Biographical Anecdotes of William Hogarth, With a Catalogue of His Works

BIOGRAPHICAL
ANECDOTES OF
WILLIAM HOGARTH;

WITH
A CATALOGUE OF HIS WORKS
CHRONOLOGICALLY ARRANGED;
AND OCCASIONAL REMARKS.

[BY JOHN NICHOLS.]

THE THIRD EDITION, ENLARGED AND CORRECTED.

LONDON:
PRINTED BY AND FOR JOHN NICHOLS,
IN RED-LION-PASSAGE, FLEET-STREET.
M DCC LXXXV.

CONTENTS

MEMORANDUM.

Respect and gratitude having engaged me to compile a memoir of my deceased Master and Patron Mr. Bowyer, in the same performance I included anecdotes of all the eminent persons any way connected with him. A note of about a page's length was allotted to Hogarth. While it was printing, Mr. Walpole's Fourth Volume on the subject of English Painters came out, and was followed by an immediate rage for collecting every scrap of our Artist's designs. Persevering in my enquiries among my friends, I had now amassed so much intelligence relative to these engravings, that it could no longer be crowded into the situation originally meant for it. I was therefore advised to publish it in the form of a sixpenny pamphlet. This intended publication, however, grew up by degrees into a three-shilling book, and, within a year and a half afterwards, was swelled into almost its present bulk, at the price of six shillings. Such was the origin and progress of the following sheets, which, with many corrections, &c. have now reached a Third Edition.

J. N.

Nov. 10, 1785.

[ADVERTISEMENT]

TO THE SECOND EDITION.

The author of these imperfect sheets cannot present them a second time to the world, before he has expressed his gratitude for the extreme candour with which they have been treated by the Monthly Reviewers. If J. N. has not availed himself of all the corrections designed for his service, it is because the able critic who proposes them has been deluded by intelligence manifestly erroneous. J. N. received each particular he has mentioned, in respect to the assistance bestowed on Hogarth while his Analysis was preparing, from Dr. Morell, a gentleman who on that subject could not easily mistake. Implicit confidence ought rather to be reposed in a literary coadjutor to the deceased, than in any consistory of females that ever "mumbled their wisdom over a gossip's bowl." Authors rarely acquaint domestic women with the progress of their writings, or the proportion of aid they solicit from their friends. If it were needful that Dr. Morell should translate a Greek passage[1] for Hogarth, how chanced it that our artist should want to apply what he did not previously understand? I must add, that the sentiments, published by the Reviewer concerning these Anecdotes, bear no resemblance to the opinion circulated by the cavillers with whom he appears to have had a remote connection. The parties who furnished every circumstance on which he founds his reiterated charges of error and misinformation, are not unknown. Ever since this little work was edited, the people about Mrs. Hogarth have paid their court to her by decrying it as "low, stupid, or false," without the slightest acknowledgement for the sums of money it has conducted to The Golden Head in Leicester Fields. While the talents of the writer alone were questioned by such inadequate judges of literary merit, a defence on his part was quite unnecessary. He has waited, however, with impatience for an opportunity of making some reply to their groundless reflections on his veracity. This purpose he flatters himself will have been completely executed after he has observed that all credentials relative to his disputed assertion shall be ready (as they are at this moment) for the Reviewer's inspection. J. N. cannot indeed dismiss his present advertisement without observing, that though the amiable partialities of a wife may apologize for any contradiction suggested by Mrs. Hogarth herself, the English language is not strong enough to express the contempt he feels in regard to the accumulated censure both of her male and her female Parasites.

J. N.

Nov. 1, 1782.

[1] Whereabouts is this translation of a Greek passage to be found in the Analysis? It may have escaped my hasty researches.

[ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION.]

When this pamphlet was undertaken, the Author had no thought of swelling it to it's present bulk; but communicating his design to his friends, they favoured him with various particulars of information. Some of these accommodated themselves to his original plan, if he can be supposed to have had any, but others were more intractable. Still aware of the value even of disjointed materials, which his profession would not afford him leisure to compact into a regular narrative, and conscious that these sheets, rude and imperfect as they are, may serve to promote a publication less unworthy of its subject, he dismisses his present work without any laboured apology for the errors that may be detected in it; claiming, indeed, some merit on account of intelligence, but not the least on the score of arrangement or composition. He takes the same opportunity to observe, that many curious anecdotes of extraordinary persons have been unfortunately lost, because the possessors of those fugitive particulars had not the power of communicating them in proper form, or polished language, and were unwilling to expose them in such a state as these are offered to the world.

May 9, 1781.

[The ingenious Mr. Crayen of Leipzig]

having translated the First Edition of these Anecdotes, &c. into the German Language, dispatched a copy of his work to J. N. attended by the obliging letter here subjoined:

SIR,

Though I have not the honour of being acquainted with you, I hope your goodness will excuse the liberty I take of sending you a German translation of the Biographical Anecdotes of Mr. Hogarth you published. Being convinced of the merits of your production, and its usefulness to such collectors of prints and connoisseurs in our country as don't understand the English language, I undertook this translation, and flatter myself you will be pleased to accept of it as a proof of my real esteem for you.

You will find, that I did not always adhere literally to the original, but made some abridgments, alterations, notes, &c. &c. But I hope you will do me the justice to consider, that I wrote for my countrymen, and therefore left out such passages, poems, anecdotes, &c. &c. as would have been entirely uninteresting to them, and have swelled the volume to no purpose.

As to the typographical performance, I think you will be tolerably satisfied of it. Though the noble art of printing is of German origin, your nation has improved and brought it to the highest pitch of perfection in point of neatness, elegance, and correctness.

I remain, with all possible esteem,

Sir,

Your most obedient

and most humble servant,

A. CRAYEN.

Leipzig in Saxony,
the 29th Jan. 1783.

---

The following are Translations, by a Friend,
from the Dedication and Preface to
Mr. Crayen's performance.

---

DEDICATION.

To Mr. Gottfried Winkler, in Leipzig;

Honoured and Worthy Friend,

Pardon my presumption in offering you the slender fruit of a few leisure hours. Receive it with your wonted kindness, and judge of it not by the trifling value of the work, but by the intention of its Author, whose most zealous wish has long been to find an opportunity of publickly offering you, however small, a memorial of his respect and friendship.

If my labour in adding a mite towards the diffusion of the knowledge of the Arts, is honoured with the approbation of so enlightened a Connoisseur, I shall feel myself completely rewarded.

Receive at the same time my sincerest thanks for the obliging communication of your Copy of Hogarth's prints, of which, in my translation, I have more than once availed myself.

Live, honoured Sir, many days; happy in the bosom of your worthy family, in the circle of your friends, and in the enjoyment of those treasures of the Arts you have collected with such distinguished taste. Remain also a friend of

Yours, &c.

The Translator.

PREFACE.

To the German Reader.

Collectors of the Fine Arts were already possessed of Catalogues and Memoires Raisonnées of the engravings of many great masters, for which their acknowledgements are due to the industry of a Gersaint, a Jombert, a Hecquet, a Vertue, a de Winter, &c. &c.

But a similar illustration of Hogarth's copper-plates was still wanting; though it may be asked what works have a juster claim to a distinguished place in a compleat collection, than those of this instructive moral painter, this creative genius?

On this account, it is presumed that the German Lover of the Arts will deem himself indebted to the Translator, for giving him, in his own tongue, a concise and faithful version of a book that has lately made its appearance in London, under the title of "Biographical Anecdotes of W. Hogarth, and a Catalogue of his Works chronologically arranged."

The Compiler as well as Editor of this work is Mr. John Nichols, a Printer and Bookseller in London, who, by much reading, and an intimate acquaintance with the Arts and Literature of his Country, has honourably distinguished himself among his professional brethren. How modestly he himself judges of this his useful performance, appears from his preface to the work.

It is true, Mr. Horace Walpole, who possesses perhaps the compleatest collection of the prints of this Master, some years ago published a Catalogue of them; but this is only to be found in his work, intituled, "Anecdotes of Painting in England collected by G. Vertue, and published by H. Walpole," a performance consisting of four volumes in 4to, too costly for many collectors, and inconvenient for others. Moreover all that is to be found there relative to Hogarth, is not only included in Mr. Nichols's publication, but is also improved by considerable additions, so that the curious reader has Walpole's Catalogue incorporated with the present work.

The liberty of abridgement, as mentioned in the title, is ventured only in regard to such diffuse illustrations, repetitions, anecdotes, and local stories, as would be alone interesting to an Englishman; in a word, in such parts as do not immediately contribute to the illustration of Hogarth's plates, and would have tired the patience of the German reader. Of the verses affixed to each copper-plate the first and last words only are given, as those afford sufficient indication for a collector who wishes to become acquainted with any particular print. How far some remarks of the Translator are useful, or otherwise, is left to the indulgent decision of Judges in the Arts.

He must not however forget it is his duty to acknowledge the goodness of old Mr. Hansen of Leipsig. This gentleman's readiness in permitting him to examine his excellent collection of the engravings of British artists, for the purpose of comparing and illustrating several passages in the original of this work, claims his warmest thanks, and a public acknowledgement.

Leipsig, February 1783.

The Translator.

[List of Gentlemen, Artists, &c. who furnished incidental intelligence to the Author of this Work.]

Mr. Ashby.
Mr. Basire.
Mr. Baynes.
Mr. Belchier—dead.
Mr. Bindley.
Mr. Birch.
Mr. Bowle.
Mr. Braithwaite.
Mr. Browning.
Lord Charlemont.
Mr. Charlton.
Mr. Cole—dead.
Mr. Colman.
Mr. Coxe.
Mr. Dodsley.
Dr. Ducarel—dead.
Mr. Duncombe.
Mr. Edwards.
Mr. Forrest—dead.
Mr. Foster—dead.
Mr Goodison.
Mrs. Gostling.
Mr. Gough.
Mr. Hall.
Sir John Hawkins.
Mr. Henderson.
Mrs. Hogarth.
Dr. Hunter—dead.
Mr. S. Ireland.
Dr. Johnson—dead.
Mr. Keate.
Bishop of Kilala.
Mr. Lane.
Mrs. Lewis.
Mr. Livesay.
Dr. Lort.
Mr. Lyon.
Mr. Major.
Mr. Malone.
Dr. Monkhouse.
Dr. Morell—dead.
Mr. Morrison.
Mr. Pinkerton.
Mr. Rayner.
Mr. Reed.
Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Mr. Richards.
Mr. Rogers—dead.
Mr. Rumsey.
Mr. Steevens.
Mr. Thane.
Mr. Thomas.
Mr. Tyers.
Mr. Waldron.
Mr. Walker.
Mr. J. C. Walker.
Mr. Walpole.
Dr. Warton.
Mr. Way.
Mr. Welch—dead.
Mr. Whately.
Mr. B. White.
Mr. H. White.
Mr. Wilkes.
Mr. Williams.
Dr. Wright.

[COLLECTORS of HOGARTH.]

Mr. Ayton.[1]
Mr. Bedford.
Mr. Bellamy.
Mr. Clare.
Mr. Crickitt.
Dr. Ducarel.[2]
Lord Exeter.
Mr. Foster.[3]
Mr. Goodison.
Mr. Gulston.
Sir John Hawkins, K^t.
Mr. Henderson.[4]
Mr. Ireland.
Dr. Lort.
Mr. Morrison.
Mr. Rogers.[5]
Mr. Steevens.
Mr. Walpole.
Mr. Windham .[6]

[1] His collection was cut up, and sold at Dickinson's, New Bond Street.

[2] Died May 29, 1785. His collection devolves to his Nephew and Heir, Mr. Ducarel, lately returned from The East Indies.

[3] Died Oct. 3, 1782. His improved collection sold at Barford's auction rooms, late Langford's, March 4, 1783, for £.105. Mr. Crickitt was the Purchaser.

[4] Mr. Henderson sold his collection to Sir John Elliot for £.126 in April 1785.

[5] Died January 2, 1784. His collection remains with his Nephew and Heir, Mr. Cotton, F. S. A.

[6] The Right Hon. William Windham, M. P. for Norwich.

[Extract from the Daily Advertiser,
January 27, 1783.]

"HOGARTH'S ORIGINAL WORKS.

"As an opinion generally prevails, that the genuine impressions of Hogarth's works are very bad, and the plates retouched; Mrs. Hogarth is under the necessity of acquainting the public in general, and the admirers of her deceased husband's works in particular, that it has been owing to a want of proper attention in the conducting this work for some years past, that the impressions in general have not done justice to the condition of the plates; and she has requested some gentlemen most eminent in the art of engraving, to inspect the plates, who have given the following opinion:

"London, Jan. 21, 1783.

"We, whose names are underwritten, having carefully examined the copper-plates published by the late Mr. Hogarth, are fully convinced that they have not been retouched since his death.

"FRANCIS BARTOLOZZI.
WM. WOOLLET.[1]
WM. WYNNE RYLAND.[2]

"N. B. All[3] the original works are now properly and well printed, and to be had of Mrs. Hogarth, at her house at The Golden Head, in Leicester-Fields."

This is one of the most extraordinary testimonials ever laid before the public. Hogarth died in 1764. Since that time his plates have been injudiciously and unmercifully worked, so as to leave no means of ascertaining, through any observation or process of art, the exact period when they were last repaired. Notwithstanding this difficulty, in the year 1783, we find several engravers of eminence declaring their full conviction on the subject. All we can do is, to suppose their confidence was grounded on the veracity of Mrs. Hogarth. I believe the parties as to the fact; and yet it was impossible for Messieurs B. W. and R. to be adequate judges of the truth to which they have set their names as witnesses.

[1] Died May 23, 1785.

[2] Executed Aug. 29, 1783.

[3] By "all the original works," Mrs. Hogarth means only such plates as are in her possession. See page [xx], where a great number of others, equally original, are found.

Prints published by Mr. Hogarth: Genuine Impressions[1] of which are to be had at Mrs. Hogarth's House in Leicester Fields, 1782.

N. B. Any person purchasing the whole together may have them delivered bound, at the Price of Thirteen Guineas; a sufficient Margin will be left for framing.—The Analysis of Beauty, in Quarto, may also be had, with two explanatory Prints, Price 15 Shillings.

[1] Genuine impressions—Query, the meaning of such an epithet in this place?

[Credite Posteri!]

In the years 1781, 1782, &c. the following Pieces of Hogarth are known to have been sold at the prices annexed.

[HOGARTH.]

This great and original Genius is said by Dr. Burn to have been the descendant of a family originally from Kirkby Thore,[1] in Westmoreland: and I am assured that his grandfather was a plain yeoman, who possessed a small tenement in the vale of Bampton, a village about 15 miles North of Kendal, in that county. He had three sons. The eldest assisted his father in farming, and succeeded to his little freehold. The second settled in Troutbeck, a village eight miles North West of Kendal, and was remarkable for his talent at provincial poetry.[2] The third, educated at St. Bee's, who had kept a school in the same county, and appears to have a man of some learning, went early to London, where he resumed his original occupation of a school-master in Ship Court in The Old Bailey, and was occasionally employed as a corrector of the press. A Latin letter, from Mr. Richard Hogarth, in 1697 (preserved among the MSS. in The British Museum, N° 4277. 50.) relates to a book which had been printed with great expedition. But the letter shall speak for itself.[3]

A Dictionary in Latin and English, which he composed for the use of schools,[4] still exists in MS. He married in London; and our Hero, and his sisters Mary and Anne, are believed to have been the only product of the marriage.

William Hogarth[5] it said (under the article Thornhill in the Biographia Britannica) to have been born in 1698, in the parish of St. Bartholomew,[6] London, to which parish, it is added, he was afterwards a benefactor. The outset of his life, however, was unpromising. "He was bound," says Mr. Walpole, "to a mean engraver of arms on plate." Hogarth probably chose this occupation, as it required some skill in drawing, to which his genius was particularly turned, and which he contrived assiduously to cultivate. His master, it since appears, was Mr. Ellis Gamble, a silversmith of eminence, who resided in Cranbourn-street, Leicester-fields. In this profession it is not unusual to bind apprentices to the single branch of engraving arms and cyphers on every species of metal; and in that particular department of the business young Hogarth was placed;[7] "but, before his time was expired, he felt the impulse of genius, and that it directed him to painting."

During his apprenticeship, he set out one Sunday, with two or three companions, on an excursion to Highgate. The weather being hot, they went into a public-house, where they had not been long, before a quarrel arose between some persons in the same room. One of the disputants struck the other on the head with a quart pot, and cut him very much. The blood running down the man's face, together with the agony of the wound, which had distorted his features into a most hideous grin, presented Hogarth, who shewed himself thus early "apprised of the mode Nature had intended he should pursue," with too laughable a subject to be overlooked. He drew out his pencil, and produced on the spot one of the most ludicrous figures that ever was seen. What rendered this piece the more valuable was, that it exhibited an exact likeness of the man, with the portrait of his antagonist, and the figures in caricature of the principal persons gathered round him. This anecdote was furnished by one of his fellow apprentices then present, a person of indisputable character, and who continued his intimacy with Hogarth long after they both grew up into manhood.

"His apprenticeship was no sooner expired," says Mr. Walpole, "than he entered into the academy in St. Martin's Lane, and studied drawing from the life, in which he never attained to great excellence. It was character, the passions, the soul, that his genius was given him to copy. In colouring he proved no greater a master: his force lay in expression, not in tints and chiaro scuro."

To a man who by indefatigable industry and uncommon strength of genius has been the artificer of his own fame and fortune, it can be no reproach to have it said that at one period he was not rich. It has been asserted, and we believe with good foundation, that the skill and assiduity of Hogarth were, even in his servitude, a singular assistance to his own family, and to that of his master. It happened, however, that when he was first out of his time, he certainly was poor. The ambition of indigence is ever productive of distress. So it fared with Hogarth, who, while he was furnishing himself with materials for subsequent perfection, felt all the contempt which penury could produce. Being one day distressed to raise so trifling a sum as twenty shillings, in order to be revenged of his landlady, who strove to compel him to payment, he drew her as ugly as possible, and in that single portrait gave marks of the dawn of superior genius.[8] This story I had once supposed to be founded on certainty; but since, on other authority, have been assured, that had such an accident ever happened to him, he would not have failed to talk of it afterwards, as he was always fond of contrasting the necessities of his youth with the affluence of his maturer age. He has been heard to say of himself, "I remember the time when I have gone moping into the city with scarce a shilling in my pocket; but as soon as I had received ten guineas there for a plate, I have returned home, put on my sword, and sallied out again, with all the confidence of a man who had ten thousand pounds in his pocket." Let me add, that my first authority may be to the full as good as my second.

How long he continued in obscurity we cannot exactly learn; but the first piece in which he distinguished himself as a painter, is supposed to have been a representation of Wanstead Assembly.[9] In this are introduced portraits of the first earl Tylney, his lady, their children, tenants, &c. The faces were said to be extremely like, and the colouring is rather better than in some of his late and more highly finished performances.

From the date of the earliest plate that can be ascertained to be the work of Hogarth, it may be presumed that he began business, on his own account, at least as early as the year 1720.

His first employment seems to have been the engraving of arms and shop-bills. The next step was to design and furnish plates for booksellers; and here we are fortunately supplied with dates.[10] Thirteen folio prints, with his name to each, appeared in "Aubry de la Motraye's Travels," in 1723; seven smaller prints for "Apuleius' Golden Ass" in 1724; fifteen head-pieces to "Beaver's Military Punishments of the Ancients," and five frontispieces for the translation of Cassandra, in five volumes, 12°, 1725; seventeen cuts for a duodecimo edition of Hudibras (with Butler's head) in 1726; two for "Perseus and Andromeda," in 1730; two for Milton [the date uncertain]; and a variety of others between 1726 and 1733.

"No symptom of genius," says Mr. Walpole, "dawned in those plates. His Hudibras was the first of his works that marked him as a man above the common; yet, what made him then noticed, now surprises us, to find so little humour in an undertaking so congenial to his talents."—It is certain that he often lamented to his friends the having parted with his property in the prints of the large Hudibras, without ever having had an opportunity to improve them. They were purchased by Mr. Philip Overton,[11] at the Golden Buck, near St. Dunstan's Church in Fleet-Street; and still remain in the possession of his successor Mr. Sayer.

Mr. Bowles at the Black Horse in Cornhill was one of his earliest patrons. I had been told that he bought many a plate from Hogarth by the weight of the copper; but am only certain that this occurrence happened in a single instance, when the elder Mr. Bowles of St. Paul's Church-yard offered, over a bottle, half a crown a pound for a plate just then completed. This circumstance was within the knowledge of Dr. Ducarel.—Our artist's next friend in that line was Mr. Philip Overton, who paid him a somewhat better price for his labour and ingenuity.

When Mr. Walpole speaks of Hogarth's early performances, he observes, that they rose not above the labours of the people who are generally employed by booksellers. Lest any reader should inadvertently suppose this candid writer designed the minutest reflection on those artists to whom the decoration of modern volumes is confided, it is necessary to observe, that his account of Hogarth, &c. was printed off above ten years ago, before the names of Cipriani, Angelica, Bartolozzi, Sherwin, and Mortimer were found at the bottom of any plates designed for the ornament of poems, or dramatic pieces.

"On the success, however, of those plates," Mr. Walpole says, "he commenced painter, a painter of portraits; the most ill-suited employment imaginable to a man whose turn certainly was not flattery, nor his talent adapted to look on vanity without a sneer. Yet his facility in catching a likeness, and the method he chose of painting families and conversations in small, then a novelty, drew him prodigious business for some time. It did not last, either from his applying to the real bent of his disposition, or from his customers apprehending that a satirist was too formidable a confessor for the devotees of self-love." There are still many family pictures by Mr. Hogarth existing, in the style of serious conversation-pieces. He was not however lucky in all his resemblances, and has sometimes failed where a crowd of other artists have succeeded. The whole-length of Mr. Garrick sitting at a table, with his wife behind him taking the pen out of his hand,[12] confers no honour on the painter or the persons represented.[13] He has certainly missed the character of our late Roscius's countenance while undisturbed by passion; but was more lucky in seizing his features when aggravated by terror, as in the tent scene of King Richard III. It is by no means astonishing, that the elegant symmetry of Mrs. Garrick's form should have evaded the efforts of one to whose ideas la basse nature was more familiar than the grace inseparable from those who have been educated in higher life. His talents, therefore, could do little justice to a pupil of Lady Burlington.

What the prices of his portraits were, I have strove in vain to discover; but suspect they were originally very low, as the people who are best acquainted with them chuse to be silent on that subject.

In the Bee, vol. V. p. 552. and also in the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. IV. p. 269. are the following verses to Mr. Hogarth, on Miss F.'s picture, 1734.

"To Chloe's picture you such likeness give,
The animated canvas seems to live;
The tender breasts with wanton heavings move,
And the soft sparkling eyes inspire with love:
While I survey each feature o'er and o'er,
I turn Idolater, and paint adore:
Fondly I here can gaze without a fear,
That, Chloe, to my love you'd grow severe;
That in your Picture, as in Life, you'd turn
Your eyes away, and kill me with your scorn:
No, here at least with transport I can see
Your eyes with softness languishing on me.
While, Chloe, this I boast, with scornful heart
Nor rashly censure Hogarth, or his art,
Who all your Charms in strongest Light has laid,
And kindly thrown your Pride and Scorn in Shade."

At Rivenhall, in Essex, the seat of Mr. Western, is a family picture, by Hogarth of Mr. Western and his mother (who was a daughter of Sir Anthony Shirley), Chancellor Hoadly, Archdeacon Charles Plumptre, the Rev. Mr. Cole of Milton near Cambridge, and Mr. Henry Taylor the Curate there,[14] 1736.

In the gallery of the late Mr. Cole of Milton, was also a small whole-length picture of Mr. Western,[15] by Hogarth, a striking resemblance. He is drawn sitting in his Fellow-Commoner's habit, and square cap with a gold tassel, in his chamber at Clare Hall, over the arch towards the river; and our artist, as the chimney could not be expressed, has drawn a cat sitting near it, agreeable to his humour, to shew the situation.

"When I sat to him," says Mr. Cole, "near fifty years ago, the custom of giving vails to servants was not discontinued. On my taking leave of our painter at the door, and his servant's opening it or the coach door, I cannot tell which, I offered him a small gratuity; but the man very politely refused it, telling me it would be as much as the loss of his place, if his master knew it. This was so uncommon, and so liberal in a man of Mr. Hogarth's profession at that time of day, that it much struck me, as nothing of the sort had happened to me before."

It was likewise Mr. Hogarth's custom to sketch out on the spot any remarkable face which particularly struck him, and of which he wished to preserve the remembrance. A gentleman still living informs me, that being once with our painter at the Bedford Coffee-house, he observed him to draw something with a pencil on his nail. Enquiring what had been his employment, he was shewn the countenance (a whimsical one) of a person who was then at a small distance.

It happened in the early part of Hogarth's life, that a nobleman, who was uncommonly ugly and deformed, came to sit to him for his picture. It was executed with a skill that did honour to the artist's abilities; but the likeness was rigidly observed, without even the necessary attention to compliment or flattery. The peer, disgusted at this counterpart of his dear self, never once thought of paying for a reflector that would only insult him with his deformities. Some time was suffered to elapse before the artist applied for his money; but afterwards many applications were made by him (who had then no need of a banker) for payment, without success. The painter, however, at last hit upon an expedient, which he knew must alarm the nobleman's pride, and by that means answer his purpose. It was couched in the following card:

"Mr. Hogarth's dutiful respects to Lord ——; finding that he does not mean to have the picture which was drawn for him, is informed again of Mr. H.'s necessity for the money; if, therefore, his lordship does not send for it in three days, it will be disposed of, with the addition of a tail, and some other little appendages, to Mr. Hare, the famous wild-beast man; Mr. H. having given that gentleman a conditional promise of it for an exhibition-picture, on his lordship's refusal."

This intimation had the desired effect. The picture was sent home, and committed to the flames.

To the other anecdotes of this comic Painter may be added the following. Its authenticity must apologize for its want of other merit.

A certain old Nobleman, not remarkably generous, having sent for Hogarth, desired he would represent, in one of the compartments on a staircase, Pharaoh and his Host drowned in the Red Sea; but at the same time gave our artist to understand, that no great price would be given for his performance. Hogarth agreed. Soon after, he waited on his employer for payment, who seeing that the space allotted for the picture had only been daubed over with red, declared he had no idea of paying a painter when he had proceeded no further than to lay his ground. "Ground!" said Hogarth, "there is no ground in the case, my lord. The red you perceive, is the Red Sea. Pharaoh and his Host are drowned as you desired, and cannot be made objects of sight, for the ocean covers them all."

Mr. Walpole has remarked, that if our artist "indulged his spirit of ridicule in personalities, it never proceeded beyond sketches and drawings," and wonders "that he never, without intention, delivered the very features of any identical person." But this elegant writer, who may be said to have received his education in a Court, perhaps had few opportunities of acquaintance among the low popular characters with which Hogarth occasionally peopled his scenes.[16] The Friend to whom I owe this remark was assured by an ancient gentleman of unquestionable veracity and acuteness of observation, that almost all the personages who attend the levee of the Rake were undoubted portraits; and that, in Southwark Fair and the Modern Midnight Conversation, as many more were discoverable. In the former plate he pointed out Essex the dancing-master; and in the latter, as well as in the second plate to the Rake's Progress, Figg the prize-fighter.[17] He mentioned several others by name, from his immediate knowledge both of the painter's design and the characters represented; but the rest of the particulars, by which he supported his assertions, have escaped the memory of my informant. I am also assured, that while Hogarth was painting the Rake's Progress, he had a summer residence at Isleworth; and never failed to question the company who came to see these pictures, if they knew for whom one or another figure was designed. When they guessed wrong, he set them right.

Mr. Walpole has a sketch in oil, given to him by Hogarth, who intended to engrave it. It was done at the time when the House of Commons appointed a committee to inquire into the cruelties exercised on prisoners in the The Fleet, to extort money from them. "The scene," he says, "is the committee; on the table are the instruments of torture. A prisoner in rags, half-starved, appears before them; the poor man has a good countenance, that adds to the interest. On the other hand is the inhuman gaoler. It is the very figure that Salvator Rosa would have drawn for Iago in the moment of detection. Villainy, fear, and conscience, are mixed in yellow and livid on his countenance; his lips are contracted by tremor, his face advances as eager to lie, his legs step back as thinking to make his escape; one hand is thrust precipitately into his bosom, the fingers of the other are catching uncertainly at his button-holes. If this was a portrait, it is the most striking that ever was drawn; if it was not, it is still finer." The portrait was that of Bambridge[18] the warden of The Fleet; and the sketch was taken in the beginning of the year 1729, when Bambridge and Huggins (his predecessor)[19] were under examination. Both were declared "notoriously guilty of great breaches of trust, extortions, cruelties, and other high crimes and misdemeanors;" both were sent to Newgate; and Bambridge was disqualified by act of parliament.[20] The son[21] of Huggins was possessed of a valuable painting from this sketch, and also of a scene in the Beggar's Opera; both of them full of real portraits. On the dispersion of his effects, the latter was purchased by the Rev. Dr. Monkhouse of Queen's College, Oxford. It is in a gilt frame, with a bust of Gay at the top. It's companion, whose present possessor I have not been able to trace out, had, in like manner, that of Sir Francis Page, one of the judges, remarkable for his severity;[22] with a halter round his neck.

The Duke of Leeds has also an original scene in the Beggar's Opera, painted by Hogarth. It is that in which Lucy and Polly are on their knees, before their respective fathers, to intercede for the life of the hero of the piece. All the figures are either known or supposed to be portraits. If I am not misinformed, the late Sir Thomas Robinson (as well known by the name of Long Sir Thomas) is standing in one of the side-boxes. Macheath, unlike his spruce representative on our present stage, is a slouching bully; and Polly appears happily disencumbered of such a hoop as the daughter of Peachum within our younger memories has worn. His Grace gave 35 l. for this picture at Mr. Rich's auction. Another copy of the same scene was bought by the late Sir William Saunderson; and is now in the possession of Sir Henry Gough. Mr. Walpole has a painting of a scene in the same piece, where Macheath is going to execution. In this also the likenesses of Walker, and Miss Fenton afterwards Dutchess of Bolton (the original Macheath and Polly), are preserved.

In the year 1726, when the affair of Mary Tofts, the rabbit-breeder of Godalming, engaged the public attention, a few of our principal surgeons subscribed their guinea a-piece to Hogarth, for an engraving from a ludicrous sketch he had made on that very popular subject. This plate, amongst other portraits, contains that of the notorious St. André, the anatomist to the royal household, and in high credit as a surgeon. The additional celebrity of this man arose either from fraud or ignorance, perhaps from a due mixture of both. It was supported, however, afterwards, by the reputation of a dreadful crime. His imaginary wealth, in spite of these disadvantages, to the last insured him a circle of flatterers, even though, at the age of fourscore, his conversation was offensive to modest ears, and his grey hairs were rendered still more irreverend by repeated acts of untimely lewdness.[23] A particular description of this plate will be given in the future catalogue of Hogarth's works.

In 1727, Hogarth agreed with Morris, an upholsterer, to furnish him with a design on canvas, representing the element of Earth, as a pattern for tapestry. The work not being performed to the satisfaction of Morris, he refused to pay for it; and our artist sued him for the money. This suit (which was tried before Lord Chief Justice Eyre at Westminster, May 28, 1728) was determined in favour of Hogarth. The brief for the defendant in the cause, is preserved below.[24]

In 1730, Mr. Hogarth married the only daughter of Sir James Thornhill,[25] by whom he had no child. This union, indeed, was a stolen one, and consequently without the approbation of Sir James, who, considering the youth of his daughter, then barely eighteen, and the slender finances of her husband, as yet an obscure artist,[26] was not easily reconciled to the match. Soon after this period, however, he began his Harlot's Progress (the coffin in the last plate is inscribed September 2, 1731); and was advised by Lady Thornhill to have some of the scenes in it placed in the way of his father-in-law. Accordingly, one morning early, Mrs. Hogarth undertook to convey several of them into his dining-room. When he arose, he enquired from whence they came; and being told by whom they were introduced, he cried out, "Very well; the man who can furnish representations like these, can also maintain a wife without a portion." He designed this remark as an excuse for keeping his purse-strings close; but, soon after, became both reconciled and generous to the young couple.

Our artist's reputation was so far established in 1731, that it drew forth a poetical compliment from Mr. Mitchell, in the epistle already quoted.

An allegorical cieling by Sir James Thornhill is at the house of the late Mr. Huggins, at Headley Park, Hants. The subject of it is the story of Zephyrus and Flora; and the figure of a Satyr and some others were painted by Hogarth.

In 1732 (the year in which he was one of the party who made A Tour by land and Water, which will be duly noticed in the [Catalogue]) he ventured to attack Mr. Pope, in a plate called "The Man of Taste;" containing a view of the Gate of Burlington-house; with Pope whitewashing it, and bespattering the Duke of Chandos's coach.[27] This plate was intended as a satire on the translator of Homer, Mr. Kent the architect, and the Earl of Burlington. It was fortunate for Hogarth that he escaped the lash of the former. Either Hogarth's obscurity at that time was his protection, or the bard was too prudent to exasperate a painter who had already given such proof of his abilities for satire. What must he have felt who could complain of the "pictured shape" prefixed to Gulliveriana, Pope Alexander's Supremacy and Infallibility examined, &c. by Ducket, and other pieces, had our artist undertaken to express in colours a certain transaction recorded by Cibber?

Soon after his marriage, Hogarth had summer-lodgings at South-Lambeth; and being intimate with Mr. Tyers, contributed to the improvement of The Spring Gardens at Vauxhall, by the hint of embellishing them with paintings, some of which were the suggestions of his own truly comic pencil. Among these were the "Four parts of the Day," copied by Hayman from the designs of our artist. The scenes of "Evening" and "Night" are still there; and portraits of Henry VIII. and Anne Bullen once adorned the old great room on the right hand of the entry into the gardens. For his assistance, Mr. Tyers gratefully presented him with a gold ticket of admission for himself and his friends, inscribed

in perpetuam beneficii memoriam.

This ticket, now in the possession of his widow, is still occasionally made use of.

In 1733 his genius became conspicuously known. The third scene of his "Harlot's Progress" introduced him to the notice of the great. At a board of Treasury which was held a day or two after the appearance of that print, a copy of it was shewn by one of the lords, as containing, among other excellencies, a striking likeness of Sir John Gonson.[28] It gave universal satisfaction; from the Treasury each lord repaired to the print-shop for a copy of it, and Hogarth rose completely into fame. This anecdote was related to Mr. Huggins by Christopher Tilson, esq. one of the four chief clerks in the Treasury, and at that period under-secretary of state. He died August 25, 1742, after having enjoyed the former of these offices fifty-eight years. I should add, however, that Sir John Gonson is not here introduced to be made ridiculous, but is only to be considered as the image of an active magistrate identified.

The familiarity of the subject, and the propriety of it's execution, made the "Harlot's Progress" tasted by all ranks of people. Above twelve hundred names were entered in our artist's subscription-book. It was made into a pantomime by Theophilus Cibber; and again represented on the stage, under the title of The Jew decoyed, or a Harlot's Progress, in a Ballad Opera. Fan-mounts were likewise engraved, containing miniature representations of all the six plates. These were usually printed off with red ink, three compartments on one side, and three on the other.[29]

The ingenious Abbé Du Bos has often complained, that no history-painter of his time went through a series of actions, and thus, like an historian, painted the successive fortune of an hero, from the cradle to the grave. What Du Bos wished to see done, Hogarth performed. He launches out his young adventurer a simple girl upon the town, and conducts her through all the vicissitudes of wretchedness to a premature death. This was painting to the understanding and to the heart; none had ever before made the pencil subservient to the purposes of morality and instruction; a book like this is fitted to every soil and every observer, and he that runs may read. Nor was the success of Hogarth confined to his persons. One of his excellencies consisted in what may be termed the furniture[30] of his pieces; for as in sublime and historical representations the fewer trivial circumstances are permitted to divide the spectator's attention from the principal figures, the greater is their force; so in scenes copied from familiar life, a proper variety of little domestic images contributes to throw a degree of verisimilitude on the whole. "The Rake's levee-room," says Mr. Walpole, "the nobleman's dining-room, the apartments of the husband and wife in Marriage Alamode, the Alderman's parlour, the bed-chamber, and many others, are the history of the manners of the age."

It may also be observed, that Hogarth, both in the third and last plate of the Harlot's Progress, has appropriated a name to his heroine which belonged to a well-known wanton then upon the town. The Grub-street Journal for August 6, 1730, giving an account of several prostitutes who were taken up, informs us that "the fourth was Kate Hackabout (whose brother was lately hanged at Tyburn), a woman noted in and about the hundreds of Drury, &c."

In 1735 our artist lost his mother, as appears by the following extract from an old Magazine: "June 11, 1735. Died Mrs. Hogarth, mother to the celebrated painter, of a fright from the fire which happened on the 9th, in Cecil Court, St. Martin's Lane, and burnt thirteen houses;[31] amongst others, one belonging to John Huggins, esq. late Warden of The Fleet, was greatly damaged."

The "Rake's Progress" (published in the same year, and sold at Hogarth's house, the Golden Head in Leicester Fields), though "perhaps superior, had not," as Mr. Walpole observes, "so much success, from want of novelty; nor is the print of the arrest equal in merit to the others.[32]

"The curtain, however," says he, "was now drawn aside, and his genius stood displayed in its full lustre. From time to time our artist continued to give those works that would be immortal, if the nature of his art will allow it. Even the receipts for his subscriptions had wit in them. Many of his plates he engraved himself, and often expunged faces etched by his assistants, when they had not done justice to his ideas. Not content with shining in a path untrodden before, he was ambitious of distinguishing himself as a painter of history; and in 1736 presented to the hospital of St. Bartholomew, of which he had been appointed a governor,[33] a painting of the Pool of Bethesda, and another of the Good Samaritan. But the genius that had entered so feelingly into the calamities and crimes of familiar life, deserted him in a walk that called for dignity and grace. The burlesque turn of his mind mixed itself with the most serious subjects. In the Pool of Bethesda, a servant of a rich ulcerated lady beats back a poor man that sought the same celestial remedy; and in his Danae [for which the Duke of Ancaster paid 60 guineas] the old nurse tries a coin of the golden shower with her teeth, to see if it is true gold. Both circumstances are justly thought, but rather too ludicrous. It is a much more capital fault that Danae herself is a mere nymph of Drury. He seems to have conceived no higher degree of beauty." Dr. Parsons also, in his Lectures on Physiognomy, 410. p. 58, says, "Thus yielded Danae to the Golden Shower, and thus was her passion painted by the ingenious Mr. Hogarth."

The novelty and excellence of Hogarth's performances soon tempted the needy artist and print-dealer to avail themselves of his designs,[34] and rob him of the advantages which he was entitled to derive from them. This was particularly the case with the "Midnight Conversation," the "Harlot's" and "Rake's" Progresses,[35] and the rest of his early works. To put a stop to depredations like these on the property of himself and others, and to secure the emoluments resulting from his own labours, as Mr. Walpole observes, he applied to the legislature, and obtained an act of parliament, 8 George II. chap. 3°, to vest an exclusive right in designers and engravers, and to restrain the multiplying of copies of their works without the consent of the artist.[36]

This statute was drawn by his friend Mr. Huggins,[37] who took for his model the eighth of Queen Anne, in favour of literary property; but it was not so accurately executed as entirely to remedy the evil; for, in a cause founded on it, which came before Lord Hardwicke in Chancery, that excellent Lawyer determined that no assignee, claiming under an assignment from the original inventor, could take any benefit by it. Hogarth, immediately after the passing the act, published a small print, with emblematical devices, and the following inscription expressing his gratitude to the three branches of the legislature:

"In humble and grateful acknowledgment
Of the grace and goodness of the LEGISLATURE,
Manifested
In the ACT of PARLIAMENT for the Encouragement
Of the Arts of Designing, Engraving, &c.
Obtained
By the Endeavours, and almost at the sole Expence,
Of the Designer of this Print in the Year 1735;
By which
Not only the Professors of those Arts were rescued
From the Tyranny, Frauds, and Piracies
Of Monopolizing Dealers,
And legally entitled to the Fruits of their own Labours;
But Genius and Industry were also prompted
By the most noble and generous Inducements to exert themselves;
Emulation was excited,
Ornamental Compositions were better understood;
And every Manufacture, where Fancy has any concern,
Was gradually raised to a Pitch of Perfection before unknown;
Insomuch, that those of Great-Britain
Are at present the most Elegant
And the most in Esteem of any in Europe."

This plate he afterwards made to serve for a receipt for subscriptions, first to a print of an "Election Entertainment;" and afterwards for three prints more, representing the "polling for members for parliament, canvassing for votes, and chairing the members." The royal crown at the top of this receipt is darting its rays on mitres, coronets, the Chancellor's great seal, the Speaker's hat, &c. &c. and on a scroll is written, "An Act for the Encouragement of the Arts of Designing, Engraving, and Etching, by vesting the Properties thereof in the Inventors and Engravers, during the Time therein mentioned." It was "Designed, etched, and published as the Act directs, by W. Hogarth, March 20, 1754." After Hogarth's death, the legislature, by Stat. 7 Geo. III. chap. 38. granted to his widow a further exclusive term of twenty years in the property of her husband's works.

In 1736 he had the honour of being distinguished in a masterly poem of a congenial Humourist. The Dean of St. Patrick's, in his "Description of the Legion Club," after pourtraying many characters with all the severity of the most pointed satire, exclaims,

"How I want thee, humorous Hogarth!
Thou, I hear, a pleasant rogue art!
Were but you and I acquainted,
Every monster should be painted:
You should try your graving tools
On this odious group of fools;
Draw the beasts as I describe them;
Form their features, while I gibe them;
Draw them like, for I assure ye,
You will need no caricatura.
Draw them so, that we may trace
All the soul in every face."

An elegant compliment was soon after paid to Hogarth by Somervile, the author of The Chace, who dedicates his Hobbinol to him as to "the greatest master in the burlesque way." Yet Fielding, in the Preface to Joseph Andrews, says, "He who should call the ingenious Hogarth a burlesque painter, would, in my opinion, do him very little honour, for sure it is much easier, much less the subject of admiration, to paint a man with a nose, or any other feature of a preposterous size, or to expose him in some absurd or monstrous attitude, than to express the affections of men on canvas. It hath been thought a vast commendation of a painter, to say his figures seem to breathe; but surely it is a much greater and nobler applause, that they appear to think."[38]

Vincent Bourne, that classical ornament of Westminster School, addressed the following copy of hendecasyllables

"Ad Gulielmum Hogarth, Παρουνετικόν [Greek: Parounetikon]
"Qui mores hominum improbos, ineptos,
Incidis, nec ineleganter, æri,
Derisor lepidus, sed & severus,
Corrector gravis, at nec invenustus;
Seu pingis meretricios amores,
Et scenas miseræ vicesque vitæ;
Ut tentat pretio rudem puellam
Corruptrix anus, impudens, obesa;
Ut se vix reprimit libidinosus
Scortator, veneri paratus omni:
Seu describere vis, facete censor,
Bacchanalia sera protrahentes
Ad confinia crastinæ diei,
Fractos cum cyathis tubos, matellam
Non plenam modò sed superfluentem,
Et fortem validumque combibonem
Lætantem super amphorâ repletâ;
Jucundissimus omnium ferêris,
Nullique artificum secundus, ætas
Quos præsens dedit, aut dabit futura.
Macte ô, eja age, macte sis amicus
Virtuti: vitiique quod notâris,
Pergas pingere, & exhibere coràm,
Censura utilior tua æquiorque
Omni vel satirarum acerbitate,
Omni vel rigidissimo cachinno."

By printed proposals, dated Jan. 25, 1744-5, Hogarth offered to the highest bidder "the six pictures called The Harlot's Progress, the eight pictures called The Rake's Progress, the four pictures representing Morning, Noon, Evening, and Night, and that of A Company of Strolling Actresses dressing in a Barn; all of them his own original paintings, from which no other copies than the prints have ever been taken." The biddings were to remain open from the first to the last day of February, on these conditions: "1. That every bidder shall have an entire leaf numbered in the book of sale, on the top of which will be entered the name and place of abode, the sum paid by him, the time when, and for which picture.—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. 3. That none advance less than gold at each bidding. 4. 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 persons, except those whose names are entered in the book, will come to view his paintings on the last day of sale."

The pictures were sold for the following prices:

At the same time the six pictures of Marriage à-la-mode were announced as intended for sale as soon as the plates then taking from them should be completed. This set of Prints may be regarded as the ground-work of a novel called "The Marriage Act," by Dr. Shebbeare, and of "The Clandestine Marriage." In the prologue to that excellent comedy, Mr. Garrick thus handsomely expressed his regard for the memory of his friend:

"Poets and painters, who from nature draw
Their best and richest stores, have made this law:
That each should neighbourly assist his brother,
And steal with decency from one another.
To-night, your matchless Hogarth gives the thought,
Which from his canvas to the stage is brought.
And who so fit to warm the poet's mind,
As he who pictur'd morals and mankind?
But not the same their characters and scenes;
Both labour for one end, by different means:
Each, as it suits him, takes a separate road,
Their one great object, Marriage à la Mode!
Where titles deign with cits to have and hold,
And change rich blood for more substantial gold!
And honour'd trade from interest turns aside,
To hazard happiness for titled pride.
The painter dead, yet still he charms the eye;
While England lives, his fame can never die:
But he, 'who struts his hour upon the stage,'
Can scarce extend his fame for half an age;
Nor pen nor pencil can the actor save,
The art, and artist, share one common grave."[39]

Hogarth had projected a Happy Marriage, by way of counterpart to his Marriage à la Mode. A design for the first of his intended six plates he had sketched out in colours; and the following is as accurate an account of it as could be furnished by a gentleman who, long ago enjoyed only a few minutes' sight of so imperfect a curiosity.

The time supposed was immediately after the return of the parties from church. The scene lay in the hall of an antiquated country mansion. On one side, the married couple were represented sitting. Behind them was a group of their young friends of both sexes, in the act of breaking bride-cake over their heads. In front appeared the father of the young lady, grasping a bumper, and drinking, with a seeming roar of exultation, to the future happiness of her and her husband. By his side was a table covered with refreshments. Jollity rather than politeness was the designation of his character. Under the screen of the hall, several rustic musicians in grotesque attitudes, together with servants, tenants, &c. were arranged. Through the arch by which the room was entered, the eye was led along a passage into the kitchen, which afforded a glimpse of sacerdotal luxury. Before the dripping-pan stood a well-fed divine, in his gown and cassock, with his watch in his hand, giving directions to a cook, drest all in white, who was employed in basting a haunch of venison.

Among the faces of the principal figures, none but that of the young lady was completely finished. Hogarth had been often reproached for his inability to impart grace and dignity to his heroines. The bride was therefore meant to vindicate his pencil from so degrading an imputation. The effort, however, was unsuccessful. The girl was certainly pretty; but her features, if I may use the term, were uneducated. She might have attracted notice as a chambermaid, but would have failed to extort applause as a woman of fashion. The parson, and his culinary associate, were more laboured than any other parts of the picture. It is natural for us to dwell longest on that division of a subject which is most congenial to our private feelings. The painter sat down with a resolution to delineate beauty improved by art; but seems, as usual, to have deviated into meanness; or could not help neglecting his original purpose, to luxuriate in such ideas as his situation in early life had fitted him to express. He found himself, in short, out of his element in the parlour, and therefore hastened, in quest of ease and amusement, to the kitchen fire. Churchill, with more force than delicacy, once observed of him, that he only painted the backside of nature. It must be allowed, that such an artist, however excellent in his walk, was better qualified to represent the low-born parent, than the royal preserver of a foundling.

The sketch already described (which I believe is in Mrs. Garrick's possession) was made after the appearance of Marriage à la Mode, and many years before the artist's death. Why he did not persevere in his plan, during such an interval of time, we can only guess. It is probable that his undertaking required a longer succession of images relative to domestic happiness, than had fallen within his notice, or courted his participation. Hogarth had no children; and though the nuptial union may be happy without them, yet such happiness will have nothing picturesque in it; and we may observe of this truly natural and faithful painter, that he rarely ventured to exhibit scenes with which he was not perfectly well acquainted.

Let us, however, more completely obviate an objection that may be raised against the propriety of the foregoing criticism. Some reader may urge, that perhaps, all circumstances considered, a wedding celebrated at an old mansion-house did not require the appearance of consummate beauty, refined by the powers of education. The remark has seeming justice on its side; but Hogarth had previously avowed his intent to exhibit a perfect face, divested of vulgarity; and succeeded so well, at least in his own opinion, that he carried the canvas, of which we are now speaking, in triumph to Mr. Garrick, whose private strictures on it coincided with those of the person who furnishes this additional confirmation of our painter's notorious ignorance in what is styled—the graceful. From the account I have received concerning a design for a previous compartment belonging to the same story, there is little reason to lament the loss of it. It contained no appeal either to the fancy or to the heart. An artist, who, representing the marriage ceremony in a chapel, renders the clerk, who lays the hassocks, the principal figure in it, may at least be taxed with want of judgement.

Soon after the peace of Aix la Chapelle, he went over to France, and was taken into custody at Calais, while he was drawing the gate of that town, a circumstance which he has recorded in his picture, intituled, "O the Roast Beef of Old England!" published March 26, 1749. He was actually carried before the governor as a spy, and, after a very strict examination, committed a prisoner to Grandsire, his landlord, on his promising that Hogarth should not go out of his house till it was to embark for England. This account, I have good authority for saying, he himself gave to his friend Mr. Gostling at Canterbury, at whose house he lay the night after his arrival.

The same accident, however, has been more circumstantially related by an eminent English engraver, who was abroad when it happened. Hayman, and Cheere the statuary, were of the same party.

While Hogarth was in France, wherever he went, he was sure to be dissatisfied with all he saw. If an elegant circumstance either in furniture, or the ornaments of a room, was pointed out as deserving approbation, his narrow and constant reply was, "What then? but it is French! Their houses are all gilt and b—t." In the streets he was often clamourously rude. A tatter'd bag, or a pair of silk stockings with holes in them, drew a torrent of imprudent language from him. In vain did my informant (who knew that many Scotch and Irish were often within hearing of these reproaches, and would rejoice at least in an opportunity of getting our painter mobbed) advise him to be more cautious in his public remarks. He laughed at all such admonition, and treated the offerer of it as a pusillanimous wretch, unworthy of a residence in a free country, making him the butt of his ridicule for several evenings afterwards. This unreasonable pleasantry was at length completely extinguished by what happened while he was drawing the Gate at Calais; for though the innocence of his design was rendered perfectly apparent on the testimony of other sketches he had about him, which were by no means such as could serve the purpose of an engineer, he was told by the Commandant, that, had not the peace been actually signed, he should have been obliged to have hung him up immediately on the ramparts. Two guards were then provided to convey him on shipboard; nor did they quit him till he was three miles from the shore. They then spun him round like a top, on the deck; and told him he was at liberty to proceed on his voyage without farther attendance or molestation. With the slightest allusion to the ludicrous particulars of this affair, poor Hogarth was by no means pleased. The leading circumstance in it his own pencil has recorded.

Soon after this period he purchased a little house at Chiswick; where he usually passed the greatest part of the summer season, yet not without occasional visits to his dwelling in Leicester Fields.

In 1753, he appeared to the world in the character of art author, and published a quarto volume, intituled, "The Analysis of Beauty, written with a view of fixing the fluctuating Ideas of Taste." In this performance he shews, by a variety of examples, that a curve is the line of beauty, and that round swelling figures are most pleasing to the eye; and the truth of his opinion has been countenanced by subsequent writers on the subject.

Among the letters of Dr. Birch is the following short one, sent with the "Analysis of Beauty," and dated Nov. 25, 1753; "Sir, I beg the favour of you to present to the Royal Society the enclosed work, which will receive great honour by their acceptance of it. I am, Sir, your most obedient humble servant, Wm. Hogarth."

In this book, the leading idea of which was hieroglyphically thrown out in a frontispiece to his works in 1745, he acknowledges himself indebted to his friends for assistance, and particularly to one gentleman for his corrections and amendments of at least a third part of the wording. This friend, I am assured, was Dr. Benjamin Hoadly the physician, who carried on the work to about a third part, Chap. IX. and then, through indisposition, declined the friendly office with regret. Mr. Hogarth applied to his neighbour, Mr. Ralph; but it was impossible for two such persons to agree, both alike vain and positive. He proceeded no farther than about a sheet, and they then parted friends, and seem to have continued such. In the Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times, vol. I. p. 47, published in 1757 by Dr. Brown, that author pays a compliment to Mr. Hogarth's genius. Mr. Ralph, animadverting on the work, amongst other things, says, "It is happy for Mr. Hogarth, in my humble opinion, that he is brought upon the stage in such company, rather for the sake of fastening some additional abuse upon the public, than of bestowing any special grace upon him. 'Neither the comic pencil, nor the serious pen of our ingenious countrymen (so the Estimator or Appraiser's Patent of Allowance runs) have been able to keep alive the taste of Nature or of Beauty.' For where he has chosen to be a niggard of his acknowledgements, every other man would chuse to be a prodigal: Nature had played the Proteus with us, had invited us to pursue her in every shape, but had never suffered us to overtake her: Beauty all had been smitten with, but nobody had been able to assign us a rule by which it might be defined: This was Mr. Hogarth's task; this is what he has succeeded in; composition is at last 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 hacknied name of taste no more. So that, whatever may be said in disparagement of the age on other accounts, it has more merit and honour to claim on this, than any which preceded it. And I will venture for once to prophesy, from the improvements already manifested, that we shall have the arts of designing to value ourselves upon, when all our ancient virtues are worn out."

The office of finishing the work, and superintending the publication, was lastly taken up by Dr. Morell, who went through the remainder of the book.[40] The preface was in like manner corrected by the Rev. Mr. Townley. The family of Hogarth rejoiced when the last sheet of the Analysis was printed off; as the frequent disputes he had with his coadjutors, in the progress of the work, did not much harmonize his disposition.

This work was translated into German by Mr. Mylins, when in England, under the author's inspection; and the translation, containing twenty-two sheets in quarto, and two large plates, was printed in London, price five dollars.

Of the same performance a new and correct edition was (July 1, 1754) proposed for publication at Berlin, by Ch. Fr. Vok, with an explanation of Mr. Hogarth's satirical prints, translated from the French; the whole to subscribers for one dollar, but after six weeks to be raised to two dollars.

An Italian translation was also published at Leghorn in 1761, 8vo, dedicated "All' illustrissime Signora Diana Molineux, Dama Inglese."

"This book," Mr. Walpole observes, "had many sensible hints and observations; but it did not carry the conviction, nor meet the universal acquiescence he expected. As he treated his contemporaries with scorn, they triumphed over this publication,[41] and irritated him to expose him. Many wretched burlesque prints came out to ridicule his system. There was a better answer to it in one of the two prints that he gave to illustrate his hypothesis. In the ball, had he confined himself to such outlines as compose awkwardness and deformity, he would have proved half his assertion; but he has added two samples of grace in a young lord and lady, that are strikingly stiff and affected. They are a Bath beau and a county Beauty."

Hogarth had one failing in common with most people who attain wealth and eminence without the aid of liberal education. He affected to despise every kind of knowledge which he did not possess. Having established his fame with little or no obligation to literature, he either conceived it to be needless, or decried it because it lay out of his reach. His sentiments, in short, resembled those of Jack Cade, who pronounced sentence on the clerk of Chatham, because he could write and read. Till, in evil hour, this celebrated artist commenced an author, and was obliged to employ the friends already mentioned to correct his Analysis of Beauty,[42] he did not seem to have discovered that even spelling was a necessary qualification; and yet he had ventured to ridicule[43] the late Mr. Rich's deficiency as to this particular, in a note which lies before the Rake whose play is refused while he remains in confinement for debt. Previous to the time of which we are now speaking, one of our artist's common topicks of declamation was the uselessness of books to a man of his profession. In Beer-street, among other volumes consigned by him to the pastry cook, we find Turnbull on ancient Painting, a treatise which Hogarth should have been able to understand, before he ventured to condemn. Garrick himself, however, was not more ductile to flattery. A word in favour of Sigismunda, might have commanded a proof print, or forced an original sketch out of our artist's hands. The furnisher of this remark owes one of his scarcest performances to the success of a compliment, which might have stuck even in Sir Godfrey Kneller's throat.

The following authenticated story of our artist will also serve to shew how much more easy it is to detect ill-placed or hyperbolical adulation respecting others, than when applied to ourselves. Hogarth being at dinner with the great Cheselden, and some other company, was told that Mr. John Freke, surgeon of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, a few evenings before at Dick's Coffee-house, had asserted, that Greene was as eminent in composition as Handel. "That fellow Freke," replied Hogarth, "is always shooting his bolt absurdly one way or another! Handel is a giant in music; Greene only a light Florimel kind of a composer."—"Ay," says our artist's informant, "but at the same time Mr. Freke declared you were as good a portrait-painter as Vandyck."—"There he was in the right," adds Hogarth; "and so by G— I am, give me my time, and let me choose my subject!"

With Dr. Hoadly, the late Chancellor of Winchester, Mr. Hogarth was always on terms of the strictest friendship, and frequently visited him at Winchester, St. Cross, and Alresford. It is well known, that Dr. Hoadly's fondness for theatrical exhibitions was so great, that few visitors were ever long in his house before they were solicited to accept a part in some interlude or other. He himself, with Garrick and Hogarth, once performed a laughable parody on the scene in Julius Cæsar, where the Ghost appears to Brutus. Hogarth personated the spectre; but so unretentive was his memory, that, although his speech consisted only of two lines, he was unable to get them by heart. At last they hit on the following expedient in his favour. The verses he was to deliver were written in such large letters, on the outside of an illuminated paper-lanthorn, that he could read them when he entered with it in his hand on the stage. Hogarth painted a scene on this occasion, representing a sutling booth, with the Duck of Cumberland's head by way of sign. He also prepared the play-bill, with characteristic ornaments. The original drawing is still preserved, and we could wish it were engraved; as the slightest sketch from the design of so grotesque a painter would be welcome to the numerous collectors of his works.

Hogarth was also the most absent of men. At table he would sometimes turn round his chair as if he had finished eating, and as suddenly would return it, and fall to his meal again. I may add, that he once directed a letter to Dr. Hoadly, thus,—"To the Doctor at Chelsea." This epistle, however, by good luck, did not miscarry; and was preserved by the late Chancellor of Winchester, as a pleasant memorial of his friend's extraordinary inattention.

Another remarkable instance of Hogarth's absence was told me, after the first edition of this work, by one of his intimate friends. Soon after he set up his carriage, he had occasion to pay a visit to the lord-mayor (I believe it was Mr. Beckford). When he went, the weather was fine; but business detained him till a violent shower of rain came on. He was let out of the Mansion-house by a different door from that at which he entered; and, seeing the rain, began immediately to call for a hackney-coach. Not one was to be met with on any of the neighbouring stands; and our artist sallied forth to brave the storm, and actually reached Leicester-fields without bestowing a thought on his own carriage, till Mrs. Hogarth (surprized to see him so wet and splashed) asked where he had left it.

Mr. Walpole, in the following note, p. 69, is willing to expose the indelicacy of the Flemish painters, by comparing it with the purity of Hogarth. "When they attempt humour," says our author, "it is by making a drunkard vomit; they take evacuations for jokes; and when they make us sick, think they make us laugh. A boor hugging a frightful frow is a frequent incident, even in the works of Teniers." Shall we proceed to examine whether the scenes painted by our countryman are wholly free from the same indelicacies? In one plate of Hudibras, where he encounters a Skimmington, a man is making water against the end of a house, while a taylor's wife is most significantly attending to the dirty process. In another plate to the same work, a boy is pissing into the shoe of Ralpho, while the widow is standing by. Another boy in the Enraged Musician is easing nature by the same mode; and a little miss is looking earnestly on the operation. In the March to Finchley, a diseased soldier has no better employment; and a woman is likewise staring at him out of a window. This circumstance did not escape the observation of Rouquet the enameller, whose remarks[44] on the plates of our artist I shall have more than once occasion to introduce. "Il y a," says he, "dans quelques endroits de cet excellent tableau, des objets peut être plus propres à peindre qu'à décrire. D'ou vient que les oreilles sont plus chaste que les yeux? Ne seroit ce pas parce qu'on peut regarder certains objets dans un tableau, et feindre de ne pas les voir; et qu'il n'est pas si aisé d'entendre une obscénité, et de feindre de ne l'entendre pas! L'objet, dont je veux parler, est toutefois peu considérable; il s'agit seulement d'un soldat à qui le voyage de Montpelier conviendroit mieux que celui d'Ecosse. L'amour lui a fait une blessure, &c." Was this occurrence delicate or precious enough to deserve such frequency of repetition? In the burlesque Paul before Felix, when the High Priest applies his fingers to his nose, we have reason to imagine that his manœuvre was in consequence of some offensive escape during the terrors of the pro-consul of Judea, who, as he is here represented, conveys no imperfect image of a late Lord Mayor, at the time of the riots in London. In this last instance, indeed, I ought to have observed that Hogarth meant to satirize, not to imitate, the painters of Holland and Flanders. But I forbear to dwell any longer on such disgusting circumstances; begging leave only to ask, whether the canvas of Teniers exhibits nastier objects than those of the woman cracking a louse between her nails in the fourth plate of the Harlot's Progress; a Scotch bag-piper catching another in his neck while he is performing at the Election feast; Aurora doing the same kind office for a Syren or Nereid, in the Strollers, &c.; the old toothless French beldams, slobbering (Venus forbid we should call it kissing) each other in the comic print entitled Noon; the chamber-pot emptied on the Free Mason's head, in the Rejoicing Night; or the Lilliputians giving a clyster to Gulliver? In some of these instances, however, the humour may compensate for the indelicacy, which is rarely the case with such Dutch pictures as have justly incurred the censure of Mr. Walpole. Let us now try how far some of the compositions of Hogarth have befriended the cause of modesty. In the Harlot's Progress, Plate VI. we meet with a hand by no means busied in manner suitable to the purity of its owner's function. Hogarth indeed, in three different works, has delineated three clergymen; the one as a drunkard; the second as a glutton; and the third as a whoremaster, who (I borrow Rouquet's words) "est plus occupé de sa voisine que de son vin, qu'il repand par une distraction qu'elle lui cause." He who, in the eyes of the vulgar, would degrade our professors of religion, deserves few thanks from society. In the Rake's Progress, Plate the last, how is the hand of the ideal potentate employed, while he is gazing with no very modest aspect on a couple of young women who pass before his cell numbered 55? and to what particular object are the eyes of the said females supposed to be directed?[45] Nay, in what pursuit is the grenadier engaged who stands with his face toward the wall in Plate 9. of Industry and Idleness? May we address another question to the reader? Is the "smile of Socrates," or the "benevolence of the designer," very distinguishable in the half dozen last instances? It has been observed indeed by physiognomists, that the smile of the real Socrates resembled the grin of a satyr; and perhaps a few of the particulars here alluded to, as well as the prints entitled Before and After, ought to be considered as a benevolence to speculative old maids, or misses not yet enfranchised from a boarding school. Had this truly sensible critic, and elegant writer, been content to observe, that such gross circumstances as form the chief subject of Flemish pictures, are only incidental and subordinate in those of our artist, the remark might have escaped reprehension. But perhaps he who has told us that "St. Paul's hand was once improperly placed before the wife of Felix" should not have suffered more glaring insults on decency to pass without a censure. On this occasion, though I may be found to differ from Mr. Walpole, I am ready to confess how much regard is due to the opinions of a gentleman whose mind has been long exercised on a subject which is almost new to me; especially when I recollect that my present researches would have had no guide, but for the lights held out in the last volume of the Anecdotes of Painting in England.

Hogarth boasted that he could draw a Serjeant with his pike, going into an alehouse, and his Dog following him, with only three strokes;—which he executed thus:

A. The perspective line of the door.
B. The end of the Serjeant's pike, who is gone in.
C. The end of the Dog's tail, who is following him.
There are similar whims of the Caracci.

A specimen of Hogarth's propensity to merriment, on the most trivial occasions, is observable in one of his cards requesting the company of Dr. Arnold King to dine with him at the Mitre.[46] Within a circle, to which a knife and fork are the supporters, the written part is contained. In the center is drawn a pye, with a mitre on the top of it; and the invitation of our artist concludes with the following sport on three of the Greek letters—to Eta Beta Pi.[47] The rest of the inscription is not very accurately spelt. A quibble by Hogarth is surely as respectable as a conundrum by Swift.

"Some nicer virtuosi have remarked, that in the serious pieces, into which Hogarth has deviated from the natural biass of his genius, there are some strokes of the ridiculous discernible, which suit not with the dignity of his subject. In his preaching of St. Paul, a dog snarling at a cat;[48] and in his Pharaoh's Daughter, the figure of the infant Moses, who expresses rather archness than timidity; are alledged as instances, that this artist, unrivalled in his own walk, could not resist the impulse of his imagination towards drollery. His picture, however, of Richard III. is pure and unmixed, without any ridiculous circumstances, and strongly impresses terror and amazement." As these observations are extracted from the first edition of Dr. Warton's "Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope," it would be uncandid if we did not accompany them with the following note from a subsequent edition of that valuable performance: "The author gladly lays hold of the opportunity of this third edition of his work to confess a mistake he had committed with respect to two admirable paintings of Mr. Hogarth, his Paul Preaching, and his Infant Moses; which, on a closer examination, are not chargeable with the blemishes imputed to them. Justice obliges him to declare the high opinion he entertains of the abilities of this inimitable artist, who shines in so many different lights, and on such very dissimilar subjects; and whose works have more of what the ancients called the ΗθΟΣ [Greek: Ethos] in them, than the compositions of any other Modern. For the rest, the author begs leave to add, that he is so far from being ashamed of retracting his error, that he had rather appear a Man of Candour, than the best Critic that ever lived."[49]

In one of the early exhibitions at Spring Gardens, a very pleasing small picture by Hogarth made its first appearance. It was painted for the earl of Charlemont, in whose collection it remains.[50] It was intituled, Picquet, or Virtue in Danger, and shews us a young lady, who, during a tête-à-tête, had just lost all her money to a handsome officer of her own age. He is represented in the act of returning her a handful of bank bills, with the hope of exchanging them for a softer acquisition, and more delicate plunder. On the chimney piece is a watch-case and a figure of Time over it, with this motto—NUNC. Hogarth has caught his heroine during this moment of hesitation, this struggle with herself, and has marked her feelings with uncommon success. Wavering chastity, as in this instance, he was qualified to display; but the graceful reserve of steady and exalted virtue he would certainly have failed to express. He might have conveyed a perfect idea of such an Iphigenia as is described by Mr. Hayley, in one of the cantoes of his beautiful poem on the Triumphs of Temper; but the dignity of the same female at the Tauric altar would have baffled the most vigorous efforts of his pencil.

Hogarth's Picquet, or Virtue in Danger, when exhibited at Spring Gardens, in May, 1761, produced the following explanation:

Ye fair, be warn'd, and shun those arts,
That faithless men do use for hearts:
Weigh o'er and o'er the destin'd man,
And oft this little lesson scan;
If he his character don't fear,
For yours he'll very little care:
With scorn repulse the wretch so bold,
Nor pawn your virtue for his gold!
Of gaming (cards or not) beware,
'Tis very often found a snare;
But, lest my precept still should fail,
Indulge me—whilst I tell a tale:
Dorinda, chearful, young, and gay,
Oft shone at Balls, at Park, and Play;
Blest with a free, engaging air,
In short, throughout quite debonnair;
(Excuse me—shall I tell the truth?)
That bane of misled, heedless youth,
Gaming—had quite possess'd her mind,
To this (no other vice) inclin'd:
She oft would melancholy sit,
No partner near for dear Picquet!
"At last a cruel spoiler came,"
And deeply learn'd in all the game;
A son of Mars, with iron face,
Adorn'd with impudence and lace!
Acquaintance with her soon he gains,
He thinks her virtue worth his pains:
Cards (after nonsense) came in course,
By sap advances, not by force.
The table set, the cards are laid,
Dorinda dreams not she's betray'd;
The cards run cross, she fumes and frets,
Her brilliant necklace soon she betts,
She fears her watch, but can't resist,
A miniature can scarce be mist!
At last both watch and trinkets go,
A prey to the devouring foe:
Nay more (if fame but tells us true),
She lost her di'mond buckles too!
Her bracelets next became his prize,
And in his hat the treasure lies.
Upon her Virtue next he treats,
And Honour's sacred name repeats:
Tenders the trinkets, swears and lies,
And vows her person is a prize!
Then swears (with hand upon his breast)
That he without her can't be blest!
Then plies her with redoubled pains,
T' exchange her virtue for his gains:
Shame's purple wings o'ershade her face,
He triumphs over her disgrace;
Soon turns to jest her scruples nice,
In short, she falls!—a sacrifice!
Spoil'd of her virtue in her prime,
And, knowing Heaven detests the crime,
Is urg'd, perhaps, to dare his rod,
"And rush unsummon'd to her God!"
Ye fair, if happiness ye prize,
Regard this rule, Be timely wise.

In the "Miser's Feast," Mr. Hogarth thought proper to pillory Sir Isaac Shard, a gentleman proverbially avaricious. Hearing this, the son of Sir Isaac, the late Isaac Pacatus Shard,[51] esq. a young man of spirit, just returned from his travels, called at the painter's to see the picture; and, among the rest, asking the Cicerone "whether that odd figure was intended for any particular person;" on his replying, "that it was thought to be very like one Sir Isaac Shard;" he immediately drew his sword, and slashed the canvas. Hogarth appeared instantly in great wrath; to whom Mr. Shard calmly justified what he had done, saying, "that this was a very unwarrantable licence; that he was the injured party's son, and that he was ready to defend any suit at law;" which, however, was never instituted.

About 1757, his brother-in-law, Mr. Thornhill, resigned the place of king's serjeant-painter in favour of Mr. Hogarth; who soon after made an experiment in painting, which involved him in some disgrace. The celebrated collection of pictures belonging to Sir Luke Schaub was in 1758 sold by public auction;[52] and the admired picture of Sigismunda (purchased by Sir Thomas Sebright for 404. l. 5 s.) excited Mr. Hogarth's emulation.

"From a contempt of the ignorant virtuosi of the age," says Mr. Walpole, "and from indignation at the impudent tricks of picture-dealers, 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 proportion might be true or false. He went farther: he determined to rival the ancients—and unfortunately chose one of the finest pictures in England as the object of his competition. This was the celebrated Sigismunda of Sir Luke Schaub, now in the possession of the Duke of Newcastle, said to be painted by Correggio, probably by Furino, but no matter by whom. It is impossible to see the picture, or read Dryden's inimitable tale, and not feel that the same soul animated both. After many essays, Hogarth at last produced HIS Sigismunda—but no more like Sigismunda, than I to Hercules. Not to mention the wretchedness of the colouring, it was the representation of a maudlin strumpet just turned out of keeping, and, with eyes red with rage and usquebaugh, tearing off the ornaments her keeper had given her. To add to the disgust raised by such vulgar expression, her fingers were bloodied by her lover's heart,[53] that lay before her, like that of a sheep, for her dinner.[54] 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 was wanting that should have been there, all was 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. Hogarth's performance was more ridiculous than any thing he had ever ridiculed. He set the price of 400 l. on it, and had it returned on his hands by the person for whom it was painted. He took subscriptions for a plate of it; but had the sense, at last, to suppress it. I make no more apology for this account than for the encomiums I have bestowed on him. Both are dictated by truth, and are the history of a great man's excellencies and errors. Milton, it is said, preferred his Paradise Regained to his immortal poem."[55]

Hogarth, however, gave directions before his death that the Sigismunda should not be sold under 500 l. and, greatly as he might have been mortified by Churchill's invective, and the coldness with which the picture was received by the rest of the world,[56] he never wholly abandoned his design of having a plate prepared from it. Finding abundant consolation in the flattery of self-love, he appealed from the public judgement to his own, and had actually talked with the celebrated Mr. Hall about the price of the engraving, which was to have been executed from a smaller painting,[57] copied by himself from the large one. Death alone secured him from the contempt such obstinacy would have riveted on his name. To express a sorrow like that of Tancred's daughter, few modern artists are fully qualified. We must except indeed Sir Joshua Reynolds, with whose pencil Beauty in all her forms, and the passions in all their varieties, are equally familiar.

Since the preceding paragraph was written, the compiler of this volume has seen an unfinished plate of Sigismunda, attempted after the manner of Edelinck, etched by Mr. Basire, but not bit-in, and from which consequently no proof can have been taken. The size of the plate is 18 inches by 16½. The outlines in general, and particularly of the face, were completed under the immediate direction of Mr. Hogarth.[58] It was intended to be published by subscription.[59] The plate itself is still in the hands of Mr. Basire.

This unfortunate picture, which was the source of so much vexation to Mr. Hogarth, at least made a versifier of him, and furnished vent to his anger in the following lines; which, as I know of no other specimen of his poetry,[60] may serve to gratify the curiosity of the reader. The old adage facit indignatio versum, seems scarcely to have been realised in this splenetic effusion, which is intituled "An Epistle to a Friend," occasioned by Sir Richard Grosvenor (now lord) returning the picture of Sigismunda on our artist's hands:

"To your charge, the other day
About my picture and my pay,
In metre I've a mind to try,
One word by way of a reply.
"To risque, you'll own, 'twas most absurd,
Such labour on a rich man's word;
To lose at least an hundred days
Of certain gain, for doubtful praise;
Since living artists ne'er were paid;
But then, you know, it was agreed,
I should be deem'd an artist dead.
Like Raphael, Rubens, Guido Rene,
This promise fairly drew me in;
And having laid my pencil by,[61]
What painter was more dead than I?
But dead as Guido let me be,
Then judge, my friend, 'twixt him and me
If merit crowns alike the piece,
What treason to be like in price;
Because no copied line you trace,
The picture can't be right, you're sure;
But say, my critic connoisseur,
Moves it the heart as much or more
Than picture ever did before?
This is the painter's truest test,
And this Sir Richard's self confess'd.
Nay, 'tis so moving, that the knight
Can't even bear it in his sight;
Then who would tears so dearly buy,
As give four hundred pounds to cry?
I own, he chose the prudent part,
Rather to break his word than heart;
And yet, methinks, 'tis ticklish dealing,
With one so delicate—in feeling.
"However, 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."

"The last memorable event in our artist's life," as Mr. Walpole observes, "was his quarrel with Mr. Wilkes, in which, if Mr. Hogarth did not commence direct hostilities on the latter, he at least obliquely gave the first offence, by an attack on the friends and party of that gentleman. This conduct was the more surprizing, as he had all his life avoided dipping his pencil in political contests, and had early refused a very lucrative offer that was made to engage him in a set of prints against the head of a court-party. Without entering into the merits of the cause, I shall only state the fact. In September 1762, Mr. Hogarth published his print of The Times. It was answered by Mr. Wilkes in a severe North Briton.[62] On this the painter exhibited the caricatura of the writer. Mr. Churchill, the poet, then engaged in the war, and wrote his epistle to Hogarth, not the brightest of his works,[63] in which the severest strokes fell on a defect that the painter had neither caused nor could amend—his age;[64] and which, however, was neither remarkable nor decrepit; much less had it impaired his talents, as appeared by his having composed but six months before one of his most capital works, the satire on the Methodists. In revenge for this epistle, Hogarth caricatured Churchill, under the form of a canonical bear, with a club and a pot of porter—et vitulá tu dignus & hic—never did two angry men of their abilities throw mud with less dexterity."

The concluding observation of Mr. Walpole is mortifyingly true. It may be amusing to compare the account given of this squabble, which long engrossed the attention of the town, with the narrative of it printed by Mr. Wilkes; who states the circumstances of it in the following manner:

"Mr. Hogarth was one of the first who, in the paper war begun by lord Bute on his accession to the Treasury, sacrificed private friendship at the altar of party madness. In 1762, the Scotch minister took a variety of hirelings into his pay, some of whom were gratified with pensions, others with places and pensions. Mr. Hogarth was only made serjeant-painter to his majesty, as if it was meant to insinuate to him, that he was not allowed to paint any thing but the wainscot of the royal apartments. The term means no more than house-painter, and the nature of the post confined him to that business. He was not employed in any other way. A circumstance can scarcely be imagined more humiliating to a man of spirit and genius, who really thought that he more particularly excelled in portrait-painting.

"The new minister had been attacked in a variety of political papers. The North Briton in particular, which commenced the week after The Briton, waged open war with him. Some of the numbers had been ascribed to Mr. Wilkes, others to Mr. Churchill, and Mr. Lloyd. Mr. Hogarth had for several years lived on terms of friendship and intimacy with Mr. Churchill and Mr. Wilkes. As the Buckinghamshire militia, which this gentleman had the honour of commanding, had been for some months at Winchester guarding the French prisoners, the Colonel was there on that duty. A friend wrote to him, that Mr. Hogarth intended soon to publish a political print of The Times, in which Mr. Pitt, Lord Temple, Mr. Churchill, and himself, were held out to the public as objects of ridicule. Mr. Wilkes, on this notice, remonstrated by two of their common friends to Mr. Hogarth, that such a proceeding would not only be unfriendly in the highest degree, but extremely injudicious; for such a pencil ought to be universal and moral, to speak to all ages, and to all nations, not to be dipt in the dirt of the faction of a day, of an insignificant part of the country, when it might command the admiration of the whole. An answer was sent, that neither Mr. Wilkes nor Mr. Churchill were attacked in The Times, though Lord Temple and Mr. Pitt were, and that the print should soon appear. A second message soon after told Mr. Hogarth, that Mr. Wilkes should never believe it worth his while to take notice of any reflections on himself; but if his friends were attacked, he should then think he was wounded in the most sensible part, and would, as well as he was able, revenge their cause; adding, that if he thought the North Briton would insert what he sent, he would make an appeal to the public on the very Saturday following the publication of the print. The Times soon after appeared, and on the Saturday following [Sept. 25, 1762,] N° 17, of the North Briton, which is a direct attack on the king's serjeant-painter.[65] If Mr. Wilkes did write that paper, he kept his word better with Mr. Hogarth, than the painter had done with him.

"It is perhaps worth remarking, that the painter proposed to give a series of political prints, and that The Times were marked Plate I. No farther progress was however made in that design. The public beheld the first feeble efforts with execrations, and it is said that the caricaturist was too much hurt by the general opinion of mankind, to possess himself afterwards sufficiently for the execution of such a work.

"When Mr. Wilkes was the second time brought from the Tower to Westminster-hall, Mr. Hogarth skulked behind in a corner of the gallery of the Court of Common Pleas; and while the Chief Justice Pratt,[66] with the eloquence and courage of old Rome, was enforcing the great principles of Magna Charta, and the English constitution, while every breast from him caught the holy flame of liberty, the painter was wholly employed in caricaturing the person of the man; while all the rest of his fellow citizens were animated in his cause, for they knew it to be their own cause, that of their country, and of its laws. It was declared to be so a few hours after by the unanimous sentence of the judges of that court, and they were all present.

"The print of Mr. Wilkes was soon after published, drawn from the life by William Hogarth. It must be allowed to be an excellent compound caricatura, or a caricatura of what nature had already caricatured. I know but one short apology can be made for this gentleman, or, to speak more properly, for the person of Mr. Wilkes. It is, that he did not make himself, and that he never was solicitous about the case of his soul, as Shakspeare calls it, only so far as to keep it clean and in health. I never heard that he once hung over the glassy stream, like another Narcissus, admiring the image in it, nor that he ever stole an amorous look at his counterfeit in a side mirrour. His form, such as it is, ought to give him no pain, because it is capable of giving pleasure to others. I fancy he finds himself tolerably happy in the clay-cottage, to which he is tenant for life, because he has learnt to keep it in good order. While the share of health and animal spirits, which heaven has given him, shall hold out, I can scarcely imagine he will be one moment peevish about the outside of so precarious, so temporary a habitation, or will even be brought to own, ingenium Galbæ male habitat. Monsieur est mal logé.

"Mr. Churchill was exasperated at this personal attack on his friend. He soon after published the Epistle to William Hogarth,[67] and took for the motto, ut pictura poesis. Mr. Hogarth's revenge against the poet terminated in vamping up an old print of a pug-dog and a bear, which he published under the title of The Bruiser C. Churchill (once the Revd.!) in the character of a Russian Hercules, &c."

The Editor of the Monthly Review for November, 1769, in an account of Mr. Wilkes's correspondence, remarks, "The writer of this article had in substance the same relation from the mouth of Mr. Hogarth himself, but a very little while before his death;[68] and the leading facts appeared, from his candid representation, in nearly the same light as in this account which our readers have been just perusing."

I have been assured by the friend[69] who first carried and read the invective of Churchill to Hogarth, that he seemed quite insensible to the most sarcastical parts of it. He was so thoroughly wounded before by the North Briton, especially with regard to what related to domestic happiness, that he lay no where open to a fresh stroke. Some readers, however, may entertain a doubt on this subject. A man feels most exquisitely when the merit of which he is proudest is denied him; and it might be urged, that Hogarth was more solicitous to maintain the character of a good painter, than of a tender husband.

One quotation, however, from Churchill's Epistle the warmest admirers of our matchless artist must be pleased with:

"In walks of humour, in that cast of style,
Which, probing to the quick, yet makes us smile;
In Comedy, his natural road to fame,
Nor let me call it by a meaner name,
Where a beginning, middle, and an end,
Are aptly join'd; where parts on parts depend,
Each made for each, as bodies for their soul,
So as to form one true and perfect whole,
Where a plain story to the eye is told,
Which we conceive the moment we behold;[70]
Hogarth unrival'd stands, and shall engage
Unrival'd praise to the most distant age."

Hogarth having been said to be in his dotage when, he produced his print of the Bear, it should seem as if he had been provoked to make the following additions to this print, in order to give a further specimen of his still existing genius.

In the form of a framed picture on the painter's palette, he has represented an Egyptian pyramid, on the side of which is a Cheshire cheese,[71] and round it 3000 l. per annum; and at the foot a Roman Veteran in a reclining posture, designed as an allusion to Mr. Pitt's resignation. The cheese is meant to allude to a former speech of his, wherein he said that he would rather subsist a week on a Cheshire cheese and a shoulder of mutton, than submit to the implacable enemies of his country.

But to ridicule this character still more, he is, as he lies down, firing a piece of ordnance at the standard of Britain, on which is a dove with an olive-branch, the emblem of peace. On one side of the pyramid is the City of London, represented by the figure of one of the Guildhall giants, going to crown the reclining hero. On the other side is the king of Prussia, in the character of one of the Cæsars, but smoking his pipe. In the center stands Hogarth himself, whipping a Dancing Bear (Churchill) which he holds in a string. At the side of the Bear is a Monkey, designed for Mr. Wilkes. Between the legs of the little animal is a mop-stick, on which he seems to ride, as children do on a hobby-horse: at the top of the mop-stick is the cap of liberty. The Monkey is undergoing the same discipline as the Bear. Behind the Monkey is the figure of a man, but with no lineaments of face, and playing on a fiddle. This was designed for Earl Temple.

At the time these hostilities were carrying on in a manner so virulent and disgraceful to all the parties, Hogarth was visibly declining in his health. In 1762, he complained of an inward pain, which, continuing, brought on a general decay that proved incurable.[72] This last year of his life he employed in retouching his plates with the assistance of several engravers whom he took with him to Chiswick. On the 25th of October, 1764, he was conveyed from thence to Leicester-fields, in a very weak condition, yet remarkably chearful; and, receiving an agreeable letter from the American Dr. Franklin, drew up a rough draught of an answer to it; but going to bed, he was seized with a vomiting, upon which he rung his bell with such violence that he broke it, and expired about two hours afterwards in the arms of Mrs. Mary Lewis, who was called up on his being taken suddenly ill. To this lady, for her faithful services, he bequeathed 100 l. After the death of Hogarth's sister, Mrs. Lewis succeeded to the care of his prints; and, without violation of truth, it may be observed, that her good nature and affability recommend these performances which she continues to dispose of at Mrs. Hogarth's house in Leicester-square. Before our artist went to bed, he boasted of having eaten a pound of beef-steaks for his dinner,[73] and was to all appearance heartier than he had been for a long time before. His disorder was an aneurism; and his corpse was interred in the church-yard at Chiswick, where a monument is erected to his memory, with this inscription, under his family arms:

"Here lieth the body
Of William Hogarth, Esq.
Who died October the 26th, 1764;
Aged 67 years."

On another side, which is ornamented with a masque, a laurel wreath, a palette, pencils, and a book, inscribed "Analysis of Beauty," are the following verses by his friend Mr. Garrick:

"Farewell, great painter of mankind,
Who reach'd the noblest point of art;
Whose pictur'd 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."

On a third side is this inscription:

"Here lieth the body
Of Dame Judith Thornhill,
Relict of Sir James Thornhill, knight,
Of Thornhill in the county of Dorset.
She died November the 12th, 1757,
Aged 84 years."

And on the fourth side:

"Here lieth the body
Of Mrs. Anne Hogarth, sister
to William Hogarth, Esq.
She died August the 13th, 1771,
Aged 70 years."

Mr. Hayley, in his justly admired Epistle to an Eminent Painter (Mr. Romney), has since expressed himself concerning our artist in terms that confer yet higher honours on his comic excellence:

"Nor, if her favour'd hand may hope to shed
The flowers of glory o'er the skilful dead,
Thy talents, Hogarth! will she leave unsung;
Charm of all eyes, and Theme of every tongue!
A separate province 'twas thy praise to rule;
Self-form'd thy Pencil! yet thy works a School,
Where strongly painted, in gradations nice,
The Pomp of Folly, and the Shame of Vice,
Reach'd thro' the laughing Eye the mended Mind,
And moral Humour sportive Art refin'd.
While fleeting Manners, as minutely shown
As the clear prospect on the mirror thrown;
While Truth of Character, exactly hit,
And drest in all the dyes of comic wit;
While these, in Fielding's page, delights supply,
So long thy Pencil with his Pen shall vie.
Science with grief beheld thy drooping age
Fall the sad victim of a Poet's rage:
But Wit's vindictive spleen, that mocks controul,
Nature's high tax on luxury of soul!
This, both in Bards and Painters, Fame forgives
Their Frailty's buried, but their Genius lives."

Thus far the encomiast, who seeks only for opportunities of bestowing praise. A more impartial narrative will be expected from the biographer.

It may be truly observed of Hogarth, that all his powers of delighting were restrained to his pencil.[74] Having rarely been admitted into polite circles, none of his sharp corners had been rubbed off, so that he continued to the last a gross uncultivated man. The slightest contradiction transported him into rage. To be member of a Club consisting of mechanics, or those not many removes above them, seems to have been the utmost of his social ambition; but even in these assemblies he was oftener sent to Coventry for misbehaviour, than any other person who frequented them. To some confidence in himself he was certainly entitled; for, as a comic painter, he could have claimed no honour that would not most readily have been allowed him;[75] but he was at once unprincipled and variable in his political conduct and attachments. He is also said to have beheld the rising eminence and popularity of Sir Joshua Reynolds with a degree of envy; and, if I am not misinformed, frequently spoke with asperity both of him and his performances. Justice, however, obliges me to add, that our artist was liberal, hospitable, and the most punctual of pay-masters; so that, in spite of the emoluments his works had procured to him, he left but an inconsiderable fortune to his widow. His plates indeed are such resources as may not speedily be exhausted. Some of his domestics had lived many years in his service, a circumstance that always reflects credit on a master. Of most of these he painted strong likenesses on a canvas still in Mrs. Hogarth's possession.

His widow has also a portrait of her husband, and an excellent bust of him by Roubilliac, a strong resemblance; and one of his brother-in-law Mr. Thornhill, much resembling the countenance of Mrs. Hogarth. Several of his portraits also remain in her possession: viz. a finished portrait of Mrs. Mary Lewis; Thomas Coombes of Dorsetshire, aged 108; Lady Thornhill; Mrs. Hogarth herself, &c. &c.

A portrait of Hogarth with his hat on, painted for the late Rev. Mr. Townley by Weltdon, and said to be finished by himself, is in the possession of Mr. James Townley, proctor in Doctors Commons. A mezzotinto print from it will be mentioned under the year 1781 in the [Catalogue].

Mr. Edwards, of Beaufort Buildings, has the portrait of Sir George Hay, The Savoyard Girl, The Bench, and Mary Queen of Scots,[76] by Hogarth.

A conversation-piece by him is likewise at Wanstead in Essex, the seat of Earl Tylney.[77] And Mrs. Hoadly has a scene of Ranger and Clarinda in The Suspicious Husband; and the late Chancellor Hoadly repeating a song to Dr. Greene, for him to compose; both by Hogarth. The first of these is an indifferent picture, and contains very inadequate likenesses of the persons represented.

One of the best portraits Hogarth ever painted, is at Lichfield. It is of a gentleman with whom he was very intimate, and at whose houses at Mortlake and in Ironmongers-Lane he spent much of his time—Mr. Joseph Porter, of London, merchant, who died April 7, 1749. Mrs. Porter the sister of this gentleman (who was daughter of Dr. Johnson's wife by a former husband) is in possession of the picture.—John Steers, esq. (of The Paper Buildings in The Temple) has an auction by Hogarth, in which Dr. Chauncey, Dr. Snagg, and others, are introduced; and the Earl of Exeter has a butcher's shop, with Slack fighting, &c.

Of Hogarth's lesser plates many were destroyed. When he wanted a piece of copper on a sudden, he would take any from which he had already worked off such a number of impressions as he supposed he should sell. He then sent it to be effaced, beat out, or otherwise altered to his present purpose.

The plates which remained in his possession were secured to Mrs. Hogarth by his will, dated August 12, 1764, chargeable with an annuity of 80 l. to his sister Anne,[78] who survived him. When, on the death of his other sister, she left off the business in which she was engaged (see, in the Catalogue, the first article among the "[Prints of uncertain date],") he kindly took her home, and generously supported her, making her, at the same time, useful in the disposal of his prints. Want of tenderness and liberality to his relations was not among the failings of Hogarth.

Of Hogarth's drawings and contributions towards the works of others, perhaps a number, on enquiry, might be found. An acquaintance of his, the late worthy Mr. John Sanderson, architect, who repaired Woburn Abbey, as well as Bedford House in Bloomsbury-square, possessed several of his curiosities. One was a sketch in black-lead of a celebrated young engraver (long since dead) in a salivation. The best that can be said of it is, that it was most disgustingly natural. Even the coarse ornaments on the corners of the blankets which enwrapped him, were characteristically expressed. Our artist seems to have repeated the same idea, though with less force, and fewer adjuncts, in the third of his Election prints, where a figure swaddled up in flannel is conveyed to the hustings. Two other works, viz. a drawing in Indian ink, and a painting in oil colours, exhibited Bedford House in different points of view; the figures only by Hogarth. Another represented the corner of a street, with a man drinking under the spout of a pump, and heartily angry with the water, which, by issuing out too fast, and in too great quantities, had deluged his face. Our great painter had obliged Mr. Sanderson with several other comic sketches, &c. but most of them had been either begged or stolen, before the communicator of these particulars became acquainted with him.

In the year 1745, Launcelot Burton was appointed naval officer at Deal. Hogarth had seen him by accident; and on a piece of paper, previously impressed by a plain copper-plate, drew his figure with a pen, in imitation of a coarse etching. He was represented on a lean Canterbury hack, with a bottle sticking out of his pocket; and underneath was an inscription, intimating that he was going down to take possession of his place. This was inclosed to him in a letter; and some of his friends, who were in the secret, protested the drawing to be a print which they had seen exposed to sale at the shops in London; a circumstance that put him in a violent passion, during which he wrote an abusive letter to Hogarth, whose name was subscribed to the work. But, after poor Burton's tormentors had kept him in suspence throughout an uneasy three weeks, they proved to him that it was no engraving, but a sketch with a pen and ink. He then became so perfectly reconciled to his resemblance, that he shewed it with exultation to Admiral Vernon, and all the rest of his friends.

In 1753, Hogarth returning with Dr. Morell from a visit to Mr. Rich at Cowley, stopped his chariot, and got out, being struck by a large drawing (with a coal) on the wall of an alehouse. He immediately made a sketch of it with triumph; it was a St. George and the Dragon, all in strait lines.

Hogarth made one essay in sculpture. He wanted a sign to distinguish his house in Leicester-fields; and thinking none more proper than the Golden Head, he, out of a mass of cork made up of several thicknesses compacted together, carved a bust of Vandyck, which he gilt and placed over his door. It is long since decayed, and was succeeded by a head in plaster, which has also perished; and is supplied by a head of Sir Isaac Newton. Hogarth modelled another resemblance of Vandyck in clay; which is likewise destroyed.

It is very properly observed by Mr. Walpole, that "If ever an author wanted a commentary, that none of his beauties might be lost, it is Hogarth; not from being obscure (for he never was that but in two or three of his first prints, where transient national follies, as Lotteries, Free-masonry, and the South Sea, were his topics) but for the use of foreigners, and from a multiplicity of little incidents, not essential to, but always heightening the principal action. Such is the spider's web extended over the poor's box in a parish church; the blunders in architecture in the nobleman's seat, seen through the window, in the first print of Marriage à la Mode; and a thousand in the Strollers dressing in a barn, which, for wit and imagination, without any other aid, is perhaps the best of all his works; as, for useful and deep satire, that on the Methodists is the most sublime. Rouquet, the enameller, published a French explanation, though a superficial one, of many of his prints, which, it was said, he had drawn up for the use of Marshal Belleisle, then a prisoner in England."

However great the deficiencies in this work may be, it was certainly suggested by Hogarth, and drawn up at his immediate request. I receive this information from undoubted authority. Some of the circumstances explanatory of the plates, he communicated; the rest he left to be supplied by Rouquet his near neighbour, who lived in the house at which Gardelle the enameller afterwards lodged, and murdered his landlady Mrs. King. Rouquet, who (as I learn from Mr. Walpole) was a Swiss of French extraction, had formerly published a small tract on the state of the Arts in England, and another, intituled "L'Art de peinture en fromage ou en ramequin, 1755;" 12mo. (V. "La France litteraire, ou Dictionaire des Auteurs François vivans, par M. Formey, 1757.") On the present occasion he was liberally paid by Hogarth, for having cloathed his sentiments and illustrations in a foreign dress. This pamphlet was designed, and continues to be employed, as a constant companion to all such sets of his prints as go abroad. Only the letter descriptive of the March to Finchley was particularly meant for the instruction of Marshal Belleisle.[79]

It was added after the three former epistles had been printed off, and before the plate was published. The entire performance, however, in my opinion, exhibits very strong marks of the vivacious compiler's taste, country, and prejudices. Indeed many passages must have been inserted without the privity of his employer, who had no skill in the French language. That our clergy always affect to ride on white horses, and other remarks of a similar turn, &c. &c. could never have fallen from the pen of Hogarth, or any other Englishman.

This epistle bears also internal evidence to the suggestions Rouquet received from Hogarth. Are not the self-congratulations and prejudices of our artist sufficiently visible in the following passage?

"Ce Tableau dis-je a le defaut d'etre encore tout brillant de cette ignoble fraîcheur qu'on decouvre dans la nature, et qu'on ne voit jamais dans les cabinets bien célèbres. Le tems ne l'a point encore obscurci de cette decte fumée, de ce usage sacré, qui le cachera quelque jour aux yeux profanes du vulgaire, pour ne laisser voir ses beautés qu'aux initiés."

The title of this performance, is, "Lettres de Monsieur * * à un de ses Amis à Paris, pour lui expliquer les Estampes de Monsieur Hogarth.—Imprimé à Londres: et se vend chez R. Dodsley, dans Pall Mall; et chez M. Cooper, dans Paternoster Row, 1746." (Le prix est de douze sols.)

I should here observe, that this pamphlet affords only descriptions of the Harlot's and Rake's Progress, Marriage à la Mode, and the March to Finchley. Nine other plates, viz. the Modern Midnight Conversation, the Distressed Poet, the Enraged Musician, the Fair, Strolling Actresses dressing in a Barn, and the Four Times of the Day, are enumerated without particular explanation.

I am authorized to add, that Hogarth, not long before his death, had determined, in compliance with the repeated solicitations of his customers, to have this work enlarged and rendered into English, with the addition of ample comments on all his performances undescribed by Rouquet.

"Hogarth Moralised"[80] will however in some small degree (a very small one) contribute to preserve the memory of those temporary circumstances which Mr. Walpole is so justly apprehensive will be lost to posterity. Such an undertaking indeed, requires a more intimate acquaintance with fleeting customs, and past occurrences, than the compiler of this work can pretend to. Yet enough has been done by him to awaken a spirit of enquiry, and point out the means by which it may be farther gratified.

The works of Hogarth, as his elegant biographer has well observed, are his history;[81] and the curious are highly indebted to Mr. Walpole for a catalogue of prints, drawn up from his own valuable collection, in 1771. But as neither that catalogue, nor his appendix to it in 1780, have given the whole of Mr. Hogarth's labours, I hope that I shall not be blamed if, by including Mr. Walpole's catalogue, I have endeavoured from later discoveries of our artist's prints in other collections, to arrange them in chronological order. It may not be unamusing to trace the rise and progress of a Genius so strikingly original.

Hogarth gave first impressions of all his plates to his late friends the Rev. Mr. Townley and Dr. Isaac Schomberg.[82] Both sets were sold since the death of these gentlemen. That which was Dr. Schomberg's became the property of the late Sir John Chapman, baronet; and passed after his death into the hands of his brother, the late Sir William Chapman. I should add, indeed, that our artist never sorted his impressions, selecting the slight from the strong ones: so that they who wish to possess any equal series of his prints, must pick it out of different sets.

A portrait of Samuel Martin, esq. the antagonist of Mr. Wilkes, which Mr. Hogarth had painted for his own use, he gave as a legacy to Mr. Martin.

Mrs. Baynes, of Kneeton-Hall, near Richmond, Yorkshire, has an original picture by Hogarth, four feet two inches long, by two feet four inches wide. It is a landscape, with several figures; a man driving sheep; a boat upon a piece of water, and a distant view of a town. This picture was bought in London, by her father, many years ago.

At Lord Essex's sale, in January 1777, Mr. Garrick bought a picture by Hogarth, being the examination of the recruits before the justices Shallow and Silence. For this, it was said in the news-papers, he gave 350 guineas. I have since been told, that remove the figure 3, and the true price paid by the purchaser remains. In private he allowed that he never gave the former of these sums, though in the public prints he did not think such a confession necessary. It was in reality an indifferent performance, as those of Hogarth commonly were, when he strove to paint up to the ideas of others.

Mr. Browning, of King's College, Cambridge, has a small picture by Hogarth, representing Clare-Market. It seems to have been one of our artist's early performances.

There are three large pictures by Hogarth, over the altar in the church of St. Mary Redcliff at Bristol; the sealing of the sacred Sepulchre, the Ascension, and the three Maries, &c. A sum of money was left to defray the expence of these ornaments, and it found its way into Hogarth's pocket. The original sketches in oil for these performances, are now at Mrs. Hogarth's house in Leicester-fields.

In Lord Grosvenor's house, at Milbank, Westminster, is a small painting by our artist on the following subject. A boy's paper-kite in falling become entangled with furze: the boy arrives just as a crow is tearing it in pieces. The expression in his face is worthy of Hogarth.

Hogarth was also supposed to have had some hand in the exhibition of signs,[83] projected above 20 years ago by Bonnel Thornton, of festive memory; but I am informed, that he contributed no otherwise towards this display, than by a few touches of chalk. Among the heads of distinguished personages, finding those of the King of Prussia and the Empress of Hungary, he changed the cast of their eyes so as to make them leer significantly at each other. This is related on the authority of Mr. Colman.

Mr. Richardson ("now," as Dr. Johnson says, "better known by his books than his pictures," though his colouring is allowed to be masterly) having accounted for some classical quotations in his notes on Milton, unlearned as he was, by his son's assisting him as a telescope does the eye in astronomy; Hogarth shewed him with a telescope looking through his son (in no very decent attitude) at a Virgil aloft on a shelf; but afterwards destroyed the plate, and recalled the prints. Qu. if any remain, and what date?—I much question whether this subject was ever thrown upon copper, or meant for the public eye.

In the "Nouveau Dictionnaire Historique, Caen, 1783," our artist is thus characterized: "Ses compositions sont mal dessinées & foiblement colories; mais ce sont des tableaux parlans de diverses scènes comiques ou morales de la vie. Il avoit négligé le méchanisme de son art, c'est à-dire, les traits du pinceau, le rapport des parties entr'elles, l'effèt du clare obscure, l'harmonie du coloris, &c. pour s'élever jusqu'à la perfection de ce méchanisme, c'est à-dire, au poétique & au moral de la peinture. 'Je reconnois,' disoit-il, 'tout le monde pour juge compétent de mes tableaux, excepté les connoisseurs de profession.' Un seul exemple prouvera combien réussit. Il avoit fait graver une estampe, dans laquelle il avoit exprimé avec énergie les différens tourmens qu'on fait éprouver aux animaux. Un charrier fouettoit un jour ses chevaux avec beaucoup de dureté; un bon homme, touché de pitié, lui dit, 'Miserable! tu n'as donc pas vu l'estampe d'Hogarth?' Il n'étoit pas seulement peintre, il fut écrivain. Il publia en 1750 un traité en Anglois, intitulé, 'Analyse de la Beauté.' L'auteur pretend que les formes arrondies constituent la beauté du corps: principe vrai à certains égards, faux a plusieurs autres. Voy. sur cet artiste, la sécond volume du 'Mercure de France,' Janvier, 1770."

Mr. Peter Dupont, a merchant, had the drawing of Paul before Felix, which he purchased for 20 guineas, and bound up with a set of Hogarth's prints. The whole set was afterwards sold by auction, at Baker's, for 17 l. to Mr. Ballard of Little Britain, in whose catalogue it stood some time marked at 25 l. and was parted with for less than that sum.

The following original drawings, by Hogarth, are now in the collection of the Rev. Dr. Lort:

A coloured sketch of a Family Picture, with ten whole-length figures, most insipidly employed. A Head of a Sleeping Child, in colours, as large as life, &c. &c. &c.

When Hogarth designed the print intituled Morning, his idea of an Old Maid appears to have been adopted from one of that forlorn sisterhood, when emaciated by corroding appetites, or, to borrow Dryden's more forcible language, by "agony of unaccomplished love." But there is in being, and perhaps in Leicester-fields, a second portrait by our artist, exhibiting the influence of the same misfortune on a more fleshy carcase. The ancient virgin[84] now treated of, is corpulent even to shapelessness. Her neck resembles a collar of brawn; and had her arms been admitted on the canvas, they must have rivalled in magnitude the thighs of the Farnesian god. Her bosom, luckily for the spectator, is covered; as a display of it would have served only to provoke abhorrence. But what words can paint the excess of malice and vulgarity predominant in her visage!—an inflated hide that seems bursting with venom—a brow wrinkled by a Sardonic grin that threatens all the vengeance an affronted Fury would rejoice to execute. Such ideas also of warmth does this mountain of quaggy flesh communicate, that, without hyperbole, one might swear she would parch the earth she trod on, thaw a frozen post-boy, or over-heat a glasshouse. "How dreadful," said a bystander, "would be this creature's hatred!" "How much more formidable," replied his companion, "would be her love!"—Such, however, was the skill of Hogarth, that he could impress similar indications of stale virginity on features directly contrasted, and force us to acknowledge one identical character in the brim-full and exhausted representative of involuntary female celibacy.

Mr. S. Ireland has likewise a sketch in chalk, on blue paper, of Falstaff and his companions; two sketches intended for the "Happy Marriage;" a sketch for a picture to shew the pernicious effects of masquerading; sketch of King George II. and the royal family; sketch of his present Majesty, taken hastily on seeing the new coinage of 1764; portrait of Hogarth by himself, with a palette; of Justice Welsh;[85] of Sir James Thornhill; of Sir Edward Walpole;[86] of his friend George Lambert, the landscape-painter; of a boy; of a girl's head, in the character of Diana, finished according to Hogarth's idea of beauty; of a black girl; and of Governor Rogers and his family, a conversation-piece; eleven Sketches from Nature, designed for Mr. Lambert; four drawings of conversations at Button's Coffee-house; Cymon and Iphigenia; two black chalk drawings (landscapes) given to Mr. Kirby in 1762; three heads, slightly drawn with a pen by Hogarth, to exemplify his distinction between Character and Caricature, done at the desire of Mr. Townley, whose son gave them to Dr. Schomberg; a landscape in oil: with several other sketches in oil.

The late Mr. Forrest, of York Buildings, was in possession of a sketch in oil of our Saviour (designed as a pattern for painted glass), together with the original portrait of Tibson the Laceman,[87] and several drawings descriptive of the incidents that happened during a five days tour by land and water. The parties were Messieurs Hogarth, Thornhill (son of the late Sir James), Scott (the ingenious landscape-painter of that name), Tothall,[88] and Forrest. They set out at midnight, at a moment's warning, from the Bedford Arms Tavern, with each a shirt in his pocket. They had particular departments to attend to; Hogarth and Scott made the drawings; Thornhill the map; Tothall faithfully discharged the joint office of treasurer and caterer; and Forrest wrote the journal. They were out five days only; and on the second night after their return, the book was produced, bound, gilt, and lettered, and read at the same tavern to the members of the club then present. Mr. Forrest had also drawings of two of the members (Gabriel Hunt and Ben Read), remarkable fat men, in ludicrous situations. Etchings from all these having been made in 1782, accompanied by the original journal in letter-press, an account of them will appear in the Catalogue under that year.

A transcript of the journal was left in the hands of Mr. Gostling,[89] who wrote an imitation of it in Hudibrastic verse; twenty copies only of which having been printed in 1781, as a literary curiosity,[90] I was requested by some of my friends to reprint it at the end of the second edition of this work. It had originally been kept back, in compliment to the writer of the prose journey; but, as that in the mean time had been given to the public by authority, to preserve the Tour in a more agreeable dress cannot, it is presumed, be deemed an impropriety. See the [Appendix, N° III].

[1] History of Westmoreland, Vol. I. p. 479.

[2] "I must leave you to the annals of Fame," says Mr. Walker, the ingenious Lecturer on Natural Philosophy, who favoured me with these particulars, "for the rest of the anecdotes of this great Genius; and shall endeavour to shew you, that his family possessed similar talents, but they were destined, like the wild rose,

"'To waste their sweetness in the desart air.'

"Happy should I be to rescue from oblivion the name of Ald Hogart, whose songs and quibbles have so often delighted my childhood! These simple strains of this mountain Theocritus were fabricated while he held the plough, or was leading his fewel from the hills. He was as critical an observer of nature as his nephew, for the narrow field he had to view her in: not an incident or an absurdity in the neighbourhood escaped him. If any one was hardy enough to break through any decorum of old and established repute; if any one attempted to over-reach his neighbour, or cast a leering eye at his wife; he was sure to hear himself sung over the whole parish, nay, to the very boundaries of the Westmoreland dialect: so that his songs were said to have a greater effect on the manners of his neighbourhood, than even the sermons of the parson himself.

"But his poetical talents were not confined to the incidents of his village. I myself have had the honour to bear a part in one of his plays (I say one, for there are several of them extant in MS. in the mountains of Westmoreland at this hour). This play was called 'The Destruction of Troy.' It was written in metre, much in the manner of Lopez de Vega, or the ancient French drama; the unities were not too strictly observed, for the siege of ten years was all represented; every hero was in the piece; so that the Dramatis Personæ consisted of every lad of genius in the whole parish. The wooden horse—Hector dragged by the heels—the fury of Diomed—the flight of Æneas—and the burning of the city, were all represented. I remember not what Fairies had to do in all this; but as I happened to be about three feet high at the time of this still-talked-of exhibition, I personated one of these tiny beings. The stage was a fabrication of boards placed about six feet high, on strong posts; the green-room was partitioned off with the same materials; it's cieling was the azure canopy of heaven; and the boxes, pit, and galleries, were laid into one by the Great Author of Nature, for they were the green slope of a fine hill. Despise not, reader, this humble state of the provincial drama; let me tell you, there were more spectators, for three days together, than your three theatres in London would hold; and let me add, still more to your confusion, that you never saw an audience half so well pleased.

"The exhibition was begun with a grand procession, from the village to a great stone (dropt by the Devil about a quarter of a mile off, when he tried in vain to erect a bridge across Windermere; so the people, unlike the rest of the world, have remained a very good sort of people ever since). I say the procession was begun by the minstrels of five parishes, and were followed by a yeoman on bull-back—you stare!—stop then till I inform you that this adept had so far civilised his bull, that he would suffer the yeoman to mount his back, and even to play upon his fiddle there. The managers besought him to join the procession; but the bull, not being accustomed to much company, and particularly so much applause; whether he was intoxicated with praise; thought himself affronted, and made game of; or whether a favourite cow came across his imagination; certain it was, that he broke out of the procession; erected his tail, and, like another Europa, carried off the affrighted yeoman and his fiddle, over hedge and ditch, till he arrived at his own field. This accident rather inflamed than depressed the good humour arising from the procession; and the clown, or jack-pudding of the piece, availed himself so well of the incident, that the lungs and ribs of the spectators were in manifest danger. This character was the most important personage in the whole play: for his office was to turn the most serious parts of the drama into burlesque and ridicule: he was a compound of Harlequin and the Merry Andrew, or rather the Arch-fool of our ancient kings. His dress was a white jacket, covered with bulls, bears, birds, fish, &c. cut in various coloured cloth. His trowsers were decorated in like manner, and hung round with small bells; and his cap was that of Folly, decorated with bells, and an otter's brush impending. The lath sword must be of great antiquity in this island, for it has been the appendage of a jack-pudding in the mountains of Westmoreland time out of mind.

"The play was opened by this character with a song, which answered the double purpose of a play-bill and a a prologue, for his ditty gave the audience a foretaste of the rueful incidents they were about to behold; and it called out the actors, one by one, to make the spectators acquainted with their names and characters, walking round and round till the whole Dramatis Personæ made one great circle on the stage. The audience being thus become acquainted with the actors, the play opened with Paris running away with Helen, and Menelaus scampering after them; then followed the death of Patroclus, the rage of Achilles, the persuasions of Ulysses,&c. &c. and the whole interlarded with apt songs, both serious and comic, all the production of Ald Hogart. The bard, however, at this time had been dead some years, and I believe this Fete was a Jubilee to his memory; but let it not detract from the invention of Mr. Garrick, to say that his at Stratford was but a copy of one forty years ago on the banks of Windermere. Was it any improvement, think you, to introduce several bulls into the procession instead of one? But I love not comparisons, and so conclude. Yours, &c. Adam Walker."

However Ald Hogart might have succeeded in the dramatic line, and before a rustic audience, his poems of a different form are every way contemptible. Want of grammar, metre, sense, and decency, are their invariable characteristics. This opinion is founded on a thorough examination of a whole bundle of them, transmitted by a friend since the first publication of this work.

[3] Vir Clarissime, Excusso Malpighio intra sex vel plurimum septem septimanas te tamen per totum inconsulto, culpa est in Bibliopolam conferenda, qui adeo festinanter urgebat opus ut moras nectere nequivimus. Utut sit, tamen mihimet adulor me satis recte authoris & verba & mentem cepisse (diligenter enim noctes atque dies opere incubui ne tibi vel ulli regiorum tuorum sodalium molestus forem). Rudiora tamen quorum specimen infra exhibere placuit, & Italico-Latina, juxta præceptum tuum, similia feci aliter si fecissem, totus fere liber mutationem sul iisset. Authorem tam pueriliter & barbare loquentem nunquam antehac evolvi quod meminerim; faciat ergo lector, ut solent nautæ, qui dum fœtet aqua, nares pilissando comprimunt, spretis enim verbis sensum, si quis est, attendat. Multa (infinita pœnè dixerim) authoris errata emendavi, quædam tamen non animadversa vereor; Augeæ enim stabulum non nisi Hercules repurgavit. Partem Italico sermone conscriptam præetermitto, istam enim provinciam adornare suscepit Doctor Pragestee Italus; quam bene rem gessit, ipse viderit. Menda Typographica, spero, aut nulla, aut levia apparebunt. Tuam tamen & Regiæ Societatis censuram exoptat facilem, Tibi omni studio addictissimus,

"RICHARDUS HOGARTH, ...Preli Curator."

[4] He published "Grammar Disputations; or, an Examination of the eight parts of speech by way of question and answer, English and Latin, whereby children in a very little time will learn, not only the knowledge of grammar, but likewise to speak and write Latin; as I have found by good experience. At the end is added a short Chronological index of men and things of the greatest note, alphabetically digested, chiefly relating to the Sacred and Roman History, from the beginning of the World to the Year of Christ 1640, and downwards. Written for the use of schools of Great-Britain, by Richard Hogarth Schoolmaster, 1712." This little book has also a Latin title-page to the same purpose, "Disputationes Grammaticales, &c." and is dedicated, "Scholarchis, Ludimagistris, et Hypodidascalis Magnæ Britanniæ."

[5] Hogart was the family name, probably a corruption of Hogherd, for the latter is more like the local pronunciation than the first. This name disgusted Mrs. Hogart; and before the birth of her son, she prevailed upon her husband to liquify it into Hogarth. This circumstance was told to me by Mr. Walker, who is a native of Westmoreland. By Dr. Morell, I was informed that his real name was Hoggard, or Hogard, which, himself altered, by changing d into ð, the Saxon th.

[6] On what authority this is said, I am yet to learn. The registers of St. Bartholomew the Great, and of St. Bartholomew the Less, have both been searched for the same information, with fruitless solicitude. The school of Hogarth's father, in 1712, was in the parish of St. Martin's Ludgate. In the register of that parish, therefore, the births of his children, and his own death, may probably be found.[A]

[A] The register of St. Martin's Ludgate, has also been searched to no purpose.

[7] This circumstance has, since it was first written, been verified by a gentleman who has often heard a similar account from one of the last Head Assay-Masters at Goldsmiths-Hall, who was apprentice to a silversmith in the same street with Hogarth, and intimate with him during the greatest part of his life.

[8] Universal Museum, 1764. p. 549. The same kind of revenge, however, was taken by Verrio, who, on the cieling of St. George's Hall at Windsor, borrowed the face of Mrs. Marriot, the housekeeper, for one of the Furies.

[9] This picture is noticed in the article Thornhill, in the Biographia Britannica, where, instead of Wanstead, it is called the Wandsworth assembly. There seems to be a reference to it in "A Poetical Epistle to Mr. Hogarth, an eminent History and Conversation Painter," written June 1730, and published by the author (Mr. Mitchell), with two other epistles, in 1731, 4to.

"Large families obey your hand;
Assemblies rise at your command."

Mr. Hogarth designed that year the frontispiece to Mr. Mitchell's Opera, The Highland Clans.

[10] Of all these a more particular account will be given in the Catalogue annexed.

[11] Brother to Henry Overton, the well-known publisher of ordinary prints, who lived over against St. Sepulchre's Church, and sold many of Hogarth's early pieces coarsely copied, as has since been done by Dicey in Bow Church-yard.

[12] This conceit is borrowed from Vanloo's picture of Colley Cibber, whose daughter has the same employment.