For instance, we have a French anecdote, from the latter
part of the seventeenth century, which ascribes one bloody war to the
accident of a little 'miff,' arising between the king and his minister
upon some such trifle as the situation of a palace window. Again, from
the early part of the eighteenth century, we have an English anecdote,
ascribing consequences no less bloody to a sudden feud between two
ladies, and that feud, (if I remember,) tracing itself up to a pair of
gloves; so that, in effect, the war and the gloves form the two poles
of the transaction. Harlequin throws a pair of Limerick gloves into a
corn-mill; and the spectator is astonished to see the gloves
immediately issuing from the hopper, well ground into seven armies of
one hundred thousand men each, and with parks of artillery to
correspond. In these two anecdotes, we recognize at once the able and
industrious artist arranging his materials with a pious regard to
theatrical effect. This man knows how to group his figures; well he
understands where to plant his masses of light and shade; and what
impertinence it would be in us spectators, the reader suppose and
myself, to go behind the scenes for critical inquiry into daylight
realities. All reasonable men see that, the less of such realities our
artist had to work with, the more was his merit.
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