By ALLAN CUNNINGHAM.
_6 vols., with Portraits of Thirty-two of the most distinguished
British Artists, &c._
The author has collected in six small volumes the History of Art in
England, and the Lives, Characters, and Works of its Professors,--the
materials for which were previously scattered through many volumes.
On this account, these biographies have been considered a valuable
acquisition to literature; and although the critical observations will
render them valuable to the student, yet, being free from the dry
technicalities of virtù, and abounding with personal anecdote, they are
not less alluring to the ordinary reader.
The annals of Art, and the lives of its followers, though deficient
in the spirit-stirring incidents of the warrior and the politician,
possess an interest not less attractive. The labours and struggles
of genius, the success of perseverance, and the inutility of natural
talent separated from prudence, as exemplified in these biographies,
will afford a useful moral lesson, at the same time that the perusal of
the stories of such lives is a source of pleasure and entertainment.