Dilettanti: The Antic and the Antique in Eighteenth-Century England by Bruce Redford (review)

98 ‘‘character’’ and the kind of representations that he dismissed as ‘‘caricatura,’’ a distinction that has more to do with abstract versus natural form than with mere exaggeration. The best parts of her book focus on popular visual satires that are relatively straightforward, such as the ‘‘macaroni’’ satires of the 1770s, or those that are particularly susceptible to analysis in terms of masking and unmasking , such as the strange device of doubled half portraits treated in Chapter 5. Alexander Gourlay Rhode Island School of Design BRUCE REDFORD. Dilettanti: The Antic and the Antique in Eighteenth-Century England. Los Angeles: Getty, 2008. Pp. xi ⫹ 204. $49.95. An inquiry into ‘‘the virtuoso, the dilettante , the connoisseur’’ of the eighteenth century would seem relevant to Scriblerian interests, and indeed this handsome and fascinating study has much to tell us about the age, although primarily directed toward its second half. The origins of the Dilettanti Society have been traced by other scholars; the uniqueness of Mr. Redford’s study is his close analysis of the visual productions that announced its beginnings, its heyday, and its demise as the age of amateurism gave way in the early nineteenth century to professionalism. What seemed to characterize the Society in its early days was an almost adolescent self-consciousness: although the members did not want to be taken too seriously and hence centered much of their activity on rituals and drinking, they were educated, well-read, well-traveled elites, with a serious interest in art and architecture, history, and literature. ‘‘Their primary motto, Seria Ludo, reflects both the substance and the tone of this undertaking.’’ This beginning was chronicled in a series of portraits of members by George Knapton from 1741–1750, much as Sir Godfrey Kneller had painted portraits of the Kit-Cat Club in the first two decades of the century. Knapton divided the paintings into several categories, each of which portrayed a distinct facet of the Society: GrecoRoman , emphasizing the classical interest of the Dilettanti; the Venetian group, suggestive of the Society’s liberal republicanism ; the Libertine group (as Pope noted, they ‘‘Intrigu’d with glory, and with spirit whor’d’’); the Van Dyck group, in which the excesses of the Libertine were ameliorated by aesthetic seriousness; and, finally, the Turkish group, representing the increased tendency of the Dilettanti to explore the unfamiliar and exotic. Mr. Redford is excellent in his analysis of the portraits, his capacity to demonstrate convincingly the complicated allusiveness and intertextuality in each portrait. Without specific reference to the literature of the period, almost every description reminds us of a line from Swift or Pope; and indeed, although a later string of dizzying dichotomies are actually applied to Richard Payne Knight’s Discourse on the Worship of Priapus (1786), they do represent the heart of both the Scriblerian and Dilettanti vision : ‘‘the earnest and the ironic, the scholarly and the subversive, the exoteric and the esoteric, the punctilious and the pornographic, the outward-reaching and inward-turning.’’ It is no accident that Knight opens with a parody of Dryden ’s Absalom, ably analyzed by Mr. Redford. The Getty Museum adds to its list of 99 beautifully illustrated books on eighteenth -century topics, most recently Fragonard’s Allegories of Love, Carmontelle ’s Landscape Transparencies, and European Art of the Eighteenth Century. While none of these works directly engages the Scriblerians, all provide a broadened perspective on the aesthetic theories and practices of the eighteenth century and hence are of increasing value as we reeducate ourselves to think about literature as something other than economic, social, and political propaganda. Melvyn New University of Florida DONNA LANDRY. Noble Brutes: How Eastern Horses Transformed English Culture. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2009. Pp. 240. $50. The larger part of this study concerns itself with the emergence of the ‘‘English ’’ Thoroughbred, a hybrid breed of horse genetically acquired by mixing delicate but powerfully agile Eastern blood stock—Arab, Barb, or Turk— with sturdier, weight-carrying English horses. Between 1650 and 1750, when horse ownership throughout the British Isles increased dramatically, the Thoroughbred was embraced as the equine ideal. Elegant, fast, and uncommonly sensitive to its rider’s will, it excelled at racing and hunting, two pastimes...