Conceivably he himself was unaware
of his hostility until, more than ten years later, he was forced to
criticise the poets who made the English Pindaric popular.

Perhaps too by ordering its publication he was saying indirectly what he
had already expressed in many of his writings, for example in _Rambler_
No. 23: "the publick, which is never corrupted, nor often deceived, is
to pass the last sentence upon literary claims." If this is so, a series
like the Augustan Reprints necessarily deals with literary failures. And
yet Morrison's ode is well worth reading today as a pleasing example of
what I somewhat fearsomely term the baroque, of what the cultured
gentleman of that time regarded as a token of good taste. Long dormant,
it is here given new life. Who knows but that the prophecy made by
Morrison at the end of the poem may after all be fulfilled:

In the long course of rolling years,
When all thy labour disappears,
Yet shall this verse descend from age to age,
And, breaking from oblivion's shade,
Go on, to flourish while thy paintings fade.

Frederick W. Hilles

Yale University

Postscript

Mr. Kirkwood has sent me information, too late to be incorporated in the
preface, which adds to, and in an important way corrects, what I have
written.

In the Print Room of the British Museum there is an engraving by James
Watson "From an Original Picture by Vandevelde, in the Possession of Mr.
Reynolds." Every detail in the engraving tallies with Morrison's
word-painting of the Vandevelde. Furthermore the description of a
landscape by Claude (a View near Castle Gondolfo) in the sale of Sir
Joshua's collection of paintings in 1795 suggests that this was the
Claude Morrison had in mind when writing his ode. In other words, it is
probable that all the paintings discussed in the poem had been seen by
Morrison in Reynolds's house.

As to matters of fact, the ode, it turns out, was not unnoticed in its
day. It was commented upon in both the _Critical_ and the _Monthly_--not
in 1767 but in 1768. The reviewer in the _Critical_ (vol. 25, p. 393, in
the monthly catalogue for May) wrote: "This is an elegant and ingenious
descriptive poem. The author supposes himself viewing several pieces of
historic, landskip, and portrait painting; and from thence takes
occasion to represent the figures, prospects, and passions, which the
artist has exhibited. As the poet has touched upon various topics, he
has very p