formances at the time when he was engaged by booksellers, and rose not above those they generally employ; but in his maturer age, when he had invented his art, and gave a few designs for some great authors, as Cervantes, Gulliver, and even Hudibras, his compositions were tame, spiritless, void of humour, and never reach the merits of the books they were designed to illustrate. He could not bend his talents to think after anybody else. He could think like a great genius rather than after one. I have a sketch in oil that he gave me, which he intended to engrave. It was done at the time (in 1729. Brit. Top. vol. i. p. 636) that the House of Commons appointed a committee to inquire into the cruelties exercised on prisoners in the Fleet to extort money from them. The scene 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 jailer. It is the very figure that Salvator Rosa would have drawn for Iago in the moment of detection. Villany, 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 speaking that ever was drawn; if it was not, it is still finer. It is seldom that his figures do not express the character he intended to give them. When they wanted an illustration that colours could not bestow, collateral circumstances, full of wit, supply notes. The nobleman in Marriage à la Mode has a great air-the coronet on his crutches, and his pedigree issuing out of the bowels of William the Conqueror add his character. In the breakfast, the old steward reflects for the spectator. Sometimes a short label is an epigram, and is never introduced without improving the subject. Unfortunately, some circumstances that were temporary will be lost to posterity, the fate of all comic authors; and 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, freemasonry, 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 end, I think the best of all his works; as for useful and deep satire, that on the Methodists is the most sublime. The scenes of bedlam and the gaming-house are inimitable representations of our serious follies or unavoidable woes; and the concern shown by the lord-mayor when the companion of his childhood is brought before him as a criminal, is a touching picture, and big with humane admonition and reflection. Another instance of this author's genius is his not condescending to explain his moral lessons by the trite poverty of allegory. If he had an emblematic thought, he expressed it with wit rather than by a symbol. Once indeed he descended to use an allegoric personage, and was not happy in it; in one of his election prints Britannia's chariot breaks down, while the coachman and footman are playing at cards on the box. Sometimes, too, to please his vulgar customers, he stooped to low images and national satire, as in the two prints of France and England, and that of The Gates of Calais. The last, indeed, has great merit, though the caricatura is carried to excess. In all these the painter's purpose was to make his countrymen observe the ease and affluence of a free government, opposed to the wants and woes of slaves. In Beer Street, the English butcher tossing a Frenchman in the air with one hand is absolute hyperbole; and, what is worse, was an afterthought, not being in the first edition. The Gin Alley is much superior, horridly fine, but disgusting. His Bartholomew Fair is full of humour; the March to Finchley, of nature; the Enraged Musician tends to farce. The Four Parts of the Day, except the last, are inferior to few of his works. The Sleeping Congregation, the Lecture on the Vacuum, the Laughing Audience, the Consultation of Physicians, as a coat of arms, and the Cockpit, are perfect in their several kinds. The prints of Industry and Idleness have more merit in the intention than execution. Towards his latter end he now and then repeated himself, but seldomer than most great authors who executed so much. It may appear singular, that of an author whom I call comic, and who is so celebrated for his humour, I should speak in general in so serious a style; but it would be suppressing the merits of his heart to consider him only as a promoter of laughter. I think I have shown that his views were more generous and exten He sive. Mirth coloured his pictures, but benevo- | painter of portraits: the most ill-suited emlence designed them. He smiled like Socrates, ployment imaginable to a man whose turn that men might not be offended at his lectures, certainly was not flattery, nor his talent adapand might learn to laugh at their own follies. ted to look on vanity without a sneer. Yet When his topics were harmless, all his touches his facility in catching a likeness, and the were marked with pleasantry and fun. He method he chose of painting families and connever laughed, like Rabelais, at nonsense that versations in small, then a novelty, drew him he imposed for wit; but, like Swift, combined prodigious business for some time. It did not incidents that divert one from their unexpected last: either from his applying to the real bent encounter, and illustrate the tale he means of his disposition, or from his customers appreto tell. Such are the hens roosting on the hending that a satirist was too formidable a upright waves in the scene of The Strollers, confessor for the devotees of self-love. and the devils drinking porter on the altar. had already dropped a few of his smaller prints The manners or costume are more than observed on some reigning follies; but as the dates are in every one of his works. The very furniture wanting on most of them, I cannot ascertain of his rooms describes the characters of the which; though those on the South Sea and persons to whom they belong: a lesson that Rabbit Woman prove that he had early dismight be of use to comic authors. It was re- covered his talent for ridicule, though he did served to Hogarth to write a scene of furniture. not then think of building his reputation or The rake's levee room, the nobleman's dining- fortune on its powers. room, the apartments of the husband and wife in Marriage à la Mode, the alderman's parlour, the poet's bed-chamber, and many others, are the history of the manners of the age. But perhaps too much has been said of this great genius as an author; it is time to speak of him as a painter, and to mention the circumstances of his life, in both of which I shall be more brief. His works are his history; as a painter he had but slender merit. He was born in the parish of St. Bartholomew, London, the son of a low tradesman, who bound him to a mean engraver of arms1 on plate; but before his time was expired he felt the impulse of genius, and felt it directed him to painting, though little apprised at that time of the mode nature had intended he should pursue. His apprenticeship was no sooner expired, 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 chiaroscuro. At first he worked for booksellers, and designed and engraved plates for several books; and, which is extraordinary, no symptom of genius 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. On the success, however, of those plates he commenced painter, a 1 This is wrong; it was to Mr. Gamble, an eminent silversmith. Nichol's Biog. Remarks. His Midnight Modern Conversation was the first work that showed his command of character; but it was The Harlot's Progress, published in 1729 or 1730, that established his fame. The pictures were scarce finished, and no sooner exhibited to the public, and the subscription opened, than above twelve hundred names were entered on his book. The familiarity of the subject and the propriety of the execution made it tasted by all ranks of people. Every engraver set himself to copy it, and thousands of imitations were dispersed all over the kingdom. It was made into a pantomime, and performed on the stage. The Rake's Progress, perhaps superior, had not so much success, from want of novelty; nor indeed is the print of The Arrest equal in merit to the others. The curtain was now drawn aside, and his genius stood displayed in its full lustre. From time to time he continued to give those works. that should 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. But not only his colouring and drawing rendered him unequal to the task; 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 his Danaë, the old nurse tries a coin of the golden shower with her teeth to see if it is true gold; in the Pool of Bethesda, a servant of a rich ulcerated lady beats back a poor man | Hogarth's performance was more ridiculous that sought the same celestial remedy. Both than anything he had ever ridiculed. He set circumstances are justly thought, but rather too the price of £400 on it, and had it returned ludicrous. It is a much more capital fault that on his hands by the person for whom it was Danae herself is a mere nymph of Drury. He painted. He took subscriptions for a plate of seems to have conceived no higher idea of beauty. it, but had the sense at last to suppress it. I So little had he eyes to his own deficiencies, make no more apology for this account than that he believed he had discovered the princi- for the encomiums I have bestowed on him. ple of grace. With the enthusiasm of a dis- Both are dictated by truth, and are the history coverer he cried, "Eureka!" This was his of a great man's excellencies and errors. famous line of beauty, the ground-work of his Milton, it is said, preferred his Paradise ReAnalysis, a book that has many sensible hints gained to his immortal poem. and observations, but that did not carry the con- The last memorable event of our artist's life viction nor meet the universal acquiescence he was his quarrel with Mr. Wilkes; in which, expected. As he treated his contemporaries if Mr. Hogarth did not commence direct hoswith scorn, they triumphed over this publica-tilities on the latter, he at least obliquely gave tion, and imitated him to expose him. Many the first offence by an attack on the friends wretched burlesque prints came out to ridicule and party of that gentleman. This conduct his system. There was a better answer to it was the more surprising, as he had all his life in one of the two prints that he gave to illus- avoided dipping his pencil in political contests, trate his hypothesis. In The Ball, had he and had early refused a very lucrative offer confined himself to such outlines as compose that was made to engage him in a set of prints awkwardness and deformity, he would have against the head of a court party. Without proved half his assertion; but he has added two entering into the merits of the cause, I shall samples of grace in a young lord and lady that only state the fact. In September, 1762, Mr. are strikingly stiff and affected. They are a Hogarth published his print of The Times. Bath beau and a county beauty. It was answered by Mr. Wilkes in a severe North Briton. 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, and in which the severest strokes fell on a defect that the painter had neither caused nor could amend-his age; 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 vitula tu dignus et hic. Never did two angry men of their abilities throw mud with less dexterity. But this was the failing of a visionary. He fell afterwards into a grosser mistake. From a contempt of the ignorant virtuosi of the age, 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 proposition 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 Sigismonda 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 Sigismonda, but no more like Sigismonda than I to Hercules. Mr. Hogarth, in the year 1730, married the only daughter of Sir James Thornhill, by whom he had no children. He died of a dropsy in his breast at his house in Leicester Fields, October 26, 1764. He sold about twenty-four of his principal pictures by auction in 1745. Mr. Vincent Bourne addressed a copy of Latin hendecasyllables to him on his chief pictures, and Roquetti, 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. "THE BEACON."1 BY JOANNA BAILLIE. BASTIANI. TERENTIA. Bast. He's in a blessed mood: what so disturbs him? Ter. What has disturb'd him long, as well thou knowest: Aurora's persevering fond belief That her beloved Ermingard still lives, And will return again. To guide his bark Bast. Ulrick in wisdom should have married them Your widow is a thing of more docility Ter. Thy tongue wags freely. Yet, I must confess, A wayward passion warp'd him from the right, Three hours have pass'd, but pass'd by you unheeded; Who have the while in silent stillness been, Like one forlorn, that has no need of time. Aur. In truth I now but little have to do With time or any thing besides. It passes; Hour follows hour; day follows day; and year, If I so long shall last, will follow year: Like drops that through the cavern'd hermit's roof Some cold spring filters; glancing on his eye At measured intervals, but moving not His fix'd unvaried notice. Ed. Nay, dearest lady, be not so depress'd. You have not ask'd me for my song to day The song you praised so much. Shall I not sing it? I do but wait your bidding. Aur. I thank thy kindness; sing it if thou wilt. 1 One of the" Plays on the Passions:" this one being in illustration of Hope. SONG. Where distant billows meet the sky, As spent they stand and tempest-tost, While distant homes where kinsmen weep, And graves full many a fathom deep, By turns their fitful, gloomy thoughts portray: ""Tis some delusion of the sight, Some northern streamer's paly light." "Fools!" saith roused Hope with generous scorn, "It is the blessed peep of morn, And aid and safety come when comes the day." Spreads o'er heaven's verge its lengthen'd line: And tint the changeful deep below; Now sombre red, now amber bright, Till upward breaks the blazing light; Like floating fire the gleamy billows burn: Far distant on the ruddy tide, A blackening sail is seen to glide; Loud bursts their eager joyful cry, Their hoisted signal waves on high, And life, and strength, and happy thoughts retura. Viol. Kindly enough, but somewhat cross'd with dreams. Aur. And let them fail: though duller thoughts succeed, Aur. How cross'd? What was thy dream? O tell it The bliss e'en of a moment, still is bliss. me! Aur. He does! Then will we have A noble fire. This night our lofty blaze (For many a bark within their widened reach [Taking VIOLA and TERENTIA gaily by the hands. I could like midnight goblins round the flame Ter. Indeed you let your fancy wildly run, Ter. Nay, sweet Aurora, feed not thus thy wishes Viol. [To TER.] Thou wouldst not of her dewdrops spoil the thorn, Because her glory will not last till noon; Nor still the lightsome gambols of the colt, Aur. Thanks, gentle Viola! Thou art ever kind. Ter. And thus a profitable life you'll lead, Aur. Well, taunt me as thou wilt, I'll worship still The blessed morrow, storehouse of all good For wretched folks. They who lament to-day, E en to the earth, be then in honour robed. [TO TER.] Frown not again; we must not wrangle now. Ter. Thou dost such vain and foolish fancies cherish, Thou forcest me to seem unkind and stern. Aur. Ah! be not stern. Edda will sing the song SONG. Wish'd-for gales, the light vane veering, The absent will return, the long, long lost be found. In the tower the ward-bell ringing, Joyful looks through blind tears glancing, Hymned thanks and beadsmen praying, O who can tell each blessed sight and sound That says, he with us bides, our long, long lost is found. Aur. I thank thee: this shall be our daily song. It cheers my heart, although these foolish tears Seem to disgrace its sweetness. |