TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources.

Footnotes have been moved to the end of the book text, and before the publisher's Book Catalog. Some Footnotes are very long.

To avoid duplication, the page numbering in the publisher's Book Catalog at the back of the book has a suffix C added, so that for example page [23] in the Catalog is denoted as [23C].

The cover was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

More detail can be found at the [end of the book].

HOGARTH'S WORKS:
WITH
LIFE AND ANECDOTAL DESCRIPTIONS OF HIS PICTURES.
—◆—
FIRST SERIES.

WILLIAM HOGARTH & HIS DOG TRUMP.

HOGARTH'S WORKS:

WITH

LIFE AND ANECDOTAL DESCRIPTIONS OF HIS PICTURES.

BY

JOHN IRELAND and JOHN NICHOLS, F.S.A.

THE WHOLE OF THE PLATES REDUCED IN EXACT
FAC-SIMILE OF THE ORIGINALS.

First Series.

London

CHATTO AND WINDUS, PUBLISHERS.

(SUCCESSORS TO JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN.)

LIST OF PLATES

DESCRIBED IN THE FIRST SERIES.

PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION.

It is a singular fact, that, notwithstanding the enormous popularity enjoyed by Hogarth in the minds of English people, no perfectly popular edition has been hitherto brought before the public. Were a foreigner to ask an ordinary Briton who was the most thoroughly national painter in the roll of English artists, the answer would be undoubtedly William Hogarth; but the chances are that our countryman would not have at command a tangible proof that his statement was correct. Such editions as have hitherto appeared have been either expensive or unsatisfactory,—even the handsome and costly volume by Nichols is far from complete. To supply the want, the present issue has been projected. The illustrative text of Ireland—undoubtedly the best in existence—has been given in full, and is supplemented by addenda from the works of Nichols. The three volumes form certainly the most complete gallery of Hogarth's drawings yet given to the public. The rapid progress of science has provided means by which the pictures have been reduced from their original size to the compact form of this page; while, at the same time, the most perfect truthfulness has been preserved.

Hogarth is essentially English—brave, straight-forward, manly; never pandering to fashion or fancy. When he had to deal with sin and misery, he met them full in the face, bating no whit of their repulsiveness; and in all his works, wherever a moral is to be drawn, it is a noble and a healthy one. In his merry moods he is irresistibly comic; when he stands forward as a censor of morals, he is terrible in his truth; when he creates a character, it is always human and complete,—a true reflex of the age in which he lived. Times may change, and costumes, but humanity remains much the same. Take any series of the splendid list, and the people who crowd the canvas live and move amongst us with different names and other attire. Such suggestive cognomens as Mary Hackabout are not in use; nor do procuresses haunt such localities as Wood Street in pursuit of their vile calling. The course of fashion, as of empire, has taken its way westward; but the whole story of the Harlot's Progress is as fresh and as applicable to a season in 1873 as it was a hundred and forty years before. Have we not Tom Rakewells in scores among us; and had Hogarth been living now, would he not have interpolated another picture of the degradation attained by the spendthrift when he enters the employment of the moneylender as a decoy to poor flies such as he was himself at the beginning of the chapter? The function of the satirist is still needed, and there is no danger of the works of William Hogarth proving to be out of date. Probably no artist ever told stories so well; certainly no one ever acquired such a reputation, and there is no reason why his splendid monuments should be found only in the libraries of the wealthy. Every one should know something of him besides his moral lessons, since, of all the moral lessons he ever taught, his life formed the most pointed. Fearlessness and honesty were his watchwords from his early career of art, after being released from the silversmith's apprenticeship in 1720 until the day of his death in 1764, when he retired from mundane existence full of years and honours. As Ireland declares him to have asserted, his drawings were meant for the crowd rather than for the critics; and with that intention his book was commenced, the original design being to comprise in one volume "a moral and analytical description of seventy-eight prints;" but as the work advanced, such an amount of anecdote and illustrative comment suggested itself, that he was compelled to adopt the three-volume form which is here followed, with the further addition to which we have alluded, of such a full description and reproduction as the original compiler, from accident or design, omitted. These will be found in the third volume, and include many of the most important and meritorious works of the great artist. It has been found advisable to change the ornamental and sometimes indistinct lettering of the original plates, and to adopt a consistent and uniform style of titles. At the same time the elaborate catalogue compiled by Ireland is preserved, since it is still highly valuable as a chronological list of every effort of Hogarth's hand, although it would be folly to attempt a reproduction of every variation it contains. The system pursued by Ireland and Nichols is followed, and the Publishers venture to congratulate themselves on submitting to the notice of the artistic and literary world, as well as to the public generally, the best and cheapest edition of Hogarth's complete works ever brought forward.

INTRODUCTION.

Mr. Hogarth frequently asserted that no man was so ill qualified to form a true judgment of pictures as the professed connoisseur; whose taste being originally formed upon imitations, and confined to the manners of Masters, had seldom any reference to Nature. Under this conviction, his subjects were selected for the crowd rather than the critic;[1] and explained in that universal language common to the world, rather than in the lingua technica of the arts, which is sacred to the scientific. Without presuming to support his hypothesis, I have endeavoured to follow his example.

My original design was to have comprised in one volume a moral and analytical description of seventy-eight prints; but as the work advanced, such variety of anecdote and long train of et cetera clung to the narrative, that these limits were found too narrow. With the explanation of fifteen additional plates, the letterpress has expanded to near seven hundred pages.

Where the artist has been made a victim to poetical or political prejudice, without meaning to be his panegyrist, I have endeavoured to rescue his memory from unmerited obloquy. Where his works have been misconceived or misrepresented, I have attempted the true reading. In my essay at an illustration of the prints, with a description of what I conceive the comic and moral tendency of each, there is the best information I could procure concerning the relative circumstances, occasionally interspersed with such desultory conversation as frequently occurred in turning over a volume of his prints. Though the notes may not always have an immediate relation to the engravings, I hope they will seldom be found wholly unconnected with the subjects.

Such mottoes as were engraven on the plates are inserted; but where a print has been published without any inscription, I have either selected or written one. Errors in either parody or verse with the signature E, being written by the editor, are submitted to that tribunal from whose candour he hopes pardon for every mistake or inaccuracy which may be found in these volumes.

HOGARTH.

ANECDOTES OF AN ARTIST.

"By heaven, and not a master, taught."

PORTRAIT OF HOGARTH PAINTING THE COMIC MUSE.

When Leonardo da Vinci lay upon his death-bed, Francis the First, actuated by that instinctive reverence which great minds invariably feel for each other, visited him in his chamber. An attendant informing the painter that the king was come to inquire after his health, he raised himself from the pillow, a lambent gleam of gratitude for the honour lighted up his eyes, and he made an effort to speak. The exertion was too much; he fell back; and Francis stooping to support him, this great artist expired in his arms. Affected with the awful catastrophe, the king heaved a sigh of sympathetic sorrow, and left the bed-chamber in tears. He was immediately surrounded by a crowd of those kind-hearted nobles who delight in soothing the sorrows of a sovereign; and one of them entreating him not to indulge his grief, added, as a consolatory reflection, "Consider, sire, this man was but a painter." "I do," replied the monarch; "and I at the same time consider, that though, as a king, I could make a thousand such as you, the Deity alone can make such a painter as Leonardo da Vinci."

Shall I be permitted to adopt this remark, and, without any diminution of the Italian's well-earned fame, assert that the eulogy is equally appropriate to the Englishman whose name is at the head of this chapter; for he was not the follower, but the leader of a class, and became a painter from divine impulse rather than human instruction.

The biographers who have written of artists, especially if the hero of their history was of the Dutch school, generally began by informing us that he received the rudiments of his art from the great Van A—, who was a pupil of the divine Van B—, first the disciple, and afterwards the rival, of the immortal and never enough to be admired Vander C.

This palette pedigree was not the boast of William Hogarth; he was the pupil,—the disciple,—the worshipper of nature!

I do not learn that his family either obtained a grant of lands from our first William, or flourished before the Conquest; but from Burn's History of Westmoreland, it appears that his grandfather was an honest yeoman, the inhabitant of a small tenement in the vale of Bampton, a village fifteen miles north of Kendal, and had three sons. The eldest, in conformity to ancient custom, succeeded to the title, honour, and estate of his father, became a yeoman of Bampton, and proprietor of the family freehold.

The second was not endowed with either land or beeves, but had in their stead a large portion of broad humour and wild original genius. Like his nephew, he grasped the whip of satire; and though his lash was not twisted with much skill, nor brandished with much grace, it was probably felt by those on whom his strokes were inflicted, more than would one of the most exquisite workmanship.

He was the Shakspeare of his village, and his dramas were the delight of the country; though, being written by an uneducated yeoman, it may naturally be supposed they were sufficiently coarse. Mr. Nichols, in his Anecdotes, tells us that he has seen a whole bundle of them, and want of grammar, metre, sense, and decency is their invariable characteristic. This may possibly be true, for in refinement Westmoreland was many, many years behind the capital; and our libraries contain sundrie black-letter proofs that those pithie, pleasaunte, and merrie comedies, which in the same century were enacted by the Kingis servantes with universal applause, had similar wants; notwithstanding which, these unalloyed chronicles of our ancestors' dulness are now purchased at a price considerably higher than virgin gold. Let it not from hence be imagined that I mean to sanction one folly by the mention of another; but as every human production is relative, if auld Hogarth, under the circumstances he wrote, was the admiration of his neighbours, we may fairly infer that his talents, properly cultivated, would, in a more polished situation, have ensured him the admiration of his contemporaries.[2]

Richard was the third son, and seems to have been intended for a scholar,—the scholar of his family!—for he was educated at St. Bees, in Westmoreland, and afterward kept a school in the same county. Of learning he had a portion more than sufficient for his office, for he wrote a Latin and English dictionary, which still exists in MS., and one of his Latin letters, dated 1657, preserved in the British Museum. However well he might be qualified for a teacher, he had few pupils; and finding that his employment produced neither honour nor profit, removed to London, and in Ship Court, Old Bailey, renewed his profession.

It was fortunate for literature that Doctor Samuel Johnson was not successful in an application for the place of a provincial schoolmaster. It was fortunate for the arts that Richard Hogarth was not able to establish a village school, in which situation he would probably have qualified his son William for his successor; and those talents which were calculated to instruct, astonish, and reform a world, might have been wasted in teaching some half a hundred of the young Westmoreland gentry to scan verses by their fingers, and call English things by Latin names. The fates ordained otherwise; it was his destiny to marry and reside in London, where were born unto him one son and two daughters.

The girls had such instructions as qualified them to keep a shop; and the son, who drew his first breath in this bustling world in the year 1697, was author of the prints which, copied in little, form the basis and give the value to these volumes.

Of his education we do not know much; but as his father appears to have been a man of understanding, I suppose it was sufficient for the situation in which he was intended to be placed. That it was not more liberal, might arise from the old man finding erudition answer little purpose to himself, and knowing that in a mechanic employment it is rather a drawback than an assistance. Added to this, I believe young Hogarth had not much bias towards what has obtained the name of learning. He must have been early attentive to the appearance of the passions, and feeling a strong impulse to attempt their delineation, left their names and derivations to the profound pedagogue, the accurate grammarian, or more sage and solemn lexicographer. While these labourers in the forest of science dug for the root, inquired into the circulation of the sap, and planted brambles and birch round the tree of knowledge, Hogarth had an higher aim,—an ambition to display, in the true tints of nature, the rugged character of the bark, the varied involutions of the branches, and the minute fibres of the leaves.

The first notices of his prints were written in French, by a Swiss named Rouquet, who in 1746 published "Lettres de Monsieur * * à un de ses Amis à Paris, pour lui expliquer les Estampes de Monsieur Hogarth."[3] This pamphlet describes the Harlot's and Rake's Progress, Marriage à la Mode, and March to Finchley. In the remarks, there is great reason to believe Rouquet was assisted by Hogarth, who long afterwards expressed an intention of having them translated and amplified. From such a junction, the reader will naturally expect this book to contain more information than he will find.

The second publication was by the Reverend Doctor Trusler, and extends farther than the preceding. It was begun immediately after the artist's death, is baptized Hogarth Moralized, and interspersed with seventy-eight engravings, printed on the same paper with the letterpress. It contains two hundred pages, built upon Rouquet's pamphlet, and the information he received from Mrs. Hogarth, who, conceiving her property would be essentially injured by such a publication, purchased the copyright. As the Doctor does not profess an intimate acquaintance with the arts, and confines himself to morality!—I hope and believe my work will not much clash with his.

Of the artist and his prints, we had no regular narrative until the appearance of Mr. Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting,—a work in which refined taste and elegant diction gave rank and importance to a class of men whose history, in the writings of preceding biographers, exhibited little more than a catalogue of names, or a dry uninteresting narrative of uninteresting events. To the pen of this highly accomplished writer, William Hogarth owes a portion of his deserved celebrity; for in near fifty pages devoted to his name, we find the history of a great man's excellencies and errors written with the warmth of a friend and the fidelity of a chronologist. With the first tolerably complete catalogue of his works, there was such remarks upon their meaning and tendency, as have given the artist a new character; for though his superlative merit secured him admiration from the few who were able to judge, he was considered by the crowd as a mere caricaturist, whose only aim was to burlesque whatever he represented.

The Reverend Mr. Gilpin, in his valuable Essay on Prints, has made some observations on one series by Hogarth. The remarks were evidently written in haste; and though in a few instances I cannot coincide with a gentleman for whose worth and talents I have the most unfeigned respect, I am convinced that the candour of the Vicar of Boldre will forgive the freedom taken with the critic on the Rake's Progress.

In 1781, Mr. Nichols published his Anecdotes, which since that time have been considerably enlarged. This work contains much useful information relative to the artist; and much monumental miscellany from the Grub Street Journal, and other ancient sources, concerning his contemporaries, that were it not there enniched, would in all probability have sunk in dark and endless night. Where Mr. Walpole and preceding writers threw a hair-line, he cast the antiquarian drag-net, and brought from the great deep a miraculous draught of aquatic monsters and web-footed animals, that swam round the triumphal bark of William Hogarth. For the information which I received from his volume, he has my best thanks; where I depart from his authorities, it is on the presumption that my own are better. In many cases, it is more than possible both of us are frequently mistaken.

In this I believe we agree,—that young Hogarth had an early predilection for the arts, and his future acquirements give us a right to suppose he must have studied the curious sculptures which adorned his father's spelling books, though he neglected the letterpress; and when he ought to have been storing his memory with the eight parts of speech, was examining the allegorical apple-tree which decorates the grammar. These first lines of nature inclined his father to place him with an engraver; but workers in copper were not numerous, neither did the demand for English prints warrant a certainty of any additional number obtaining constant employment. Engraving on plate seemed likely to afford a more permanent subsistence, required some taste for drawing, and had a remote alliance with the arts. These reasons being seconded by his own inclination, our juvenile satirist was apprenticed to Mr. Ellis Gamble, who kept a silversmith's shop in Cranbourn Alley, Leicester Fields. This vendor of salvers and sauce-boats had in his own house two or three rare artisans, whose employment was to engrave cyphers and armorial symbols, not only on the articles their master sold, but on any that he might have to mark from cunning workmen, in silver or meaner metals. In this branch he covenanted to instruct William Hogarth, who about the year 1712 became a practical student in Mr. Gamble's Attic Academy. In this school of science, we may fairly conjecture his first essays were the initials on tea-spoons; he would next be taught the art and mystery of the double cypher, where four letters in opposite directions are so skilfully interwoven, that it requires almost an apprenticeship to learn the art of deciphering them. Having conquered his alphabet, he ascended to the representation of those heraldic monsters which first grinned upon the shields of the holy army of crusaders, and were from thence transferred to the massy tankards and ponderous two-handled cups of their stately descendants. By copying this legion of hydras, gorgons, and chimeras dire, he attained an early taste for the ridiculous; and in the grotesque countenance of a baboon or a bear, the cunning eye of a fox, or the fierce front of a rampant lion, traced the characteristic varieties of the human physiognomy. He soon felt that the science which appertaineth unto the bearing of coat armour was not suited to his taste or talents; and tired of the amphibious many-coloured brood that people the fields of heraldry, listened to the voice of Genius, which whispered him to read the mind's construction in the face,—to study and delineate MAN.

As the first token of his turn for the satirical, it may be worth recording, that while yet an apprentice, when upon a sultry Sunday he once made an excursion to Highgate, two or three of his companions and himself sought shelter and refreshment in one of those convenient caravanserais which so much abound in the vicinity of the metropolis. In the same room were a party of thirsty pedestrians, washing down the dust they had inhaled in their walk, with London porter. Two of the company debating upon politics, and the palm of victory being, at the moment Hogarth and his companions entered, adjudged to the taller man, he very vociferously exulted in his conquest, and added some sarcastic remarks on the diminutive appearance of his adversary. The little man had a great soul, and having in his right hand a pewter pot, threw it with fatal force at his opponent: it struck him in the forehead,—and

"As the mountain oak

Nods to the axe, till with a groaning sound

It sinks, and spreads its honours on the ground,"—

he sunk to the floor, and there,—as the divine Ossian would have sublimely expressed it,—The grey mist swam before his eyes. He lay in the hall of mirth as a mountain pine, when it tumbles across the rushy Loda.—He recovered; lifted up his bleeding head, and rolled his full-orbed eyes around. He ascended as a pillar of smoke streaked with fire, and streams of blood ran down his dark brown cheeks, like torrents from the summit of an oozy rock, etc. etc.

To descend from the pinnacle of Parnassus to the plain of common sense,—the fellow being deeply, though not dangerously, wounded in the forehead, extreme agony excited a most hideous grin. His woe-begone figure, opposed to the pert triumphant air of his tiny conqueror, and the half suppressed laugh of his surrounding friends, presented a scene too ridiculous to be resisted. The young tyro seized his pencil, drew his first group of portraits from the life, and gave, with a strong resemblance of each, such a grotesque variety of character as evades all description.

When we consider this little sketch was his coup d'essai, the loss of it is much to be regretted.

He probably made many others during his apprenticeship. When that expired, bidding adieu to red lions and green dragons, he endeavoured to attain such knowledge of drawing as would enable him to delineate the human figure, and transfer his burin from silver to copperplate. In this attempt he had to encounter many difficulties; engraving on copper was so different an art from engraving on silver, that it was necessary he should unlearn much which he had already learned; and at twenty years of age, habits are too deeply rooted to be easily eradicated; so that he never attained the power of describing that clear, beautiful stroke which was then given by some foreign artists, and has since been brought, I believe, to its utmost perfection by Sir Robert Strange.

In his first efforts he had little more assistance than could be acquired by casual communications, or imitating the works of others;[4] those of Callot were probably his first models; and shop-bills and book-plates his first performances. Some of these, with impressions from tankards and tea-tables which escaped the crucible, have, by the laudable industry of collectors, been preserved to the present day. How far they add to the artist's fame, or are really of the value at which they are sometimes purchased, is a question of too high import for me to decide. By the connoisseur it is asserted, that the earliest productions of a great painter ought to be preserved, for they soar superior to the mature labours of plodding dulness, and though but seeds of that genius intended by nature to tower above its contemporaries, invariably exhibit clear marks of mind; as every variety in the branches of a strong-ribbed oak is, by the aid of a microscope, discoverable in the acorn.

By the opposite party it is urged, that collecting these blotted leaves of fancy, is burying a man of talents in the ruins of his baby-house; and that for the honour of his name, and repose of his soul, they ought to be consigned to the flames, rather than pasted in the portfolio.

I must candidly acknowledge, that for trifles by the hand of Hogarth or Mortimer, I have a kind of religious veneration; but, like the rebuses and riddles of Swift, they are still trifles, and except when considered as tracing the progress of the mind from infancy to manhood, are not entitled to much attention. If examined with this regard, especial care should be taken that their names are not dishonoured by the unmeaning and contemptible productions of inferior artists, some of whose prints have found a place in the catalogue of Hogarth's works. Mr. Nichols properly questions the plate of Æneas in a Storm: he might safely put the same query to Riche's Triumphal Entry into Covent Garden, and a few other plates, which some of the collectors have very positively asserted to be his. The Jack in Office and Pug the Painter, I believe, belong to other collectors. That the design for General Wolfe's monument should ever be supposed the work of Hogarth, has often astonished me. I do not see the most distant resemblance of his manner, in mind, conception, design, or execution.

Many stories, similar to those which are told of the manner that other painters revenged an insult, or supplied the exigencies of the moment, are related of young Hogarth. If true, these volumes would gain little interest by their insertion, for few of them are worthy of a memorial; and if false, they ought not to be admitted.

That a young artist, just emancipated from the obscurity of a silversmith's garret, should be unknown, we naturally suppose; that talents, however exalted, should not be noticed by the public until the professor gave some proofs of superiority, may be readily credited.

That a youth of volatile dispositions, who had neither inheritance nor protection, must frequently want money, follows as certainly as night to day; and we place full confidence in the assertion, when told that he has frequently said, "I remember the time when I have gone moping into the city with scarce a shilling in my pocket; but having received ten guineas there for a plate, returned home, put on my sword and bag, and sallied out again, with all the confidence of a man who had ten thousand pounds in his pocket."

I can believe that the elder Mr. Bowles was his first patron; but when Mr. Nichols informs us, on the authority of Doctor Ducarrel, that this patron offered the young engraver half-a-crown a pound for a plate just finished, rejoice that the inauspicious period when such talents had such patronage[5] is past.

Mr. Horace Walpole well observes, that the history of an artist must be sought in his works. The earliest date I have seen on any of Hogarth's engravings is his own shop-bill, bordered with two figures and two Cupids, and inscribed April 20, 1720. From this and similar mechanic blazonry, he ascended to prints for books, in the execution of which it was not necessary to have much knowledge of the arts. If they were copperplates, the public were satisfied; neither spirit of design, accuracy of drawing, nor delicacy of stroke were demanded. Six engravings, containing six compartments each, for King's History of the Heathen Gods, I should apprehend were among the earliest. I have heard them doubted, and they are not mentioned in either Mr. Walpole's or Mr. Nichols' list; but I believe them to be as certainly Hogarth's as the Rake's Progress.

In two emblematical prints on the lottery, and the South Sea Bubble, published in 1721, there is not much merit; and in the fifteen for Aubrey de la Mottraye's Travels, dated 1723, we only regret that so much time and copper should be wasted.

The Burlington Gate, which appeared in 1724, is in a very superior style, and in the spirit of Callot. With some very well pointed satire on the general passion for masquerades, and other ridiculous raree-shows, it unites a burlesque of Kent the architect, who upon the pediment of his patron's gate is exalted above Raphael and Michael Angelo. From this circumstance I think it probable that the print was engraved as a sort of admission ticket to Sir James Thornhill's academy, which was opened that year. The knight would unquestionably be gratified by this ridicule of his rival, and might in consequence admit the young artist to such a degree of intimacy as enabled him to gain the heart and hand of Miss Thornhill. The burlesque copy of Kent's altar-piece at St. Clement's Church was published in 1725; and fifteen headpieces for Bever's Military Punishments in the same year.[6]

By seventeen small plates, with a head of the author for Butler's Hudibras, printed in 1726, he first became known in his profession. In design, these are almost direct copies from a series inserted in a small edition of the same book, published sixteen years before. Whether this originated in a wish to save himself the trouble of making original designs, or in the twenty booksellers for whom this edition was published, is not easy to determine. These midwives to the Muses might think he was upon safer ground while copying the designs of an artist sanctioned by public approbation, than in following his own inventions, and in this opinion our young engraver might possibly join. Taking these circumstances into the account, I do not agree with Mr. Walpole, when he observes that we are surprised to find so little humour in an undertaking so congenial to his talents. If these prints are considered as copies, they ought not to be produced as a criterion; if compared with those from which they are taken, it is not easy to conceive a greater superiority than he has attained over his originals. Neatness was not required; and for such subjects I prefer the spirited etchings of a Hogarth to the most delicate finishing of a Bartolozzi.

Copies of them are inserted in Grey's Hudibras, published 1744, and Townley's French translation, printed à Londres, 1757. In Grey's edition, the head of Butler is not copied from Hogarth, who certainly had for his pattern White's mezzotint of John Baptist Monoyer the flower painter, from Sir Godfrey Kneller: to any portrait that I have ever seen of Samuel Butler, it has not the faintest resemblance; and how the artist came to give it that name, it is difficult to guess.[7]

The large series on that subject were published the same year, and are thus entitled: Twelve excellent and most diverting prints taken from the celebrated poem of Hudibras, written by Mr. Samuel Butler, exposing the villany and hypocrisy of the times, invented and engraved on twelve copperplates, by William Hogarth, and are humbly dedicated to William Ward, Esq. of Great Houghton, in Northamptonshire, and Mr. Allan Ramsay of Edinburgh.[8]

"What excellence can brass or marble claim!

These papers better do secure thy fame:

Thy verse all monuments does far surpass;

No mausoleum's like thy Hudibras."

Allan Ramsay subscribed for thirty sets. The number of subscribers in all, amounts to 192.

The late Mr. Walker of Queen Anne Street had a sketch of Hudibras and Ralpho, painted by Isaac Fuller, very much in the manner of Hogarth, who I think must have seen, and, in the early part of his life, studied Fuller's pictures.

Seven of the drawings were in the possession of the late Mr. Samuel Ireland, three are in Holland, and two are said to have been in the collection of a person in one of the northern provinces about twenty years ago, but are now probably destroyed. Thus are the works of genius scattered like the Sibyl's leaves.

Hogarth seems to have been particularly partial to this subject; for, previous to engraving the twelve large plates, he painted it in oil. The twelve original pictures, somewhat larger than the prints, are in the possession of the editor of these volumes.

The variety with which the characteristic distinctions of the figures are marked, the firm and spirited touch with which each of the characters are pencilled, is peculiar to this artist: they come into that class of pictures, which to those who have not seen them cannot be described; to those who have, a description is unnecessary.

In a masquerade ticket, published 1727, he has a second time introduced John James Heidegger, of ill-favoured memory. Notwithstanding Lord Chesterfield's wager, that this Surintendant des plaisirs d'Angleterre did not produce a man with so hideous a countenance as his own, and Pope having honoured him with a place in his Dunciad, when describing

"A monster of a fowl,

Something between a Heidegger and owl,"

and his ugliness being in a degree proverbial, an engraving of his face from a mask, taken after his death, and inserted in Lavater's Physiognomy, has strong marks of a benevolent character, and features by no means displeasing or disagreeable.

The print of our decollating Harry and Anna Boleyne, is engraved from a painting once in Vauxhall Gardens.[9] Whatever might be the picture, the print is in every point of view contemptible. His frontispieces to Apuleius and Cassandra, Perseus and Andromeda, John Gulliver, and the Highland Fair, come in precisely the same class. Those to Terræ Filius, the Humours of Oxford, and Tom Thumb, have some traces of comedy.

Various temporary satires on the local follies and vices of the day, which he engraved about this time, are enumerated by Mr. Walpole and Mr. Nichols, but have not in general much merit. The compliments he paid to Sir James Thornhill, by ridiculing William Kent, have been noticed in the preceding pages; but Hogarth's partiality was not confined to the knight, he extended it to the knight's daughter, and finding favour in her sight,—without the formal ceremony of asking consent, or the tedious process of a settlement,—took her to wife. This union being neither sanctioned by her father,[10] nor accompanied with a fortune, compelled him to redouble his professional exertions.

His first large print was Southwark Fair, a natural and highly ludicrous representation of the plebeian amusements of that period; but by the Harlot's Progress, he in 1734 established his character as a painter of domestic history. When his wife's father saw the designs, their originality of idea, regularity of narration, and fidelity of scenery, convinced him that such talents would force themselves into notice, and when known, must be distinguished and patronized. Among a great number of copies which the success of these prints tempted obscure artists to make, there was one set printed on two large sheets of paper, for G. King, Brownlow Street, which, being made with the author's consent, may possibly contain some additions suggested and inserted by Hogarth's directions. In Plate I., beneath the sign of the Bell, PARSONS INTIER BUTT BEAR. In Plate II., to the picture of Jonah under a gourd, a label, Jonah, why art thou angry? and under one of the portraits is written, Mr. Woolston. Below each scene, an inscription describes, in true beaux' spelling; the meaning of the prints, and points out two of the characters to be Colonel Charteris and Sir John Gonson. To the strong resemblance the latter of these delineations bore to the original, Mr. Hogarth is said to be indebted for much of his popularity. The magistrate being universally known, a striking portrait in little would then, as now, have a more numerous band of admirers than the best conceived moral satire.

In 1735, when he published his Rake's Progress with a view of stranding the pirates of the arts, he solicited and obtained an Act to vest an exclusive right in designers and engravers, and restrain the multiplying copies of their works without their consent.

Like many other Acts of Parliament, it was inaccurately worded, and very inadequate to the evil it professed to cure; for Lord Hardwicke determined that no assignee, claiming under an assignment from the original inventor, could receive advantage from it: though after Hogarth's death, the Legislature, by Stat. 7th, Geo. III., granted to his widow a further term of twenty years in the property of her husband's works.

In 1736, at the particular desire of a nobleman, whose name deserves no commemoration, he engraved two prints, entitled Before and After. There are few examples of this artist making designs from the thoughts of others. The Sleeping Congregation, Distressed Poet, Enraged Musician, Strolling Actresses, Modern Midnight Conversation, and many genuine comedies of a new description, where the humour of five acts is brought into one scene, were the productions of his own mind. From these and other mirrors of the times, he was considered as an original author; and being now in the plenitude of his fame,—conceiving himself established in reputation, and conscious of being first in his peculiar walk,—he, on the 25th of Jan. 1744-5, printed proposals, offering the paintings of his Harlot's and Rake's Progress, Four Times of the Day, and Strolling Actresses, to public sale, by an auction of a most singular nature.

"I. Every bidder shall have an entire leaf numbered in the book of sale, on the top of which will be entered his name and place of abode, the sum paid by him, the time when, and for which picture.

"II. That on the last day of sale, a clock (striking every five minutes) shall be placed in the room; and when it hath struck five minutes after twelve, the first picture mentioned in the sale book will be deemed as sold; the second picture, when the clock hath struck the next five minutes after twelve; and so on successively till the whole nineteen pictures are sold.

"III. That none advance less than gold at each bidding.

"IV. No person to bid on the last day, except those whose names were before entered in the book. As Mr. Hogarth's room is but small, he begs the favour that no person, except those whose names are entered in the book, will come to view his paintings on the last day of sale."

A method so novel possibly disgusted the town: they might not exactly understand this tedious formulæ of entering their names and places of abode in a book open to indiscriminate inspection; they might wish to humble an artist, who, by his proposals, seemed to consider that he did the world a favour in suffering them to bid for his works; or the rage for paintings might be confined to the admirers of old masters. Be that as it may, for his nineteen pictures he received only four hundred and twenty-seven pounds seven shillings,—a price by no means equal to their merit.[11]

The prints of the Harlot's Progress had sold much better than those of the Rake's; yet the paintings of the former produced only fourteen guineas each, while those of the latter were sold for twenty-two! That admirable picture, Morning, twenty guineas,—Night, in every point inferior to almost any of his works, six-and-twenty!

As a ticket of admission to this sale, he engraved the annexed plate.

THE BATTLE OF THE PICTURES.

"In curious paintings I'm exceeding nice,

And know their several beauties by their price;

Auctions and sales I constantly attend,

But choose my pictures by a skilful friend.

Originals and copies, much the same;

The picture's value is the painter's name."

BATTLE OF PICTURES.

In one corner of this very ludicrous print he has represented an auction-room, on the top of which is a weathercock, in allusion perhaps to Cock the auctioneer. Instead of the four initials for North, East, West, and South, we have P, U, F, S, which, with a little allowance for bad spelling, must pass for Puffs! At the door stands a porter, who from the length of his staff may be high-constable of the old school, and gentleman-usher to the modern connoisseurs. As an attractive show-board, we have an high-finished Flemish head, in one of those ponderous carved and gilt frames, that give the miniatures inserted in them the appearance of a glow-worm in a gravel pit. A catalogue and a carpet (properly enough called the flags of distress) are now the signs of a sale; but here, at the end of a long pole, we have an unfurled standard, emblazoned with that oracular talisman of an auction-room, the fate-deciding hammer. Beneath is a picture of St. Andrew on the cross, with an immense number of fac-similes, each inscribed ditto. Apollo, who is flaying Marsyas, has no mark of a deity, except the rays which beam from his head; he is placed under a projecting branch, and we may truly say the tree shadows what it ought to support. The coolness of poor Marsyas is perfectly philosophical; he endures torture with the apathy of a Stoic. The third tier is made up by a herd of Jupiters and Europas, of which interesting subject, as well as the foregoing, there are dittos, ad infinitum. These invaluable tableaux being unquestionably painted by the great Italian masters, is a proof of their unremitting industry;—their labours evade calculation; for had they acquired the polygraphic art of striking off pictures with the facility that printers roll off copperplates, and each of them attained the age of Methusaleth, they could not have painted all that are exhibited under their names. Nothing is therefore left us to suppose, but that some of these undoubted originals were painted by their disciples.[12] Such are the collections of fac-similes; the other pictures are drawn up in battle array; we will begin with that of St. Francis, the corner of which is in a most unpropitious way driven through Hogarth's Morning. The third painting of the Harlot's Progress suffers equal degradation from a weeping Madonna, while the splendid saloon of the repentant pair in Marriage à la Mode is broken by the Aldobrandini Marriage. Thus far is rather in favour of the ancients; but the aerial combat has a different termination: for, by the riotous scene in the Rake's Progress, a hole is made in Titian's Feast of Olympus; and a Bacchanalian, by Rubens, shares the same fate from the Modern Midnight Conversation. Considered as so much reduced, the figures are etched with great spirit, and have strong character.

In ridicule of the preference given to old pictures, he exercised not only his pencil, but his pen. His advertisement for the sale of the paintings of Marriage à la Mode, inserted in a Daily Advertiser of 1750, thus concludes:

"As, according to the standard so righteously and laudably established by picture-dealers, picture-cleaners, picture-frame makers (and other connoisseurs), the works of a painter are to be esteemed more or less valuable as they are more or less scarce, and as the living painter is most of all affected by the inferences resulting from this and other considerations equally candid and edifying, Mr. Hogarth by way of precaution, not puff, begs leave to urge that probably this will be the last sale of pictures he may ever exhibit, because of the difficulty of vending such a number at once to any tolerable advantage; and that the whole number he has already exhibited of the historical or humorous kind does not exceed fifty, of which the three sets called the Harlot's Progress, the Rake's Progress, and that now to be sold, make twenty: so that whoever has a taste of his own to rely on, and is not too squeamish, and has courage enough to own it, by daring to give them a place in a collection till Time (the supposed finisher, but real destroyer of paintings) has rendered them fit for those more sacred repositories where schools, names, heads, masters, etc., attain their last stage of preferment, may from hence be convinced that multiplicity, at least, of his, Mr. Hogarth's pieces, will be no diminution of their value."[14]

In the same year with the Battle of the Pictures he etched the subscription-ticket for Garrick in Richard III.; where, in a festoon with a mask, a roll of paper, a palette, and a laurel, he combines the drama and the arts.

Soon after the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle he visited France. A people so different from any he had before seen, and manners so inimical to his own, greatly disgusted him. Ignorance of the language, added to some unpleasant circumstances that had their rise in his own imprudence, form a slight apology for these prejudices; he told them to the world in a view of the Gates of Calais, under which article I have inserted a cantata written by his friend Forest. The portrait in a cap, with a palette, on which is the waving line of beauty and grace, he this year engraved from his own painting. Beneath the frame are three books, labelled, Shakspeare, Milton, Swift; and on one side his faithful and favourite dog Trump. As Hogarth afterwards erased the human face divine, and inserted the divine Churchill in the character of a bear, the print is become very scarce; a small copy adorns the title-page to this volume. Some despicable rhymes on the dog and painter were published in the Scandalizade. Thus do the lines conclude:

"The very self same,—how boldly they strike!

And I can't forbear thinking they're somewhat alike.

Oh fie! to a dog would you Hogarth compare?

Not so,—I say only, they're like as it were;

A respectable pair, all spectators allow,

And that they deserve a description below,

In capital letters, BEHOLD WE ARE TWO."

Those who are personally acquainted with Hogarth deem this print a strong likeness: the picture is remarkably well painted, better than any I have seen from his pencil, except the head of Captain Coram, now in the Foundling Hospital. To that charity Hogarth and several contemporary painters presented some of their performances. The attention they obtained from the public induced the members of an academy in St. Martin's Lane to attempt an extension of the plan. With this view, a letter was printed, and sent to the different artists. As it was the cornerstone of that stupendous structure, now become a Royal Academy, I have inserted a copy, with which I was favoured by the gentleman to whom it is addressed.

"TO MR. PAUL SANDBY.

Academy of Painting, Sculpture, etc.,
St. Martin's Lane, Tuesday, October the 23d, 1753.

"Sir,—There is a scheme set on foot for erecting a public academy for the improvement of the arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture; and as it is thought necessary to have a certain number of professors, with proper authority, in order to the making regulations, taking in subscriptions, erecting a building, instructing the students, and concerning all such measures as shall be afterwards thought necessary, your company is desired at the Turk's Head, in Greek Street, Soho, on Tuesday the 13th of November, at five o'clock in the evening precisely, to proceed to the election of thirteen painters, three sculptors, one chaser, two engravers, and two architects; in all twenty-one, for the purposes aforesaid.—I am, Sir, your most humble servant,

"Francis Milner Newton, Sec.

"P.S.—Please to bring the enclosed list, marked with a cross before the names of thirteen painters, three sculptors, one chaser, two engravers, and two architects, as shall appear to you the most able artists in their several professions, and in all other respects the most proper for conducting this design. If you cannot attend, it is expected that you will send your list, sealed and enclosed in a cover, directed to me, and write your name in the cover, without which no regard will be paid to it.

"The list in that case will be immediately taken out of the cover, and mixed with the other lists, so that it shall not be known from whom it came; all imaginable methods being concerted for carrying on this election without favour or partiality. If you know any artist of sufficient merit to be elected a professor, who has been overlooked in drawing out the list, be pleased to write his name, according to his place in the alphabet, with a cross before it."

Their measures did not meet the approbation of Mr. Hogarth. He thought that the establishment of an academy would attract a crowd of young men to neglect studies better suited to their powers, and depart from more profitable pursuits: that every boy who could chalk a straight-lined figure upon a wall, would be led, by his mamma discovering that it was prodigious natural! to mistake inclination for ability, and suppose himself born for shining in the fine arts!—that the streets would be crowded by lads with palettes and portfolios, print-shops be as numerous as porter-houses, and finally, that which ought to be considered as a science, become a trade; and what was still worse, a trade which would not support its professors.

In near fifty years, that have sunk like a sunbeam in the sea, the arts have assumed a new face; they at this period form a very profitable branch of our commerce, and his prophecy pertaining unto print-shops is partly fulfilled.

It has been before observed that Mr. Hogarth, in his own portrait, engraved as a frontispiece to his works, drew a serpentine line on a painter's palette, and denominated it—The line of beauty.

In the preface to his Analysis, he thus describes the consequence of this denomination:—

"The bait soon took, and no Egyptian hieroglyphic ever amused more than it did for a time; painters and sculptors came to me to know the meaning of it, being as much puzzled with it as other people, till it came to have some explanation. Then indeed, but not till then, some found it out to be an old acquaintance of theirs; though the account they gave of its properties was very near as satisfactory as that which a day-labourer, who occasionally uses the lever, could give of that machine as a mechanical power.

"Others, as common face-painters, and copiers of pictures, denied that there could be such a rule either in art or nature, and asserted it was all stuff and madness; but no wonder that these gentlemen should not be ready in comprehending a thing they have little or no business with. For though the picture-copier may sometimes, to a common eye, seem to vie with the original he copies, the artist himself requires no more ability, genius, or knowledge of nature, than a journeyman weaver at the Gobelins, who in working after a piece of painting, bit by bit, scarcely knows what he is about; whether he is weaving a man or a horse; yet at last, almost insensibly, turns out of his loom a fine piece of tapestry, representing, it may be, one of Alexander's battles painted by Le Brun.

"As the above-mentioned print thus involved me in frequent disputes, by explaining the qualities of the line, I was extremely glad to find it (which I had conceived as only part of a system in my own mind) so well supported by a precept of Michael Angelo, which was first pointed out to me by Dr. Kennedy, a learned antiquarian and connoisseur, of whom I afterwards purchased the translation, from which I have taken several passages to my purpose."[15]

To explain this system, he in 1753 commenced author, and published his Analysis, the professed purpose of which was to fix the fluctuating ideas of taste, by establishing a standard of beauty. This he expected would be considered by his contemporaries, as the ancients considered the little soldier modelled by Policletus, the grammar of proportion, criterion of elegance, and rule of perfection. It must be acknowledged that this was expecting somewhat more than his system deserved; but he received much less. Sheets of good copper were defaced to prove, in the first place, that there was no such line, and in the next, that he had stolen it from the ancients. Some called it the line of deformity, and others the line of drunkenness. By a lady he was more flattered: she told him it was precisely the line which the sun makes in his annual motion round the ecliptic.

His book is divided into chapters, treating of fitness, variety, symmetry, simplicity, intricacy, quantity, lines, forms, composition with the waving line, proportion, light and shade, colouring, attitude, and action. The hypothesis which he endeavours to establish is illustrated by near three hundred explanatory figures, with references to each.

ANALYSIS OF BEAUTY.

PLATE I.

"So vary'd he, and of his tortuous train

Curl'd many a wanton wreath in sight of Eve,

To lure her eye." —Milton.

ANALYSIS OF BEAUTY, PLATE I.

If the figures which compose this plate are considered independent of the volume, they will appear sufficiently incongruous. He has given us curves and curvatures, straight lines and angles, circles and squares. He has ransacked the garden for examples, and drawn from the shops of the blacksmith, founder, and cabinetmaker, illustrations of his doctrine. To the beauteous and elegant Grecian Venus,[16] he has opposed the venerable English judge, arrayed in an ample robe, with his head enveloped in a periwig like the mane of a lion. The naked majesty of the Apollo Python is contrasted with an English actor, dressed by a modern tailor and barber, to personate a Roman general. The elegant winding lines of an Egyptian sphynx are opposed by a bloated, overcharged, recumbent Silenus. The uniform, coldly correct figures of Albert Durer's drawing-book, that never deviate into grace, to the antique torso, in which Michael Angelo asserted he discovered every principle that gave so grand a gusto to his own works. Three anatomical representations of the muscles which appear in a human leg when the skin is taken off, are placed close to a shapeless pedestal in a shoe and stocking, which by disease has, in the painter's phrase, lost its drawing.

A fine wire, properly twisted round the figure of a cone, represented in Number 26, as giving that elegant wave which adds grace to beauty, is the leading principle on which he builds his system of serpentine lines. Of this ancient grace, opposed to modern air, he could not have selected better examples than Numbers 6 and 7, where Mr. Essex, an English dancing-master, places himself in such an attitude as he thinks the sculptor ought to have given the Antinous, who he is ludicrously enough handing out to dance a minuet.

Number 19 represents the deep-mouth'd Quin! dressed in all the dignity of a playhouse wardrobe, to perform the part of Brutus. That this (and not Coriolanus) is the character meant by the artist, I am inclined to think, from the statue of Julius Cæsar, with a rope round his neck, immediately before him.[17] The rope is passed through a pulley, inserted in one of those triple supporters of great weights, which some of our provincial carpenters call a gallows, and passes to upright beams intersected by poles, in the front of a monument, on which is seated a judge, over whose head is another noosed pulley. How far this may hint at any connection between the law and the rope I cannot determine; but a weeping naked boy, who is seated below, has in his hand what may pass for the model of a gibbet as well as a square. Over the judge's head is written, BIT DECEM. 1752, ÆTATIS; the O preceding BIT is covered: I apprehend the same judge may be found in a print of THE BENCH.

A new order was Hogarth's favourite idea: he has here made an attempt at a capital composed of hats and periwigs.[18] An infant with a man's wig and cap on, is a miniature representation of Mr. Quin's Roman general; and a monkey child, led by a travelling tutor, gives the painter's opinion of those young gentlemen who visited Rome for improvement in connoisseurship.[19] It is copied from a burlesque of Cav. Ghezzi, etched by Mr. Pond.

PLATE II.

"Though rosy youth embloom the sprightly fair,

And beauty mold her with a lover's care,

If motion to the form denies a grace,

Vain is the beauty that adorns the face."

ANALYSIS OF BEAUTY, PLATE. II.

The fatigued figures that labour through this dance, Mr. Hogarth in his 16th chapter thus explains:

OF ATTITUDE.

"Such dispositions of the body and limbs as appear most graceful when seen at rest, depend upon gentle winding contrasts, mostly governed by the precise serpentine line, which in attitudes of authority are more extended and spreading than ordinary, but reduced somewhat below the medium of grace in those of negligence and ease; and as much exaggerated in insolent and proud carriage, or distortions of pain (see Number 9, in [Plate I].), as lessened and contracted into plain and parallel lines, to express meanness, awkwardness, and submission.

"The general idea of an action, as well as of an attitude, may be given with a pencil in very few lines. It is easy to conceive that the attitude of a person upon the cross may be fully signified by the true straight lines of the cross; so the extended manner of St. Andrew's crucifixion is wholly understood by the X-like cross.

"Thus, as two or three lines at first are sufficient to show the intention of an attitude, I will take this opportunity of presenting my reader with the sketch of a country-dance, in the manner I began to set out the design. In order to show how few lines are necessary to express the first thoughts, as to different attitudes, see Number 71 (top of the plate), which describes in some measure the several figures and actions, mostly of the ridiculous kind, that are represented in the chief part of [Plate II].

"The most amiable person may deform his general appearance by throwing his body and limbs into plain lines; but such lines appear still in a more disagreeable light in people of a particular make. I have therefore chose such figures as I thought would agree best with my first score of lines, Number 71.

"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 angles, gave the hint for the fat man's 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 awkward one in the bag-wig, for whom I had made a sort of an X. The prim lady his partner, in the riding habit, by pecking back her elbows, as they call it, from the waist upwards, made a tolerable D, with a straight line under it, to signify the scanty stiffness of her petticoat; and the Z stood for the angular position the body makes with the legs and thighs of the affected fellow in the tie-wig; the upper part of his plump partner was confined to an O, and this changed into a P, served as a hint for the straight lines behind. The uniform diamond of a card was filled up by the flying dress, etc. of the little capering figure in the Spencer wig, whilst a double L marked the parallel position of his poking partner's hands and arms: and lastly, the two waving lines were drawn for the more genteel turns of the two figures at the hither end."[20]

Such is the author's alphabetical analysis of his serpentine system, which some of my readers may possibly think borders on the visionary: certain it is, that however he may have failed in his two specimens of grace, those of awkwardness are carried as far as they could have been in a Russian dance, when Peter the Great ordained that no lady of any age should presume to get drunk before nine o'clock.

I have seen the print framed as a companion to Guido's Aurora; nothing surely can form a stronger contrast to the golden age, when

"Universal Pan,

Knit with the Graces and the Hours, in dance

Led on th' eternal Spring."

They are said to represent the Wanstead assembly, and contain portraits of the first Earl Tylney, his Countess, their children, tenants, etc. In the tall young lady he has evidently aimed at Milton's description of motion—smooth sliding without step; but her air is affected. Her noble partner was originally intended for a portrait of the present King, then Prince of Wales; and though I learn from Mr. Walpole that it was afterward altered to the first Duke of Kingston, still retains so much of its original designation as to bear a resemblance.

The design was made about the year 1728, and might be a just representation of the Wanstead belles and beaux; but since that period we have had so many ship-loads of grace imported from the Continent, and such numbers of well-educated gentlemen,[21] who have exerted their talents in perfecting this divine art, that the picture would not do for the present day.

The sighing Celadon, privately delivering a letter fraught with love to his fair Amelia, is evidently the native of a country that has furnished many of our English heiresses with good husbands. Her impatient father's watch is precisely twelve, which determines what were then thought late hours, on so particular an occasion as a wedding-ball, the sketch being originally designed for a series illustrative of a happy marriage.[22]

Hogarth is said to have boasted that each of the hats which lie upon the floor are so characteristic of their respective proprietors, that any man who understood the form of the human caput might assign each to its owner. Among them is a cushion, which was formerly part of the ball-room furniture, for what was called the cushion-dance, in the progress of which the gentleman kneels down and salutes his partner.

The light diffused from the chandelier shows an attention to nature worthy the study and imitation of many modern painters, whose figures are illuminated by beams unaccountable!

Thus much may suffice for the prints; as to the book, a pen was not Hogarth's instrument. His life had been devoted to the study of the pencil; and however clear in idea, he felt the consciousness that his language might be rendered more worthy public attention by the advice and assistance of literary friends. This he acknowledges, in the style of a man who felt that his character did not depend on the power of constructing a sentence, in which branch of the work he was aided by Doctor Hoadley, Doctor Morrell, and his friend the Reverend Mr. Townley,[23] whose son told me, that when his father corrected the first sheet, he found a plentiful crop of errors; the second and third were less incorrect; and the fourth much more accurate than the preceding. Such is the power of genius, whatever its direction.

I will not go so far as Mr. Ralph, who says, "that by means of this volume composition is become a science; the student knows what he is in search of, the connoisseur what to praise, and fancy or fashion, or prescription, will usurp the hackneyed name of taste no more; because I think with Lady Luxborough, that in the line of beauty no man can literally fix the precise degree of obliquity;" but I think with the same lady, "that between his pencil and his pen, he conveys an idea which enables one to conceive his meaning," and that he gives many hints which may be of great use to the artist, actor, dancer, or connoisseur.[24]

Though many profitable opportunities were offered by the politics of the day, it does not appear that Hogarth ever degraded his character by either servile adulation or interested abuse of the powers which were.

In an account of the March to Finchley, it will be found that when the print was presented to George II., the king returned it in a way that must have mortified and wounded the artist, who, though he was tremblingly alive to professional indignity, made no graven retaliation. He could not therefore be considered as an opponent it was proper to silence, or as an advocate it was necessary to retain; notwithstanding which, on the 16th of July 1757, when Mr. Thornhill (son to Sir James) resigned his place of sergeant painter, William Hogarth was appointed his successor; and very soon after, engaged in a pencil competition that did not terminate to his advantage.

I have had frequent occasion to mention the opinion he entertained of ancient paintings. By ridiculing copies and contemptible originals, he got a habit of laughing at them all; and when, in 1758, Sir Thomas Sebright, at Sir Luke Schaub's sale, gave £404, 5s. for Correggio's Sigismunda, [25] Hogarth, in evil hour, asserted that, were he paid as good a price, he could paint a better picture. Sir Richard (afterwards Lord) Grosvenor unluckily gave him an order for the same subject, guarded with the qualifying monosyllable IF. The work was finished,—sent to the purchaser,—and returned to the artist,—because,—as the ironical epistle[26] which accompanied it expressed,—"Contemplating such a subject must excite melancholy ideas, which a curtain being drawn before it would not diminish."[27]

This rejection produced a letter from Hogarth to a friend, relating the whole transaction, in rhymes that might perhaps give our painter a niche amongst the minor poets; but which, having neither the harmony of Pope nor the ardour of Dryden, shall find no place here. The prophecy it concludes with has not been absolutely fulfilled, but in the form of a wish may be a suitable motto for the next print.

SIGISMUNDA.

"Let the picture rust;

Perhaps Time's price-enhancing dust,

As statues moulder into earth,

When I'm no more, may mark its worth;

And future connoisseurs may rise,

Honest as ours, and full as wise,

To puff the piece, and painter too,

And make me then what Guido's now."

—Hogarth's Epistle.

SIGISMUNDA.

A competition with either Guido or Furino would to any modern painter be an enterprise of danger: to Hogarth it was more peculiarly so, from the public justly conceiving that the representation of elevated distress was not his forte, and his being surrounded by an host of foes, who either dreaded satire or envied genius. The connoisseurs considering the challenge as too insolent to be forgiven,—before his picture appeared, determined to decry it. The painters rejoiced in his attempting what was likely to end in disgrace; and to satisfy those who had formed their ideas of Sigismunda upon the inspired page of Dryden, was no easy task.

The bard has consecrated the character, and his heroine glitters with a brightness that cannot be transferred to the canvas. Mr. Walpole's description, though equally radiant, is too various for the utmost powers of the pencil.

Hogarth's Sigismunda, as this gentleman poetically expresses it, "has none of the sober grief, no dignity of suppressed anguish, no involuntary tear, no settled meditation on the fate she meant to meet, no amorous warmth turned holy by despair; in short, all is wanting that should have been there, all is there that such a story would have banished from a mind capable of conceiving such complicated woe; woe so sternly felt, and yet so tenderly." This glowing picture presents to the mind a being whose contending passions may be felt, but were not delineated even by Correggio. Had his tints been aided by the grace and greatness of Raphael, they must have failed.

The author of the Mysterious Mother sought for sublimity, where the artist strictly copied nature, which was invariably his archetype, but which the painter, who soars into fancy's fairy regions, must in a degree desert. Considered with this reference, though the picture has faults, Mr. Walpole's satire is surely too severe. It is built upon a comparison with works painted in a language of which Hogarth knew not the idiom,—trying him before a tribunal whose authority he did not acknowledge; and from the picture having been in many respects altered after the critic saw it, some of the remarks become unfair. To the frequency of these alterations we may attribute many of the errors:[28] the man who has not confidence in his own knowledge of the leading principles on which his work ought to be built, will not render it perfect by following the advice of his friends. Though Messrs. Wilkes and Churchill dragged his heroine to the altar of politics, and mangled her with a barbarity that can hardly be paralleled, except in the history of her husband,—the artist retained his partiality, which seems to have increased in exact proportion to their abuse. The picture being thus contemplated through the medium of party prejudice, we cannot wonder that all its imperfections were exaggerated. The painted harlot of Babylon had not more opprobrious epithets from the first race of reformers, than the painted Sigismunda of Hogarth from the last race of patriots.[30]

When a favourite child is chastised by his preceptor, a partial mother redoubles her caresses. Hogarth, estimating this picture by the labour he had bestowed upon it, was certain that the public were prejudiced, and requested, if his wife survived him, she would not sell it for less than five hundred pounds. Mrs. Hogarth acted in conformity to his wishes; but after her death, the painting was purchased by Messrs. Boydell, and exhibited in the Shakspeare Gallery. The colouring, though not brilliant, is harmonious and natural: the attitude, drawing, etc., may be generally conceived by the print engraved by Mr. Benjamin Smith. I am much inclined to think, that if some of those who have been most severe in their censures, had consulted their own feelings, instead of depending upon connoisseurs, poor Sigismunda would have been in higher estimation. It has been said that the first sketch was made from Mrs. Hogarth, at the time she was weeping over the corse of her mother.

Hogarth once intended to have appealed from the critics' fiat to the world's opinion, and employed Mr. Basire to make an engraving, which was begun, but set aside for some other work, and never completed.[31]

TIME SMOKING A PICTURE.

"To nature and yourself appeal,

Nor learn of others what to feel."—Anon.

TIME SMOKING A PICTURE.

This animated satire was etched as a receipt-ticket for a print of Sigismunda. It represents Time, seated upon a mutilated statue, and smoking a landscape, through which he has driven his scythe, to give proof of its antiquity,—not only by sober, sombre tints, but by an injured canvas. Beneath the easel on which it is fixed the artist has placed a capacious jar, on which is written VARNISH,—to bring out the beauties of this inestimable assemblage of straight lines. The frame is dignified with a Greek motto:

Crates,—Ὁ γὰρ χρόνος μ' ἔκαμψε, τέκτων μὲν σοφὸς,
Ἅπαντα δ' ἐργαζόμενος ἀσθενέστερα.

See Spectator, vol. ii. p. 83.

This, though not engraved with precise accuracy, is sufficiently descriptive of the figure.

Time has bent me double; and Time, though I confess he is a great artist, weakens all he touches.

"From a contempt" (says Mr. Walpole) "of the ignorant virtuosi of the age, and from indignation at the impudent tricks of picture-dealers,[32] whom he saw continually recommending and vending vile copies to bubble-collectors, and from having never studied, indeed having seen few good pictures of the great Italian masters, he persuaded himself that the praises bestowed on those glorious works were nothing but the effects of prejudice. He talked this language till he believed it; and having heard it often asserted, as is true, that Time gives a mellowness to colours, and improves them, he not only denied the proposition, but maintained that pictures only grew black and worse by age, not distinguishing between the degrees in which the proposition might be true or false."

Whether Mr. Walpole's remarks are right or wrong, Hogarth has admirably illustrated his own doctrine, and added to his burlesque, by introducing the fragments of a statue, below which is written,

As statues moulder into worth. P. W.

By part of this print being in mezzotinto and the remainder etched, it has a singularly striking and spirited appearance.

Hogarth, the following year, published that admirable satire, The Medley, which completely refutes the reproach thrown on his declining talents by his political opponents, whose violent, and in some respects vindictive attack, is erroneously said to have hastened his death. That he was wounded with a barbed spear, hurled by the hand of a friend, it is reasonable to suppose; but armed with the mailed coat of conscious superiority, he could not be wounded mortally. What!—broken-hearted by a rhyme!—pelted to death with ballads!—He was too proud! I am told by those who knew him best, that the little mortification he felt, did not arise from the severity of the satire, but from a recollection of the terms on which he had lived with the satirist.

To the painter's recriminations in this party jar, Mr. Nichols I suppose alludes, page 97 of his Anecdotes, where he says, that "in his political conduct and attachments, Hogarth was at once unprincipled and variable." These are harsh and heavy charges, but I am to learn on what they are founded. He never embarked with any party, nor did he publish a political print before the year 1762; and the principles he there professes he retained until his death.

In the same page of the Anecdotes, I find, after a complimentary quotation from one of Mr. Hayley's poems, several severe strictures to which I cannot assent.[33] The assertion, that all his powers of delighting were confined to his pencil, is in a degree refuted by the Analysis. That he was rarely admitted into polite circles, I can readily believe; but if by polite circles, Mr. Nichols means those persons of honour who deem dress the grand criterion of distinction, think making an easy bow the first human acquirement, and Lord Chesterfield's code the whole duty of man,—the artist had no great cause to regret the loss of such society. But his sharp corners not being rubbed off by collision with these polite circles, he was, to the last, a gross, uncultivated man. Engaged in ascertaining the principles of his art, he had not leisure to study the principles of politeness; but by those who lived with him in habits of intimacy, I am told he was by no means gross.

"To be member of a club consisting of mechanics, or those not many degrees above them, seems to have been the utmost of his social ambition."—Yet we find in the list of his social companions, Fielding, Hoadley, Garrick, Townley, and many other names who were an honour to their age and country. Though excluded from polite circles, by these and such men he was received as a friend. Some of his evenings were probably passed among his neighbours, and being above dissimulation, I suppose he resented what he disliked, and was, as Mr. Nichols informs us, often sent to Coventry. "He is said to have beheld the rising eminence and popularity of Sir Joshua Reynolds with a degree of envy; and, if I am not misinformed, spoke with asperity both of him and his performances." It has been said, and I believe with equal truth, that Rubens envied the rising eminence and popularity of Vandyke: neither the Englishman nor the Fleming were capable of so mean a passion. The walk of William Hogarth was diametrically opposite to that of Sir Joshua Reynolds. They saw nature through a different medium: one of them almost invariably dignifies his characters; whilst the other, from the nature of his subjects, sinks, and in some measure degrades them. The man whose portrait is painted by the President feels exalted; whilst he who looks in the mirror displayed by Hogarth, finds a resemblance better calculated to gratify his good-natured friends than himself. These circumstances considered, I can conceive Hogarth might have been pleased if he could have united the elegance of Sir Joshua to his own humour, and that the knight might be proud of adding the powers of Hogarth to his own taste, without either of them possessing a particle of the diabolical passion alluded to by Mr. Nichols, who thus winds up the character: "Justice, however, obliges me to add, that our artist was liberal, hospitable, and the most punctual of paymasters." This is fair and unequivocal praise,—but justice obliges me to add, seems given upon compulsion. Why the biographer feels so much reluctance at being thus obliged to commend the hero of his own history, we are not told,—though the cause of a lady being most indecently caricatured, is, in the same book, frankly acknowledged.

"She is still living, and has been loud in abuse of this work, a circumstance to which she owes a niche in it!"—Nichols' Anecdotes, p. 114.

Hogarth, with all the indelicacy of which he is accused, would have blushed at the perusal of this overcharged character. Though nothing fastidious, I cannot quote so disgusting a combination of abominable images. In page 59 we are presented with a series equally delectable.

Mr. Walpole remarks that the Flemish painters, as writers of farce and editors of burlesque nature, are the Tom Brownes of the mob; and in their attempts at humour, when they intend to make us laugh, make us sick; that Hogarth resembles Butler,—amidst all his pleasantry, observes the true end of comedy, REFORMATION, and has always a moral. To prove this truth, is one great object of these volumes. But Mr. Nichols, thinking it necessary to examine whether the scenes painted by our countryman are wholly free from Flemish indelicacies, has with laudable industry culled some sixteen or eighteen delicious examples, to convince us that they are not. I omit the catalogue; yet let me be permitted to suggest, that without the aid of a commentary, these indelicacies are not generally obtrusive. I once knew a very grave and profound critic, who employed several years of his life in collecting all Shakspeare's double entendres; these he intended for publication, to prove that his plays were not fit for the public eye, but was prevented, by a friend suggesting that it would be thought he had acted like the birds—pecked at that fruit which he liked best.

Leaving these and all other indecencies to the contemplation of those who seek for them, let us return to our narrative.

Finding his health in a declining state, Hogarth had some years before purchased a small house at Chiswick.[34] To this he retired during the summer months, but so active a mind could never rust in idleness;—even there he pursued his profession, and employed the last years of his life in retouching and superintending some repairs and alterations in his plates. From this place he, on the 25th October 1764, returned to Leicester Square, and though weak and languid, retained his usual flow of spirits; but being on the same night taken suddenly ill, died of an aneurism, in the arms of his friend Mrs. Lewis, who was called up to his assistance.

"The hand of him here torpid lies,

That drew th' essential form of grace;

Here cloath'd in death th' attentive eyes,

That saw the manners in the face."[35]

His will, which bears date August 16, 1764, has the following bequests:—

"I do hereby release, and acquit, and discharge my sister Ann Hogarth, of and from all claims and demands which I have on her at the time of my decease on any account whatsoever; and I do hereby give and bequeath unto my said sister Ann, eighty pounds a year, to be paid her during her natural life, by my executrix hereinafter named, out of the profits which shall arise from the sale of the prints taken from my engraved copperplates; which yearly payment shall commence within three months after my decease, and be paid in quarterly payments: and my will is, that the said copperplates shall not be sold or disposed of without the consent of my said sister, and my executrix hereinafter named; but the same shall remain in the custody or possession of my executrix hereinafter named, for and during her natural life, if she continues sole and unmarried; and from and immediately after her marriage, my will is that the three sets of copperplates, called Marriage à la Mode, the Harlot's Progress, and the Rake's Progress, shall be delivered to my said sister, by my said executrix, during her natural life; and immediately after the decease of my said executrix, the said copperplates, and the whole profits arising from such prints as aforesaid, shall be and of right belong to my said sister; and in case my executrix shall survive my sister, the same shall in like manner become the sole property, and of right belong to my said executrix hereinafter named: and I hereby give and bequeath unto Mary Lewis, for her faithful services, one hundred pounds, to be paid her immediately after my decease by my executrix hereinafter named: and my will is, that Samuel Martin, Esq., of Abingdon Buildings, be requested to accept of the portrait which I painted of him for myself. Item, that a ring, value ten guineas, be presented to Doctor Isaac Schomberg, in remembrance of me. Item, that Miss Julian Bence be presented with a ring, value five guineas: and my will is, that the remainder of my money, securities for money, and debts due to me, shall of right belong to my said executrix hereinafter named; and all my other goods, pictures, chattels, and estates, real or personal whatsoever, I do give and bequeath the same and every part thereof unto my dear wife Jane Hogarth, whom I do ordain, constitute, and appoint my sole executrix of my will. And I do hereby revoke all the other wills by me made at any time. In witness thereof, I do hereunto set my hand and seal, this day, August 16th, 1764.

"William Hogarth (L.S.).

"Signed, sealed, and published, and delivered by William Hogarth, to be his last will and testament, in the presence of us, who in the presence of each other have subscribed our names as witness thereto.—Richard Loveday, George Ellsom, Mary Graham."

His remains were removed to Chiswick, where, on a plain but neat pyramidical monument, are the following inscriptions:—

On the first side is engraven:

"HERE LIETH THE BODY
OF WILLIAM HOGARTH, ESQ.,
WHO DIED OCTOBER 26, 1764,
AGED 67 YEARS.
MRS. JANE HOGARTH,
WIFE OF WILLIAM HOGARTH, ESQ.
OBIT 13 NOVEMBER 1789,
ÆTAT: 80 YEARS."

On the second:

"HERE LIETH THE BODY OF
DAME JUDITH THORNHILL,
RELICT OF SIR JAMES THORNHILL, KNIGHT,
OF THORNHILL, IN THE COUNTY OF DORSET:
SHE DIED NOV. 12, 1757,
AGED 84 YEARS."

On a third:

"HERE LIETH THE BODY OF MRS. ANNE HOGARTH,
SISTER TO WILLIAM HOGARTH, ESQ.
SHE DIED AUGUST 13, 1771,
AGED 70 YEARS."

On the front, in basso-relievo, is the comic mask, laurel wreath, rest-stick, palette, pencils, a book inscribed Analysis of Beauty, and the following admirable lines by his friend Mr. Garrick:—

"Farewell, great painter of mankind,

Who reached the noblest point of art;

Whose pictured morals charm the mind,

And through the eye correct the heart.

If genius fire thee, reader, stay;

If Nature touch thee, drop a tear:

If neither move thee, turn away,

For Hogarth's honoured dust lies here."[36]

Time will obliterate this inscription, and even the pyramid must crumble into dust; but his fame is engraven on tablets which shall have longer duration than monumental marble.

During the twenty-five years which his widow survived, the plates were neither repaired nor altered,[37] but being necessarily entrusted to the management of others, were often both negligently and improperly taken off.[38] On Mrs. Hogarth's demise, in 1789, she bequeathed her property as follows:—

"Imprimis, I give and devise unto my cousin Mary Lewis, now living with me, all that my copyhold estate, lying and being at Chiswick, in the county of Middlesex, to have and to hold, during the term of her natural life; and after her decease, I give and devise the said copyhold estate unto Richard Loveday, surgeon, of Hammersmith, to have and to hold during his natural life; and after his decease, to his son Francis James Loveday, to him and his heirs for ever. Item, I give and bequeath unto the said Mary Lewis all my personal estate, of what kind soever, the legacies hereinafter mentioned excepted. Item, I give unto my god-daughter Jane Amelia Loveday, the sum of one hundred pounds. And I do make, constitute, and appoint my said cousin Mary Lewis, my sole executrix of this my last will and testament, written with my own hand, this third day of August, in the year of our Lord, 1770. In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and seal.

"Jane Hogarth (L.S.).

"Witnesses—Michael Impey, Jane Sarah Home.

"This stock of £479, 10s. 3d. I give to M. Lewis; and to Charles Stilewell, if he is with me at the time of my death, twenty pounds.—May the 17th, 1789.

"Jane Hogarth."

Mrs. Lewis, soon after the death of her friend, on condition of receiving an annuity for life, transferred to Messrs. Boydell her right in all the plates; and since in their possession, they have not been touched upon by a burin. It may be proper to add, that every plate has been carefully cleaned; and the rolling-presses now in use being on an improved principle, the paper superior, and the art of printing better understood, impressions are more clearly and accurately taken off than they have been at any preceding period.

Thus much may suffice for the state of his plates: their general intention and execution is the proper basis on which to build his

CHARACTER.

Were it considered by a connoisseur, he would probably assert that this man could not be a painter, for he had never travelled to Rome; could not be a judge of art, for he spoke irreverently of the ancients; gave his figures neither dignity nor grace; was erroneous in his distribution of light and shade, and inattentive to the painter's balance; that his grouping was inartificial, and his engraving coarse.

To traverse continents in search of antique paintings, explore caverns for mutilated sculpture, and measure the proportions of a statue with mathematical precision, was not the boast of William Hogarth. The Temple of Nature was his academy, and his topography the map of the human mind. Disdaining to copy or translate, he left the superior class of beings that people the canvas of Poussin and Michael Angelo to their admirers; selected his images from his own country, and gave them with a truth, energy, and variety of character,[39] ever appropriate, and invariably original. Considering his peculiar powers, it is fortunate for his fame that he was a native of Britain. In Switzerland, the scenery is romantic,—the rocks are stupendous; in Italy, the models of art are elevated and majestic,—the ruins of ancient Greece still continue a school of architecture and proportion;—but in England, and in England alone, we have every variety of character that separates man from man. To these he resorted, and rarely attempted to heighten nature, either by ideal or elevated beauty; for though he had the eye, he had not the wing of an eagle; when he attempted to soar, particles of his native clay clung to his pinions, and retarded his flight.

His engravings, though coarse, are forcible in a degree scarcely to be paralleled. Every figure is drawn from the quarry of nature; and, though seldom polished, is always animated.

He has been accused of grossness in some of his single figures: but the general vein of his wit is better calculated to make the man of humour smile than the humourist laugh;—has the air of Cervantes rather than Rabelais,—of Fielding rather than Smollett.

I do not know in what class to place his pictured stories. They are too much crowded with little incidents for the dignity of history; for tragedy, are too comic; yet have a termination which forbids us to call them comedies. Being selected from life, they present to us the absurdities, crimes, punishments, and vicissitudes of man: to-day, basking in the bright beams of prosperity; to-morrow, sunk in the gloom of comfortless despair. Be it recorded to his honour, that their invariable tendency is the promotion of virtue, and the diffusion of such a spirit as tends to make men industrious, humane, and happy. If some of the incidents are thought too ludicrous, and a few of the scenes rather border on the licentious, let it be remembered, that since they were engraved the standard of delicacy has been somewhat altered: that species of wit which this sentimental and double-refined age deems too much debased for common currency, was then, with a still larger portion of alloy, the sterling coin of the kingdom.

On canvas he was not so successful as on copper. Scripture history, which was one of his first attempts,[40] did not add a leaf to his laurel. In small portraits of conversations, etc., he was somewhat more successful; but in a few years the novelty wore off, and the public grew tired. Though he had great facility[41] and general success in his resemblances, his eye was too correct and his hand too faithful for those who wished to be flattered. The fantastic fluttering robes, given by contemporary painters, were too absurd for him to imitate; and he painted all his figures in the exact habits they wore. Compared with the dignified dresses of Vandyke, the Germanic garb, which then prevailed, gave a mean and unpicturesque formality to his portraits.

With respect to his person, though hardly to be classed as a little man, Hogarth was rather below the middle size; he had an eye peculiarly bright and piercing, and an air of spirit and vivacity. From an accident in his youth, he had a deep scar on his forehead: the mark remained; and he frequently wore his hat so as to display it. His conversation was lively and cheerful,[42] mixed with a quickness of retort that did not gain him friends. Severe in his satire on those who were present, but of the absent he was usually the advocate;[43] and has sometimes boasted that he never uttered a sentence concerning any man living, that he would not repeat to his face. In the relations of husband, brother, friend, and master, he was kind, generous, sincere, and indulgent. In diet abstemious; but in his hospitalities, though devoid of ostentation, liberal and free-hearted. Not parsimonious, yet frugal;—but so comparatively small were the rewards then paid to artists, that, after the labour of a long life, he left a very inconsiderable sum to his widow, with whom he must have received a large portion of what was bequeathed to her.[44] His character, and the illustrations I have attempted, are built upon a diligent examination of his prints: if in any case it should be thought that they have biassed my judgment, I can truly say that they have informed it. From them I have learnt much which I should not otherwise have known, and to inspecting them I owe many very happy hours. Considering their originality, variety, and truth, if we take from the artist all that he is said to have wanted, he will have more left than has been often the portion of man.

HOGARTH ILLUSTRATED.

THE HARLOT'S PROGRESS.

PLATE I.

"The snares are set, the plot is laid,

Ruin awaits thee, hapless maid!

Seduction sly assails thine ear,

And gloating, foul desire is near;

Baneful and blighting are their smiles,

Destruction waits upon their wiles:

Alas! thy guardian angel sleeps,

Vice clasps her hands, and virtue weeps."—E.

THE HARLOT'S PROGRESS, PLATE I.

The general aim of historical painters has been to emblazon some signal exploit of an exalted and distinguished character. To go through a series of actions, and conduct their hero from the cradle to the grave, to give a history upon canvas, and tell a story with the pencil, few of them attempted. Mr. Hogarth saw with the intuitive eye of genius, that one path to the temple of Fame was yet untrodden: he took Nature for his guide, and gained the summit. He was the painter of nature; for he gave not merely the ground-plan of the countenance, but marked the features with every impulse of the mind. He may be denominated the biographical dramatist of domestic life. Leaving those heroic monarchs who have blazed through their day with the destructive brilliancy of a comet to their adulatory historians, he, like Lillo, has taken his scenes from humble life, and rendered them a source of entertainment, instruction, and morality.

This series of prints gives the history of a Prostitute. The story commences with her arrival in London, where, initiated in the school of profligacy, she experiences the miseries consequent to her situation, and dies in the morning of life. Her variety of wretchedness forms such a picture of the way in which vice rewards her votaries, as ought to warn the young and inexperienced from entering this path of infamy. The first scene of this domestic tragedy is laid at the Bell Inn, in Wood Street, and the heroine may possibly be daughter to the poor old clergyman who is reading the direction of a letter close to the York waggon, from which vehicle she has just alighted. In attire, neat, plain, unadorned; in demeanour, artless, modest, diffident; in the bloom of youth, and more distinguished by native innocence than elegant symmetry; her conscious blush and downcast eyes attract the attention of a female fiend who panders to the vices of the opulent and libidinous. Coming out of the door of the inn we discover two men, one of whom is eagerly gloating on the devoted victim. This is a portrait, and said to be a strong resemblance of Colonel Francis Chartres,[45] whose epitaph was written by Doctor Arbuthnot: in that epitaph his character is most emphatically described.[46]

The old procuress, immediately after the girl's alighting from the waggon, addresses her with the familiarity of a friend rather than the reserve of one who is to be her mistress.

Had her father been versed in even the first rudiments of physiognomy, he would have prevented her engaging with one of so decided an aspect; for this also is the portrait of a woman infamous in her day:[47] but he, good, easy man, unsuspicious as Fielding's Parson Adams, is wholly engrossed in the contemplation of a superscription to a letter addressed to the bishop of the diocese. So important an object prevents his attending to his daughter, or regarding the devastation occasioned by his gaunt and hungry Rozinante having snatched at the straw that packs up some earthenware, and produced

"The wreck of flower-pots, and the crash of pans!"

From the inn she is taken to the house of the procuress, divested of her home-spun garb, dressed in the gayest style of the day, and the tender native hue of her complexion encrusted with paint and disguised by patches. She is then introduced to Colonel Chartres, and by artful flattery and liberal promises becomes intoxicated with the dreams of imaginary greatness. A short time convinces her of how light a breath these promises were composed. Deserted by her keeper, and terrified by threats of an immediate arrest for the pompous paraphernalia of prostitution, after being a short time protected by one of the tribe of Levi, she is reduced to the hard necessity of wandering the streets for that precarious subsistence which flows from the drunken rake or profligate debauchee. Here her situation is truly pitiable! Chilled by nipping frost and midnight dew, the repentant tear trickling on her heaving bosom, she endeavours to drown reflection in draughts of destructive poison. This, added to the contagious company of women of her own description, vitiates her mind, eradicates the native seeds of virtue, destroys that elegant and fascinating simplicity which gives additional charms to beauty, and leaves in its place art, affectation, and impudence.

Neither the painter of a sublime picture nor the writer of an heroic poem should introduce any trivial circumstances that are likely to draw the attention from the principal figures. Such compositions should form one great whole: minute detail will inevitably weaken their effect. But in little stories which record the domestic incidents of familiar life, these accessory accompaniments, though trifling in themselves, acquire a consequence from their situation; they add to the interest, and realize the scene. In this, as in almost all that were delineated by Mr. Hogarth, we see a close regard paid to things as they then were; by which means his prints become a sort of historical record of the manners of the age.

The balcony, with linen hanging to dry; the York waggon, which intimates the county that gave birth to our young adventurer; parcels lying on the ground, and a goose, directed To my lofen coosin in Tems Stret London, prove the peculiar attention he paid to the minutiæ. The initials M. H. on one of the trunks give us the name of the heroine of this drama,—Hackabout was a character then well known, and infamous for her licentiousness and debauchery.[48]

Of elegant beauty Mr. Hogarth had not much idea; but he has marked his heroine with natural simplicity. To the old procuress he has given her physiognomical distinction, and to the Colonel his appropriate stamp.[49]

PLATE II.

"Ah! why so vain, though blooming in thy spring;

Thou shining, frail, adorn'd, but wretched thing!

Old age will come; disease may come before,

And twenty prove as fatal as threescore!"

THE HARLOT'S PROGRESS, PLATE II.

Entered into the path of infamy, the next scene exhibits our young heroine the mistress of a rich Jew, attended by a black boy,[50] and surrounded with the pompous parade of tasteless profusion. Her mind being now as depraved as her person is decorated, she keeps up the spirit of her character by extravagance and inconstancy. An example of the first is exhibited in the monkey being suffered to drag her rich head-dress round the room, and of the second in the retiring gallant. The Hebrew is represented at breakfast with his mistress; but having come earlier than was expected, the favourite has not departed. To secure his retreat, is an exercise for the invention of both mistress and maid. This is accomplished by the lady finding a pretence for quarrelling with the Jew, kicking down the tea-table, and scalding his legs, which, added to the noise of the china, so far engrosses his attention, that the paramour, assisted by the servant, escapes discovery.

The subjects of two pictures with which the room is decorated are, David dancing before the ark, and Jonah seated under a gourd.[51] They are placed there, not merely as circumstances which belong to Jewish story, but as a piece of covert ridicule on the old masters, who generally painted from the ideas of others, and repeated the same tale ad infinitum. On the toilet-table we discover a mask, which well enough intimates where she had passed part of the preceding night, and that masquerades, then a very fashionable amusement, were much frequented by women of this description; a sufficient reason for their being avoided by those of an opposite character.

Under the protection of this disciple of Moses she could not remain long. Riches were his only attraction, and though profusely lavished on this unworthy object, her attachment was not to be obtained, nor could her constancy be secured; repeated acts of infidelity are punished by dismission; and her next situation shows that, like most of the sisterhood, she had lived without apprehension of the sunshine of life being darkened by the passing cloud, and made no provision for the hour of adversity.

In this print the characters are marked with a master's hand. The insolent air of the harlot, the astonishment of the Jew,[52] eagerly grasping at the falling table, the start of the black boy, the cautious trip of the ungartered and barefooted retreating gallant, and the sudden spring of the scalded monkey, are admirably expressed. To represent an object in its descent has been said to be impossible: the attempt has seldom succeeded; but in this print, the tea equipage really appears falling to the floor.[53]

PLATE III.

"Reproach, scorn, infamy, and hate,

On all thy future steps shall wait;

Thy form be loathed by every eye,

And every foot thy presence fly."

THE HARLOT'S PROGRESS, PLATE III.

We here see this child of misfortune fallen from her high estate! Her magnificent apartment is quitted for a dreary lodging in the purlieus of Drury Lane: she is at breakfast, and every object exhibits marks of the most wretched penury; her silver tea-kettle is changed for a tin-pot, and her highly-decorated toilet gives place to an old leaf-table, strewed with the relics of the last night's revel, and ornamented with a broken looking-glass. Around the room are scattered tobacco-pipes, gin measures, and pewter pots,—emblems of the habits of life into which she is initiated, and the company which she now keeps: this is further intimated by the wig-box of James Dalton, a notorious street-robber, who was afterwards executed. In her hand she displays a watch, which might be either presented to her, or stolen from her last night's gallant. By the nostrums which ornament the broken window, we see that poverty is not her only evil. The dreary and comfortless appearance of every object in this wretched receptacle, the bit of butter on a piece of paper,[54] the candle in a bottle, the basin upon a chair, the punch-bowl and comb upon the table, and the tobacco-pipes, etc. strewed upon the unswept floor, give an admirable picture of the style in which this pride of Drury Lane ate her matin meal. The pictures which ornament the room are, Abraham offering up Isaac, and a portrait of the Virgin Mary; Dr. Sacheverell[55] and Macheath the highwayman are companion prints. There is some whimsicality in placing the two ladies under a canopy,[56] formed by the unnailed valance of the bed, and characteristically crowned by the wig-box of a highwayman.

A magistrate,[57] cautiously entering the room with his attendant constables, commits her to an house of correction, where our legislators wisely suppose, that being confined to the improving conversation of her associates in vice, must have a powerful tendency towards the reformation of her manners!

PLATE IV.

"With pallid cheek and haggard eye,

And loud laments, and heartfelt sigh,

Unpitied, hopeless of relief,

She drinks the bitter cup of grief.

In vain the sigh, in vain the tear,

Compassion never enters here;

But justice clanks her iron chain,

And calls forth shame, remorse, and pain."—E.

THE HARLOT'S PROGRESS, PLATE IV.

The situation in which the last plate exhibited our wretched female was sufficiently degrading, but in this her misery is greatly aggravated. We now see her suffering the chastisement due to her follies; reduced to the wretched alternative of beating hemp, or receiving the correction of a savage taskmaster.[58] Exposed to the derision of all around, even her own servant, who is well acquainted with the rules of the place, appears little disposed to show any return of gratitude for recent obligations, though even her shoes, which she displays while tying up her garter, seem by their gaudy outside to have been a present from her mistress. The civil discipline of the stern keeper has all the severity of the old school.[59] With the true spirit of tyranny, he sentences those who will not labour to the whipping post, to a kind of picketing suspension by the wrists, or having a heavy log fastened to their leg. With the last of these punishments he at this moment threatens the heroine of our story; nor is it likely that his obduracy can be softened except by a well-applied fee. How dreadful, how mortifying the situation! These accumulated evils might perhaps produce a momentary remorse, but a return to the path of virtue is not so easy as a departure from it. The Magdalen hospital has been since instituted, and the wandering female sometimes finds it an asylum from wretchedness, and a refuge from the reproaches of the world.

To show that neither the dread nor endurance of the severest punishment will deter from the perpetration of crimes, a one-eyed female, close to the keeper, is picking a pocket. The torn card may probably be dropped by the well-dressed gamester, who has exchanged the dice-box for the mallet, and whose laced hat is hung up as a companion trophy to the hoop-petticoat.

One of the girls appears scarcely in her teens. To the disgrace of our police, these unfortunate little wanderers are still suffered to take their nocturnal rambles in the most public streets of the metropolis. What heart so void of sensibility as not to heave a pitying sigh at their deplorable situation? Vice is not confined to colour, for a black woman is ludicrously exhibited as suffering the penalty of those frailties which are imagined peculiar to the fair.

The figure chalked as dangling upon the wall, with a pipe in his mouth, is intended as a caricatured portrait of Sir John Gonson, and probably the production of some wou'd-be artist whom the magistrate had committed to Bridewell as a proper academy for the pursuit of his studies. The inscription upon the pillory, BETTER TO WORK THAN STAND THUS, and that on the whipping-post, near the laced gambler, THE REWARD OF IDLENESS, are judiciously introduced.

In this print the composition is tolerably good: the figures in the background, though properly subordinate, sufficiently marked; the lassitude of the principal character well contrasted by the austerity of the rigid overseer. There is a fine climax of female debasement, from the gaudy heroine of our drama to her maid, and from thence to the still lower object who is represented as destroying[60] one of the plagues of Egypt.

PLATE V.

"With keen remorse, deep sighs, and trembling fears,

Repentant groans, and unavailing tears,

This child of misery resigns her breath,

And sinks, despondent, in the arms of death."—E.

THE HARLOT'S PROGRESS, PLATE V.

Released from Bridewell, we now see this victim to her own indiscretion breathe her last sad sigh, and expire in all the extremity of penury and wretchedness. The two quacks, whose injudicious treatment has probably accelerated her death, are vociferously supporting the infallibility of their respective medicines, and each charging the other with having poisoned her.[61] While the maid-servant is entreating them to cease quarrelling, and assist her dying mistress, the nurse plunders her trunk of the few poor remains of former grandeur. Her little boy turning a scanty remnant of meat hung to roast by a string; the linen hanging to dry; the coals deposited in a corner; the candles, bellows, and gridiron hung upon nails; the furniture of the room, and indeed every accompaniment, exhibit a dreary display of poverty and wretchedness. Over the candles hangs a cake of Jew's bread, once perhaps the property of her Levitical lover, and now used as a fly-trap. The initials of her name, M. H., are smoked upon the ceiling as a kind of memento mori to the next inhabitant. On the floor lies a paper inscribed ANODYNE NECKLACE, at that time deemed a sort of CHARM against the disorders incident to children;[62] and near the fire, a tobacco-pipe and paper of pills.

A picture of general, and, at this awful moment, indecent confusion, is admirably represented. The noise of two enraged quacks disputing in bad English, the harsh vulgar scream of the maid-servant, the table falling, and the pot boiling over, must produce a combination of sounds dreadful and dissonant to the ear. In this pitiable situation, without a friend to close her dying eyes or soften her sufferings by a tributary tear,—forlorn, destitute, and deserted,—the heroine of this eventful history expires; her premature death brought on by a licentious life, seven years of which had been devoted to debauchery and dissipation, and attended by consequent infamy, misery, and disease. The whole story affords a valuable lesson to the young and inexperienced, and proves this great, this important truth, that A DEVIATION FROM VIRTUE IS A DEPARTURE FROM HAPPINESS.

The emaciated appearance of the dying figure, the boy's thoughtless inattention, and the rapacious, unfeeling eagerness of the old nurse, are naturally and forcibly delineated.

The figures are well grouped; the curtain gives depth, and forms a good background to the doctor's head; the light is judiciously distributed, and each accompaniment highly appropriate.

PLATE VI.

"No friend's complaint, no kind domestic tear,

Pleas'd thy pale ghost, or grac'd thy mournful bier:

By harlots' hands thy dying eyes were clos'd;

By harlots' hands thy decent limbs compos'd;

By harlots' hands thy humble grave adorn'd;

By harlots honoured, and by harlots mourn'd."

THE HARLOT'S PROGRESS, PLATE VI.

The adventures of our heroine are now concluded. She is no longer an actor in her own tragedy; and there are those who have considered this print as a farce at the end of it: but surely such was not the author's intention.

The ingenious writer of Tristram Shandy begins the life of his hero before he is born; the picturesque biographer of Mary Hackabout has found an opportunity to convey admonition, and enforce his moral, after her death. A wish usually prevails, even among those who are most humbled by their own indiscretion, that some respect should be paid to their remains; that their eyes should be closed by the tender hand of a surviving friend, and the tear of sympathy and regret shed upon the sod which covers their grave; that those who loved them living should attend their last sad obsequies, and a sacred character read over them the awful service which our religion ordains with the solemnity it demands. The memory of this votary of prostitution meets with no such marks of social attention or pious respect. The preparations for her funeral are as licentious as the progress of her life, and the contagion of her example seems to reach all who surround her coffin. One of them is engaged in the double trade of seduction and thievery; a second is contemplating her own face in a mirror. The female who is gazing at the corpse displays some marks of concern, and feels a momentary compunction at viewing the melancholy scene before her: but if any other part of the company are in a degree affected, it is a mere maudlin sorrow, kept up by glasses of strong liquor. The depraved priest does not seem likely to feel for the dead that hope expressed in our liturgy.[63] The appearance and employment of almost every one present at this mockery of woe, is such as must raise disgust in the breast of any female who has the least tincture of delicacy, and excite a wish that such an exhibition may not be displayed at her own funeral.

In this plate there are some local customs which mark the manners of the times when it was engraved, but are now generally disused, except in some of the provinces very distant from the capital; sprigs of rosemary were then given to each of the mourners: to appear at a funeral without one, was as great an indecorum as to be without a white handkerchief. This custom might probably originate at a time when the plague depopulated the metropolis, and rosemary was deemed an antidote against contagion. It must be acknowledged that there are also in this print some things which, though they gave the artist an opportunity of displaying his humour, are violations of propriety and custom: such is her child, but a few removes from infancy, being habited as chief mourner, to attend his parent to the grave; rings presented, and an escutcheon hung up in a garret at the funeral of a needy prostitute.[64] The whole may be intended as a burlesque upon ostentatious and expensive funerals, which were then more customary than they are now. Mr. Pope has well ridiculed the same folly:

"When Hopkins dies, a thousand lights attend

The wretch who, living, saved a candle's end."

The figures have much characteristic discrimination: the woman looking into the coffin has more beauty than we generally see in the works of this artist. The undertaker's gloating stare, his companion's leer, the internal satisfaction of the parson and his next neighbour, are contrasted by the Irish howl of the woman at the opposite side, and evince Mr. Hogarth's thorough knowledge of the operation of the passions upon the features. The composition forms a good shape, has a proper depth, and the light is well managed.

Sir James Thornhill's opinion of this series may be inferred from the following circumstance. Mr. Hogarth had without consent married his daughter: Sir James, considering him as an obscure artist, was much displeased with the connection. To give him a better opinion of his son-in-law, a common friend one morning privately conveyed the six pictures of the "Harlot's Progress" into his drawing-room. The veteran painter eagerly inquired who was the artist; and being told, cried out, "Very well! Very well indeed! The man who can paint such pictures as these, can maintain a wife without a portion." This was the remark of the moment; but he afterwards considered the union of his daughter with a man of such abilities an honour to his family, was reconciled, and generous.

When the publication was advertised, such was the expectation of the town, that above twelve hundred names were entered in the subscription book. When the prints appeared, they were beheld with astonishment. A subject so novel in the idea, so marked with genius in the execution, excited the most eager attention of the public. At a time when England was coldly inattentive to everything which related to the arts, so desirous were all ranks of people of seeing how this little domestic story was delineated, that there were eight piratical imitations,—besides two copies in a smaller size than the original, published, by permission of the author, for Thomas Bakewell. The whole series were copied on fan-mounts, representing the six plates, three on one side, and three on the other. It was transferred from the copper to the stage, in the form of a pantomime, by Theophilus Cibber; and again represented in a ballad opera, entitled, The Jew Decoyed, or the Harlot's Progress.

A Joseph Gay, and several other wretched rhymers, published what they called poetical illustrations of Mr. Hogarth's six plates: but these effusions of dulness do not deserve enumeration; nor would they deserve mention, but as collateral proofs of the great estimation in which these prints were held, when their popularity could force the sale of such miserable productions. Happily they are now consigned to those two high priests of the temple of oblivion, the trunkmaker and the pastrycook.

The six original pictures were sold on the 25th of January 1744-5, and produced eighty-eight pounds four shillings. Mr. Beckford, a late Lord Mayor of London, was, I believe, the purchaser. At a fire which burnt down his house at Fonthill, Wiltshire, in the year 1755, five of them were consumed.

When a messenger brought him intelligence of this unfortunate event, he said nothing, but took out his pocket-book, and wrote down a number of figures, which he seemed inspecting with the cool precision of a true disciple of Cocker, when a friend who was present, expressing some surprise at his being so collected after so heavy a loss, asked him what was the subject of his meditation? to which he answered, with the most philosophical indifference, "I am calculating how much it will cost me to rebuild my house."

THE RAKE'S PROGRESS.

PLATE I.

"Oh, vanity of age untoward!

Ever spleeny, ever froward!

Why these bolts and massy chains,

Squint suspicions, jealous pains?

Why, thy toilsome journey o'er,

Lay'st thou up an useless store?

Hope along with Time is flown;

Nor canst thou reap the field thou'st sown.

Had'st thou a son? In time be wise;

He views thy toil with other eyes.

Needs must thy kind paternal care,

Lock'd in thy chests, be buried there?

Whence, then, shall flow that friendly ease,

That social converse, heartfelt peace,

Familiar duty without dread,

Instruction from example bred,

Which youthful minds with freedom mend,

And with the father mix the friend.

Uncircumscrib'd by prudent rules,

Or precepts of expensive schools;

Abus'd at home, abroad despis'd,

Unbred, unletter'd, unadvis'd;

The headstrong course of life begun,

What comfort from thy darling son?"

—Hoadley.[65]

THE RAKE'S PROGRESS, PLATE I.

In the last series of prints Mr. Hogarth delineated, with a master's hand, the miseries attendant upon a female's deviation from virtue. In this he presents to us the picture of a young man, thoughtless, extravagant, and licentious; and, in colours equally impressive, paints the destructive consequences of his conduct. The first print most forcibly contrasts two opposite passions,—the unthinking negligence of youth, and the sordid avaricious rapacity of age. It brings into one point of view what Mr. Pope so exquisitely describes in his Epistle to Lord Bathurst:

"Who sees pale Mammon pine amidst his store,

Sees but a backward steward for the poor;

This year a reservoir, to keep and spare;

The next a fountain, spouting through his heir."

It represents a young man taking possession of a rich miser's effects, and is crowded with the monuments of departed avarice. Everything, valuable or not valuable, has been hoarded. A chest of old plate, an old coat, a worn-out boot, and the caul of a periwig, are preserved with equal care. The thread-bare garments are hung up; the rusty spur put into a closet; and even a spectacle-frame, without glasses, is thought worthy of preservation. The contents of his armoury are curious, and valuable as the lumbering furniture of his room: they consist of two swords, which may be considered as trophies of his youthful prowess, or protectors of his cankered pelf. The crutch and walking-stick, those unequal supporters of his feeble frame, now lean unheeded against the wall. His fur cap and greatcoat seem to have been winter substitutes for fire, as the grate in which a withered Sibyl is laying wood has no marks of even a remaining cinder. The remnant of candle in a save-all, the Jack taken down as an useless piece of furniture, and, with the spit, hoisted into a high cupboard, give strong indications of the manner in which this votary of Mammon existed, for such a being could scarcely be said to live. The gaunt appearance of an half-starved cat proves not only the rigid abstinence practised by this wretched slave to his wealth, but that in his miserable mansion

"No mouse e'er lurk'd, no rat e'er sought for food."

The iron-bound chests, the hidden gold falling from the breaking cornice, and indeed every article that is displayed in this dreary tomb of buried wealth, give additional marks of a suspicious and sordid disposition. The picture of a miser counting his gold; the escutcheons, those gloomy ornaments of departed wretchedness, with the armorial bearings of avarice, three vices hard screwed, are adjuncts highly appropriate to the place; the motto, BEWARE, inscribed under the arms, is a well-directed caution, and ought to be seriously considered by those who feel a propensity to this meanest of passions. An old shoe, soled with the cover of a Bible, and the little memorandum, May 5th, 1721, put off my bad shilling, are strong proofs that extreme avarice destroys all reverence for religion, and eradicates every principle of honesty.

The introduction to this history is well delineated, and the principal figure marked with that easy, unmeaning vacancy of face which speaks him formed by nature for a DUPE. Ignorant of the value of money, and negligent in his nature, he leaves his bag of untold gold in the reach of an old and greedy pettifogging attorney,[66] who is making an inventory of bonds, mortgages, indentures, etc. This man, with the rapacity so natural to his profession, seizes the first opportunity of plundering his employer. Hogarth had a few years before been engaged in a lawsuit, which gave him some experience of the PRACTICE of those pests of society.

The figure of the young woman with a wedding-ring is not alluring, neither is her face attractive; but her being pregnant, and accompanied by her mother with an apron full of letters, gives her a claim to our pity, as it clearly intimates that this is meant as a visit to entreat the promised hand of her seducer; but he violates every former protestation, refuses her marriage, and attempts by a bribe to get a release from the obligation. Her mother violently reproaches him for his conduct, and invokes the curses of offended Heaven upon his falsehood.

In this print the drawing and disposition of the figures are tolerably good, the light is properly distributed, and the perspective accurately represented; but the whole wants mass. To display the hoards, it was necessary to open the boxes and doors; and though an exhibition of the heterogeneous collection heaped together by this wretched defrauder of himself most forcibly describes the disposition of the man, it hurts the repose of the picture. Breaking the background into so many parts, destroys that breadth which ought to be considered as a leading excellence.

PLATE II.

"Prosperity (with harlot's smiles,

Most pleasing when she most beguiles),

How soon, sweet foe, can all thy train

Of false, gay, frantic, loud, and vain,

Enter the unprovided mind,

And memory in fetters bind?

Load faith and love with golden chain,

And sprinkle Lethe o'er the brain!

Pleasure, on her silver throne,

Smiling comes, nor comes alone;

Venus comes with her along,

And smooth Lyæus, ever young;

And in their train, to fill the press,

Come apish Dance, and swoln Excess,

Mechanic Honour, vicious Taste,

And Fashion in her changing vest."

—Hoadley.

THE RAKE'S PROGRESS, PLATE II.

The sordid avarice of the wretched miser is in this print contrasted by the giddy profusion of his prodigal heir. The old man pined in the midst of plenty, starved while surrounded by abundance, and refused himself enjoyment of the absolute necessaries of life from an apprehension of future poverty.

"Not so his son; he mark'd this oversight,

And quite mistook reverse of wrong for right."

Three years have elapsed, and our giddy spendthrift, throwing of the awkwardness of a rustic, assumes the character and apes the manners of a modern fine gentleman. To qualify himself for performing the part, he is attended by a French tailor, a milliner, a Parisian dancing-master,[67] a Gallic fencing-master,[68] an English prize-fighter,[69] and a teacher of music.[70] Besides this crowd of masters of arts, he has at his levee a blower of the French horn, an improver of gardens,[71] a bravo,[72] a jockey,[73] and a poet! the latter having written a panegyric in honour of this exalted character, already anticipates approbation and reward. Surrounded by such a multitude of attentive friends and warm admirers, the dissolution of his fortune is inevitable; it must melt like snow beneath the solar beam.

How exactly does Bramston describe the character in his Man of Taste:

"Without Italian, and without an ear,

To Bononcini's music I adhere.

To boon companions I my time would give,

With players, pimps, and parasites I'd live;

I would with jockeys from Newmarket dine,

And to rough riders give my choicest wine.

My evenings all I would with sharpers spend,

And make the thief-taker my bosom friend;

In Figg the prize-fighter by day delight,

And sup with Colley Cibber every night."

On the back of the musician's chair hangs a list of presents which Farinelli, an Italian singer, received the day after his performance of a favourite character at the Opera House. Among others, a gold snuff-box, chased with the story of Orpheus charming the brutes, from T. Rakewell, Esq.

Another memento of musical extravagance is the frontispiece to a poem lying on the floor, and dedicated to Esquire Rakewell, in which the ladies of Great Britain are represented as sacrificing their hearts to this idol of sound, and crying out with great earnestness, One God, one Farinelli! This intimates the violent rage of the fashionable world for that most frivolous of all amusements, the Italian Opera. The taste which our prodigal has imbibed for the turf is pointed out by the jockey presenting a silver punch-bowl, which one of his horses is supposed to have won; his passion for another royal amusement, by the portraits of two fighting-cocks, hung up as the ornaments of his saloon. A picture which he has placed between them bears a whimsical allusion; it is the "Judgment of Paris."[74] The figures in the background consist of such persons as are general attendants in the ante-chamber of a dissipated man of fashion. The whole is a high-wrought satire on those men of rank and fortune whose follies render them a prey to the artful and rapacious.

Of the expression in this print we cannot speak more highly than it deserves. Every character is marked with its proper and discriminative stamp. It has been said by a very judicious critic,[75] from whom it is not easy to differ without being wrong, that the hero of this history, in the first plate of the series, is unmeaning; and in the second, ungraceful. The fact is admitted; but, for so delineating him, the author is entitled to our praise rather than our censure. Rakewell's whole conduct proves he was a fool, and at that time he had not learned how to perform an artificial character; he therefore looks as he is, unmeaning and uninformed. But in the second plate he is ungraceful—granted. The ill-educated son of so avaricious a father could not have been introduced into very good company; and though, by the different teachers who surround him, it evidently appears that he wishes to assume the character of a gentleman, his internal feelings tell him he has not attained it. Under that consciousness, he is properly and naturally represented as ungraceful and embarrassed in his new situation.

The light, it must be acknowledged, is very ill distributed, and the figures most inartificially grouped. To infer from hence, with Mr. Gilpin, that the artist was at a loss how to group them, is not quite fair: his others compositions prove that he was not ignorant of the art, but in many of them he has been inattentive to it. In this he may have introduced in his print figures which were not inserted in the sketch, merely because they were appropriate to his story. The expression of the actors in his drama was always his leading object; composition he considered as secondary, and was little solicitous about their situation on the stage.

PLATE III.

"O vanity of youthful blood,

So by misuse to poison good!

Woman, framed for social love,

Fairest gift of powers above,

Source of every household blessing;

All charms in innocence possessing:

But, turn'd to vice, all plagues above;

Foe to thy being, foe to love!

Guest divine, to outward viewing;

Ablest minister of ruin!

And thou, no less of gift divine,

Sweet poison of misused wine!

With freedom led to every part,

And secret chamber of the heart,

Dost thou thy friendly host betray,

And show thy riotous gang the way

To enter in, with covert treason,

O'erthrow the drowsy guard of reason,

To ransack the abandoned place,

And revel there with wild excess?"

THE RAKE'S PROGRESS, PLATE III.

This plate exhibits our licentious prodigal engaged in one of his midnight festivities: forgetful of the past, and negligent of the future, he riots in the present. Having poured his libation to Bacchus, he concludes the evening orgies in a sacrifice at the Cyprian shrine; and, surrounded by the votaries of Venus, joins in the unhallowed mysteries of the place. The companions of his revelry are marked with that easy, unblushing effrontery which belongs to the servants of all work in the isle of Paphos;—for the maids of honour, they are not sufficiently elevated.

He may be supposed, in the phrase of the day, to have beat the rounds, overset a constable, and conquered a watchman, whose staff and lanthorn he has brought into the room as trophies of his prowess. In this situation he is robbed of his watch by the girl whose hand is in his bosom; and, with that adroitness peculiar to an old practitioner, she conveys her acquisition to an accomplice, who stands behind the chair.

Two of the ladies are quarrelling; and one of them delicately spouts wine in the face of her opponent, who is preparing to revenge the affront with a knife, which, in a posture of threatening defiance, she grasps in her hand. A third, enraged at being neglected, holds a lighted candle to a map of the globe, determined to set the world on fire though she perish in the conflagration! A fourth is undressing. The fellow bringing in a pewter dish,[76] as part of the apparatus of this elegant and attic entertainment, a blind harper,[77] a trumpeter, and a ragged ballad-singer roaring out an obscene song, completes this motley group.

This design may be a very exact representation of what were then the nocturnal amusements of a brothel;—so different are the manners of the year 1805 from those of 1734, that I much question whether a similar exhibition is now to be seen in any tavern of the metropolis. That we are less licentious than our predecessors, I dare not affirm; but we are certainly more delicate in the pursuit of our pleasures.

The room is furnished with a set of Roman emperors,—they are not placed in their proper order; for in the mad revelry of the evening this family of frenzy have decollated all of them except Nero; and his manners had too great a similarity to their own to admit of his suffering so degrading an insult: their reverence for virtue induced them to spare his head. In the frame of a Cæsar they have placed the portrait of Pontac, an eminent cook, whose great talents being turned to heightening sensual rather than mental enjoyments, he has a much better chance of a votive offering from this company than would either Vespasian or Trajan.

The shattered mirror, broken wine-glasses, fractured chair and cane; the mangled fowl, with a fork stuck in its breast, thrown into a corner, and indeed every accompaniment, shows that this has been a night of riot without enjoyment, mischief without wit, and waste without gratification.

With respect to the drawing of the figures in this curious female coterie, Hogarth evidently intended several of them for beauties; and of vulgar, uneducated, prostituted beauty, he had a good idea. The hero of our tale displays all that careless jollity which copious draughts of maddening wine are calculated to inspire; he laughs the world away, and bids it pass. The poor dupe without his periwig, in the background, forms a good contrast of character: he is maudlin drunk, and sadly sick. To keep up the spirit of unity throughout the society, and not leave the poor African girl entirely neglected, she is making signs to her friend the porter, who perceives, and slightly returns, her love-inspiring glance. This print is rather crowded,—the subject demanded it should be so; some of the figures thrown into shade might have helped the general effect, but would have injured the characteristic expression.

PLATE IV.

"O vanity of youthful blood,

So by misuse to poison good!

Reason awakes, and views unbarr'd

The sacred gates he wish'd to guard;

Approaching, see the harpy Law,

And Poverty, with icy paw,

Ready to seize the poor remains

That vice has left of all his gains.

Cold penitence, lame after-thought,

With fear, despair, and horror fraught,

Call back his guilty pleasures dead,

Whom he hath wrong'd, and whom betray'd."

THE RAKE'S PROGRESS, PLATE IV.

The career of dissipation is here stopped. Dressed in the first style of the ton, and getting out of a sedan chair, with the hope of shining in the circle, and perhaps forwarding a former application for a place or a pension, he is arrested! To intimate that being plundered is the certain consequence of such an event, and to show how closely one misfortune treads upon the heels of another, a boy is at the same moment picking his pocket.

The unfortunate girl whom he basely deserted is now a milliner, and naturally enough attends in the crowd to mark the fashions of the day. Seeing his distress, with all the eager tenderness of unabated love, she flies to his relief. Possessed of a small sum of money, the hard earnings of unremitted industry, she generously offers her purse for the liberation of her worthless favourite. This releases the captive beau, and displays a strong instance of female affection, which, being once planted in the bosom, is rarely eradicated by the coldest neglect or harshest cruelty.

The high-born, haughty Welshman, with an enormous leek, and a countenance keen and lofty as his native mountains, establishes the chronology, and fixes the day to be the first of March; which, being sacred to the titular saint of Wales, was observed at court.[78]

The background exhibits a view of St James's Palace, and White's Chocolate House, then the rendezvous of the first gamesters in London. At this fountainhead of dissipation the artist has aimed a flash of lightning; and to show the contagion of example, and how much this ruinous vice prevails even in the lowest ranks of society, he has in one corner of the print represented an assembly composed of shoe-blacks, chimney-sweepers, etc.,[79] who, aping the vices of their superiors, are engaged at cards, dice, cups and balls, and pricking in the belt. To intimate how eagerly these minor gamblers enter into the spirit of what they are engaged in, one of them is naked, and having staked and lost his clothes, is now throwing for his stock in trade, a basket, brushes, and blacking. The little smutty smoking politician is reading the Farthing Post; his attention is exquisitely marked; his whole soul is engaged; and, regardless of the confusion which reigns around, he contemplates

"The fate of empires, and the fall of kings."

A chimney-sweeper peeping at the postboy's cards, and informing his adversary that he has two honours, by holding up two fingers, is a fine stroke of humour; as the inscription Black's, being on a post[80] close to where this congress of the privileged orders are assembled, is an excellent antithesis when contrasted to White's, on the opposite side.

The grouping is good, the perspective agreeable, and the expression admirable. The trembling terror of the beau, agitated to the very soul, is well contrasted by the hard unfeeling insolence of two bailiffs; and that, again, opposed by the tender solicitude of the poor girl. The gunpowder mark of a star on the side of the naked shoe-black, who is putting his last stake on the hazard of a die, is another well-pointed piece of satire on the conduct of those high-born gamesters, who at the opposite house, with a dignified disregard for the future fate of themselves or their families, put their last acre on the same issue. The boy with a pipe and little pewter measure and glass by his side, shows that smoking and drinking drams was not peculiar to adults, but sometimes practised by young gentlemen before their attainment of what the law calls years of discretion.

PLATE V.

"New to the school of hard mishap,

Driven from the ease of fortune's lap,

What schemes will nature not embrace

T' avoid less shame of drear distress?

Gold can the charms of youth bestow,

And mask deformity with show:

Gold can avert the sting of shame,

In Winter's arms create a flame:

Can couple youth with hoary age,

And make antipathies engage."

THE RAKE'S PROGRESS, PLATE V.

To be thus degraded by the rude enforcement of the law, and relieved from an exigence by one whom he had injured, would have wounded, humbled, I had almost said reclaimed, any man who had either feeling or elevation of mind; but, to mark the progression of vice, we here see this depraved, lost character, hypocritically violating every natural feeling of the soul to recruit his exhausted finances, and marrying an old and withered Sibyl, at the sight of whom nature must recoil.

The ceremony passes in Marybone Church, which was then considered at such a distance from London, as to become the usual resort of those who wished to be privately married.[81] That such was the view of this prostituted young man, may be fairly inferred from a glance at the object of his choice. Her charms are heightened by the affectation of an amorous leer, which she directs to her youthful husband, in grateful return for a similar compliment which she supposed paid to herself. This gives her face much meaning, but meaning of such a sort, that an observer being asked, "How dreadful must be this creature's hatred?" would naturally reply, "How hateful must be her love!"

In his demeanour we discover an attempt to appear at the altar with becoming decorum: but internal perturbation darts through assumed tranquillity; for though he is plighting his troth to the old woman, his eyes are fixed on the young girl who kneels behind her.[82]

The parson and clerk seem made for each other: a sleepy, stupid solemnity marks every muscle of the divine, and the nasal droning of the lay brother is most happily expressed. Accompanied by her child and mother, the unfortunate victim of his seduction is here again introduced, endeavouring to enter the church and forbid the banns. The opposition made by an old pew-opener, with her bunch of keys, gave the artist a good opportunity for indulging his taste in the burlesque, and he has not neglected it.

A dog[83] paying his addresses to a one-eyed quadruped of his own species, is a happy parody of the unnatural union going on in the church.

The Commandments are broken:[84] a crack runs near the tenth, which says, "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife;" a prohibition in the present case hardly necessary. The Creed is destroyed by the damps of the church; and so little attention has been paid to the poor's box, that—it is covered with a cobweb!!! These three high-wrought strokes of satirical humour were perhaps never equalled by an exertion of the pencil; excelled they cannot be.

On one of the pew-doors is the following curious specimen of churchyard poetry and mortuary orthography:—

These : pewes : vnscrud : and tane : in : svnder
In : stone : thers : grauen : what : is : vnder
To : wit : a valt : for : burial : there : is
Which : Edward : Forset : made : for : him : and : his.[85]

A glory over the bride's head is whimsical.

The bay and holly, which decorate the pews, give a date to the period, and determine this preposterous union of January with June to have taken place about the time of Christmas,

"When Winter linger'd in her icy veins."

Addison would have classed her among the evergreens of the sex.

It has been observed, that "the church is too small, and that the wooden post, which seems to have no use, divides the picture very disagreeably."[86] This cannot be denied: but it appears to be meant as an accurate representation of the place, and the artist delineated what he saw.

The grouping is good, and the principal figure has the air of a gentleman. The light is well distributed, and the scene most characteristically represented.

PLATE VI.

"Gold, thou bright son of Phœbus, source

Of universal intercourse;

Of weeping Virtue soft redress:

And blessing those who live to bless:

Ye oft behold this sacred trust,

The tool of avaricious lust;

No longer bond of human kind,

But bane of every virtuous mind.

What chaos such misuse attends,

Friendship stoops to prey on friends;

Health, that gives relish to delight,

Is wasted with the wasting night;

Doubt and mistrust is thrown on Heaven,

And all its power to chance is given.

Sad purchase of repentant tears,

Of needless quarrels, endless fears,

Of hopes of moments, pangs of years!

Sad purchase of a tortur'd mind,

To an imprison'd body join'd."

THE RAKE'S PROGRESS, PLATE VI.

Though now, from the infatuated folly of his antiquated wife, in possession of a fortune, he is still the slave of that baneful vice which, while it enslaves the mind, poisons the enjoyments, and sweeps away the possessions of its deluded votaries. Destructive as the earthquake which convulses nature, it overwhelms the pride of the forest, and engulfs the labours of the architect.

Newmarket and the cock-pit were the scenes of his early amusements; to crown the whole, he is now exhibited at a gaming-table, where all is lost! His countenance distorted with agony, and his soul agitated almost to madness, he imprecates vengeance upon his own head.

"In heartfelt bitter anguish he appears,

And from the bloodshot ball gush purpled tears!

He beats his brow, with rage and horror fraught;

His brow half bursts with agony of thought!"

That he should be deprived of all he possessed in such a society as surround him, is not to be wondered at. One of the most conspicuous characters appears, by the pistols in his pocket, to be a highwayman: from the profound stupor of his countenance, we are certain he also is a losing gamester; and so absorbed in reflection, that neither the boy who brings him a glass of water, nor the watchman's cry of Fire! can arouse him from his reverie. Another of the party is marked for one of those well-dressed Continental adventurers, who, being unable to live in their own country, annually pour into this, and with no other requisites than a quick eye, an adroit hand, and an undaunted forehead, are admitted into what is absurdly enough called good company.

At the table a person in mourning grasps his hat, and hides his face in the agony of repentance,[87] not having, as we infer from his weepers, received that legacy of which he is now plundered more than a little month. On the opposite side is another on whom fortune has severely frowned, biting his nails in the anguish of his soul. The fifth completes the climax; he is frantic, and with a drawn sword endeavours to destroy a pauvre miserable whom he supposes to have cheated him, but is prevented by the interposition of one of those staggering votaries of Bacchus who are to be found in every company where there is good wine; and gaming, like the rod of Moses, so far swallows up every other passion, that the actors, engrossed by greater objects, willingly leave their wine to the audience.

In the background are two collusive associates eagerly dividing the profits of the evening.

A nobleman in the corner is giving his note to an usurer.[88] The lean and hungry appearance of this cent. per cent. worshipper of the golden calf is well contrasted by the sleek contented vacancy of so well-employed a legislator of this great empire. Seated at the table, a portly gentleman,[89] of whom we see very little, is coolly sweeping off his winnings.

So engrossed is every one present by his own situation, that the flames which surround them are disregarded,[90] and the vehement cries of a watchman entering the room are necessary to rouse their attention to what is generally deemed the first law of nature, self-preservation.[91]

The grouping of the figures in this print is masterly; but the light, being reflected from various sources, overbalances the shadow, and fatigues the eye. The perspective, though formal, is natural.

PLATE VII.

"Happy the man whose constant thought

(Though in the school of hardship taught)

Can send remembrance back to fetch

Treasures from life's earliest stretch;

Who, self-approving, can review

Scenes of past virtues, which shine through

The gloom of age, and cast a ray

To gild the evening of his day!

Not so the guilty wretch confin'd:

No pleasures meet his conscious mind;

No blessings brought from early youth,

But broken faith, and wrested truth;

Talents idle and unus'd,

And every trust of Heaven abus'd,

In seas of sad reflection lost,

From horrors still to horrors toss'd,

Reason the vessel leaves to steer,

And gives the helm to mad Despair."

THE RAKE'S PROGRESS, PLATE VII.

It is pithily and profitably observed by Mr. Hugh Latimer, or some other venerable writer of his day, that "the direct path from a gaming-house is unto a prisonne, for the menne who doe neeste themselves in these pestiferous hauntes, being either fooles or cheates, be punished: if fooles, by their own undoing; if cheates, by the biting lash of the beadle, and the durance of their vile bodies."

In the plate before us this remark is verified. Our improvident spendthrift is now lodged in that dreary receptacle of human misery—a prison. His countenance exhibits a picture of despair; the forlorn state of his mind is displayed in every limb, and his exhausted finances by the turnkey's demand of prison fees not being answered, and the boy refusing to leave a tankard of porter unless he is paid for it.

We learn by a letter upon the table, that a play which he sent for the manager's inspection "will not doe;"[92] and we see by the enraged countenance of his wife, that she is violently reproaching him for having deceived and ruined her. To crown this catalogue of human tortures, the poor girl whom he deserted is come with her child,—perhaps to comfort him, to alleviate his sorrows, to soothe his sufferings: but the agonizing view is too much for her agitated frame; shocked at the prospect of that misery which she cannot remove, every object swims before her eyes, a film covers the sight, the blood forsakes her cheeks, her lips assume a pallid hue, and she sinks to the floor of the prison in temporary death. What a heart-rending prospect for him by whom this is occasioned! Should he in the anguish of his soul inquire, "Who is it that hath caused this?" that inward monitor, which to him must be a perpetual torment, would reply in the words that Nathan said unto David, "Thou art the man!" Such an accumulation of woe must shake reason from her throne. The thin partitions which divide judgment from distraction are thrown down, the fine fibres of the brain are overstrained, and in the place of godlike apprehension,

"Chaos and anarchy assume the sway."

That balm of a wounded mind,—the recollection of connubial love, parental joys, and all the nameless tender sympathies which calm the troubled soul,—in his blank and blotted memory find no place. Remorse and self-abhorrence rankle in his bosom! his groans, heaved from the heart, pierce the air! he is chained! rages! gnashes his teeth, and tears his quivering flesh! At this dreadful crisis he sees, or seems to see,

"A fiend, in evil moments ever nigh,

Death in her hand, and frenzy in her eye!

Her eye all red, and sunk! A robe she wore,

With life's calamities embroidered o'er.

From me (she cries), pale wretch, thy comfort claim,

Born of Despair, and Suicide my name."

He attempts to take away that life which is become hateful to him; is prevented, and removed to a cell more dreadful than even a prison:

"Where Misery and Madness hold their court."

But let us for a moment return to the present scene. The wretched, squalid inmate who is assisting the fainting female, bears every mark of being naturalized to the place: out of his pocket hangs a scroll, on which is inscribed, "A scheme to pay the national debt, by J. L., now a prisoner in the Fleet." So attentive was this poor gentleman to the debts of the nation, that he totally forgot his own. The cries of the child, and the good-natured attentions of the two women, heighten the interest, and realize the scene. Over the group are a large pair of wings, with which some emulator of Dedalus intended to escape from his confinement; but finding them inadequate to the execution of his project, has placed them upon the tester of his bed. They would not exalt him to the regions of air, but they o'er-canopy him on earth. A chemist in the background, happy in his views, watching the moment of projection, is not to be disturbed from his dream by anything less than the fall of the roof or the bursting of his retort; and if his dream affords him felicity, why should he be awakened? The bed and gridiron, those poor remnants of our miserable spendthrift's wrecked property, are brought here as necessary in his degraded situation; on one he must try to repose his wearied frame, on the other he is to dress his scanty meal.

The grated gate, secured with tenfold bars of iron, reminds us of Milton's

"Infernal doors, that on their hinges grate

Harsh thunder!"

The principal figure is wonderfully delineated. Every muscle is marked, every nerve is unstrung; we see into his very soul. The poor prisoner who is assisting the fainting woman is ill drawn; the group of which she is the principal figure is unskilfully contrived: it forms a round heavy mass. The opposite group, though better, is not pleasing.

PLATE VIII.

"Madness! thou chaos of the brain,

What art? that pleasure giv'st and pain,

Tyranny of fancy's reign!

Mechanic fancy! that can build

Vast labyrinths and mazes wild,

With rule disjointed, shapeless measure,

Fill'd with horror, fill'd with pleasure!

Shapes of horror, that would even

Cast doubt of mercy upon Heaven;

Shapes of pleasure, that but seen,

Would split the shaking sides of Spleen.

O vanity of age! here see

The stamp of Heaven effac'd by thee!

The headstrong course of youth thus run,

What comfort from this darling son?

His rattling chains with terror hear,

Behold death grappling with despair!

See him by thee to ruin sold,

And curse thyself, and curse thy gold!"

THE RAKE'S PROGRESS, PLATE VIII.

"Last scene of all,—which ends this strange eventful history!"

But in this scene, dreary and horrid as are its accompaniments, he is attended by the faithful and kind-hearted female whom he so basely betrayed. In the first plate we see him refuse her his promised hand. In the fourth she releases him from the harpy fangs of a bailiff; she is present at his marriage. In the hope of relieving his distress, she follows him to a prison. Wishing to soothe his misery and alleviate his woe, she here attends him in a madhouse! What a return for deceit and desertion!

The Reverend Mr. Gilpin, in his elucidation of these eight prints, asserts that "this thought is rather unnatural, and the moral certainly culpable."[93] With the utmost deference for his critical abilities, I must entertain a different opinion. We have had many similar examples of female attachment. If it be culpable to forgive those which have despitefully used us, to free those which are in bonds, to visit those which are in prison, and to comfort those which are in affliction, what meaning have the divine precepts of our holy religion?

The female mind is naturally credulous, affectionate, and—in its attachments—ardent. If, in her peculiar situation, her assiduities must be deemed in any degree culpable, let us remember that this is but a frail vessel of refined clay. When the awful record of her errors is unrolled, may that sigh which was breathed for the misery of a fellow-mortal waft away the scroll, and the tears which flowed for the calamities of others float the memorial down the stream of oblivion!

On the errors of women, let us look with the allowance and humanity of men. Enchanting woman! thou balm of life! soother of sorrow! solace of the soul! how dost thou lessen the load of human misery, and lead the wretched into the valley of delight! Without thee, how heavily would man drag through a dreary world; but if the white hand of a fascinating female be twined round his arm, how joyous, how lightly doth he trip along the path!

That warm and tender friend, who in the most trying situations retains her enthusiastic fondness, and in every change of fortune preserves unabated love, ought to be embraced as the first bension of heaven, the completion of earthly happiness! Let man but draw such a prize in the lottery of life, and glide down the stream of existence with such a partner, and neither the cold averted eye of a summer friend, nor the frowns of an adverse fortune, should ever produce a pang or excite a murmur. But enough,—let not the chaste feelings of blushing innocence be wounded by this rhapsody, or for a moment suppose that the episode, or effusion, or e'en whatever she pleases, is intended as a vindication of female folly; in good truth it is not. The writer would not wish it delivered to the cold-fingered portress of Diana's temple, but it may be laid upon that altar which is sacred to Friendship, to Hymen, to Love.—There we will leave it, and return to the plate before us.

A gentleman[94] from whom I have once or twice reluctantly presumed to differ, says that "the drawing of the principal figure is a more accurate piece of anatomy than we commonly find in the works of this master." The observation is perfectly just, but the inaccuracies of Mr. Hogarth did not arise from inability, but from inattention. He says further, that "the expression of the principal figure is rather unmeaning." The late and ever to be lamented Mr. Mortimer, whose wonderful abilities as an artist were only equalled by his amiable and kind-hearted virtues as a man,—the late Mr. Mortimer, of whom I can never think without a sigh of regard and regret, thought very differently. He was once requested to delineate several of the passions, as they are personified by Mr. Gray. One of the subjects proposed was,—

"Moody madness, laughing wild, amid severest woe."

The instant this line was read to him, he opened a portfolio, took out the eighth plate of the "Rake's Progress," and pointing to the principal figure, exclaimed, "Sir, if I had never seen this print, I should say it was not possible to paint these contending passions in the same countenance. Having seen this, which exactly displays Mr. Gray's idea, I dare not attempt it. I could only make a correct copy; for the alteration of a single line would be a departure from the character."

The reclining figure, with a cross leaning near him, is in a high degree terrific.[95]

"With horror wild,

'Tis Devotion's ruin'd child,

Sunk in the emphasis of grief;

Nor can he feel, nor dares he ask relief."

In the cell are the portraits of three saints, whose systems were built on the necessity of propagating the religion of mercy by the sword and the wheel.

Near him are two astronomers, one with a paper rolled up to imitate a telescope, gazing at the roof, in the idea that it is

"The spacious canopy of heaven, fretted with golden fires."

The other, delineating the firing off a bomb and a ship moored at a distance, is an immediate ridicule of Whiston's project for the discovery of the longitude,—an object which at this time engaged the attention of the philosophical world, and in the fruitless search after which many a feeble head hath become mad, north—north-west!

The opposite group form a whimsical trio. A mad musician, a counterfeit presentment of St. Peter, and a poor gentleman, with his hands clasped together, that appears by the inscription of "Charming Betty Careless," which he has chalked upon a board, to be

"Craz'd with care, and cross'd by hopeless love."

He is absorbed in thought, and his whole soul so engrossed by the charms of his Dulcinea, that neither the discordant sounds of the fiddler, whose trembling strings

"Grate harshly on the nerve auricular,"

nor the roar of the pope, who is furiously denouncing destruction on all heretics, nor the ear-piercing noise of a barking cur, can awake him from his reverie.

A crazy tailor and a mimic monarch complete this congregation of calamity.

Two women, impelled by a most unaccountable curiosity, are walking in the background. Devoid of that delicacy which gives beauty new attractions, they forget that an eagerness to witness woe which they cannot alleviate, gives strong indication of an hardened and unfeeling heart.

The halfpenny stuck against a wall, and dated 1763, was inserted by Mr. Hogarth the year before his death, and is designed to intimate that Britannia was then mad. This is one of the few instances wherein he has called in the aid of allegory, but his allegory was always seasoned with wit.

Of the expression I have already spoken. The disposition of the figures is good. That group in which the usurper of St. Peter's chair is the principal object, is well contrived. There is great simplicity and breadth in the background, and the light and perspective are judicious.

"Protract not, curious ears, the mournful tale;

But o'er the hapless group low drop Compassion's veil."

The eight prints of the "Rake's Progress," with "Southwark Fair," were advertised in the London Daily Post to be delivered June 25th, 1735, with an apology for the publication being deferred, which Mr. Hogarth states to have been occasioned by his waiting until the royal assent was given to an Act intended to secure all new invented prints from being copied, etc.

This series are in every respect superior to those which preceded them, but were not honoured with an equal attention by the public.

From what did this arise? Were the town more interested in the story of an harlot than in the adventures of a rake, or had this new mode of engraving history lost its novelty?

On this occasion was published an octavo pamphlet, entitled, "The Rake's Progress, or the Humours of Drury Lane, a Poem in eight Cantos, in Hudibrastic verse; being the Rambles of a modern Oxonian: which is a complete Key to the eight Prints lately published by the celebrated Mr. Hogarth. Printed for John Chetwood, and sold at Inigo Jones' Head, against Exeter Change, Strand, 1735." This is a most contemptible and indecent performance. In some of the copies are inserted eight prints; but they are only the designs of Hogarth mutilated, and perhaps were originally engraved for the decoration of some other work.

There is reason to believe that the artist once intended to have introduced the ceremony of a marriage contract, instead of the levee, as an unfinished painting of the scene is still preserved. In this sketch he appears to have thought of taking the same ground with Mr. Pope:

"What brought Sir Visto's ill-got wealth to waste?

Some demon whisper'd, 'Visto, have a taste.'"

For our Rake is there turned connoisseur; and among a number of articles which prove him a man of virtu, is a canvas containing the representation of a human foot.[96]

In the year 1745 the eight pictures were sold by auction, at Mr. Hogarth's in Leicester Fields, and produced twenty-two guineas each; total, one hundred and eighty-four pounds, sixteen shillings. They are now, I believe, in the possession of Mr. Beckford of Fonthill, in Wiltshire.

SOUTHWARK FAIR.

"The crowded scene will please us then,

And the busy hum of men;

The Thespian throng, and champions bold,

Their jubilee of triumph hold:

With store of wenches, whose bright eyes

Rain influence, and judge the prize

Of hat or shirt,—while all contend

To catch her glance whom all commend.

Come, Sport, that wrinkled Care derides;

And Laughter, holding both his sides;

And puppet-show, and quaint device,

And Troy in flames, and rattling dice:

And Comedy, with wreathed smiles;

And Music, that dull care beguiles;

Here let the droning bagpipe be,

And there the cheerful fiddle see.

Nor be our joys to earth confin'd,—

But, light as air, swift as the wind,

Let Cadman cut the liquid sky,

And on the rope Violante fly.

Our trumpet's loud clangour

Excites not to arms;

No shrill notes of anger,

No horrid alarms,

The double, double, double beat

Of the thundering drum,

Tells—the actors are come;

Let us follow, nor think of retreat.

I'll to the well-trod stage anon,

If Settle's[97] 'cumber'd sock be on;

Or heavy Howard,[98] Folly's child,

In native nonsense soareth wild.

These joys if Southwark Fair can give,

In Southwark Fair a week I'll live."

SOUTHWARK FAIR.

At a time when martial hardihood was the only accomplishment likely to confer distinction, when war was thought to be the most honourable pursuit, and agriculture deemed the only necessary employment, there was little social intercourse, and so few retail dealers, that men had no very easy means of procuring those articles which they occasionally wanted. To remove this inconvenience, it was found necessary to establish some general mart, where they might be supplied. Fairs were therefore instituted, as a proper medium between the buyer and seller, and were at first considered as merely places of trade.[99] They were generally held on saints' days. Some of them continued open many weeks, and had peculiar privileges to encourage the attendance of those who had goods upon sale. The pedlar travelled from city to city, or from town to town, with his moveable warehouse, and furnished his customers with what served them until his periodical return.

As men grew more polished their wants increased, their intercourse became more general, and the importance of commerce was better understood. The merchant deposited his goods in a warehouse, and the trader opened a shop. Fairs, deserted by men of business, gradually changed their nature, and, instead of being crowded by the active and the industrious, were the haunts of the idle and the dissolute.[100] Such were they at the time of this delineation, which was made about the year 1733, and may be considered as a true picture of the holiday amusements of that period. At the head of these we must place what were than called stage-plays,—a most favourite diversion of your Englishman ever since the time

"When sweetest Shakspeare, Fancy's child,

Warbled his native woodnotes wild."

In these humble representations some of our greatest actors made their first appearance; and not a few of them, even after they had attained high eminence, ranted, strutted, and bellowed through all the days the fairs were kept open, to their own emolument, and the heartfelt pleasure of the Wapping beaux and the black-eyed beauties of Saltpetre Bank.

The play now enacting appears to be the Fall of Bajazet,[101]—and it is performed to the life; for the unsure scaffolding, not being built to bear the terror-working stamps of the furious Turk, tumbles to the ground. The tyrant's turban is shaken from his head, the truncheon is dropped from his hand, and with the moralizing Tamerlane he joins the general crash, and threatens destruction to the china jars and bowls which are beneath. Not only the heroes and heroine of the drama, but both band and musical instruments are involved in the ruin. The band, it is true, consists of—a solitary fiddler; and the instruments are—a violin and a salt-box. The monkey and the merry-andrew seem the only two animals likely to evade injury in this universal wreck. Corporeal dexterity at such a time is more useful than mental acquirements.

The Amazonian, with a hat, feather, and drum, is a beauty of Mr. Hogarth's school, belongs to a company of comedians, and is beating up for an audience. The gaping astonishment of two rustics who are looking at her is inimitably described. One of them, awe-struck by her figure, has pulled off his hat in reverence of her charms; the other "wonders with a foolish face of praise."

A buskined hero, arrayed perhaps for an Alexander, has his career of glory stopped by a sheriff's officer, who pays no respect

"To Macedonia's madman, or the Swede."

The hero puts his hand to his sword, but the bailiffs follower secures his other arm, and aims a bludgeon at his head.

A younger branch of the family of the Simples, with a whip in one hand and the other hooked on a young girl's arm, is so lost in gaping astonishment at the variety of objects around him, that he neglects his pockets, which an adroit candidate for Tyburn is clearing of their contents. While one fellow kisses a girl,[102] another endeavours to decoy her two companions. A prize-fighter, furrowed with scars, makes his triumphal entry on a blind horse, and, calling up a face of terror, and grasping his sword, hurls a proud defiance to all who dare appear as his competitors.

A juggler, in a senatorial wig, displays magic wonders with the cups and balls; and above him is a fellow with a pair of artificial legs extended on a board: one of these legs a man beneath is either attempting to break, or using as a lever to give a summerset to a tumbler, who kneels upon the other. A hat displayed on the end of a pole is the prize of the best wrestler on the green; and a holland chemise will reward the fair racer swiftest of foot.

A quack doctor, in laced hat, long periwig, and embroidered coat, mounted upon a stage and attended by his merry-andrew, dispenses his infallible medicines. To attract the notice of a gaping crowd, this iron-throated descendant of Paracelsus eats fire.

That ancient puppet-show joke of Mr. Punch's horse picking the pocket of the chequered fool of the farce, is exhibited in a balcony, on one side of which is a bout at cudgels by puppets all alive!

Under a show-cloth, which announces "The Siege of Troy[103] is here," are a company rehearsing some part of the play. By a sun upon the breast of the figure in a mitre, we know him to be the high-priest of Apollo, the venerable Chryses. While one arm of this sage of many sorrows is twined round the pole which supports the wooden horse, the other is stretched out in moving supplication, entreating the hearers to

"Relieve a wretched parent's pain,

And give Chryseïs to his arms again."

Chryseïs, however, is perfectly satisfied with her situation. Seated in all the pride of conscious beauty close to the haughty Atrides, and glorying in his protection, she prefers the lover to the parent. The inexorable chief nods his plumed crest, grasps his truncheon, and "looks with threatening brow on all around."

"No tears subdue him, no entreaties move,

He dares avenging Phœbus, son of Jove."

A little fellow with long hair, playing upon the bagpipes,[104] is attended by a dancing dog, dressed en militaire, and with his foot dances his Fantoccini figures. His Madame Catharina does not excite the attention she merits: the woman with a dice-box has superior attractions; and a country fellow, in a coat which seems to have been the Sunday habiliment of his forefathers for many generations, is trying his fortune, though earnestly dissuaded by his more prudent son from putting his pence in so perilous a situation. The woman, with that energetic eloquence which marks the orators of Billingsgate, rates the boy for daring to doubt her honesty. On the other side, a Savoyard music-grinder, with her galante show, is attended by a dwarf drummer, and collecting pence from the little people who prefer a wonderful and surprising prospect of every court in Europe to a pennyworth of gingerbread. In the distance, a set of figures have been engaged at quarter-staff, then a favourite amusement; and the conqueror, waving his flag of victory, is hoisted upon the shoulders of another man; and thus triumphantly exalted, the air echoes with loud and reiterated acclamations in honour of his prowess.

Having despatched the herd[105] of characters who people the scene on earth, I reserved to a class by themselves those who are buoyant in the air. The figure vaulting on a rope was designed for Signora Violante, who signalized herself in the reign of George I. She was followed by some inferior performers; but the science of rope-dancing and riding has now arrived at its acme, and is rising into such estimation with the public, that Dr. Johnson's prophecy may, at a future day, be wholly fulfilled in our royal theatres. In part it has been already verified:

"Perhaps where Lear has rav'd and Hamlet died,

On flying cars new sorcerers may ride;

Perhaps (for who can guess th' effects of chance?)

Here Hunt may box, or Mahomet may dance."

The man descending from a steeple represents one Cadman, who, in the memory of some persons now living, performed the same feat at St. Martin's in the Fields, from the steeple of which he descended into the Mews. In an experiment of the like nature at Shrewsbury, the rope breaking, he was dashed to pieces.

A show-cloth over the Fall of Bajazet is almost a direct copy from a very coarse etching made by John Laguerre, son of Louis Laguerre, whom Pope has immortalized for his sprawling saints. On the upper part of the print is inscribed, "The Stage Mutiny." It alludes to some disputes between the managers of Drury Lane and such of the actors as were spirited up to rebellion by Theophilus Cibber, and seceded to the Haymarket in 1733. As this made much noise in its day, it may not be unentertaining to narrate some of the circumstances which occasioned it.

The patent for Drury Lane being renewed, Mr. Booth, who found his health decline, began to think it was time to dispose of his share and interest in the theatre. The purchaser was John Highmore, Esq., a gentleman who had unhappily contracted an attachment to the stage, from having one night performed the part of Lothario for a wager.[106] He gave Booth £2500 for half his share in the property, and his whole right in the management. Mr. Wilkes had previously appointed Ellis his deputy; and Colley Cibber, extremely displeased that two strangers should be thus empowered to interfere, authorized his son to act for him in everything that concerned his share in the management. The first season ended with some profit to the new patentees; but Mr. Highmore being disgusted by the impertinence of young Cibber, determined to exonerate himself from his interference, and, for the sum of three thousand guineas, purchased the elder Cibber's right in the theatre. Two years had hardly passed before the principal actors, encouraged by Theophilus Cibber, determined to revolt from the patentee; and as the little theatre in the Haymarket was then unoccupied, agreed to rent it from the proprietor, and opened their campaign with the comedy of Love for Love, at which they were attended by an elegant and crowded audience. The patentees, though weakened by this desertion, began to act at the usual time. To supply the place of those who had left their service, they had recourse to such actors as could be procured from the itinerant companies. With all the help they could obtain, their performances were inferior to those exhibited at the Haymarket, and losses came so heavy upon Mr. Highmore, that he was under the necessity of giving up the contest, and sold the whole property to Mr. Charles Fleetwood for about half the sum he had originally paid for it.'

Upon this circumstance is built the print from which the show-cloth was copied; it probably announces the performance of a farce entitled "The Stage Mutineers, a tragi-comic farcical ballad opera, acted at Covent Garden in 1733;" which is a burlesque on the whole contest. Theophilus Cibber, who was the leader of the malcontents, is in this farce characterized by the name of Ancient Pistol, all his speeches being in that high-flown mock-heroic style with which Shakspeare has marked that boasting coward. The scene is supposed to be in the playhouse, and the time, during a rehearsal.

In 1740, a pamphlet was published for J. Mechell, at the King's Arms, Fleet Street, entitled, "An Apology for the Life of T—— C——, Comedian; being a proper sequel to the Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber; with an historical view of the stage to the present year. Supposed to be written by himself, in the style and manner of the poet-laureate:" but in reality the work of Harry Fielding. The following passage, relative to this subject, occurs in page 16, etc:—"In that year, when the stage fell into great commotions, and the Drury Lane company, asserting the glorious cause of liberty and property, made a stand against the oppressions of the patentees;—in that memorable year, when the theatric dominions fell in labour of a revolution, under the conduct of myself; that revolt gave occasion to several pieces of wit and satirical flirts at the conductor of the enterprise. I was attacked, as my father had been before me, in the public papers and journals; and the burlesque character of Pistol was attributed to me as a real one. Out came a print of Jack Laguerre's, representing, in most vile designing, this expedition of ours, under the name of 'The Stage Mutiny;' in which, gentle reader, your humble servant, in the Pistol character, was the principal figure. This I laughed at, knowing it only a proper embellishment for one of those necessary structures to which persons out of necessity repair." Again, p. 88: "At the fair of Bartholomew we gained some recruits; but, besides those advantages over the enemy, I myself went there in person, and publicly exposed myself. This was done to fling defiance in the patentees' teeth; for, on the booth where I exhibited, I hung out 'The Stage Mutiny,' with Pistol at the head of his troop; our standard bearing the motto, 'We eat.'" Whether this account which Cibber is made to give of his own conduct is entirely jocular, or contains a mixture of truth and falsehood, cannot now be ascertained. Hogarth may have transferred a circumstance from Bartholomew to Southwark Fair; or Fielding, by design, may have misrepresented it, alluding at the same time to Hogarth's print.

To return to the show-cloth. The figure seated in the corner, with his head bound with laurel, is intended to represented old Cibber, then poet-laureate. With a bag of money upon his knee, he rejoices in the sum he has realized, and laughs at those who are enduring the storm. Under his feet is inscribed "Quiet and snug." The tall, thin figure, stooping, is meant for Mr. Highmore. He holds in his hand a scroll, on which is written, "It cost 6000 pounds." He is again characterized in the figure of a monkey astride the sign-iron of the Rose Tavern, with a label, on which is written, "I am a gentleman."[107]—The man in his shirt, with a paint-pot and brushes at his feet, who takes up the cudgels for the new patentees, is John Ellis the painter. He was the pupil of Sir James Thornhill, deputy-manager for Mr. Wilkes, and principal scene painter to the theatre. By the favour of the Duke of Montagu and Sir Robert Walpole, he was appointed to be great master of the wardrobe, and keeper of the lions in the Tower. He was much happier in attending a pugilistic exhibition at Broughton's academy than in the exercise of his profession. His figure appears muscular, but hardly leads one to suppose, what is yet certainly a fact, that Rysbrack—when he produced what Mr. Walpole very emphatically calls that exquisite summary of his skill, knowledge, and judgment, the "Hercules," now in Mr. Hoare's temple at Stourhead—modelled the legs of the god from those of Ellis.—The figure in the background, with a tremendous plume of feathers, and a flowing periwig, grasping his truncheon in a style of defiance, may be Mills, in the character of Bajazet. On the flag which is borne between Mr. Highmore and Ellis, is inscribed, "We'll starve them out." On that borne in the rear of the seceders, on the opposite side, is written, "We eat." The figure near it is probably intended to represent Johnson, in Sir Hugh Evans; as that with a truncheon in his hand, who stands next him, may be intended for Bardolph; but who the performer was, I am not well enough versed in dramatic history to determine: it would probably be known at that time, by the ends of two cudgels, which rise in parallel lines immediately behind his head, and may perhaps intimate that this gentleman, as well as Theophilus Cibber, was under some obligations to his wife for giving him a title he was not born with.—The Sir John Falstaff was certainly intended for Harper,[108] who was eminent in that character; as Pistol, with the inscription, "Pistol's alive," was indisputably meant for the younger Cibber. The masculine gentlewoman, waving a flag on which is inscribed "Liberty and Property," is, I think, clearly intended as a portraiture of the notorious Mistress Doll Tearsheet; but who was the actress that personated this fair friend of the fat knight, I really do not know.[109]

The show-cloth underneath, with the tall figure and two spectators, is a representation of Maximilian, a giant from Upper Saxony. That with the wooden horse is explained by the inscription above it, "The Siege of Troy is here." Mr. Victor, in an eulogium upon Boheme the actor, says that "his first appearance was at a booth in Southwark Fair, which in those days lasted two weeks, and was much frequented by persons of all ranks and both sexes. He acted the part of Menelaus, in the best droll I ever saw, called The Siege of Troy."

The Adam and Eve upon another show-cloth may probably allude to the representation of somewhat compiled from an old mystery called The Creation.[110]

The old puppet-show joke of Punch wheeling his wife into the jaws of destruction, which is underneath, is well known. By the paper lantern, dwarf drummer, and little figure at a temporary door, it appears that the royal waxwork and whole Court of France are at the Royal Oak.

It is a little remarkable, that in this almost endless variety of holiday amusements there should be no exhibition of wild beasts[111] or wonderful quadrupeds. A roaring lion, raging tiger, and fierce cat a-mountain, would have had a large audience; and a learned pig or an overgrown Lincolnshire ox might have made the proprietors' fortunes at that time, as they have done at this.

The amusements of the fair at this period continued a fortnight,[112] and were unquestionably attended with much loss of time, and productive of some habits of dissipation among the lower ranks of people who attended them. A visit to a family in the vicinity must have been a delightful entertainment, and the pleasure much heightened if the lady of the mansion happened to be fond of dumb creatures. A whistle, drum, and trumpet, in the possession of three little masters, with a barking lap-dog, screaming parrot, and canary bird in full song, must form a concert of such heavenly harmony, as

"Would bring an angel down!"

For those who delight in pointing out examples of Hogarth's bad spelling, this print affords a fine field. The name of Cibber is spelt with only one b. In the Fall of Bajazet, the z appears to have been originally an s. "We'l starve them out." The e final in waxworke, these syllable dissectors may perhaps deign to acknowledge was then customary.

In my enumeration of some of the actors who appear on the show-cloth, etc., I may sometimes be wrong: let it be received as conjecture founded on the best information I could obtain; and let it be remembered, that to procure positive information of circumstances which happened near fifty years ago is not easy. The memoranda to be found in magazines, and other perishable prints of the day, are not always to be depended upon. Even now these authentic documents sometimes lead those who implicitly believe them into error.[113]

A MIDNIGHT MODERN CONVERSATION.

"Think not to find one meant resemblance there;

We lash the vices, but the persons spare.

Prints should be priz'd, as authors should be read,

Who sharply smile prevailing Folly dead.

So Rabelais laught, and so Cervantes thought;

So Nature dictated what Art has taught."

MIDNIGHT MODERN CONVERSATION.

Notwithstanding this inscription, which was engraved on the plate some time after its publication, it is very certain that most of these figures were intended for individual portraits; but Mr. Hogarth, not wishing to be considered as a personal satirist, and fearful of making enemies among his contemporaries, would never acknowledge who were the characters. Some of them the world might perhaps mistake; for though the author was faithful in delineating whatever he intended to portray, complete intoxication so far caricatures the countenance, that, according to the old though trite proverb, "the man is not himself." His portrait, though given with the utmost fidelity, will scarcely be known by his most intimate friends, unless they have previously seen him in this degrading disguise. Hence it becomes difficult to identify men whom the painter did not choose to point out at the time; and sixty years having elapsed, it becomes impossible,—for all who composed the group, with the artist by whom it was delineated,

"Shake hands with dust, and call the worm their kinsman."

Mrs. Piozzi told me that the divine with a corkscrew,[114] occasionally used as a tobacco-stopper, hanging upon his little finger, was the portrait of Parson Ford, Dr. Johnson's uncle; though upon the authority of Sir John Hawkins, of anecdotish memory, it has been generally supposed to be intended for Orator Henley.[115] As I have been told that both these worthies were distinguished by that clerical rubicundity of face with which it is marked, the reader may decree the honour of a sitting to which he pleases. We may say of either one or the other:

"No loftier theme his thought pursues,

Than punch, good company, and dues.

Easy, and careless what may fall,

He hears, assents, and fills to all;

Proving it plainly by his face,

That cassocks are no signs of grace."[116]

The roaring Bacchanalian who stands next him, waving his glass in the air, has pulled off his wig, and in the zeal of his friendship crowns the divine's head. He is evidently drinking destruction to fanatics and success to Mother Church, or a mitre to the jolly parson whom he addresses.

The lawyer who sits near him is a portrait of one Kettleby, a vociferous bar-orator, who, though an utter barrister, chose to distinguish himself by wearing an enormous full-bottom wig, in which he is here represented. He was further remarkable for a diabolical squint and a Satanic smile. In the Causidicade are a number of lines dedicated to the honour of this amiable person. They begin with—

"Up Kettleby starts with a horrible stare."

A poor maudlin miserable who is addressing him, when sober, must be a fool; but, in this state, it would puzzle Lavater to assign him a proper class. He seems endeavouring to demonstrate to the lawyer that in a poi—poi—point of law he has been most cruelly cheated, and lost a cau—cau—cause that he ought to have got,—and all this was owing to his attorney being an infernal villain. This may very probably be true; for the poor man's tears show that, like the person relieved by the good Samaritan, he has been among thieves. The barrister grins horribly at his misfortunes, and tells him he is properly punished for not employing a gentleman.

Next to him sits a gentleman in a black periwig. He politely turns his back to the company, that he may have the pleasure of smoking a sociable pipe.

The justice, "in fair round belly, with good capon lin'd,"—the justice, having hung up his hat, wig, and cloak, puts on his nightcap, and with a goblet of superior capacity before him, sits in solemn cogitation. Meditating severe punishments on the dissolute peasant who tipples ale or viler liquors, he resolves for the future to act with magisterial harshness, that he may convince his neighbours of his zeal for the law, and detestation of drunkenness. His left elbow supported by the table and his right by a chair, with a pipe in one hand and a stopper in the other, he puffs out the bland vapour with the dignity of an alderman, and fancies himself as great as Jupiter seated upon the summit of Mount Olympus, enveloped by the thick cloud which his own breath has created.

With folded arms and open mouth another leans back in his chair.[117] His wig is dropped from his head, and he is asleep: but though speechless, he is sonorous; for you clearly perceive that where nasal sounds are the music, he is qualified to be leader of the band.

The fallen hero, who with his chair and goblet has tumbled to the floor, by the cockade in his hat we suppose to be an officer. His forehead is marked, perhaps with honourable scars. To wash his wounds and cool his head, the staggering apothecary bathes it with brandy.

A gentleman in the corner, who, from having the Craftsman and London Evening in his pocket, we determine to be a politician, very unluckily mistakes his ruffle for the bowl of his pipe, and sets fire to it.

The person in a bag-wig and solitaire, with his hand upon his head,[118] would not now pass for a fine gentleman, but in the year 1735 was a complete beau. Unaccustomed to such joyous company, he appears to have drank rather more than agrees with him.

The company consists of eleven,[119] and on the chimney-piece, floor, and table, are three-and-twenty empty flasks. These, added to a bottle which the apothecary holds in his hand, prove that this select society have not lost a moment. The overflowing bowl, full goblets, and charged glasses, prove that they think "'tis too early to part," though the dial points to four in the morning!

"What have we with day to do?

Sons of Care, Sons of Care, 'twas made for you."

The clock, like the company, is irregular; for the minute finger and hour hand do not agree. Over the chimney-piece is a picture, of which we can discover enough to guess that it has once been a landscape; but, like the understandings of the gentlemen present, is so obscured by smoke and vapour as to appear a mere chaos, without one clear and distinct form. The fumes of punch, the smoke of pipes, and effluvia of candles sunk into the sockets, must render the air delightfully balmy, and produce ambrosial fragrance.

The different degrees of drunkenness are well discriminated, and its effects admirably described. The poor simpleton who is weeping out his woes to honest lawyer Kettleby, it makes mawkish; the beau it makes sick; and the politician it stupifies. One is excited to roaring, and another lulled to sleep. It half closes the eyes of justice, renders the footing of physic unsure, and lays prostrate the glory of his country and the pride of war.

On the 22d of March 1742, for the benefit of Mr. Hippisley, was acted at Covent Garden Theatre a new scene, called A Modern Midnight Conversation, taken from Hogarth's print, in which was introduced Hippisley's Drunken Man, with a comic tale of what really passed between him and his old aunt, at her house on Mendip Hills, in Somersetshire.

Having described the individuals of which this print is composed, let us for a moment reflect upon the vice it is intended to satirize; and considered in a moral point of view, it may have as good an effect as the sight of an intoxicated slave had upon the young men of Sparta. This people sometimes made a slave drunk, that their sons, disgusted by the sight, might avoid the practice.

In a book published about a century and a half ago, I remember to have read a tale, which recounteth that, "Once uponne a tyme, the Divelle was permitted to tempte a yonge manne. Sathanne had noe sooner power gyven hym, than hee didde appeere in the guyze of a grave bencher of Graie's Inne, and didde tell himme that hee was impoweryd to compelle hys doing one of these three thynges: eyther he shoulde morthere his fathere, lie wythe his mothere, or gette dronke. The young manne," saith my author, "shockyd atte the two first proposycyons, didde ymbrace the laste. He gotte verie dronke, and in thatte state, havying neyther the use of reasonne nor the dredde of sinne, hee was guyltie offe bothe the unaturalle deedes hee hadde before soe shudderydde atte, and for hys naughtinesse and wyckednesse hee was hangydde."

I have been told that the original picture was some years since found at an inn in Gloucestershire, and is now in the possession of J. Calverley, Esq., of Leeds, in Yorkshire.

THE SLEEPING CONGREGATION.

"Beneath this antique roof, this hallow'd shade,

Where wearied rustics holy Sabbath keep,

Compos'd as if on downy pillows laid,

The sons and daughters of the hamlet sleep."

THE SLEEPING CONGREGATION.

The shepherd is not much more awake than his sleeping flock, whose appearance convinces us that, though there is no organ, there is much melody. The nasal music of the congregation, joined to the languid monotony of the preacher,[120] which sounds like the drowsy hum of a drone bee, must form such a concert as neither Tubal Cain nor Sir John Hawkins ever dreamed of. The text is perfectly applicable to the audience, "Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." His parishioners have not troubled themselves much about the Greek version; good, easy men, they take these words in their literal sense, and, after the toil of six days, find the church a comfortable and convenient dormitory. By the preacher's aspect and attitude, we are convinced that he would lull to soft repose the most lively assembly that ever congregated in the capital. How, then, must his manner operate here? As an opiate more powerful than poppies. It is as composing as are the very descriptive lines that conclude the second book of Pope's Dunciad; which are so perfectly an echo to the sense, that they ought to be inscribed on the front of the first temple which is dedicated to Somnus. He

"In one lazy tone,

Through the long, heavy, painful page, drawls on.

Soft creeping words on words the sense compose;

At every line they stretch, they yawn, they doze.

As to soft gales top-heavy pines bow low

Their heads, and lift them as they cease to blow,

Thus oft they rear, and oft the head decline,

As breathe or pause by fits the airs divine:

And now to this side, now to that they nod," etc.

The clerk,[121] infinitely more important than the divine, is kept awake by contemplating the charms of a voluptuously blooming damsel, who, in studying the Service of Matrimony, has sighed her soul to rest. The eyes of this pronouncer of Amen are visibly directed to her.

In the pew opposite are five swains of the village;

"Each mouth distended, and each head reclin'd,

They soundly sleep."

To render this rural scene more pastoral, they are accompanied by two women who have once been shepherdesses, and perhaps celebrated by some neighbouring Theocritus as the Chloe and Daphne of their day. Being now in the wane of their charms, poetical justice will not allow us to give them any other appellation than old women. They are awake. Whether the artist intended by this to show that they are actuated by the spirit of contradiction, for the preacher entreats them to go to rest, or meant it as a compliment to the softer sex, as being more attentive than men, I cannot tell; let those who have studied their characters more than I have, determine as seemeth best in their eyes.

In the gallery are two men joining in chorus with the band below. One of them has the decency to hide his face; but the other is evidently in full song.

The heavy architecture and grotesque decorations lead us to conjecture that this now venerable edifice was once the cottage of Baucis and Philemon, so exquisitely described by Swift:

"Grown to a church by just degrees—

—— The ballads pasted on the wall,

Of Joan of France, and English Moll,

Fair Rosamond, and Robin Hood,

The little Children in the Wood,

Now seem to look abundance better,

Improv'd in picture, size, and letter,

And, high in order plac'd, describe

The heraldry of every tribe."

The "Children in the Wood" are now exalted above the Gothic windows. One of them we see transformed to an angel; which, to prove its being of a more exalted species, and no longer a mere mortal, has four thighs.

"The pretty Robin Redbreasts, which

Did cover them with leaves,"

have undergone a transmigration much to their advantage. It has somewhat sullied their plumage, but they have assumed a more important appearance, and the loss of beauty is compensated by an abundant increase in bulk and dignity. Exalted to the upper part of a fluted pillar, and seated in heraldic state, they seem to mortal eyes the emblems of wisdom, the symbols of Minerva.[122]

A lion and companion unicorn, concealed by the pillar, was originally an headpiece to that excellent old ballad, beginning with

"The fierce lyon of faire Englonde

Didde swallowe the lillie of France."

With jaws extended wide enough to swallow a bed of lilies, he is one of the supporters to the king's arms.

The pews carry evident marks of having been once a Gothic bedstead. The cumbrous load of oak with which it was canopied, still supported by large square posts, is become a gallery. The lower part retains much of its original form, and answers its original purpose; but why should I attempt to describe that which is already described by the Dean?

"A bedstead of the antique mode,

Compact of timber many a load;

Such as our ancestors did use,

Is metamorphos'd into pews,

Which still their ancient nature keep,

Of lodging folks dispos'd to sleep."

The pulpit in which our dozing divine is groaning out the gospel, was once a groaning-chair for the good wife of the cottage. The cushion on which she sat for many a winter's eve is now ornamented with tassels. The arm still retains its original form, though somewhat more upright than when it served for a rest to the old dame's elbow. Swift describes the exact manner of the metamorphosis:

"The groaning-chair began to crawl,

Like an huge snail against the wall;

There stuck aloft, in public view,

And with small change a pulpit grew."

The crutches, which erst supported Dame Baucis, now prop the clerk's reading-desk.

The triangle, environed by a glory, was placed in the church by old Philemon. In his youth he had been a very good carpenter, and, when become a divine, retained so much of his original disposition as to suppose he could explain an awful mystery by a mechanical representation. The only misfortune which attended this curious delineation was, that not one of his parishioners could understand it: they however, were silent; they thought it too serious an affair to dispute or call names about. It would perhaps have been as well if many of our learned and right grave divines had been silent upon this subject on the same principle.

Swift says that the jack was turned to a clock; in this circumstance he must have been mistaken, for the hour-glass, which was the constant companion of Dame Baucis at her wheel, retains its old form, and is placed at the parson's left hand.[123] Underneath it is the following applicable inscription from St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians: "I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain."

The windows are evidently intended for companions, but there is a considerable difference in their proportions, panes of glass, etc. At the time this massy temple was erected, our countrymen neither studied Vitruvius, nor considered uniformity as a requisite in architecture.

This print was published on the 26th of October 1736; but we learn, by an inscription on the sinister side of the plate, that on the 21st April 1762 it was retouched and improved by the author.

There is a printed copy, tolerably executed, but not quite so large, nor has it any price affixed beneath.

The original picture was in Sir Edward Walpole's collection; who is the present proprietor I do not know. There are some variations in it; the face of the clerk is different from the print, and he does not appear leering at the girl, but, to keep in unison with the rest of the congregation, is half asleep.

THE DISTRESSED POET.

"Furnish'd with paper, pen, and ink,

He gravely sat him down—to think:

He bit his nails, and scratch'd his head,

But wit and fancy both were dead:

Or, if with more than usual pain,

A thought came slowly from his brain,

It cost him Lord knows how much time

To shape it into sense or rhyme;

And what was yet a greater curse,

Long thinking made his fancy worse."

THE DISTRESSED POET.

Such is the fate of many a miserable scribbler who usurps the sacred name of a poet. Parnassus must be peopled, and the fashionable versifiers that have no other aim than feeding on the mountain have sometimes cropped better pasturage at the foot of the hill than has been found by those hallowed bards who have attained the summit. Of gentle readers that demand the strains of gentle writers, there are in this our city an innumerable host. They are sober and well-disposed persons, good subjects to their king, and useful members of the community; but being by their various avocations confined to a smoky town, are debarred from the cheering prospects of purling streams, waving woods, and shady groves. They have nevertheless great comfort and delectation in reading descriptions of scenes so profusely beautified with the amenities of nature. Happily for such admirers of rural simplicity, there is a band of pastoral poets who make the press groan with description. Seated like this unfortunate labourer of the Muses in their attic storey, and scarcely ever seeing a green tree except in the Moorfields Mall, they daily present the public with amplifications of verdant meads, glistening dew-drops, and liquid rains. In the sublime strains of these gentlemen,

"The misty mountains lift their cloud-capt heads;

The enamell'd mead its velvet carpet spreads;

The groves appear all drest with wreaths of flowers,

And from their leaves drop aromatic showers."[124]

Upon the same principle with our town-made rhymers, who have generally written about things which they have neither seen, felt, heard, nor understood, this our distressed poet is now spinning a poem upon riches. Of their use he probably knoweth little; and of their abuse, if judgment can be formed from externals, certes he knoweth less.

Seated upon the side of his bed, without a shirt, but wrapped in an old night-gown,—enchanted, impressed, inspired with his subject,—he is disturbed by a nymph of the Lactarium. Her shrill sounding voice awakes one of the little loves, whose chorus disturbs his meditations. A link of the golden chain is broken!—a thought is lost! To recover it, his hand becomes a substitute for the barber's comb: enraged at the noise, he tortures his head for the fleeting idea; but, ah! no thought is there!

Proudly conscious that the lines already written are sterling, he possesses by anticipation the mines of Peru, a view of which hangs over his head. Upon the table we see Byshe's Art of Poetry;[125] for, like the packhorse who cannot travel without his bells, he cannot climb the hill of Parnassus without his jingling-book. On the floor lies the Grub Street Journal,[126] to which valuable repository of genius and taste he is probably a contributor. To show that he is a master of the profound, and will envelope his subject in a cloud, his pipe and tobacco-box—those friends to cogitation deep—are close to him.

His wife, mending that part of his dress in the pockets of which the affluent keep their gold, is worthy of a better fate. Her figure is peculiarly interesting.[127] Her face, softened by adversity, and marked with domestic care, is at this moment agitated by the appearance of a boisterous woman, insolently demanding payment of the milk-tally. In the excuse she returns, there is a mixture of concern, complacency, and mortification. As an addition to the distresses of this poor family, a dog is stealing the remnant of mutton incautiously left upon a chair.

The sloping roof and projecting chimney prove the throne of this inspired bard to be high above the crowd;—it is a garret. The chimney is ornamented with a dare for larks; and a book, a loaf, the tea-equipage, and a saucepan, decorate the shelf. Before the fire hangs half a shirt and a pair of ruffled sleeves. His sword lies on the floor; for though our professor of poetry waged no war, except with words, a sword was in the year 1740 a necessary appendage to every thing which called itself gentleman. At the feet of his domestic seamstress, the full-dress coat is become the resting-place of a cat and two kittens: in the same situation is one stocking; the other is half immersed in the washing-pan. The broom, bellows, and mop are scattered round the room. The open door shows us that their cupboard is unfurnished, and tenanted by an hungry and solitary mouse. In the corner hangs a long cloak, well calculated to conceal the threadbare wardrobe of its fair owner.

Mr. Hogarth's strict attention to propriety of scenery is evinced by the cracked plastering of the walls, broken window, and uneven floor, in the miserable habitation of this poor weaver of madrigals.[128]

The original picture is in the collection of Lord Grosvenor.

THE ENRAGED MUSICIAN.

"With thundering noise the azure vault they tear,

And rend, with savage roar, the echoing air:

The sounds terrific he with horror hears;

His fiddle throws aside,—and stops his ears."—E.

THE ENRAGED MUSICIAN.

The last plate displayed the distress of a poet; in this the artist has exhibited the rage of a musician. Our poor bard bore his misfortunes with patience, and, rich in his Muse, did not much repine at his poverty. Not so this master of harmony—of heavenly harmony! To the evils of poverty he is now a stranger; his adagios and cantabiles have procured him the protection of nobles; and, contrary to the poor shirtless mendicant of the Muses that we left in a garret, he is arrayed in a coat decorated with frogs, a bag-wig, solitaire, and ruffled shirt. Waiting in the chamber of a man of fashion, whom he instructs in the divine science of music, having first tuned his instrument, he opens his crotchet-book, shoulders his violin, flourishes his fiddlestick, and

"Softly sweet, in Lydian measure,

Soon he soothes his soul to pleasure."

Rapt in Elysium at the divine symphony, he is awakened from his beatific vision by noises that distract him:

"An universal hubbub wild,

Of stunning sounds, and voices all confus'd,

Assails his ears with loudest vehemence."

Confounded with the din, and enraged by the interruption, our modern Terpander starts from his seat, and opens the window. This operates as air to a kindling fire; and such a combination of noises burst upon the auricular nerve that he is compelled to stop his ears,—but to stop the torrent is impossible!

"A louder yet, and yet a louder strain,

Break his bands of thought asunder!

And rouse him, like a rattling peal of thunder,

At the horrible sound

He has rais'd up his head,

As awak'd from the dead,

And amazed he stares all around."

In this situation he is delineated; and those who for a moment contemplate the figures before him, cannot wonder at his rage:

"A crew of hell-hounds never ceasing bark,

With wide Cerberean mouth, full loud, and ring

A hideous peal."

Of the dramatis personæ who perform the vocal parts, the first is a fellow in a tone that would rend hell's concave, bawling, "Dust, ho! dust, ho! dust!" Next to him, an amphibious animal, who nightly pillows his head on the sedgy bosom of old Thames, in a voice that emulates the rush of many waters, or the roaring of a cataract, is bellowing, "Flounda-a-a-rs!" A daughter of May-day, who dispenses what in London is called milk, and is consequently a milkmaid, in a note pitched at the very top of her voice, is crying, "Be-louw!" While a ballad-singer dolefully drawls out The Ladie's Fall, an infant in her arms joins its treble pipe in chorus with the screaming parrot, which is on a lamp-iron over her head. On the roof of an opposite house are two cats, performing what an amateur of music might perhaps call a bravura duet; near them appears

A sweep, shrill twittering on the chimney-top.

A little French drummer, singing to his rub-a-dub, and the agreeable yell of a dog, complete the vocal performers.

Of the instrumental, a fellow blowing a horn with a violence that would have almost shaken down the walls of Jericho claims the first notice; next to him, the dustman rattles his bell with ceaseless clangour, until the air reverberates the sound.

The intervals are filled up by a pavior, who to every stroke of his rammer adds a loud, distinct, and echoing "Haugh!" The pedestrian cutler is grinding a butcher's cleaver with such earnestness and force, that it elicits sparks of fire. This, added to the agonizing howls of his unfortunate dog, must afford a perfect specimen of the ancient chromatic. The poor animal,[129] between a man and a monkey, piping harsh discords upon a hautboy, the girl whirling her crepitaculum, or rattle, and the boy beating his drum, conclude the catalogue of this harmonious band.

Thus much we may be almost said to hear; and we see, by the flag displayed at the church, that the fanciers of corals for grown gentlemen are performing a round of double bob-majors in the belfry. "John Long, pewterer," is inscribed over a door, and intimates the business going on in the house, where the strokes of some thirty or forty hammers ringing incessantly upon pewter, produce a sound more sonorous than that which is echoed from the forge of Vulcan.

This delineation originated in a story which was told to Hogarth by the late Mr. John Festin,[130] who is the hero of the print. He was eminent for his skill in playing upon the German flute and hautboy, and much employed as a teacher of music. To each of his scholars he devoted one hour each day. "At nine o'clock in the morning," said he, "I once waited upon my Lord Spencer; but his lordship being out of town, from him I went to Mr. V——n, now Lord V——n. It was so early, that he was not arisen. I went into his chamber, and, opening a shutter, sat down in the window-seat. Before the rails was a fellow playing upon the hautboy. A man with a barrow full of onions offered the piper an onion if he would play him a tune. That ended, he offered a second onion for a second tune; the same for a third, and was going on: but this was too much,—I could not bear it,—it angered my very soul—'Zounds!' said I, 'stop here! This fellow is ridiculing my profession—he is playing on the hautboy for onions!'"

The whole of this bravura scene is admirably represented. A person quaintly enough observed that it deafens one to look at it.

The roar of the fisherman, with one hand so placed as to become a sort of sounding-board, and give reverberation, is admirably depicted. You perceive that he has, professionally speaking, not merely a volume, but a folio volume of voice. As well as that of the dustman, it is a thorough bass; and, added to the tenor and treble of the other performers, must form a concert, though not quite so harmonious, yet nearly as loud, as those which have been graced with the royal presence in Westminster Abbey.

The scene seems to be taken from the lower part of St. Martin's Lane; it is certainly intended to represent the steeple of St. Martin's Church.

A heap of bricks, scientifically piled up close to the little girl, have been said to be a contrivance of some boy to catch birds. Is it not more likely that the modern architecture of this little Babel, as well as the adjoining plantation and pond, originated in the united efforts of the young lady and young gentleman in a corner cap? The latter has been dragging a slate fastened to a string, and tied round his waist, over a rough pavement, that he also might make a pretty noise.

A play-bill on the wall describes the unaccountable run of that very popular and pernicious performance, The Beggar's Opera, to have been sixty-two nights. In a copy of this opera, published in 1729, the dramatis personæ are printed as here written; and the good fortune which followed Miss Fenton's attractions in Polly are universally known.

The figures are well grouped and judiciously characterized: those in the background have great force; but the boy with a drum is ill drawn, and the milk-pail is too large.

In the London Daily Post for November 24, 1740, is the following advertisement:—"Shortly will be published, a new print, called The Provoked Musician, designed and engraved by Mr. William Hogarth; being a companion to a print representing a Distressed Poet, published some time since. To which will be added, a third on painting, which will complete the set; but as this subject may turn upon an affair depending between the Right Hon. the Lord Mayor and the author, it may be retarded for some time."

Humphry Parsons was at that time Lord Mayor; but the business alluded to not being in the city records, must remain obscure until some one who knows more about it than I do shall explain it.

In Dr. Beattie's Essay on Laughter and Ludicrous Composition, quarto edition, p. 608, speaking of the modes of combination by which incongruous qualities may be presented to the eye or the fancy, so as to provoke laughter, he observes, that "this extraordinary group form a very comical mixture of incongruity and relation: of incongruity, owing to the dissimilar employment and appearances of the several persons, and to the variety of dissonance of their respective noises; and of relation, owing to their being all united in the same place, and for the same purpose of tormenting the poor fiddler. From the various sounds co-operating to this one end, the piece becomes more laughable than if their meeting were conceived to be without any particular destination; for the greater number of relations, as well as of contrarieties, that take place in any ludicrous assembly, the more ludicrous it will generally appear. Yet though this group comprehends not any mixture of meanness and dignity, it would, I think, be allowed to be laughable to a certain degree, merely from the juxtaposition of the objects, even though it were supposed to be accidental."

Of the immense fortunes realized by the Italian professors of music, we have many examples in this island; but the success of Lully, in France, was greater than any of his countrymen ever experienced here. He was by birth a Florentine. By his fiddle and his impudence, he raised himself from the Queen of France's kitchen to be chief of the band of music, and carried the art to a degree of perfection hitherto unknown in that kingdom. Louis XIV. gave him letters of nobility, and on his account enacted that the profession of music should consist with the quality of a gentleman. He died by excessive drinking, and left an immense fortune. The nobleman who had entertained him when he drank what proved his quietus, paying him a visit, "Ah! my lord," said his wife, with a deep sigh, "you are the last who made my husband drunk." Lully, who was dying, heard the remark, and had just voice enough left to add, "He shall be the first who makes me so again, when I get upon my legs!"

THE FOUR TIMES OF THE DAY.