Moses departing for the "Fair." Hopeful and confident are the group, and not least so Moses himself. We fancy we recognize in Moses a similar figure in a sweet picture exhibited last year by Mr Stonhouse, one of the "Etching Club." We are not quite satisfied with the other figures--they all hide their faces, as well they might, for their simplicity in trusting to the "discreet boy" that can "buy and sell to very good advantage"--so off go Moses and the colt that had been nine years in the family. "We all followed him several paces from the door, bawling after him good-luck! good-luck! till we could see him no longer."
No. 12 exhibits simplicity upon a larger scale, and shows the head of the family, verifying the old proverb, "like father like son"--though it should be here like son like father. The colt was fitly turned over to the son, grave blind Blackberry was a horse for the father's art and wisdom. "By this time I began to have a most hearty contempt for the poor animal myself, and was almost alarmed at the approach of every customer." Poor Blackberry! He is quite conscious of his depreciation; he is a wise animal, and can see that "with half an eye." Alas! we fear he has not that half. Blackberry is good--yet will he sell for nothing; how patiently he lets them handle his leg, and a handle it is; we can imagine the creature thinking, "pray, sir, would you like to look at the other poor thing of a leg?" The rascally Fair, in which Mr Mulready has shown, according to his author, that the Vicar ought not to have been, is well given; but we should have liked a full length portrait of Mr Jenkinson pronouncing [Greek: Anarchon ara chai atelentaion to pan.]
The reading the letter, the well-known letter of Mr Burchell to "The Ladies." "There seemed, indeed, something applicable to both sides in this letter, and its censures might as well be referred to those to whom it was written, as to us; but the malicious meaning was obvious, and we went no further." This, as usual, is well grouped; the Vicar ponders, and cannot tell what to make of it. We should have preferred, as a subject, the Vicar confronting Mr Burchell, and the cool effrontery of the philosopher turning the tables upon the Vicar, "and how came you so basely to presume to break open this letter?" or better still, perhaps, the encounter of art between Mr Burchell and Mrs Deborah Primrose. And why have we not Dick's episode of the dwarf and the giant? Episodes are excellent things, as good for the illustrations as for the book. No. 14, the contrivance of Mrs Primrose to entrap the squire, properly belongs to another chapter. "Then the poor woman would sometimes tell the squire that she thought him and Olivia extremely of a size, and would bid both stand up to see which was tallest." The passage is nicely told; there is, however, but one figure to arrest attention, and that is quite right, for it is Olivia's, and a sweet figure it is. Dear Olivia! We have not seen her portrait before, and we shall love her, beyond "to the end of the chapter," to the end of the volume, and the more so, that hers after all was a hard fate. It is the part of the tale which leaves a melancholy impression; Goldsmith has so determined it--and to his judgment we bow implicitly. Had any other author so wretchedly disposed of his heroine, in a work not professedly tragic, we should have been pert as critics usually are. Mrs Primrose is certainly here too young. We cannot keep our eyes off Olivia; and see, the scoundrel has slyly taken her innocent hand, and the other is put up to her neck in such modest doubt of the liberty allowed. Here, as in other instances, the squire is not the well-dressed man of the world, whose gold lace had attracted Dick's attention. We could linger longer over this illustration, but must pass on--honest Burchell has been dismissed, villany has full sway. We must leave poor Olivia to her fate, and turn to the family picture "drawn by a limner;" capital--"limner" well suiting the intended satire--some say a good-natured, sly cut at Sir Joshua. We should certainly have had Mrs Primrose as Venus, and the two little ones as Cupids, and the Vicar presenting to her his books on the Whistonian controversy, and the squire as Alexander. Whoever wishes to see specimens of this kind may see some ludicrous ones at Hampton court--particularly of Queen Elizabeth, and the three goddesses abashed by her superiority. We thought to leave poor Olivia to her fate--Mr Mulready will not let us give her up so easily, and takes us to the scene of her quitting her home for her betrayer; and this is the subject of--