L

1
Linfinita varietà della natura umana
2
Variety

• 'The Figures which excite in us the Ideas of
  Beauty, seem to be those in which there is
  uniformity amidst variety (Francis Hutcheson,
  Inquiry Concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony, and
  Design, 1725)
• "Beauty belongs to objects possessed of
  uniformity, variety and proportion. Each of these
  qualities pleases in some degree but all of them
  united give exquisite satisfaction." (Alexander
  Gerard, An Essay on Taste, 1759)
• How great a share variety has in producing
  beauty may be seen in the ornamental part of
  nature. () All the senses delight in it, and
  equally are averse to sameness. () I mean here,
  and every where indeed, a composed variety for
  variety uncomposed, and without design, is
  confusion and deformity (William Hogarth, The
  Analysis of Beauty, 1753)

3
Variety and the novel

• It is a pleasing labour of the mind to solve
  the most difficult problems allegories and
  riddles, trifling as they are, afford the mind
  amusement and with what delight does it follow
  the well-connected thread of a play, or novel,
  which ever increases as the plot thickens, and
  ends most pleasd, when that is most distinctly
  unravelld? (Of Intricacy in The Analysis of
  Beauty)

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• la pittura cercherà la linea serpentina, la
  bellezza teorizzata da Hogarth e capace di
  scardinare lordine specchiato e meccanico della
  simmetria. () Quando lideale grafico classico
  luomo e la correlata svalutazione del
  paesaggio lascerà spazio a ciò che si era
  eliminato, quando cioè alla natura naturans
  lidealizzazione si aggiungerà la natura
  naturata in tutti i suoi aspetti, sia
  naturalistici (i dirupi, le eruzioni vulcaniche,
  lasperità delle Alpi e la voga dei Northern
  Tours) sia antropomorfi (i personaggi umili ed
  idiosincratici, si pensi ai characters di
  Fielding, di Hogarth o di Smollett), allora si
  compirà il passo dal generale al particolare.
  (Yvonne de Bezrucka, Genio e immaginazione nel
  Settecento inglese)

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() to see with our own eyes

• It is also evident that the painters eye may
  not be a bit better fitted to receive these new
  impressions, who is in like manner too much
  captivated with the works of art for he also is
  apt to pursue the shadow, and drop the substance.
  This mistakes happens chiefly to those who go to
  Rome for the accomplishment of their studies, as
  they naturally will, without the utmost care,
  take the infectious turn of the connoisseur,
  instead of the painter (Introduction to The
  Analysis of Beauty)

8
W. Hogarth, Captain Coram, 1740
9
William Hogarth. David Garrick in Richard III
10
William Hogarth Portrait of David Garrick And
his Wife, 1757
11
Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mrs Siddons as the Tragic
Muse, 1789
12
Gainsborough, Portrait of Mrs Siddons, 1785
13
So necessary is this to the understanding of the
characters of men

• Again, there is another sort of knowledge,
  beyond the power of learning to bestow, and this
  is to be had by conversation. So necessary is
  this to the understanding the characters of men,
  that none are more ignorant of them than those
  learned pedants whose lives have been entirely
  consumed in colleges, and among books for
  however exquisitely human nature may have been
  described by writers, the true practical system
  can be learnt only in the world. () Such
  characters are only the faint copy of a copy, and
  can have neither the justness nor spirit of an
  original. (Tom Jones, Book IX, Ch. I)

14

• Writing () is but a different name for
  conversation
• (L. Sterne, Tristram Shandy)

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HOGARTHSCONVERSATION PIECESAND CYCLES
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W. Hogarth, A Midnight Modern Conversation
17
W. Hogarth, The Staymaker
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Of faces

• It is an observation, that, out of the great
  number of faces that have been formd since the
  creation of the world, no two have been so
  exactly alike, but the usual and common
  discernment of the eye would discover a
  difference between them. (W. Hogarth, The
  Analysis of Beauty)

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To diversify their operations, is one talent of
a good writer

• Another caution we would give thee, my good
  Reptile, is, that thou dost not find out too near
  a resemblance between certain characters here
  introduced as, for instance, between the
  landlady who appears in the seventh book and her
  in the ninth. Thou art to know, friend, that
  there are certain characteristics in which most
  individuals of every profession and occupation
  agree. To be able to preserve these
  characteristics, and at the same time to
  diversify their operations, is one talent of a
  good writer Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, Book X,
  Ch. I)

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He who should call the ingenious Hogarth a
burlesque painter, would, in my opinion, do him
very little honour for sure it is much easier,
much less the subject of admiration, to paint a
man with a nose, or any other feature, of a
preposterous size, or to expose him in some
absurd or monstrous attitude, than to express
the affections of men on canvas. It hath been
thought a vast commendation of a painter to say
his figures seem to breathe but surely it is a
much greater and nobler applause, that they
appear to think. (Henry Fielding, Joseph
Andrews, Authors preface, 1742)
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J. Reynolds, Laurence Sterne 1760
30
Joshua Reynolds, Mrs. Abington
31
Gainsborough, Portrait of Viscountess Folkestone,
detail
32

• The cutis is composed of tender threads, like
  network, filled with different colourd juices.
  () These different colourd juices, together
  with the different mashes of the network, and the
  size of its threads in this or that part, causes
  the variety of complexions (W. Hogarth, Of
  Colouring, AB)

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• the general hue of the performance will be a
  seeming uniform prime tint, at any little
  distance, that is a very fair, transparent and
  pearl-like complexion but never quite uniform as
  snow, ivory, marble or wax, like a poets
  mistress, for either of these in living-flesh,
  would in truth be hideous. (Of Colouring, AB)

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Beauty does no longer equal virtue

• The lock () serves Hogarth as the contingency
  that distinguishes the real from Shaftesburys
  ideal, the living woman from a sculpted
  simulacrum or the perfect geometrical figure.
  (Ronald Paulson, Introduction to Hogarths AB)

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W. Hogarth, Mrs Salter, 1741
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conversation of character

• In the last place, the actions should be such
  as may not only be within the compass of human
  agency, and which human agents may probably be
  supposed to do but they should be likely for the
  very actors and characters themselves to have
  performed for what may be only wonderful and
  surprizing in one man, may become improbable, or
  indeed impossible, when related of another. This
  last requisite is what the dramatic critics call
  conversation of character and it requires a very
  extraordinary degree of judgment, and a most
  exact knowledge of human nature.
• (Tom Jones, Book VIII, Ch. I)

38
Mr Thwackum and Mr Square

• This gentleman and Mr Thwackum scarce ever met
  without a disputation for their tenets were
  indeed diametrically opposite to each other.
  Square held human nature to be the perfection of
  all virtue, and that vice was a deviation from
  our nature, in the same manner as deformity of
  body is. Thwackum, on the contrary, maintained
  that the human mind, since the fall, was nothing
  but a sink of iniquity, till purified and
  redeemed by grace. In one point only they agreed,
  which was, in all their discourses on morality
  never to mention the word goodness. The favourite
  phrase of the former, was the natural beauty of
  virtue that of the latter, was the divine power
  of grace. The former measured all actions by the
  unalterable rule of right, and the eternal
  fitness of things (). (Tom Jones, Book III, Ch.
  III)

39
If thou dost delight in these models of
perfection, there are books enow written to
gratify thy taste

• In the next place, we must admonish thee, my
  worthy friend () not to condemn a character as a
  bad one, because it is not perfectly a good one.
  If thou dost delight in these models of
  perfection, there are books enow written to
  gratify thy taste () nor do I, indeed, conceive
  the good purposes served by inserting characters
  of such angelic perfection, or such diabolical
  depravity, in any work of invention since, from
  contemplating either, the mind of man is more
  likely to be overwhelmed with sorrow and shame
  than to draw any good uses from such patterns
  for in the former instance he may be both
  concerned and ashamed to see a pattern of
  excellence in his nature, which he may reasonably
  despair of ever arriving at (). (Tom Jones,
  Book X, Ch. I)

40
Henry Fielding, To John Hayes Esq.

• And see how various men at once will seem/How
  passions blended on each other fix./How vice with
  virtues, faults with graces mix /How passions
  opposite, as sour to sweet, / Shall in one bosom
  at one moment meet. / With various luck for
  victory contend. / And now shall carry, and now
  lose their end.
• ()
• But as the diff'ring colours blended lie/When
  Titian variegates his clouded sky/Where white
  and black, the yellow and the green,/Unite and
  undistinguish'd form the scene./So the great
  artist diff'ring passions joins,/And love with
  hatred, fear with rage combines.

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Tiziano Vecellio , Il ratto d'Europa (1559-62)
42
The variety of human nature

• (Containing references to and passages from
  Defoe, Fielding, Hogarth, Choderlos de Laclos,
  Sterne)

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• From Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, 1606
• Age cannot wither her, nor custom staleHer
  infinite variety other women cloyThe appetites
  they feed but she makes hungryWhere most she
  satisfies

• From Miltons Paradise Lost, 1667
• So varyd he, and of his tortuous Traine Curld
  many a wanton wreath in sight of Eve, To lure her
  Eye

45

• It is strange that nature has afforded us so
  many lines and shapes to indicate the
  deficiencies and blemishes of the mind, whilst
  there are none at all that point out the
  perfections of it beyond the appearance of common
  sense and placidity. Deportment, words, and
  actions, must speak for the good, the wise, the
  witty, the humane, the generous, the merciful and
  the brave. (AB, Of the face)

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• It is by the natural and unaffected movements
  of the muscles, caused by the passions of the
  mind, that evry mans character would in some
  measure be written in his face. (Analysis of
  Beauty, Of the face)

49
The hypocrite

• Many handsom faces of almost any age, will hide
  a foolish or wicked mind till they betray
  themselves by their actions or their words yet
  the frequent aukward movements of the muscles of
  the fools face, th ever so handsom, is apt in
  time to leave such traces up and down it, as will
  distinguish a defect of mind upon examination
  but the bad man, if he be a hypocrite, may so
  manage his muscles, by teaching them to
  contradict his heart, that little of his mind can
  be gatherd from his countenance, so that the
  character of an hypocrite is entirely out of the
  power of the pencil, without some adjoining
  circumstances to discover him, as smiling and
  stabing at the same time. (BA, Of the face)

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• () and I will say boldly, that both religion
  and virtue have received more real discredit from
  hypocrites than the wittiest profligates or
  infidels could ever cast upon them nay, farther,
  as these two, in their purity, are rightly called
  the bands of civil society, and are indeed the
  greatest of blessings so when poisoned and
  corrupted with fraud, pretence, and affectation,
  they have become the worst of civil curses, and
  have enabled men to perpetrate the most cruel
  mischiefs to their own species. (Tom Jones, Book
  III, CH. IV)

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Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism1761Will
iam Hogarthb. Nov. 10, 1697
54

• Here Allworthy concluded his Sermon, to which
  Blifil had listened with the profoundest
  attention, though it cost him some pain to
  prevent now and then a small discomposure of his
  muscles. He now praised every period of what he
  had heard, with the warmth of a young divine, who
  hath the honour to dine with a bishop the same
  day in which his lordship hath mounted the
  pulpit. (Tom Jones, Book I, Ch. XII)

55
Maîtrise de soiself-control or
de-textualization of the Self?

• "Entrée dans le monde dans le temps où, fille
  encore, j'étais vouée par état au silence et à
  l'inaction, j'ai su en profiter pour observer et
  réfléchir. Tandis qu'on me croyait étourdie ou
  distraite, écoutant peu à la vérité les discours
  qu'on s'empressait de me tenir, je recueillais
  avec soin ceux qu'on cherchait à me cacher.Cette
  utile curiosité, en servant à m'instruire,
  m'apprit encore à dissimuler forcée souvent de
  cacher les objets de mon attention aux yeux qui
  m'entouraient, j'essayai de guider les miens à
  mon gré j'obtins dès lors de prendre à volonté
  ce regard distrait que depuis vous avez loué si
  souvent. Encouragée par ce premier succès, je
  tâchai de régler de même les divers mouvements de
  ma figure. Ressentais-je quelque chagrin, je
  m'étudiais à prendre l'air de la sécurité, même
  celui de la joie j'ai porté le zèle jusqu'à me
  causer des douleurs volontaires, pour chercher
  pendant ce temps l'expression du plaisir. Je me
  suis travaillée avec le même soin et plus de
  peine pour réprimer les symptômes d'une joie
  inattendue. C'est ainsi que j'ai su prendre sur
  ma physionomie cette puissance dont je vous ai vu
  quelquefois si étonné.(Choderlos de Laclos, Le
  liaisons dangéreuses, Lettre LXXXI)

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Personality is a mask you believe in

• I was not averse to a tradesman, but then I
  would have a tradesman, forsooth, that was
  something of a gentleman too that when my
  husband had a mind to carry me to the court, or
  to the play, he might become a sword, and look as
  like a gentleman as another man and not be one
  that had the mark of his apron-strings upon his
  coat, or the mark of his hat upon his periwig
  that should look as if he was set on to his
  sword, when his sword was put on to him, and that
  carried his trade in his countenance. (D. Defoe,
  Moll Flanders)

57

• Some have considered the larger part of mankind
  in the light of actors, as personating characters
  no more their own, and to which in fact they have
  no better title, than the player hath to be in
  earnest thought the king or emperor whom he
  represents. Thus the hypocrite may be said to be
  a player and indeed the Greeks called them both
  by one and the same name. (Tom Jones, Book VII,
  Ch. I)

58
Physiognomy can be deceiveing

• () there are pretty frowns and disagreable
  smiles the lines that form a pleasing smile
  about the corners of the mouth have gentle
  windings () but lose their beauty in the full
  laugh (), the expression of excessive laughter,
  oftener than any other, gives a sensible face a
  silly or disagreable look, as it is apt to form
  regular plain lines about the mouth, like a
  parenthesis, which sometimes appears like crying
  as, on the contrary, I remember to have seen a
  beggar who had clouted up his head very artfully,
  and whose visage was thin and pale enough to
  excite pity, but his features were otherwise so
  unfortunately formd for his purpose, that what
  he intended for a grin of pain and misery, was
  rather a joyous laugh (AB, Of the face)

59
One century later, George Eliot would write on
the subject

• If any had noticed her blush as significant,
  they had certainly not interpreted it by the
  secret windings and recesses of her feelings. A
  blush is no language only a dubious flag-signal
  which may mean either of two contradictories
  (George Eliot, Daniel Deronda)

60
Tristram Shandy

• Here are two senses () And here are two roads
  () which shall we take?
• God only knows who is a hypocrite and who is
  not

61
The artist as anatomist

• The artist must beside a delicate taste and
  quick apprehension possess an accurate knowledge
  of the internal fabric (Hume, Philosophical
  Essays Concerning Human Understanding, 1748)
• In order to my being well understood, let every
  object under our consideration, be imagined to
  have its inward contents scoopd up so nicely, as
  to have nothing of it left but a thin shell,
  exactly corresponding both in its inner and outer
  surface, to the shape of the object itself (BA,
  Introduction)
• Human faculties are not fitted to penetrate into
  the internal Fabrick and real Essences of Bodies
  (John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding
  4.12.11)

62

• () our minds shine not through the body but
  are wrapt up here in a dark covering of
  uncrystalized flesh and blood so that if we
  would come to the specifick cha- racters of
  them, we must go some other way to work.
  (Tristram Shandy, vol. I, ch. XXIII)

63
In Tristram Shandy la teoria fisiognomica può
funzionare solo se il narratore

• assume un atteggiamento sentimentale, registrando
  emozioni e gesti
• sposta lattenzione dalla complessità
  dellindividuo alla complessità del mondo che lo
  circonda, in modo che lenigma della natura umana
  possa essere rappresentata anche attraverso la
  presenza inquietante delle cose
• riesce a creare dei centri di coscienza ingenui
  in modo da evitare dei fraintendimenti assoluti
  solo così, visto che gli uomini non hanno una
  finestra sul petto, si può leggere il gioco delle
  passioni sul volto.

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We live among riddles and mysteries

• But mark, madam, we live amongst riddles and
  mysteries the most obvious things, which come
  in our way, have dark sides, which the quickest
  sight cannot penetrate into and even the
  clearest and most exalted understandings amongst
  us find ourselves puzzled and at a loss in almost
  every cranny on natures works (TS)

65

• I have left Trim my bowling-green, cried my
  uncle Toby My father smiled I have left him
  moreover a pension, continued my uncle Toby my
  father looked grave. (TS, Vol IV, Ch. IV)

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W. Hogarth After
68
Body language

• Action is a sort of language which perhaps one
  time or other may come to be taught by a kind of
  grammar rules. (AB, Of action)

69

• There are some traits of certain ideas which
  leave prints of themselves about our eyes and
  eye-brows and there is a consciousness of it,
  somewhere about the heart, which serves but to
  make the etchings the stronger we see, spell,
  and put them together without a dictionary (TS,
  Vol. V, Ch. I)

70

• There are certain combined looks of simple
  subtlety where whim, and sense, and
  seriousness, and nonsense, are so blended, that
  all the languages of Babel set loose together
  could not express them they are communicated
  and caught so instantaneously, that you can
  scarce say which party is the infecter. I leave
  it to your men of words to swell pages about it
  (A Sentimental Journey, The gloves)

71

• The old officer was reading attentively a small
  pamphlet (). As soon as I sat down, he took his
  spectacles off (). Translate this into any
  civilized language in the world

72

• There is not a secret so aiding in the process
  of sociality, as to get master of this short
  hand, and be quick in rendering the several turns
  of looks and limbs, with all their inflections
  and delineations, into plain words. For my own
  part, by long habitude, I do it so mechanically,
  that when I walk the streets of London, I go
  translating all the way and have more than once
  stood behind in the circle, where not three words
  have been said, and have brought off twenty
  different dialogues with me, which I could have
  fairly wrote down and sworn to. (SJ, The
  translation)

73

• to shew how few lines are necessary to express
  the first thoughts, as to different attitudes
  (W. Hogarth, AB)

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• The two parts of curves next to 71, served for
  the figures of the old woman and her partner at
  the farther end of the room. The curve and two
  straight lines at right angle, gave the hint for
  the fat mans sprawling posture. I next resolved
  to keep a figure within the bounds of a circle,
  which produced the upper part of the fat woman,
  between the fat man and the aukward one in the
  bag wig, for whom I had made a sort of X. The
  prim lady, his partner, in the riding-habit, by
  pecking back her elbows, as they call it, from
  the waste upwards, made a tolerable D, with a
  straight line under it, to signify the scanty
  stiffness of her petticoat and a Z stood for the
  angular position the body makes with the legs and
  thighs of the affected fellow in the tye-wig the
  upper parts of this plump partner were confind
  to a O .. (AB, Of attitude)

76

• My Lord A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, M, N, O,
  P, Q, and so on, all of a row, mounted upon their
  several horses some with large stirrups, getting
  on in a more grave and sober pace others on the
  contrary, tucked up to their chins, with whips
  across their mouths, scouring and scampering it
  away like so many little party-coloured devils
  astride a mortgage, - and as if some of them were
  resolved to break their necks. (TS)

77

•    ---- But before the Corporal begins, I must
  first give you a description of his attitude
  ---- otherwise he will naturally stand
  represented, by your imagination, in an uneasy
  posture, -- stiff, -- perpendicular, -- dividing
  the weight of his body equally upon both legs
  -- his eye fix'd, as if on duty -- his look
  determined -- clinching the sermon in his left
  hand, like his firelock -- In a word, you would
  be apt to paint Trim, as if he was standing in
  his platoon ready for action -- His attitude
  was as unlike all this as you can conceive.
             

78

• He stood before them with his body swayed, and
  bent forwards just so far, as to make an angle of
  85 degrees and a half upon the plain of the
  horizon -- which sound orators, to whom I
  address this, know very well, to be the true
  persuasive angle of incidence -- in any other
  angle you may talk and preach -- 'tis certain,
  -- and it is done every day -- but with what
  effect, -- I leave the world to judge !

79

• The necessity of this precise angle of 85
  degrees and a half to a mathematical exactness,
  -- does it not shew us, by the way, -- how the
  arts and sciences mutually befriend each other ?
  

80

• He stood, ---- for I repeat it, to take the
  picture of him in at one view, with his body
  sway'd, and somewhat bent forwards, --- his
  right leg firm under him, sustaining
  seven-eighths of his whole weight, -- the foot
  of his left leg, the de-fect of which was no
  disadvantage to his attitude, advanced a little,
  -- not lateral-ly, nor forwards, but in a line
  betwixt them -- his knee bent, but that not
  vio-lently, -- but so as to fall within the
  li-mits of the line of beauty

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• ---- And possibly, gentle reader, with such a
  temptation -- so wouldst thou For never did
  thy eyes behold, or thy concupiscence covet any
  thing in this world, more concupiscible than
  widow Wadman.
• TO conceive this right, -- call for pen and ink
  -- here's paper ready to your hand. ---- Sit
  down, Sir, paint her to your own mind ---- as
  like your mistress as you can ---- as unlike
  your wife as your conscience will let you --
  'tis all one to me ---- please but your own
  fancy in it. (Vol. 6, Ch XXXVIII)

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