Flesh in the Age of Reason by Roy Porter (review)

159 the canny publisher Pierce Tempest commissioned and culled Laroon’s series for two tiers of wealthy buyers, while Amigoni ’s‘‘Cries’’beganasoilpaintings,two of which were given to his countryman, the famous castrato Farinelli (who is unflatteringly pictured in plate three of Hogarth ’s Marriage à la Mode.) Mr. Shesgreen instructively parallels the work of the two artists: Laroon focuses on ‘‘the sellers’attitudes, ‘actions’, costumes, and identities,’’whileAmigoni emphasizes the ‘‘hawkers’ personalities, declared in their faces’’ and their urban settings. Laroon created a visual encyclopedia of street types; Amigoni depicted an apple-seller, shoeblack, lamplighter , and chimney sweeper; all his hawker-children were ‘‘agents of sentimental refinement.’’ Yet Mr. Shesgreen’s contrasts between the two artists weaken his comparisons. Both produced popular art, but they could not have been more different in style, productivity, intent—a modern parallel might be in low-budget and art films. J. S. Müller imitated Amigoni’s pictorial approach, and further personalized his figures with lengthy explanatoryverses . Irritated by the sentimental naı̈veté of Amigoni’s portrayals, the mysterious G. Child copied two of his images and added lewd verses, turning them into ‘‘pornographic suites catering to the sexual fantasies of men’’; this was a ‘‘skirmish in a well-known war waged against the Venetian painter.’’A perceptive rereadingof Hogarth’s ‘‘The Enraged Musician’’ reveals the last derivation of the earlier ‘‘Cries.’’ Mr. Shesgreen deftly opens up many concurrent meanings of the print, which demythologized the streethawkers of London and made the London ‘‘Cries’’ subjects for English artists. Although this pictorial debate tells us of the print market , artistic and national rivalries, and the streets of mid-century London, Child and Hogarth represent a tradition outside of the ‘‘Cries,’’ less interested in depicting the lives of street hawkers than in commenting on those who do. The idealizations of Laroon were to be embellished by Francis Wheatley in the 1790s, an indication of continuing interest in the pastoral as London became increasingly urbanized , and sought in the distancing of art a remedy for the less pleasant reality of the streets. Satires of the ‘‘Cries’’ branched off to become its own gritty and sardonic genre. Mr. Shesgreen’s ekphrastic readings are thoughtful and never forced—here, as in his earlier volume, his clear and straightforward discussion, attentiveness to the publishing trade, and knowledge of historical backgrounds reveal a complex understanding of the ‘‘Cries.’’ One does wish for discussion of more artists and a cross listing of illustrated subjects. Reproducing 170 images, Mr. Shesgreen’s volume is both an excellent resource and a solid claim for the ordination of a new canon. W. B. Gerard Auburn University Montgomery ROY PORTER. Flesh in the Age of Reason, introd. Simon Schama. New York and London: Norton, 2003. Pp. xviii ⫹ 574. $29.95. From the eternal polarities of mind and body, soul and flesh, reason and belief, the late Mr. Porter distills the Enlightenment ’s transformation of Western consciousness . Beginning with the ancient world of Plato, Aristotle, Old and New Testament, the Church Fathers, Hippocrates , Galen, and others right up through the seventeenth century, Mr. Porter reveals ‘‘how the demise of the soul came 160 about.’’ He recapitulates the theories of seemingly sundry innovators, including very minor players (like Giorgio Baglivi, whose Paraxis medica in 1699 argued for a chemical-mechanicalexplanationofthe body) to more important figures, such as William Harvey (discoverer of the circulation of the blood, 1628). Whole chapters or large sections are devoted to the usual suspects, such as Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Shaftesbury,Mandeville, Swift, the Spectator, Erasmus Darwin, Hume, Cheyne, Sterne, Johnson, Godwin , Blake, and Byron. So who or what dealt the lethal instruments to the soul? Renaissance revival of materialist thought, Hobbes’s rationalism, Locke’s destruction of innate ideas, Hume’s skepticism ,theneedtodeterminehumanidentity (Locke again), the increase in sensibility and fear of disease by the new consuming classes of the lattereighteenth century—all had a role. Mr. Porter, who died in 2002, kept one eye focused on the past and another on the present, implying that the zeitgeist of the twenty-first century was erected upon the theoretical groundwork of the late eighteenth. He often delights his reader when he perceives an alliance...