^mSM^^m ^^^wkj ^^^^^^^I •y^ ,^ m ^k y^ u ■/^ i 1 1 % a bewildering phantasmagoria of strange devices from St. Benet's Hill, expressed in crambo, in jargon, and in heraldic romany : compony, gobony, and chequy ; lions erased and tigers couped ; bucks trippant and bucks vulned ; eagles se- greiant, and dogs sciant ; bezants, plates, torteaux, pomeis, golps, sanguiny-guzes, tawny and saltire,* The revulsion was but to be expected — was indeed inevitable, from the disgust caused by the seven years' transcription of these catalogues of lying wonders, to the contemplation of the real life that surged about Cranbourn Alley and its infinite variety of humours, comic and tragic. " Engrav- ing on copper " at twenty might be the utmost ambition to a young man mortally sick of silver salvers ; but how was it at twenty-one and twenty-two .'' " As a child," writes William, " shows of all kind gave * The bezant (from Byzantium) was a round knob on the scutcheon, blazoned yellow. " Golp " was purple, the colour of an old black eye, so defined by the heralds. "Sanguine" or "guzes" were to be congested red, like bloodshot eyes; "torteaux" were of another kind of red, hke " Simnel cakes." "Pomeis" were to be green like apples. "Tawny" was orange. There were also " hurts " to be blazoned blue, as bruises are. — New-View of London, 1712. 78 WILLIAM HOGARTH. me pleasure." To a lad of his keen eye and swift per- ception, all London must have been full of shows. Not only was there Bartlemy, opened by solemn procession and proclamation of Lord Mayor — Bartlemy with its black-puddings, pantomimes, motions of puppets, rope- dancers emulating the achievements of Jacob Hall, sword-swallowing women, fire-eating salamanders. High Dutch conjurors, Alsatian and Savoyard-Dulcamara quacks selling eye-waters, worm-powders, love-philters, specifics against chincough, tympany, tissick, chrisoms, head-mould-shot, horse-shoe-head, and other strange ail- ments, of which the Register-General makes no mention in his Returns, now-a-days ;* not only did Southwark, Tottenham and May Fair flourish, but likewise Horn Fair by Charlton, in Kent, easy of access by Gravesend tilt- boat, which brought to at Deptford Yard, and Hospital Stairs at Greenwich. There were two patent playhouses, Lincoln's Lin and Drury Lane ; and there were Mr. Powell's puppets at the old Tennis-court, in James Street, Haymarket — mysterious edifice, it lingers yet ! looking older than ever, inexplicable, obsolete, elbowed by casinos, poses plastiques, cafes, and American bowl- ing-alleys, yet refusing to budge an inch before the encroachments of Time, who destroys all things, even tennis-courts. It was "old," we hear, in 1720; I have * I believe Pope's sneer against poor Elkanah Settle (who died very com- fortably in the Charterhouse, 1 724, setat. 76 : he was alive in 1 720, and succeeded Rowe as laureate), that he was reduced in his latter days to compass a motion of St. George and the Dragon at Bartholomew fair, and himself enacted the dragon in a peculiar suit of green leather, his own invention, to have been a purely malicious and mendacious bit of spite. Moreover, Settle died years after Pope assumed him to have expired. A LONG LADDER, AND HARD TO CLIMB. 79 been told that tennis is still played there. Gramercy ! by whom .-* Surely at night, when the wicked neigh- bourhood is snatching a short feverish sleep, the "old tennis-courts " must be haunted by sallow, periwigged phantoms of Charles's time, cadaverous beaux in laced bands, puffed sleeves, and flapped, plumed hats. Bats of spectral wire strike the cobweb-balls ; the moonlight can make them cast no shadows on the old brick-wall. And in the gallery sits the harsh-visaged, cynic king, Portsmouth at his side, his little spaniels mumbling the rosettes in his royal shoes. In a kind of copartnership with Mr. Powell's puppets — formerly of the Piazza, Covent Garden, was the famous Faux, the legerdemain, or sleight-of-hand conjuror — the Wiljalba Frikell of his day, and whom Hogarth men- tions in one of his earliest pictorial satires. But Faux did that which the Russian magician, to his credit, does not do : he puffed himself perpetually, and was at immense pains to assure the public through the news- papers that he was not robbed returning from the Duchess of Buckingham's at Chelsea. From Faux's show at the " Long-room," Hogarth might have stepped to Heidegger's — hideous Heidegger's masquerades at the ^ ■ King's Theatre in the Hay market, where also were held " ridotti," and " veglioni" — junketings of an ultra Italian character, and all presented in 1722 by the Middlesex grand jury as intolerable nuisances. Many times, also, did the stern Sir John Gonson {the Harlofs Progress Gonson), justice of peace, much feared by the Phrynes of the hundreds of Drury, inveigh in his sessions-charges against the sinful ridotti and the disorderly veglioni. Other performances took place at the King's Theatre. 80 WILLIAM HOGARTH, There was struggling for its first grasp on the English taste and the Enghsh pocket — a grasp which it has never since lost — that anomalous, inconsistent, delightful enter- tainment, the Italian Opera. Hogarth, as a true-born Briton, hated the harmonious exotic ; and from his earliest plates to the grand series of the Rakes Progress, indulges in frequent flings at Handel (in his Ptolomeo, and before his immortal Oratorio stage), Farinelli, Cuzzoni, Senesino, Faustina, Barrenstadt, and other " soft simpering whiblins." Yet the sturdiest hater of this " new taste of the town " could not refrain from admiring and applauding to the echo that which was called the "miraculously dignified exit of Senesino." This celebrated sortita must have resembled in the almost electrical effect it produced, the elder Kean's " Villain, be sure thou prove," &c. in Othello ; John Kemble's " Mother of the world^ — " in Coriolanus ; Madame Pasta's " lo," m Medea ; and Ristori's world- known " Th," in the Italian version of the same dread trilogy. One of the pleasantest accusations brought against the Italian Opera was preferred some years before 1/20, in the Spectator, when it was pointed out that the principal man or woman singer sang in Italian, while the responses were given, and the choruses chanted by Britons. Judices, in these latter days, I have " as- sisted " at the performance of the Barber of Seville at one of our large theatres, when /^z^(?r^ warbled in Italian with a strong Spanish accent, when Susanna was a Frenchwoman, Doctor Bartolo an Irishman, and the chorus sang in English, and without any H's. More shows remain for Hogarth to take delight in. The quacks, out of Bartlemy time, set up their standings A LONG LADDER, AND HARD TO CLIMB. 8 1 in Moorfields by the madhouse (ilkistrated by Hogarth in the Rakes Progress), and in Covent Garden Market (W. H. in the plate of Morning), by Inigo Jones's rustic church, which he built for the Earl of Bedford : " Build me a barn," quoth the earl. " You shall have the bravest barn in England," returned Inigo, and his lordship had it. There were quacks too, though the loud-voiced beggars interferred with them, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and on Tower Hill, where the sailors and river-side Bohemians were wont to indulge in their favourite diver- sion of "whipping the snake." There were grand shows when a commoner was raised to the peerage or promoted in grade therein — a common occurrence in the midst of all the corruption entailed by the Scottish union and Walpole's wholesale bribery. On these occasions, depu- tations of the heralds came from their dusty old college in Doctor's Commons, and in full costume, to congratu- late the new peer, the viscount made an earl, or the marquis elevated to a dukedom, and to claim by the way a snug amount of fees from the newly-blown dignitary. Strange figures they must have cut, those old kings-at- arms, heralds, and pursuivants ! Everybody remembers the anecdote, since twisted into an allusion to Lord Thurlow's grotesque appearance, of a servant on such an occasion as I have alluded to, saying to his master, " Please, my lord, there's a gentleman in a coach at the door would speak with your lordship ; and, saving your presence, I f/n'n/c lie s tJie knave of spades!' I burst out in unseemly cachinnation the other day at the opening of Parliament, when I saw Rougecroix trotting along the royal gallery of the peers, with those table-napkins stiff with gold embroidery pendent back and front of him like 6 82 WILLIAM HOGARTH. heraldic advertisements. The astonishing equipment was terminated by the black dress pantaloons and patent- leather boots of ordinary life. Jc crevais de rirc : the Lord Chamberlain walking backwards was nothing to it ; yet I daresay Rougecroix looked not a whit more absurd than did Bluemantle and Portcullis in' 1720 with red heels and paste buckles to their Cordovan shoon, and curly periwigs flowing from beneath their cocked hats. Shows, more shows, and William. Hogarth walking London streets to take stock of them all, to lay them up in his memory's ample store-house. He will turn all he has seen to good account some day. There is a show "at the museum of the Royal Society, then sitting at Gresham College. The queer, almost silly things, ex- hibited there ! queer and silly, at least to us, with our magnificent museums in Great Russell Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields and Brompton. I am turning over the Royal Society catalogue as I write : the rarities all set down with a ponderous, simple-minded solemnity. " Dr. Grews " is the conscientious editor. Here shall you find the " sceptre of an Indian king, a dog without a mouth ; a Pegue hat and organ ; a bird of paradise ; a Jewish phylactery ; a model of the Temple of Jerusalem ; a burning-glass contrived by that excellent philosopher and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton " (hats off) ; " three landskips and a catcoptrick paint given by Bishop Wil- kins ; a gun which discharges seven times one after the other presently " (was this a revolver T) ; " a perspective instrument by the ingenious Sir Christopher Wren" (hats off again) ; " a pair of Iceland gloves, a pot of Macassar poison " (oh ! Rowland) ; " the tail of an Indian cow worshipped on the banks of the river Ganges ; A LONG LADDER, AND HARD TO CLIMB. 83 a tuft of coralline ; the cramp fish which by some humour or vapour benumbs the fisherman's arms," and so forth. Hogarth will make use of these " curios " in the fourth scene of the ]\Iarriage a la Mode, and presently, for the studio of Sidrophel in his illustrations to Hiidibras. And there are shows of a sterner and cruder order. Now a pickpocket yelling under a pump ; now a half- naked wretch coming along Whitehall at the tail of a slow-plodding cart, howling under the hangman's lash (that functionary has ceased to be called " Gregory," from the great executioner G. Brandon, and is now, but I have not been able to discover for what reason, " Jack Ketch").* Now it is a libeller or a perjurer in the pillory at Charing in Eastcheap or at the Royal Ex- change. According to his political opinions do the mob — the mob are chiefly of the Jacobite persuasion — pelt the sufferer with eggs and ordure, or cheer him, and fill the hat which lies at his foot on the scaffold with half- pence and even silver. And the sheriffs' men, if duly fee'd, 'do not object to a mug of purl or mum, or even punch, being held by kind hands to the sufferer's lips. So, in Hugo's deathless romance, does Esmeralda give Quasimodo on Xh^carcan to drink from her flask. Mercy is as old as the hills, and will never die. Sometimes in front of " England's Burse," or in Old Palace Yard, an odd, futile, much-laughed-at ceremony takes place : and after solemn proclamation, the common hangman makes a bonfire of such proscribed books as Pretenders no Pre- * 1720. The horrible room in Ne\vg;ate Prison where in cauldrons of boiling pitch the hangman seethed the dissevered limbs of those executed for high treason, and whose quarters were to be exposed, was called "Jack Ketch's kitchen." 6—2 84 WILLIAM HOGARTH. tencc, A sober Reply to Mr. Higgss Tri-theistical Doctrine. Well would it be if the vindictiveness of the .government stopped here ; but alas ! king's messengers are in hot pursuit of the unhappy authors, trace them to the tripe- shop in Hanging Sword Alley, or the cock-loft in Honey Lane Market, where they lie three in a bed ; and the poor scribbling wretches are cast into jail, and de- livered over to the tormentors, losing sometimes their unlucky ears. There is the great sport and show every market morning, known as " bull banking," a sweet suc- cursal to his Majesty's bear-garden and Hockley in the Hole. The game is of the simplest ; take your bull in a narrow thoroughfare, say, Cock Hill, by Smithfield ; have a crowd of Jiomnies dc bonne volontc' ; overturn a couple of hackney coaches at one end of the street, a brewer's dray at the other : then harry your bull up and down, goad him, pelt him, twist his tail, till he roar and is rabid. This is " bull-banking," and oh ! for the sports of merry England ! William Hogarth looks on sternly and wrathfully. He will remember the brutal amuse- ments of the populace when he comes to engrave the Fotir Stages of Cruelty. But I lead him away now to other scenes and shows. There are the wooden horses before Sadler's Hall ; and westward there stands an un- comfortable " wooden horse " for the punishment of sol- diers who are picketed thereon for one and two hours. This wooden horse is on St. James's Mall, over against the gun-house. The torture is one of Dutch William's legacies to the subjects, and has been retained and im- ■ proved on by the slothfully cruel Hanoverian kings. Years afterwards (1745-6), when Hogarth shall send his picture of the Mareh to FineJiley to St. James's for A LONG LADDER, AND HARD TO CLIMB. 85 inspection of his sacred Majesty King George the Second, that potentate will fly into a guard-room rage at the truthful humour of the scene, and will express an opinion that the audacious painter who has caricatured his Foot Guards, should properly suffer the punishment of the _ picket on the "wooden horse " of the Mall. Further afield. There are literally thousands of shop- signs to be read or stared at. There are prize-fights — predecessors of Fig and Broughton contests — gladiatorial exhibitions, in which decayed Life-guardsmen and Irish captains trade-fallen, hack and hew one another with broadsword and backsword on public platforms. Then the " French prophets," whom John Wesley knew, are working sham miracles in Soho, emulating — the impos- tors ! — the marvels done at the tomb of the Abbe Diacre or Chanoine, Paris, and positively holding exhibitions in which fanatics suffer themselves to be trampled, jumped upon, and beaten with clubs, for the greater glory of Molinism ;* even holding academies, where the youth of both sexes are instructed in the arts of foaming at the mouth, falling into convulsions, discoursing in unknown tongues, revealing stigmata produced by the aid of lunar caustic, and other moon-struck madnesses and cheats. Such is revivalism in 1720. William Hogarth is there, observant. He will not forget the French prophets when he executes almost the last and noblest of his plates — albeit, it is directed against English revivalists. Credulity, Superstition and Fanaticism. He leaves Soho, and * Compare these voluntary torments with the description of the Doseh, or horse-trampling ceremonial of the Sheik El Bekree, over the bodies of the faithful, in Lane's Modern Egyptia7is. 86 WILLIAM HOGARTH. wanders eastward and westward. He reads Madam Godfrey's six hundred challenges to the female sex in the newspapers ; sitting, perhaps, at the " Rose," without Temple Bar ; at the " Diapente," whither- the beaux, feeble as Lord Fanny, who could not " eat beef, or horse, or any of those things," come to recruit their exhausted digestions with jelly-broth. He may look in at mug- houses, where stum, 'quest ales, Protestant masch-beer, and Derby stingo are sold. He may drop in at Owen Swan's, at the " Black Swan " Tavern in Saint Martin's Lane, and listen to the hack-writers girding at Mr. Pope, and at the enormous amount of eating and drinking in Harry Higden's comedies. He may see the virtuosi at Childs's, and dozens of other auctions (Edward Melling- ton was the George Robins of the preceding age ; the famous Cobb was his successor in auction-room elo- quence and pomposity), buying china monsters. He may refect himself with hot furmity at the " Rainbow " or at " Nando's," mingle (keeping his surtout well but- toned) with the pickpockets in Paul's, avoid the Scotch walk on 'Change, watch the garish damsels' alight from their coaches at the chocolate-houses, mark the game- sters rushing in, at as early an hour as eleven in the morning, to shake their elbows at the " Young Man's ;" gaze at the barristers as they bargain for wherries at the Temple Stairs to take water for Westminster — a pair of sculls being much cheaper than a hackney coach — meet the half-pay officers at Whitehall, garrulously discussing the King of Spain's last treaty, as the shoeblacks polish their footgear with oil and soot — Day and Martin are yet in embryo ; stand by, on Holborn Hill, about half-past eleven, as Jack Hall, the chimney sweep, winds his sad A LONG LADDER, AND HARD TO CLIMB. 8/ way ill Newgate cart, his coffin before him, and the ordinary with his book and nosegay by his side, towards St. Giles's Pound, and the uhimate bourne, Tyburn. Jack Hall has a nosegay, too, and wears a white ribbon in his hat to announce his innocence. The fellow has com- mitted a hundred robberies. And Jack Hall is very far gone in burnt brandy. Hogarth marks — does not forget him. Jack Hall — who seems to have been a kind of mediocre Jack Sheppard, although his escape from New- gate was well-nigh as dexterous, and quite as bold as the prison-breaking feat of the arch rascal, Blueskin's friend — will soon reappear in one of the first of the Hogarthian squibs ; and the dismal procession to Tyburn will form the denonnicnt to the lamentable career of Tom Idle. Hogarth must have become /^(r<9 a poco saturated with such impressions of street life. From 1730 the tide of reproduction sets in without cessation ; but I strive to catch and to retain the fleeting image of this dead London, and it baulks and mocks me : — the sham bail, " duffers " and " mounters," skulking with straws in their shoes about Westminster Hall ; the law offices in Chan- cery Lane and the " devil's gap " between Great Queen Street and Lincoln's Lin Fields ; the Templars, the mootmen, and those who are keeping their terms in Lincoln's and Gray's Lin, dining in their halls at noon, eating off wooden trenchers, drinking from green earth- enware jugs, and summoned to commons by horn-blow ; — the furious stockjobbers at Jonathan's and Garraway's, at the sign of the " Fifteen Shillings," and in Thread- needle Row ; the fine ladies buying perfumery at the " Civet Cat," in Shire Lane, by Temple Bar — perfumery, 88 WILLIAM HOGARTH. now-a-days, is much wanted in that unsavoury locale ; the Jacobite ballad-singers growling sedition in Seven Dials ; the Hanoverian troubadours crooning, on their side, worn-out scandal touching " Italian Molly " (James the Second's Mary of Modena) and " St. James's warm- ing-pan " in the most frequented streets ; riots and tu- mults, spy-hunting, foreigner mobbing, of not unfrequent occurrence, all over the town ; gangs of riotous soldiers crowding about Marlborough House, and casting shirts into the great duke's garden, that his grace may see of what rascally stuff — filthy dowlas instead of good calico, the contractors have made them. Alas ! a wheezing, drivelling, almost idiotic dotard is all that remains of the great duke, all that is left of John Churchill. He had just strength enough at the Bath the season before to crawl home in the dark night, in order to avoid the expense of a chair. There are fights in the streets, and skirmishes on the river, where revenue cutters, custom- house jerkers, and the " Tartar pink," make retributive raids on the fresh-water pirates : light and heavy horse- men, cope-men, scuffle-hunters, lumpers, and game- watermen. There are salt-water as well as fresh-water thieves ; and a notable show of the period is the execu- tion of a pirate, and his hanging in chains at Execution dock. All which notwithstanding, it is a consolation to learn that " Captain Hunt, of the Delight',' is tried at Justice Hall for piracy, and " honourably acquitted." I know not why, but I rejoice at the captain's escape. He seems a bold, dashing spirit ; and, when captured, was " drinking orvietan with a horse-ofiicer." But when I come to reperuse the evidence adduced on the trial, I confess that the weight of testimony bears strongly A LONG LADDER, AND HARD TO CLIxMB. 89 against Captain Hunt, and that in reality it would seem that he did scuttle the " Protestant Betsey^' cause the boatswain and " one Skeggs, a chaplain, transporting himself to the plantations" — at the request of a judge and jury, I wonder? — to walk the plank, and did also carbonado the captain with lighted matches and Bur- gundy pitch prior to blowing his (the captain's) brains out. Hunt goes free ; but pirates are cast, and some- times swing. Hogarth notes, comments on, remembers them. The gibbeted corsairs by the river's side shall find a place in the third chapter of the history of Thomas Idle. So wags the world in 1720. Hogarth practising on .copper in the intervals of arms and crest engraving, and hearing of Thornhill and Laguerre's staircase-and-ceil- ing-painting renown, inwardly longing to be a Painter. Sir George Thorold is lord mayor. Comet Halley is astronomer royal, %ice Flamsteed, deceased the preceding year. Clement XL is dying, and the Jews of Ferrara deny that they have sacrificed a child at Easter, a la Hugh of Lincoln. The great King Louis is dead, and a child reigns in his stead. The Regent and the Abbe Dubois are making history one long scandal in Paris. Bernard Lens is miniature painter to the king, in lieu of Benjamin Acland, dead. Mr. Colley Cibber's works are printed on royal paper. Sheffield, Duke of Bucks, erects a plain tablet to the memory of John Dryden in West- minster Abbey : his own name in very large letters, Dryden's in more moderately-sized capitals. Madam Crisp sets a lieutenant to kill a black man, who has stolen her lapdog. Captain Dawson bullies half the world, and half the world bullies Captain Dawson : and bullies or is so bullied still to this day. 90 WILLIAM HOGARTH. In disjointed language, but with a very earnest pur- pose, I have endeavoured to trace our painter's Prelude, — the growth of his artistic mind, the ripening of his perceptive faculties under the influence of the life he saw. Now, for the operation of observation, distilled in the retort of his quaint humour. I record the work he did; and first, in 1720, mention "four drawings in Indian ink " of the characters at Button's coffee-house.* In these were sketches of Arbuthnot, Addison, Pope (as it is conjectured), and a certain Count Viviani, identified years afterwards by Horace Walpole, when the drawings came under his notice. They subsequently came into Ireland's possession. Next Hogarth executed an etch- ing, whose subject was of more national importance. In 1720-21, as all men know, England went mad, and was drawn, jumping for joy, into the Maelstrom of the South Sea Bubble. France had been alrejidy desperately in- sane, in 1 7 19, and Philip, the Regent, with John Law of Lauriston, the Edinburgh silversmith's son, who had been rake, bully, and soldier, and had stood his trial for killing Beau Wilson in a duel, had between them gotten up a remarkable mammon-saturnalia in the Palais Royal * Daniel Button's well-known coffee-house was on the south side of Russell Street, Covent Garden, nearly opposite Tom's. Button had been a servant of the Countess of \Var\Adck, and so was patronized by her spouse, the Right Hon. Joseph Addison. Sir Robert Walpole's creature, Giles Earl, a trading justice of the peace (compare Fielding and "300/. a year of the dirtiest money in the world,'') used to examine criminals, for the amuse- ment of the company, in the public room at Button's. Here, too, was a lion's head letter-box, into which communications for the Guaj-dian were dropped. At Button's, Pope is reported to have said of Patrick, the lexi- cographer, who made pretensions to criticism, that " a dictionary-maker might know the meaning of one word, but not of two put together." A LONG LADDER, AND HARD TO CLIMB. 9 1 and the Rue Quincampoix, Law lived eii prince in the Place Vendome, They show the window now whence he used to look down upon his dupes. He died, a few years after "the bursting of his bubble, a miserable bank- rupt adventurer at Venice. And yet there really was something tangible in his schemes, wild as they were. The credit of the Royal Bajik averted a national bank- ruptcy in France, and some substantial advantage might have been derived from the Mississippi trade. At all events, there actually was such a place as Louisiana. In this country, the geographical actualities were very little consulted. The English South Sea scheme was a Swindle, /«r tt simple. Almost everybody in the country caught this cholera-morbus of avarice. Pope dabbled in S. S. S. (South Sea Stock) : Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was accused of cheating Ruremonde, the French wit, out of 500/. worth of stock. Ladies laid aside ombre and basset to haunt 'Change Alley. Gay " stood to win " enormous sums — at one time imagined hinlself, as did Pope also, to be the " lord of thousands," but characteristically refused to follow a friend's advice to realize at least sufficient to secure himself a " clean shirt and a shoulder of mutton every day for life." He per- sisted in holding, and lost all. Mr. Aislabie, the Chan- cellor of the Exchequer, was deeply implicated in S. S. S. transactions, as were also many peers and members of parliament. The amiable and accomplished Craggs, the postmaster-general, the friend of all the wits, and for whose tomb Pope wrote so touching an epitaph, tar- nished his reputation indelibly by unscrupulous jobbery. He died of the small-pox, just in time to avoid disgrace and ruin ; but his poor old father was sold up, and was 92 WILLIAM HOGARTH. borne to the grave shortly aftei"ward, broken-hearted. Lord Stanhope ruptured a blood-vessel in replying to a furious speech of the Duke of Wharton (who lived a profligate and died a monk) against S. S., and did not long survive. Samuel Chandler, the eminent Noncon- formist divine, was ruined, and had to keep a book-stall for bread. Hudson, known as " Tom of Ten Thousand," went stark mad, and moved about 'Change just as the "Woman in Black" and the "Woman in White" (the son of the one, and the brother of the other were hanged for forgery,) used to haunt the avenues of the Bank of England. The South Sea Company bribed the Govern- ment, bribed the two Houses, and bribed the Court ladies, both of fair and of light fame. Erengard Melu- sina Schuylenberg, Princess von Eberstein, Duchess of Munster (1715), and Duchess of Kendal (1729) — Ho- garth engraved the High Dutch hussey's arms — the Countess of Platen, and her two nieces, and Lady Sun- derland, with Craggs and Aislabie, got the major part of the fictitious stock of 574,000/. created by the com- pany. The stock rose to thirteen hundred and fifty pounds premium ! Beggars on horseback tore through the streets. There were S. S. coaches with Aiiri sacra fames painted on the panels. Hundreds of companies were projected, and " took the town " immensely. Steele's (Sir Richard's) Fishpool Company, for bringing the finny denizens of the deep by sea to London — Buckle's Defence Gun — the Bottomree, the Coral- fishery, the Wreck-fishing companies, were highly spoken of Stogden's remittances created great excitement in the market. There were companies for insurance against bad servants, against thefts and robberies, against fire A LONG LADDER, AND HARD TO CLIMB. 93 and shipwreck. There were companies for importing jack-asses from Spain (coals to Newcastle !) ; for trading in human hair (started by a clergyman) ; for fattening pigs ; for making pantiles, Joppa and Castile soap ; for manufacturing lutestring ; " for the wheel of a perpetual motion ;" and for extracting stearine from sun-flower- seed. There were Dutch bubbles, and oil bubbles, and water bubbles — bubbles of timber, and bubbles of glass. There were the " sail cloth," or *' Globe permits" — mere cards with the seal of the " Globe " tavern impressed on them, and " permitting " the fortunate holders to acquire shares at some indefinite period in some misty sailcloth factory. These sold for sixty guineas a piece. There was Jezreel Jones's trade to Barbary, too, for which the permits could not be sold fast enough. Welsh copper and York Buildings' shares rose to cent, per cent, pre- mium. Sir John Blunt, the scrivener, rose from a mean estate to prodigious wealth, prospered, and " whale directors ate up all." There was an S. S. literature, an S. S. anthology. Meantime, secure on Garrway's cliffs, A savage race, by shipwreck fed, Lie waiting for the foiinder'd skiffs. And strip the Ijodies of the dead. Pshaw ! have we not Mr. Ward's capital picture in the Vernon collection, and hundreds of pamphlets on S. S. in the British Museum ? The end came, and was, of course, irrevocable and immortal smash. Ithuriel's spear, in the shape of a scire facias in the London Gazette, pierced this foully iridescent bubble through and through, producing precisely the same effect as the publication of Mr. Spackman's inexorable railway statistics in a supple- 94 WILLIAM HOGARTH. ment to TJic Times newspaper, A.D. 1845. The city woke up one morning and found itself ruined. The Sword-blade company went bankrupt. Knight, the S. S. cashier, fled, but was captured at Tirlemont in Flanders, at the instance of the British resident in Brussels, and thrown into the citadel of Antwerp, from which he pre- sently managed to escape. In an age when almost every one had committed more or less heinous acts of roguery, great sympathy was evinced for rogues. At home, however, there were some thoughts of vengeance. Honest men began, for the first time these many months, to show their heads, and talked of Nemesis and Newgate. Aislabie resigned. The end of the Craggses you have heard. Parliament-men were impeached and expelled the House, Patriots inveighed against the injuries which corrupt ministers may inflict on the sovereigns they serve, and quoted the history of Claudian and Sejanus. The directors — such as had not vanished — were examined by secret committees, and what effects of theirs could be laid hold of were confiscated for the benefit of the thou- sands of innocent sufferers. I have waded through many hundred pages of the parliamentary reports of the period, and have remarked, with a grim chuckle, the similarities of swindling between this fraud and later ones. Cooked accounts, torn-out leaves, erasures, and a small green ledger with a brass lock — these are among the flowers of evidence strewn on the heads of the secret committees. Knight took the key away with him, forgetting the ledger, I presume. The lock was forced, and there came floating out a bubble of fictitious stock. The old story, gentles and simples. " Conime CJiarlcs Dix, cominc Charles Dix," muttered wretched, wigless, Smithified old A LONG LADDER, AND HARD TO CLIMB. 95 Louis Philippe, as he fled in a fiacre from the Tuileries in '48 ; and this S. S. swindle of i72fo was only " Commc Charles Dix" — the elder brother of 1825 and 1845 manias, of Milk Companies, Washing Companies, Poyais Loans, Ball's Pond Railways, Great Diddlesex Junctions, Borough, British, and Eastern Banks, and other thieveries which this age has seen. Did William Hogarth hold any stock t Did he ever bid for a " Globe permit ? " Did he hanker after human hair } Did he cast covetous eyes towards the gigantic jack-asses of Iberia 1 Ignoramus : but we know at least that he made a dash at the bubble with his sharp pencil. In 1 72 1 appeared an etching of T/w South Sea, an Allegory. It was sold at the price of one shilling by Mrs. Chilcot, in Westminster Hall, and B, Caldwell, in Newgate Street. The allegory is laboured, but there is a humorous element diffused throughout the work. The comparatively mechanical nature of the pursuits from which Hogarth was but just emancipated shows itself in the careful drawing of the architecture and the comparative insignificance of the figures. The Enemy of mankind is cutting Fortune into collops before a crav- ing audience of rich and poor speculators. There is a huge "roundabout," with "who'll ride.'" as a legend, and a throng of people of all degrees revolving on their wooden hobbies. In the foreground a wretch is being broken on the wheel — perhaps a reminiscence of the terrible fate of Count Horn, in Paris. L. H., a ruffian, is scourging a poor fellow who is turning his great toes up in agony. These are to represent Honour and Honesty punished by Interest and Villany. In the background widows and spinsters are crowding up a 96 WILLIAM HOGARTH. staircase to a " raffle for husbands," and in the right-hand corner a Jewish high-priest, a CathoHc priest, and a Dissenting minister, are gambhng with frenzied avidity. Near them a poor, miserable starveHng Hes a-dying, and to the left there looms a huge pillar, with this inscription on the base — " This monument was erected in memory of the destruction of the city by South Sea, 1720." It is to be observed that the figure of the demon hacking at Fortune, and the lame swash buckler, half baboon, half imp, that keeps guard over the flagellated man, are copied, pretty literally, from Callot. You know that I incline towards coincidences. It is surely a not unremarkable one that Callot, a Hogarthian man in many aspects, but more inclined towards the grotesque-terrible than to the humorous observant, should have been also in his youth a martyr to heraldry. His father was a grave, dusty old king-at-arms, in the service of the Duke of Lorraine, at Nancy. He believed heraldry, next to alchemy, to be the most glorious science in the world, and would fain have had his son devote himself to tabard and escocheon work ; but the boy, after many unavailing efforts to wrestle with these Ephesian wild beasts, with their impossible attitudes and preposterous proportions, fairly ran away and turned gipsy, stroller, beggar, picaroon — all kinds of wild Bohe- mian things. Had Hogarth been a French boy, he, too, might have run away from Ellis Gamble's griffins and gargoyles. He must have been a great admirer of Callot, and have studied his works attentively, as one can see, not only from this South Sea plate, but from many of the earlier Hogarthian performances, in which, not quite trusting himself yet to run alone, he has had A LONG LADDER, AND HARD TO CLIMB. 97 recourse to the Lorraine's strong arm. Many other sym- pathetic traits are to be found in the worthy pair. In both a Httle too much swagger and proneness to denounce things that might have had some Httle sincerity in them. The one a thorough foreigner, the other as thorough an EngHshman. The herald's son of Nancy was always " the noble Jacques Callot ; " the heraldic engraver's apprentice of Cranbourn Alley was, I wince to learn, sometimes called " Bill Hogarth." One of Hogarth's earliest employers was a Mr. Bowles, at the "Black Horse in-Cornhill," who is stated to have bought his etched works by weight — at the munificent rate of half-a-crown a pound. This is the same Mr. Bowles who, when Major the engraver was going to France to study, and wished to dispose of some landscapes he had engraved that he might raise something in aid of his travelling expenses, offered him a bright, new, burnished, untouched copper-plate for every engraved one he had by him. This Black Horse Bowles, if the story be true, must have been ancestor to the theatrical manager who asked the author hoiv much he would give him if he pro- duced his five-act tragedy ; but I am inclined to think the anecdote a bit of gossip taut soit peu spiteful of the eldest Nicholls. Moreover, the offer is stated to have been made " over a bottle." 'Twas under the same incentive to liberality that an early patron of the present writer once pressed him to write "a good poem, in the Byron style — you know," and offered him a guinea for it, down. Copper, fit for engraving purposes, was at least two shillings a pound in Bowles's time. The half- crown legend, then, may be apocryphal ; although we have some odd records of the mode of payment for art 7 98 WILLIAM HOG.A.RTH. and letters in those days, and in the preceding time : — Thornhill painting Greenwich Hall for forty shillings the Flemish ell ; Dryden contracting with Left-legged Jacob to write so many thousand lines for so many undipped pieces of money ; and Milton selling the manuscript of Paradise Lost to Samuel Simmons for five pounds. Mr. Philip Overton at the Golden Buck, over against St. Dunstan's Church, in Fleet Street, also published Hogarth's early plates. He was the purchaser, too, but not yet, of the eighteen illustrations to Hiidibras. Ere these appeared, W. H. etched the Taste of the Toivn, the Small Masquerade Ticket, the Lottery — a very confused and obscure allegory, perhaps a sly parody on one of Laguerre or Thornhill's floundering pictorial parables. Fortune and Wantonness are drawing lucky numbers. Fraud tempts Despair, Sloth hides his head behind a curtain ; all very interesting probably at the time, from the number of contemporary portraits the plate may have contained, but almost inexplicable and thoroughly uninteresting to us now. The Taste of tJie Toiun, which is otherwise the first Burlington Gate satire (not the Pope and Chandos one) created a sensation, and its author paid the first per-centage on notoriety, by seeing his work pirated by the varlets who did for art that which Edmund Curll, bookseller and scoundrel, did for literature. Burlington Gate, No. i, was published in 1723. Ho- garth seems to have admired Lord Burlington's love for art, though he might have paid him a better compliment than to have placarded the gate of his palace with an orthographical blunder. There is in the engraving A LONG LADDER, AND HARD TO CLIMB. lOI " accademy " for academy. The execution is far superior to that of the South Sea, and the figures are drawn with much verve and decision. In the centre stand three httle figures, said to represent Lord Burhngton, Camp- bell the architect, and his lordship's " postilion." This is evidently a blunder on the part of the first commentator. The figure is in cocked hat, wide cuffs, and buckled shoes, and is no more like a postilion than I to Hercules. Is it the earl's " poet," and not his " postilion," that is meant } To the right (using showman's language), sentinels in the peaked shakoes of the time, and with oh ! such clumsy, big-stocked brown-besses in their hands, guard the entrance to the fane where the panto- mime of Doctor Fanstns is being performed. From the balcony above Harlequin looks out. Fanstns was first brought out at the theatre, Lincoln's Inn Fields, in '23. It had so prodigious a run, and came into such vogue, that after much grumbling about the " legitimate " and invo- cations of " Ben Jonson's ghost " (Hogarth calls him Ben Johnson), the riva' Covent Garden managers were compelled to follow suit, and in '25 came out with their Doctor Fanstns — a kind of saraband of infernal persons contrived by Thurmond the dancing-master. He, too, was the deviser oi " Harleykin Sheppard'' (or Shepherd), in which the dauntless thief who escaped from the Middle Stone-room at Newgate in so remarkable a manner re- ceived a pantomimic apotheosis. Quick-witted Hogarth satirized this felony-mania in the caricature of Wilks, Booth, and Gibber, conjuring up "Scaramouch Jack Hall." To return to Burlington Gate. In the centre, Shakspeare's and Jonson's works are being carted away for waste paper. To the left you see a huge projecting sign or 102 WILLIAM HOGARTH. show-cloth, containing portraits of his sacred Majesty George the Second in the act of presenting the manage- ment of the ItaHan Opera with one thousand pounds ; also of the famous Mordaunt Earl of Peterborough and sometime general of the armies in Spain. He kneels, and in the handsomest manner, to Signora Cuzzoni the singer, saying (in a long apothecary's label), " Please accept eight thousand pounds ! " but the Cuzzoni spurns at him. Beneath is the entrance to the Opera. Infernal persons with very long tails are entering thereto with joyful countenances. The infernal persons are unmis- takable reminiscences of Callot's demons in the Taita- tion de St. Antoine. There is likewise a placard relating to " Faux's Long-room," and his "dexterity of hand." In 1724, Hogarth produced another allegory called the InJiabitants of the Moon, in which there are some covert and not very complimentary allusions to the " dummy " character of royalty, and a whimsical fancy of inanimate objects, songs, hammers, pieces of money, and the like, being built up into imitation of human beings, all very ingeniously worked out. By this time, Hogarth, too, had begun to work, not only for the ephemeral pictorial squib-vendors of Westminster Hall — (those squibs came in with him, culminated in Gillray, and went out with H. B. ; or were rather absorbed and amalgamated into the admirable PnncJi cartoons of Mr. Leech) — but also for the regular booksellers. For Aubry de la Mottraye's Travels (a dull, pretentious book) he executed some engravings, among which I note A woman of Smyrna in tJie Jiabit of the country — the woman's face very graceful, and the Dance, the Pyrrhic dance of the Greek islands, and the oddest fandango that ever was A LONG LADDER, AND HARD TO CLIMB. 103 seen. One commentator says that the term " as merry as a grig " came from the fondness of the inhabitants of those isles of eternal summer for dancing, and that it should be properly " as merry as a Greek." Qidensabe? I know that lately in the Sessions papers I stumbled over the examination of one Levi Solomon, alias Cockle- put, who stated that he lived in Sweet Apple Court, and that he " went a-grigging for his living." I have no Lexicon Balatronicum at hand ; but from early researches into the vocabulary of the "High Mung " I have an indistinct impression that " griggers " were agile vaga- bonds, who danced and went through elementary feats of posture-mastery in taverns. In '24, Hogarth illustrated a translation of the Golden Ass of Apnlciiis. The plates are coarse and clumsy ; show no humour ; were mere pot-boilers, gagne-pains, thrusts with the burin at the wolf looking in at the Hogarthian door, I imagine. Then came five frontis- pieces for a translation of Cassandra. These I have not seen. Then fifteen head-pieces for Beaver's Military Punishments of the Ancients, narrow little slips full of figures in chiaroscuro, many drawn from Callot's curious martyrology, Les Saincts et Sainctes de r An nee, about three hundred graphic illustrations of human torture ! There was also a frontispiece to the Happy Ascetic, and one to the Oxford squib of Terra Filius, in 1724, but of the joyous recluse in question I have no cognizance. In 1722 (you see I am wandering up and down the years as well as the streets), London saw a show— and Hogarth doubtless was there to see — which merits some lines of mention. The drivelling, avaricious dotard, who, crossing a room and looking at himself in a mirror, 104 WILLIAM HOGARTH. sighed and mumbled, " That was once a man :" — this poor wreck of mortaHty died, and became in an instant, and once more, John the great Duke of Marlborough. On the 9th of August, 1722, he was buried with extra- ordinary pomp in Westminster Abbey. The saloons of Marlborough House, where the corpse lay in state, were hung with fine black cloth, and garnished with bays and cypress. In the death-chamber was a chair of state surmounted by a "majesty scutcheon." The coffin was on a bed of state, covered with a " fine holland sheet," over that a complete suit of armour, gilt, but empty. Twenty years before, there would have been a waxen image in the dead man's likeness within the armour, but this hideous fantasy of Tussaud-tombstone effigies had in 1722 fallen into desuetude.* The garter was buckled round the steel leg of this suit of war-harness ; one list- less gauntlet held a general's truncheon ; above the vacuous helmet with its unstirred plumes was the cap of a Prince of the Empire. The procession, lengthy and splendid, passed from Marlborough House through St. James's Park to Hyde Park Corner, then through Picca- dilly, down St. James's Street, along Pall Mall, and by King Street, Westminster, to the Abbey. Fifteen pieces of cannon rumbled in this show. Chelsea pensioners, to the number of the years of the age of the deceased, pre- ceded the car. The colours were wreathed in crape and cypress. Guidon was there, and the great standard, and many bannerols and achievements of arms. "The * Not, however, to forget that another Duchess, Marlborough's daughter, who loved Congreve so, had after his death a waxen image made in his effigy, and used to weep over it, and anoint the gouty feet. A LONG LADDER, AND HARD TO CLIMB. I05 mourning horse with trophies and plumades " was gor- geous. There was a horse of state and a mourning horse, sadly led by the dead duke's equerries. And pray note : the minutest details of the procession were copied from the programme of the Duke of Albemarle's funeral (Monk) ; which, again, was a copy of Oliver Cromwell's — which, again, was a reproduction, on a more splendid scale, of the obsequies of Sir Philip Sidney, killed at Zutphen. Who among us saw not the great scarlet and black show of 1852, the funeral of the Duke of Welling- ton ? Don't you remember the eighty-four tottering old Pensioners, corresponding in number with the years of our heroic brother departed ? When gentle Philip Sid- ney was borne to the tomb, tJiirty-ojie poor men followed the hearse. The brave soldier, the gallant gentleman, the ripe scholar, the accomplished writer was so young. Arthur and Philip ! And so century shakes hand with century, and the new is ever old, and the last novelty is the earliest fashion, and old Egypt leers from a glass- case, or a four thousand year old fresco, and whispers to Sir Plume, '* I, too, wore a curled periwig, and used tweezers to remove superfluous hairs." In 1726, Hogarth executed a series of plates for Blackiveir s Military Figures, representing the drill and manoeuvres of the Honourable Artillery Company. The pike and half-pike exercise are very carefully and curi- ously illustrated ; the figures evidently drawn from life ; the attitudes very easy. The young man was improving in his drawing; for in 1724, Thornhill had started an academy for studying from the round and from life at his own house, in Covent Garden Piazza ; and Hogarth — who himself tells us that his head was filled with the I06 WILLIAM HOGARTH. paintings at Greenwich and St. Paul's, and to whose utmost ambition of scratching copper, there was now pro- bably added the secret longing to be a historico-allegorico- scriptural painter I have hinted at, and who hoped some day to make Angels sprawl on coved ceilings, and Fames blast their trumpets on grand staircases — was one of the earliest students at the academy of the king's sergeant painter, and member of parliament for Weymouth. Already William had ventured an opinion, bicn trancJu'e, on high art. In those days there flourished — yes, flourished is the word — a now forgotten celebrity, Kent the architect, gardener, painter, deco- rater, upholsterer, friend of the great, and a hundred things besides. This artistic jack-of-all-trades became so outrageously popular, and gained such a reputation for taste — if a man have strong lungs, and persist in crying out that he is a genius, the public are sure to believe him at last — that he was consulted on almost every tasteful topic, and was teased to furnish designs for the most incongruous objects. He was consulted for picture- frames, drinking-glasses, barges, dining-room tables, garden-chairs, cradles, and birthday gowns. One lady he dressed in a petticoat ornamented with columns of the five orders ; to another he prescribed a copper-coloured skirt, with gold ornaments. The man was at best but a wretched sciolist ; but he for a long period directed the " taste of the town." He had at last the presumption to paint an altar-piece for the church of St. Clement Danes. The worthy parishioners, men of no taste at all, burst into a yell of derision and horror at this astounding crontc. Forthwith, irreverent young Mr. Hogarth lunged full butt with his graver at the daub. He produced an A LONG LADDER, AND HARD TO CLIMB. 10/ engraving of Kent's Masterpiece, which was generally considered to be an unmerciful caricature ; but which he himself declared to be an accurate representation of the picture. 'Twas the first declaration of his gtierra al ciichillo against the connoisseurs. The caricature, or copy, whichever it was, made a noise ; the tasteless parishioners grew more vehement, and, at last, Gibson, Bishop of London (whose brother, by the way, had paid his first visit to London in the company of Dominie Hogarth), interfered, and ordered the removal of the obnoxious canvas. " Kent's masterpiece " subsided into an ornament for a tavern-room. For many years it was to be seen (together with the landlord's portrait, I presume) at the " Crown and Anchor," in the Strand. Then it disappeared, and faded away from the visible things extant. With another bookseller's commission, I arrive at another halting-place in the career of William Hogarth. In 1726-7 appeared his eighteen illustrations to Butler's Hudibras. They are of considerable size, broadly and vigorously executed, and display a liberal instalment of the vis comica, of which William was subsequently to be so lavish. Ralpho is smug and sanctified to a nicety. Hudibras is a marvellously droll-looking figure, but he is not human, is generally execrably drawn, and has a head preternaturally small, and so pressed down between the clavicles, that you might imagine him to be of the family of the anthropophagi, whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders. There is a rare constable, the perfection of Dogberryism-r«;//-Bumbledom, in the tableau of Hudibras in the stocks. The widow is grace- ful and beautiful to look at. Unlike Wilkie, Hogarth I08 WILLIAM HOGARTH. could draw pretty women :* the rogue \x\vo chucks the widow's attendant under the chin is incomparable, and Trulla is a most truculent brimstone. The "committee" is a character-full study of sour faces. The procession of the " Skimmington " is full of life and animation ; and the concluding tableau, " Burning rumps at Temple Bar," is a wondrous street-scene, worthy of the ripe Hogarthian epoch of The Progresses, The Election, Beer Street and Gin Lane. This edition of Butler's immortal satire had a great run ; and the artist often regretted that he had parted absolutely, and at once, with his property in the plates. So now then, William Hogarth, next shall the moderns know thee — student at Thornhill's Academy —as a painter as well as an engraver. A philosopher — qiioique tu n'en doutais gukre — thou hast been all along. * "They said he could not colour," said old Mrs. Hogarth one day to John Thomas Smith, showing him a sketch of a girl's head. "It's a lie ; look there : there's flesh and blood for you, my man." ( 109 ) TV. The Painter s Progress. About the year of grace 1727 the world began to hear of Wilham Hogarth, not only as a designer and engraver of pasquinades and book-plates, but as a painter in oils. He had even begun to know what patronage was ; and it was, doubtless, not without a reason that his Hiidibras series was dedicated to " William Ward, Esquire, of Great Houghton, Northamptonshire." In his early heraldic days, I find that he was once called upon to engrave an " Apollo in all his glory, azure." He probably copied the figure from some French print ; but in 1724 he was hard at work copying Apollo, and Marsyas to boot, at Thornhill's Academy. Although he was sensible enough not to neglect the cultivation of the main chance, and with all convenient speed betook himself to the profitable vocation of portraiture or " face painting ; " obtaining almost immediately from his connection with the king's sergeant painter, some aristocratic commissions — it is curious to observe that the young man's bent lay in the direction of the historico-allegorical, then running neck-and-neck with the upholstery style of adornment. He had the epic- fever. Who among us has not suffered from thatyf^wr no WILLIAM HOGARTH. bridante — that generous malady of youth ? How many contented sub-editors and quiet booksellers' readers do we not know, who, in their hot adolescence, came to town, their portmanteaus bursting with the " Some- thingiad," in twenty-four cantos, or with blank-verse tragedies running to the orthodox five acts ? Stipple, the charming domestic painter ; Jonquil, who limns flowers and fruits so exquisitely, commenced with their enormous cartoons and show-cloth oil-pictures : " Orestes pursued by the Eumenides," " Departure of Regulus," — la vieille patraqiLc, in short — the old, heroic, impossible undertakings. And did not Liston imagine that he was born to play Macbeth f and did not Douglas Jerrold project a treatise on Natural Philosophy ^ and where is the little boarding-school miss that has not dreamt of riding in a carriage with a coronet on the panels, and being called her ladyship .'' Amina thinks the grandilo- quent music of Norma would suit her ; the maiden speech of young Quintus Briscus is a tremendous outburst against ministers. Quintus is going to shake the country, and cut the Gordian knot of red-tape. The session after next he will be a junior Lord of the Treasury, the demurest and most complacent of place- men. Peers, politicians, pamphleteers, and players : we all find our level. Rolling about the board is not to be tolerated for any length of time : we must Y>Qg in some- where, and happy the man who finds himself in the right hole, and is satisfied with that state of life into which it has pleased heaven to call him ! Hogarth has his ji^vre brulante ; and, although he painted portraits, " conversations," and " assemblies," to eke out that livelihood of which the chief source was the THE PAINTERS PROGRESS. Ill employment given him by Philip Overton, Black-Horse Bowles, and the booksellers, he continued to hanker after torsos, and flying trumpets, and wide-waving wings, and flaunting drapery, and the other paraphernalia that went to furnish forth the apotheoses of monarchs and warriors in full-bottomed wigs. This prosperous school of art has long been in hopeless decay. You see the phantom caricature of it, only, in hair-dressers' " toilette saloons " and provincial music-halls. Timon's villa — the futile,, costly caprice — has vanished. Old Montagu House is no more. Doctor Misaubin's house, in St. Martin's Lane, the staircase painted by Clermont (the Frenchman asked a thousand, and actually received five hundred guineas for his work), is not within my ken. Examples of this florid, truculent style, are becoming rarer and rarer every day. Painted ceilings and stair- cases yet linger in some grand old half-deserted country mansions, and in a few erst gorgeous merchants' houses in Fenchurch and Leadenhall, now let out in flats as offices and chambers. If you have no objection to hazard a crick in your neck, you may crane it, and stare . upwards at the ceil-paintings at Marlborough House, in Greenwich Hall, and on Hampton Court Palace stair- case. The rest has ceded before stucco and stencilled paper-hangings ; and even the French, who never neglect an opportunity or an excuse for ornamentation, and who still occasionally paint the ceilings of their palaces, seem to have quite lost the old Lebrun and Coypel traditions of perspective and fore-shortening — overcharged and unnatural as they were (P. P. Rubens, in the Banqueting House, Whitehall, inventor) — and merely give you a picture stuck upon a rooftree, in which the figures are I 1 2 WILLIAM HOGARTH, attenuated vertically, instead of sprawling down upon you, isometrically upside down. Hogarth became useful to Sir James Thornhill. This last, a worthy, somewhat pompous, but industrious magnifico of the moment, a Covent Garden Caravaggio and cross between Raphael Mengs and the Groom- porter, had wit enough to discern the young designer and graver's capacity, and condescended to patronize him. There is reason to believe that he employed William to assist in the production of his roomy works. When ceilings and domes were to be painted at two guineas the Flemish ell, it is not likely that Royal Sergeant- painters and knights of the shire for Melcombe Regis could afford or would vouchsafe to cover with pigments and with their own courtly hands the whole of the required area. The vulgar, of course, imagined that the painter dicf all ; that Thornhill lay for ever stretched on a mattress, swinging in a basket three hundred feet high in the empyrean of Wren's dome, daubing away at his immense Peters and Pauls, or else stepping backwards to the edge of a crazy platform to contemplate the work he had done, and being within an ace of toppling over to inevitable crash of death beneath, when an astute colour-grinder saved his beloved master by flinging a brush at Paul's great toe — cruel to be kind, and so causing the artist, in indignant apprehension of injury to his beloved saint, to rush forward, saving his own life and the toe likewise. A pretty parallel to this story is in that of the little boy in the Greek epigram who has crawled to the very edge of a precipice, and is attracted from his danger by the sight of his mother's breast. A neat little anecdote, but — it is somewhat musty. It is a THE painter's PROGRESS. II3 myth, I fear. The vulgar love such terse traditions. Zeuxis refusing to sell his pictures, because no sum of money was sufficient to buy them, and imitating fruit so nicely that the birds came and pecked at it ; Parrha- sius cozening Zeuxis into the belief that his simulated curtain was real, and crucifying a bondman (the wretch !) that he might transfer his contortions to canvas ; Apelles inducing a horse to neigh in recognition of the steed he had drawn ; Amurath teaching a French jpainter how properly to design the contracted muscles of the neck when the head is severed from the body by causing a slave to be decapitated in his presence ; Correggio receiving the price of his master-work in farthings, or some vile copper Italian coinage, and dying under the weight of the sack in which he was carrying the sordid wage home ; Cimabue ruddling the fleeces of his lambs with saintly triptychs, and the late Mr. Fuseli eating raw pork-chops for supper in order to design the " Night- mare," more to the life : all these are ben trovati, — ma lion son vcri, I suspect. Thornhill had not all his domes and ceilings and staircases to himself When Augustus found Rome of brick and left it of marble, he did not execute all the quarrying and chiselling with his own imperial hands. In 1727, the painter M.P. for Melcombe Regis was at the high tide of celebrity. Many of the Flemish ells were covered by assistants. Here, I fancy, Van Shacka- back of Little Britain, and sometime of Ghent in the Low Countries, was dexterous at war and art trophies, lyres, kettle-drums, laurel wreaths, bass-viols, and S. P. O. R.s, charmingly heaped up on a solid basis of cloud. Then little Vanderscamp, who had even been employed about 8 114 WILLIAM HOGARTH. the great king's alcoves at Versailles, was wondrous cunning at the confection of those same purple and cream-coloured vapours. Lean Monsieur Carogne from Paris excelled in drapery ; Gianbattista Ravioli, ex- history painter to the Seigniory of Venice, but vehemently suspected of having been a galley-slave in the Venetian arsenal, was unrivalled in flying Cupids. All these foreign aides-de-camp sprawled on their mattresses and made their fancy's children to sprawl ; goodman Thornhill superintending, touching up now and then, blaming, praising, pooh-poohing, talking of the gusto, taking snufif, then putting on his majestic wig and his grand laced hat, and departing in a serene manner in his coach to St. James's or the House, thinking perhaps of one Rafaelle who painted the h\^gie and stanze of the Vatican, and of what a clever fellow he, James Thornhill, was. To him presently entered young Hogarth. The indulgence of William's own caustic whim had served an end he may not have recked of. He had contrived to pay Thornhill the most acceptable compliment that can be paid to a vain, shallow, pompous man. He had lampooned and degraded his rival. He had pilloried Kent in the parody of the wretched St. Clement Danes' altar-piece, and had had a fling at him, besides, in Burlington Gate, where, in sly ridicule of the earl's infatuation for this Figaro of art, Kent's effigy is placed on a pinnacle above the statues of Rafaelle and Michael Angelo. It is a capital thing to have a friend in court with a sharp tongue, or better still, with a sharp pen or pencil, who will defend you, and satirize your enemies. The watch-dog Tearem at home, to defend the treasure- THE PAINTERS PROGRESS. II5 chest, is all very well in his way ; but the wealthy worldling should also entertain Snarler, the bull-terrier, to bite and snap at people's heels. Not that for one moment I would insinuate that Hogarth strove at all unworthily to toady or to curry favour with Sir James Thornhill. The sturdiness and independence of the former are visible in his very first etching. The acorn does not grow up to be a parasite. But Hogarth's poignant humour happened to tally with the knight's little malices. Hogarth, there is reason to assume, believed in Thornhill more than he believed in Kent. The first, at least, could work, was a fair draughtsman, and a not contemptible painter, albeit his colour was garish, his conception preposterous, his execution loaded and heavy. He showed at all events a genuine interest in, and love for that art, in which he might not himself have excelled. Kent was a sheer meretricious impostor and art-manufacturing quack, and Hogarth was aware of him at once, and so scarified him. Moreover, a young man can scarcely — till his wisdom-teeth be cut — avoid drifting temporarily into some clique or another. Gibber must have had his admirers, who mauled Pope prettily among themselves ; and moreover. Sir James Thornhill, knight, sergeant painter, and M.P., had a DAUGHTER — one mistress Jane : — but I am forestalling matters again. Although it is difficult to imagine anything more confused, misunderstood, and hampered with rags and tatters of ignorance, or — worse than ignorance — false taste, than was English Art in 1727, Cimmerian darkness did not wholly reign. There were men alive who had heard their fathers tell of the glories of Charles the 8—2 Il6 WILLIAM HOGARTH. First's gallery at Whitehall ; there were some princely English nobles, then as now, patrons and collectors ; there were treasures of art in England, although no Waagen, no Jameson, had arisen to describe them, and there were amateurs to appreciate those treasures. The young peer who went the grand tour took something else abroad with him besides a negro-boy, a tipsy chaplain, and a pug-dog. He brought other things home beyond a broken-nosed busto, a rusted medal, a receipt for cooking risotto and the portrait of a Roman beggar and a Venetian cortcggiana. He frequently acquired exquisite gems of painting and statuary abroad, and on his return formed a noble gallery of art. It is unfortunately true that his lordship sometimes played deep at " White's " or the " Young Man's," and, losing all, was compelled to send his pictures to the auction room ; but e\'en then his treasures were disseminated, and wise and tasteful men were the purchasers. To their credit, the few celebrated artists then possessed by our country were assiduous gatherers in this field. Sir Godfrey Kneller collected Vandykes. Richardson the elder, a pleasing painter, whose daughter married Hudson, Sir Joshua Reynolds's master, left Rafaelle and Andrea del Sarto drawings, worth a large sum.* Jervas, Pope's * Richardson, senior, was a pupil of Charles the Second's Riley. He was born in 1666, was apprenticed to a sgrivener, and at twenty turned painter. In 1734, he edited an edition o{ Paradise Lost, with notes. He was not a highly educated man, but had given his son a university training ; and, once letting fall the unfortunate expression, that "he looked at classical literature through his son," remorseless Hogarth drew Richardson, junior, impaled with a telescope, the sire peeping through at a copy of Virgil. But Richardson seems to have been an honest, kindly-hearted man ; and William Hogarth, as in every case where he had not a downright rogue to deal with, THE painter's PROGRESS. 11/ friend, and by that polished, partial man artistically much overrated, being at the best but a weak, diaphanous, grimacing enlarger of fans and firescreens, became rich enough to form a handsome cabinet of paintings, draw- ings, and engravings. We are apt to bear much too hardly on the patron-lords and gentlemen of the eighteenth century. Many were munificent, enlightened, and accomplished ; but we devour the piquant satires on Timon and Curio and Bubo, and have patron and insolence, patron and ignorance, patron and neglect, patron and gaol, too glibly at our tongue's end. Is it not to be wished that thinking people should bear this in mind : that not only were there strong men who lived before Agamemnon, but that there were strong men who lived besides Agamemnon — his contemporaries, in fine, to whom posterity has not been generous, not even just, and whose strength has been forgotten .'' The earliest known picture of William Hogarth is one called the Wanstead Assembly, long, and by a ridiculous blunder, corrupted into " Wandsworth." The repented of his severity, cancelled the copies of his squib, and destroyed the plate. Richardson was quite a Don in the Art world. He died in 1745, andjiwo years afterwards his collections were sold. The sale lasted eighteen days. The drawings fetched 2,060/. ; the pictures, 700/. Richardson's son, to all appearances, might have served very well as a sample of those mon- strous jackasses that the South Sea Bubbler proposed to import from Spain. He declared himself "a connoisseur, and nothing but a connoisseur," and babbled and scribbled much balderdash in Italianized English. He was not alone. Pope even proposed to found a science of "picture tasting," and to call it " connoissance. " In our days the science has been christened "fudge."' I have seen the portrait of Richardson the elder, in whose features some one has said that "the good sense of the nation is charac- terized ;" but if this dictum be true, the most sensible-looking man in England must have been a foolish fat scullion. Il8 ■ WILLIAM HOGARTH. term "Assembly" was a little bit of art-slang. A portrait being a portrait, and a " conversation " a group of persons, generally belonging to one family ; by an " assembly " was understood a kind of pictorial rent-roll, or domestic "achievement," representing the lord, or the squire, the ladies and children, the secretaries, chaplains, pensioned poets, led-captains, body-flatterers, hangers- on, needy clients, lick-trenchers, and scrape-plates, the governesses and tutors, the tenants, the lacqueys, the black-boys, the monkeys, and the lapdogs : tutta la baracca in fact. In the Wanstcad Assembly was a portrait of the first Earl Tylney, and many of his vassals and dependants ; and shortly after the completion of the picture, Mitchell, for whose opera of The Highland Clans Hogarth designed a frontispiece, complimented the artist on his performance in smooth couplets : — Large families obey your hand, Assemblies rise at your command. It was William's frequent fortune during life to be much celebrated in verse. Swift, you know, apostrophized him as "hum'rous Hogart ;" Mitchell, as we have seen, lauds his " families " and " assemblies." Shortly afterwards, the tender and graceful Vincent Bourne, who wrote the Jackdaw, and whose innocent memory, as " V^jjiny Bourne," is yet cherished in Westminster School, where he was junior master, addressed the painter in Latin " hendecasyllables." Hoadley, chancellor and bishop, spurred a clumsy Pegasus to paraphrase his pictures in verse. Churchill, when he Avas old, tried to stab him with an epistle ; David Garrick and Samuel Johnson competed for the honour of writing his epitaph. Between 1727 and 1730, Hogarth appears to have I THE PAINTERS PROGRESS. II9 painted dozens of single portraits, " conversations," and " assemblies." In the list he himself scheduled are to be noticed " four figures for Mr. Wood" (1728); "six figures for Mr. Cock" (1728) ; " an assembly of twenty-five figures for my Lord Castlemaine " (1729); "five for the Duke of Montagu ;" nine for Mr. Vernon, four for Mr. Wood, and so forth. The prices paid for " assemblies " appear to have fluctuated between ten and thirty guineas. The oddest, and nearly the earliest commission he received for a portrait was in 1726, when several of the eminent surgeons of the day subscribed their guinea a-piece for him to compose a burlesque " conversation " of Mary Tofts, the infamous rabbit-breeding impostor of Godalming, and St. Andre, chirurgeon to the king's household, a highly successful and most impudent quack, who had made himself very busy in the scandalous hoax, and pretended to believe in Tofts. For the story that Hogarth made a drawing of Jack Sheppard in Newgate (1724), at the time when Sir James painted the robber's half-length in oils — the imaginary scene is admirably etched by George Cruikshank, in one of his. illustrations to Mr. Ainsworth's strange novel — there does not seem any foundation. W. H. certainly painted Sarah Malcolm, the murderess, in her cell, in 1733 ; and from that well-known and authenticated fact some persons may have jumped at the conclusion that he was limner in ordinary to the Old Bailey. I dwelt persistently in the preceding section of these essays upon the scenes and characters, the vices and follies, the humours and eccentricities, the beauties and uglinesses, that Hogarth must have seen in his young manhood, and asked and thought about, and which \ 120 WILLIAM HOGARTH. must have sunk into his mind and taken root there. Satirists can owe but httle to inspiration. They can move the world w^ith the lever of wit, but they must have a fulcrum of fact. Their philosophy is properly of the inductiv^e order. Without facts, facts to reason upon, their arguments would be tedious and pointless. Wherein lies the force or direction of satirizing that Chinese mandarin whom you never saw — that Zulu Kaffir who never came out of his kraal but once, and then to steal a cow ? It was Hogarth's faculty to catch the manners living as they rose : it was his province to watch their rising, and to walk abroad, an early bird, to pick up the worms of knavery and vice, to range the ample field, and see what the open and what the covert yielded. From twenty to thirty the social philosopher must OBSERVE. If he grovel in the mud even, he must observe and take stock of the humane passer-by who stoops to pick him up. After thirty he had better go into his study, turn on his lamp, and turn out the contents of his mind's commonplace book upon paper. This is the only valid excuse for what is termed, after a Frenchman's Quartier- Latin-argot phrase, " Bohemianism : " the only excuse for Fielding's Govent Garden escapades, for Callot's gipsy flights, for Shakspeare's deer-stealing. Young Diogenes the cynic is offensive and reprehensible, but he is no monstrosity. He is going to the deuce, but he may come back again. I will pardon him his tub, his dingy body-linen, his nails bordered sable ; but the tub-career should have its term, and Diogenes should go and wash, and if he can afford it, wear fine linen with a purple hem thereunto, as Plato did. It is pleasanter to walk in the groves of Academe, than to skulk about the purlieus THE painter's PROGRESS. 121 of the Mint. Besides, Bohemianism has its pains as well as its pleasures, and Fortune delights in disciplining with a scourge of scorpions those whom she destines to be great men : Alia giozwntu inolto si pcrdona. Caesar was snatched from the stews of Rome to conquer the world. But for the middle-aged Bohemian — the old, ragged, uncleanly, shameful Diogenes — there is no hope and no excuse. In that which I daresay you thought a mere digres- sion, I strove my best to guide you through the labyrin- thine London, which Hogarth must have threaded time after time before he could sit down, pencil or graver in hand, and say, " This is ' Tom King's coffee-house,' this is a ' modern midnight conversation,' this is the ' progress of a rake,' and this the ' career of a courtesan.' I have seen these things, and I know them to be true-"* Nor in the least do I wish to convey that in ranging the streets and beating the town, Hogarth had any fixed notions of collecting materials for future melodramas and satires. Eminently to be distrusted are those persons who, when .they should be better employed, prowl about the tents of Kedar, and pry into the cave of Adullam, pleading their desire to "see life," and to "pick up character." They are generally blind as bats to all living, breathing life ; and the only character they pick up is a bad one for themselves. I apprehend that Hogarth just took life as it came ; only the Light was in him to see and to comprehend. A right moral feeling, an intuitive hatred of wicked and cruel things, guided * ' ' yai vu Ics niivurs dc moii temps, ctfai public ccs Litres. ' ' — J. J. Rous- SEAU : La Noicvelle Heloise. 122 WILLIAM HOGARTH. and strengthened him. Amid the loose hfe of a loose age, the orgies at Moll King's and Mother Douglass's might have been frolics at the time to him, and only- frolics. A fight in a night-cellar was to him precisely as the yellow primrose was to Peter Bell : a yellow prim- rose, and nothing more. He was to be afterwards empowered and commanded to turn his youthful follies to wise ends, and to lash the vices which he had once tolerated by his presence. The philosophic prelude to his work was undoubtedly his town wanderings, 1720-30. The great manipulative skill, the grace of drawing visible, when taken in com- parison with the comic excrescences in the Hudibras — the brilliance and harmony of colour he manifested in the Progresses and the Marriage a la Mode — have yet to be accounted for. A lad does not step at once from the engraving bench to the easel, and handle the hog's- hair brush with the same skill as he wields the burin and the etching point. The Hogarthian transition from the first to the second of these stages is the more remark- able when it is remembered that, although bred an engraver, and although always quick, dexterous, and vigorous with the sharp needle and the trenchant blade, he could never thoroughly master that clear, harmonious, full-bodied stroke in which the French engravers excelled, in which Hogarth's own assistants in after life (Ravenet, Scotin, and Grignion) surpassed him, but which was afterwards, to the pride and glory of English chalco- graphy, to be brought to perfection by Woollett and Strange. Yet Hogarth the engraver seemed in 1730 to change with pantomimic rapidity into Hogarth the painter. The matter of his pictures may often be THE PAINTERS PROGRESS. 1 23 questionable ; the manner leaves scarcely anything for exceptional criticism. His colour is deliciously pure and %^ fresh ; he never loads, never spatters paint about with his palette knife ; never lays tint over tint till a figure has as many vests as the gravedigger m Hamlet. Whites, grays, carnations stand in his pictures and defy time ; no uncertain glazings have changed his foregrounds into smears and streaks and stains. He was great at Man- chester in 1857 ; great at the British Institution in 18 14, when not less than fifty of his works were exhibited, great in body, richness, transparency ; he is great, nay prodigious, in the English section of the National Gallery, where gorgeous Sir Joshua, alas ! runs and welters and turns into adipocere ; and Gainsborough (in his portraits — his landscapes are as rich as ever) — grows pallid and threadbare, and Turner's suns are grimed, and even Wilkie cracks and tesselates. I think Hogarth came fresh, assured and decided, to his picture-painting work, from a kind of second apprenticeship under Thornhill, and from compassing the " conversations " and " assem- blies." The historico-allegorico-mural decorations were a species of scene-painting ; they involved broad and decisive treatment. The hand learnt perforce to strike lines and mark-in muscles at once. The maul-stick could seldom be used ; the fluttering wrist, the nerveless grasp were fatal : the eye could not be performing a perpetual goose-step between canvas and model. Look at Salvator, at Loutherbourg, at Stanfield, and Roberts, to show what good a scene-painting noviciate can do in teaching an artist to paint in one handling, a la brochette as it were. Who can fancy a Madonna when one fancies half-a-dozen other Madonnas simpering beneath the 124 WILLIAM HOGARTH. built-up tints ? Next, Hogarth went to his portraits. They were a course of physiognomy invaluable to him — of fair faces, stern faces, sensual, stupid, hideous and pretty little baby faces. From the exigencies of the " conversations " and '! assemblies " he learnt composi- tion, and the treatment of accessories ; learnt to paint four-and-twenty fiddlers, not "all of a row," but disposed in ellipse or in pyramid-form. The perception of female beauty, and the power of expressing it, were his by birthright, by heaven's kindness ; I am despondent only at his animals, which are almost invariably impossible deformities.* The Duke of Montagu and my Lord Castlemaine having ordered "conversations" from Hogarth, there was of course but one thing necessary to put the seal to his artistic reputation. That thing, so at least the patron may have thought, was the patronage of the eminent Morris. Morris is quite snuffed out now — evaporated even as the carbonic acid gas from yesterday's flask of champagne; but in 1727 he was a somewhat notable person. He was a fashionable upholsterer in Pall Mall, * Beautiful female faces in Hogarth's plates and pictures. — Among others, the bride-elect with handkerchief passed through her wedding-ring ; the countess kneeling to her dying lord (in the Marriage) ; the charming wife mending the galligaskins in ib.& Distressed Poet ; the poor wretch whom the taskmaster is about to strike with a cane, in the Bridewell scene of the Jiake's Progress ; the milkmaid, in iho. Enraged Musician ; the blooming English girl (for she is no more an Egyptian than you or I) in ^'' Pharaoh'' s Daughter ;'''' the pure soul who sympathises w^ith the mad spendthrift, in the Bedlam scene of the Rake's Progress ; the hooped belle who is chucking the little black boy under the chin, in the Taste in High Life — a priceless per- formance, and one that should be re-engraved in this age, as a satire against exaggerated crinoline. Lord Charlemont's famous picture. Virtue in Danger, I have not seen. THE PAINTERS PROGRESS. 1 25 and not only sold, but manufactured, those tapestry arras hangings which, paper-staining being in embryo, were still conspicuous ornaments of the walls of palaces, the nobility's saloons. Morris kept a shop much frequented by the noble tribes, at the sign of the " Golden Ball" in Pall Mall. There seems to have been a plethora of Golden Balls in London about this time, just as though all the Lombards had quarrelled among themselves, and set up in business each man for himself, with no connec- tion with the golden ball over the way. In 1727, and for a century and a half before, the best and most celebrated painters were employed to execute designs for tapestry. You know who drew for the Flemish weavers that immortal dozen of cartoons, seven of which are at Hampton Court, and which have been recently so wonder- fully photographed. Rubens and Vandyke, the stately Lebrun, and the meek Lesueur, made designs also for these woven pictures. There are penitent thieves and jesting Pilates from Hans Holbein's inspiration in many faded hangings. Thornhill had been himself commis- sioned by Queen Anne to make sketches for a set of tapestry hangings emblematic of the union between England and Scotland. And does not the fabric of the Gobelins yet flourish ? Did not Napoleon the Third vouchsafe the gift of a magnificent piece of tapisserie to one of our West-End clubs .'' Morris, the upholsterer, had many of the " first foreign hands " in his employ ; but, being a Briton, bethought himself magnanimously to encourage real native British talent. My lord duke had employed Hogarth ; Morris likewise determined on giving a commission to the rising artist. He sought out William, conferred with him, explained his wishes, and 126 WILLIAM HOGARTH. a solemn contract was entered between William Hogarth for the first part, and Joshua Morris for the second, in which the former covenanted to furnish the latter with a design on canx^as of the Element of Earth, to be after- wards worked in tapestiy. The painter squared his canvas and set to work ; but when the design was com- pleted Morris flatly refused to pay the thirty pounds agreed upon as remuneration. It seems that the timorous tradesman, who must clearly have possessed a large admixture of the " element of earth " in his composition, had been informed by some good-natured friend of Hogarth that the tapestry-designer was no painter, but a " low engraver." Horror ! To think of a mean wretch who had earned his livelihood by flourishing initials on flagons and cutting plates in taillc do7ice for the book- sellers, presuming to compete with the flourishing foreigners employed by the eminent and ineffable Morris ! 'Twas as though some destitute index-maker of the Hop Gardens, some starved ballad-monger of Lewkner's Lane, had seduced Mr. Jacob Tonson into giving him an order for a translation of \.\\& yEneid into heroic verse. Amazed and terrified, the deceived Joshua Morris rushed to Hogarth's painting-room and accused him of mis- representation, fraud, covin, and other crimes. How would ever my lord duke and her ladyship — perhaps Madam Schuylenburg-Kendal herself — tolerate tapestry 7 in their apartments designed by a base churl, the quon- dam apprentice of a silversmith in Cranbourn Alley, the brother of two misguided young women who kept a slop-shop } Hogarth coolly stated that he should hold the upholsterer to his bargain. He admitted that the Element of Earth was a "bold undertaking," but THE painter's PROGRESS. 12/ expressed an opinion that he should " get through it well enough." He brought the thing to a termination ; and it was, I daresay, sufficiently of the earth earthy. Joshua resolutely withheld payment. No copper- scratcher should defraud him of thirty pounds. The young man, formerly of Little Cranbourn Alley, was not to be trifled with. If Morris had been a lord and had refused (as one of Hogarth's sitters absolutely did) to pay for his portrait, on the ground that it wasn't like him, the artist might have taken a satirical revenge, and threatened to add tails to all the figures in the Elaiicnt of Earth, and send the canvas to Mr. Hare, the wild- beast-man, as a showcloth. But the Pall Mall uphol- sterer was a tradesman, and Hogarth, all artist as he knew himself to be, was a tradesman too. So he went to his lawyer's, and sued Morris for the thirty pounds, " painter's work done." Bail was given and justified, and on the 2Sth of May, 1728, the great cause of Hogarth against Morris came on in conwmni banco, before the chief justice in Eyre. The defendant pleaded non ass2impsit. Issue was joined, and the gentlemen of the long-robe went to work. For the defendant, the alleged fraudulent substitution of an engraver for a painter was urged. The eminence of Morris's tapestry and uphol- stery was adduced. It was sworn to that he employed " some of the finest hands in Europe." Bernard Dorridor, De Friend, Phillips, Danten, and Pajou, " some of the finest hands," appeared in the witness-box and deposed to what first-rate fellows they all were, and to William Hogarth being a mere mechanic, the last of the lowest, so to speak. But the ready painter was not without friends. He subpoenaed more of the " finest hands." 128 WILLIAM HOGARTH. Up came King, Vanderbank, the opera scene-painter, Laguerre, son and successor to Charles the Second's Laguerre, and Verrio's partner, and the serene Thornhill himself: who, I doubt it not, was bidden by my lord to sit on the bench, was oracular in his evidence as to the young man's competency, smiled on the chief justice, and revolved in his majestic mind the possibility of the Lords of the Treasury giving him a commission (had they the powder) to paint the walls and ceilings of all the courts of justice with allegories of Themis, Draco, Solon, Justinian, and Coke upon Lyttleton, to be paid for out of the suitors' fee fund. We know now how tawdry and trashy these painted allegories were ; but Thornhill and Laguerre were really the most reliable authorities to be consulted as to the standard of excellence then accepted in such performances. The verdict very righteously went against the defendant, whose plea was manifestly bad, and Joshua Morris was cast in thirty pounds. I delight to fancy that the successful party straightway adjourned to the Philazers' Coffee-house, in Old Palace Yard, and there, after a slight refection of hung beef and Burton ale, betook themselves to steady potations of Lisbon wine in magnums — there were prohibitiv^e duties on claret — until each man began to see allegories of his own, in which Bacchus was the capital figure. I delight to fancy that the Anglo-Frenchman Laguerre clapped Hocrarth on the back, and told him that he was " von clevare fellow," and that Sir James shook his young friend by the hand, enjoined him to cultivate a true and proper gusto, and bade him Godspeed. Majestic man ! he little thought that when his own celebrity had vanished, or was but as the shadow of the shadow of smoke, his THE painter's PROGRESS. 1 29 young friend was to be famous to the nations and the glory of his countrymen.* * The damages and costs must have amounted to a round sum ; but it is to me marvellous that in those days of legal chicanery the action should have been so brief, and so conclusively decided. Those were the days when, if you owed any one forty shillings, you were served with writs charging you with having committed a certain trespass, to wit at Brentford, being in the company of Job Doe (not always John Doe) ; with " that having no settled abode, you had been lurking and wandering about as a vagabond ;" with that (this was in the Exchequer) "out of deep hatred and malice to the body politic, you had kept our sovereign lord the king from being seised of a certain sum, to wit, two millions of money, for which it was desirable to escheat the sum of forty shillings towards the use of our sovereign and suffer- ing lord aforesaid." In the declaration, it was set forth, that you had gone with sticks and staves, and assaulted and wounded divers people ; and the damages were laid at 10,000/., of which the plaintiff was reasonable enough to claim only the moderate sum of forty shillings. The capias took you at once for any sum exceeding 2/., and you had to find and justify bail, if you did not wish to pine in a spunging-house, or rot in the Fleet. These were the days, not quite five thousand, and some of them not quite one hundred and fifty years ago, when criminal indictments were drawn in Latin, and Norman-French was an important part of legal education (see Pope and Swift's Miscellanies, " Stradling zvrj-wj Styles"), and prisoners were brought up on habeas laden with chains. See Layer's case in the State Trials, Lord Campbell's agreeable condensation in the Lives of the Chief Justices. Layer was a barrister, a man of birth and education, but was implicated in an abortive Jacobite plot. His chains were of such dreadful weight, that he could sleep only on his back. He was suffering from an internal complaint, and pathetically appealed to Pratt, C.J., who was suffering from a similar ailment, to order his irons to be taken off, were it only on the ground of common sympathy. The gentleman gaoler of the Tower, who stood by him on the floor of the court while he made this application, was humanely employed in holding up the captive's fetters to ease him, partially, of his dreadful burden. Prisoner's counsel urged that the indignity of chains was unknown to his " Majesty's prisoners in the Tower ;" that the gentleman gaoler and the warders did not know how to set about the hangman's office of shackling captives ; that there were no fetters in the Tower beyond the "Scavenger's Daughter," and the Spanish Armada relics, and that they had been obliged to procure fetters from Newgate. But Pratt, C.J., was inexorable. He was a stanch Whig ; and so, civilly but sternly, remanded 9 130 WILLIAM HOGARTH. For all the handshakings and libations of Lisbon, Sir James was to live to be very angry with his young friend, although the quarrel was to last but a little while. Hogarth had looked upon Thornhill's daughter Jane, and she was fair, and regarded him, too, with not unfavourable eyes. He who has gained a lawsuit should surely be successful in love. Meanwhile — I don't think he was much given to sighing or dying — he went on painting, in spite of all the Morrises in upholsterydom. Poor Joshua himself came to grief He seems to have been bankrupt; and on the 15th of May, 1729, the auctioneer knocked down to the highest bidder all the choice stock of tapestry in Pall Mall. Hogarth's Ele- ment of EartJi may have been " Lot 90 ;" but one rather inclines to surmise that Morris slashed the fatal canvas with vindictive scissors to shreds and mippets the day his lawyer's bill came in. To record the tremendous success of that Newgate Pastoral, the suggestion of the first idea of which lies between Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, and Gay, does not come within my province. The history of the Beggar s Opera, that made " Rich Gay and Gay Rich," is too well known to bear repetition. Hogarth, however, has left the prisoner, all ironed as he was, to the Tower. Christopher Layer was soon afterwards put out of his miseiy by being hanged, drawn, and quar- tered ; but he was much loved by the people, and his. head' had not been long on Temple Bar when it was carried off as a relic. It is almost impos- sible to realize this cool, civil, legal savagery, in the era so closely following Anna Augvasta's silver age. Sir Walter Scott was in evidently an analogous bewilderment of horror when he described the execution of Feargus Mclvor : a fiction certainly, but with its dreadful parallels of reality in the doom of Colonel Townely, Jemmy Dawson, Dr. Cameron, and scores more unfor- tunate and misguided gentlemen who suffered the horrible sentence of the law of high treason at Carlisle, at Tyburn, or on Kennington Common. THE PAINTERS PROGRESS. 131 his mark on the famous operatic score. For Rich, the Covent Garden manager, he painted (1729) a picture of the prison scene in which Lucy and Polly are wrangling over Macheath, of which several replicas in oil, some slightly varied, as well as engravings, were afterwards executed. Portraits of many of the great personages of the day are introduced in open boxes on the stage. Macheath was a portrait of the comedian Walker ; and the Polly was the beauteous Lavinia Fenton, the hand- some, kindly, true-hearted actress with whom the Duke of Bolton, to the amusement and amazement of the town, fell in love, and fairly ran away. The Duchess of Bolton was then still alive, and lived for many years afterwards ; and poor Polly had to suffer some part of the penalty which falls on those with whom dukes elope ; but at the duchess's death, her lord showed that he was not of Mrs. Peachum's opinion, that " 'tis marriage makes the blemish," and right nobly elevated Polly to the peerage. She lived long and happily -with him, survived him, and died late in the last century, very old, and beloved, and honoured for her modesty, charity, and piety. " The lovely young Lavinia once had friends," writes Thomson in the Seasons ; but our Lavinia lost not her friends to her dying day. If Tenison, and Atterbury, and Sherlock had nothing to say against Eleanor Gwyn, let us trust that the severest moralist could find charitable words wherewith to speak of Lavinia, Duchess of Bolton.* A sterner subject, the prologue to a dismal drama of human life, was now to engross the pencil of this painter, * Hogarth painted a beautiful sepai^ate portrait of her — a loving, tiiistful face, and such lips — which has been engraved in mezzotint. I should properly have added it to my catalogue of the Hogarthian Beauties. 9—2 132 WILLIAM HOGARTH. who was now making his presence known and felt among his contemporaries. I speak of the strange solemn picture of the Committee of the House of Commons taking evidence of the enormities wreaked on the wretched prisoners in the Fleet by Huggins and Bambridge. Let us drag these mouldering scoundrels from their dis- honoured graves, and hang them up here on Cornhill, for all the world to gaze at, even as the government of the Restoration (but with less reason) hung the carcases of Cromwell and Bradshaw on Tyburn gibbet. Huggins — save the mark ! — was of gentle birth, and wrote himself " Armiger." He had bought the patent of the warden- ship of the Fleet from a great court lord, and when the trade of torturing began, through usance, to tend towards satiety, he sold his right to one Bambridge, a twin demon. The atrocities committed by the pair may very rapidly be glanced at. Huggins's chief delight was to starve his prisoners, unless they were rich enough to bribe him. Bambridge's genius lay more towards confining his victims, charged with fetters, in underground dungeons, with the occasional recreation of attempting to pistol and stab them. The moneyed debtors both rascals smiled upon. Smugglers were let out through a yard in which dogs were kept ; ran their cargoes ; defrauded the revenue, and came back to " college." One, who owed 10,000/. to the crown, was permitted to make his escape altogether. A certain T. Dumay went several times to France, being all the time in the "custody," as the sham was facetiously termed, of the Warden of the Fleet. What was such a fraud in an age when the highest legal authorities (who would not take the fetters off Christopher Layer) gravely doubted whether the rules THE PAINTERS PROGRESS. I 33 of the King's Bench might not extend to Bombay, in the East Indies ?* These surreptitiously enlarged prisoners were called " pigeons." They had bill transactions with the tipstaves ; they drew on Huggins, and then pleaded their insolvency. On the other hand, the poor debtors were very differently treated. A broken-down baronet, Sir William Rich, on refusing to pay the " baronet's fee," or " garnish," of five pounds, was heavily fettered, kept for months in a species of subterranean dog-kennel ; the vivacious Bambridge sometimes enlivening his captivity by threatening to run a red-hot poker through his body. This cheerful philanthropist, who was wont to range about the prison with a select gang of turnkeys, armed with halberts and firelocks, ordered one of his myrmi- dons to fire on " Captain Mackpheadris " — (what a name for a captain in difficulties ! Lieutenant Lismahago is nothing to it). As, however, even these callous bravoes hesitated to obey so savage a behest, and as there was absolutely nothing to be squeezed in the way of garnish out of this lackpenny Captain Mackpheadris, Bambridge locked the poor wretch out of his room, and turned him out to starve in an open yard called the " Bare." Here Mack, who was seemingly an old campaigner, built himself, out of broken tiles and other rubbish, a little hovel in an angle of the wall, just as the evicted Irish peasantry in famine and fever times were wont to build little kraals of turf-sods and wattles over dying men in ditches ; but Bambridge soon heard of the bivouac, and ordered it to be pulled down. J. Mendez Sola, a Portuguese, was by * A similar doubt — was it not by Lord Ellenborough ? — has been ex- pressed within our own times. 134 WILLIAM HOGARTH. the same kind guardian fettered with a hundredweight of iron, and incarcerated in a deadhouse, ivith dead people in it, moreover ! Others languished in dens called " Julius Caesar's chapel," the upper and lower " Ease," and the " Lyon's Den," where they were stapled to the floor. Attached to the prisoji itself was an auxiliary inferno in the shape of a spunging-house kept by Corbett, a creature of Bambridge. The orthodox process seemed to be, first to fleece you in the spunging-house and then to flay you alive in the gaol. Of course, Mr. Bambridge went snacks with Mr. Corbett. Very few scruples were felt in getting fish for this net. In one flagrant instance, a total stranger was seized as he was giving charity at the grate for poor prisoners, dragged into Corbett's, and only released on paying " garnish," and undertaking not to institute any proceedings against his kidnappers. When a prisoner had money to pay the debt for which he had been arrested, he often lay months longer in hold for his "fees." The caption fee was 5/. \6s. ^d. ; the " Philazer " — whoever that functionary may have been, but his was a patent place in the Exchequer — the judge's clerk, the tipstaves, the warden, all claimed their fees. Fees had to be paid for the favour of lighter irons, and every fresh bird in the spunging-house cage paid his " footing," in the shape of a six-shilling bowl of punch. When — as from time to time, and to the credit of human nature, occurred — a person visited the gaol, " on behalf of an unknown lady," to discharge all claims against persons who lay in prison for their fees only, Bambridge often sequestered his prisoners till the messenger of mercy had departed. But he was always open to pecu- niary conviction, and from the wife of one prisoner he THE painter's PROGRESS. 1 35 took, as a bribe, forty guineas and a " toy," being the model of a " Chinese Jonque in amber set with silver," for which the poor woman had been offered eighty broad- pieces. In these our days, Bambridge would have dis- counted bills, and given one-fourth cash, one-fourth wine, one-fourth camels' bridles, and one-fourth ivory frigates. When an Insolvent Act was passed, Bambridge de- manded three guineas a piece from those desirous of availing themselves of the relief extended by the law ; else he would not allow them to be " listed," or inserted in the schedule of insolvents. And by a stroke of per- fectly infernal cunning this gaoler-devil hit upon a plan of preventing his victims from taking proceedings against him by taking proceedings against tJicni. After some outrage of more than usual enormity, he would slip round to the Old Bailey and prefer a bill of indictment against the prisoners he had maltreated, for riot, or an attempt to break prison. He had always plenty of understrappers ready to swear for him ; and the poor, penniless, friend- less gaol-bird was glad to compromise with his tormentor by uncomplaining silence.* * These horrors were not confined to the Fleet. The King's Bench and the Marshalsea were nearly as bad ; and, in the former prison, gangs of drunken soldiers — what could the officers have been about ? — were fre- quently introduced to coerce the unhappy inmates. The Bench and Mar- shalsea were excellent properties. The patent rights were purchased from the Earl of Radnor for 5,000/., and there were some sixteen shareholders in the profits accruing from the gaol. Of the Marshalsea, evidence is given of the turnkeys holding a drinking bout in the lodge, and calling in a poor prisoner to "divert" them. On this miserable wretch they put an iron scull-cap and a pair of thumbscrews, and so tortured him for upwards of half-an-hour. Then, somewhat frightened, they gave him his discharge, as a douceur ; but the miserable man fainted in the Borough High Street, and being carried into St. Thomas's Hospital, presently died there. 136 WILLIAM HOGARTH. Already had these things been censured by highest legal authorities ; at least the judges had occasionally shaken their wise heads and declared the abuses in the Fleet to be highly improper : " You may raise your walls higher," quoth Lord King ; " but there must be no prison within a prison." An excellent dictum if only acted upon. At last, the prisoners began to die of ill-usage, of starvation and disease ; or rather, it began to be known that they were so dying, and died every year of our Lord. A great public outcry arose. Humane men bestirred themselves. The legislature was besieged with petitions. Parliamentary commissioners visited the gaol, and a committee of the House of Commons sat to hear those harrowing details of evidence of which I have given you a summary. Bambridge was removed from his post ; but the vindicte piibliqne was not appeased. First, Huggins, the retired esquire, and Barnes, his assistant, were tried at the Old Bailey for the murder of Edward Arne, a prisoner. Page, the hanging judge, presided ; but from that stern fount there flowed waters of mercy for the monster of the Fleet. Owing chiefly to his summing up, a special v^erdict was returned, and Huggins and the minor villain were acquitted. Huggins's son was a well-to-do gentleman of Headley Park, Hants, had a. taste for the fine arts, translated Ariosto, and col- lected Hogarthian drawings ! It was as though Samson should have collected miniatures of Louis the Sixteenth, or Simon the cobbler statuettes of the poor little captive Capet of the Temple. Next, the coarser scoundrels, Bambridge and Corbett, were tried for the murder of a Mr. Castell, who had been thrust into Corbett's spunging-house while the small-pox THE painter's PROGRESS. 1 3/ was raging there, and died. Bambridge, too, was acquitted through some legal quibble ; but the widow of the murdered man had another quibble, by which she hoped to obtain redress. She retained the famous casuist Lee, the sage who in a single action once pleaded seventy-seven pleas. She sued out an appeal of murder against the warden and his man. This involved the "wager of battle," which you remember in the strange Yorkshire case some forty years ago, and which was at last put an end to by statute. The appellee could either fight the appellant a la dog of Montargis, or throw himself on his country, i. c. submit to be tried again. Bambridge and Corbett chose the latter course, were again tried, and again escaped. They were, however, very near being torn to pieces by the populace. Lord Campbell says, I venture to think unjustly, that Mrs. Castell was incited to the appeal by a " mobbish confederation."* Good heaven ! was anything but a confederation of the feelings of common humanity neces- sary to incite all honest men to bring these wretches to justice .-^ I suppose that it was by a " mobbish con- federation " that the villanous Austin, of Birmingham gaol, was tried, and that after all his atrocities of gag- * Did the poet Thomson, the kind-hearted, tender, pure-minded man, belong to the "mobbish confederation?" Hear him in the Smsojis, in compliment to the commissioners for inquiring into the state of the gaols :- — *' Where sickness pines, where thirst and hunger burn, Ye sons of mercy, yet resume the search ; Drag forth the legal monsters into light ! Wrench from their hands Oppression's iron rod. And make the cruel feel the pains they give." It is slightly consolatoiy to be told by antiquary Oldys that Bambridge cut his throat in 1 749 ; but the rufhan should properly have swung as high as Haman. 138 WILLIAM HOGARTH. ging, "jacketing," and cramming salt down his prisoners' throats, he, too, escaped with an almost nominal punish- ment. Lee, the casuist (he was afterwards Chief Justice), was so disgusted with the result of the trial, that he vowed he would never have aught to do with facts again, but henceforth would stick to law alone. I am not lawyer enough to know why the case against Bam- bridge and Corbett broke down ; I only know that these men were guilty of murder most foul and most unnatural, and that one of our most ancient legal maxims is explicit as to their culpability.* A committee of gentlemen in large wigs, sitting round a table in a gloomy apartment, and examining witnesses likewise in wigs, is not a very inspiring theme for a painter ; but I have always considered Hogarth's rendering of the proceedings to be one of the most masterly of Hogarth's tableaux. The plate was a great favourite with Horace Walpole, who described with much discrimination the various emotions of pity, horror, and indignation on the countenances of the spectators ; the mutely eloquent testimony of the shackles and manacles on the table ; the pitiable appearance of the half-starved prisoner who is giving evidence ; and, especially, the Judas-like appearance of Bambridge (who was present), his yellow cheeks and livid lips, his fingers clutching at the button-holes in his coat, and his face advanced, " as if eager to lie." There was a large sale for the engraving taken from this picture, and Hogarth gained greatly in reputation from its production. * " If a prisoner die through duresse of the gaoler, it is murder in the gaoler^ — St. Qtxxa.zxC?, Doctor and Student. Why was this not quoted at Birmingham ? THE painter's PROGRESS. 1 39 He had need of reputation, and of money too. A very serious crisis in his Hfe was approaching. He had found more favour in the eyes of Jane Thornhill. ''On n' eponse pas les filles de graiide viaison avec des coquilles de noix" writes a wise Frenchman, and William Hogarth's fortune might decidedly at this time have been com- fortably " put into a wine-glass and covered over with a gooseberry leaf," as was suggested of the immortal Mr. Bob Sawyer's profits from his druggist's shop. Sir James Thornhill was a greater don in art than Sir Godfrey, or than Richardson, or Jervas. He hated Sir Godfrey, and strove to outshine him. If extent of area is to be taken as a test of ability, Thornhill certainly beat Kneller hollow. To a Lombard Street of allegory and fable in halls and on staircases the German could only show a china orange of portraiture. Thornhill was a gentleman. His father was poor enough ; but he was clearly descended from Ralph de Thornhill (12 Henry HI. 1228).* When he became prosperous, he bought back the paternal acres, and built a grand house at Thornhill, hard by Weymouth. He had been a favourite with Queen Anne. He had succeeded Sir Christopher Wren in the representation of Melcombe Regis, his native place. His gains were enormous. Though he received but two guineas a yard for St. Paul's, and twenty-five shillings a yard for painting the * Rev. James Dallaway, whose notes to Walpole's Anecdotes are very excellent. Mr. Wornum, the last editor of Walpole, annotated by Dallaway, puzzles me. He must be an accomplished art-scholar : is he not the Wornum of the Marlborough House School ? but he calls Swift's Legion Club the " Congenial Club, " utterly ignoring Swift's ferocious text, an excerpt from which he quotes. 140 WILLIAM HOGARTH. staircase of the South Sea House (with bubbles, or with an allegory of Mercury putting the world in his pocket ?), instead of 1,500/. which he demanded, he had a magni- ficent wage for painting the hall at Blenheim, and from the noted Styles, who is said to have spejit 150,000/. in the embellishments of Moor Park, he received, after a law-suit and an arbitration, 4,000/ To be sure Lafosse got nearly 3,000/. for the staircase and saloons of Montagu House (the old British Museum). Look at the etching of Sir James Thornhill, by Worlidge. He is painting in an elaborately-laced coat with brocaded sleeves ; and his wig is as so many curds in a whey of horsehair : no one but a Don could have such a double chin. With the daughter of this grandee of easeldom, this favourite of monarchs, this Greenwich and Hampton Court Velasquez, William Hogarth, painter, engraver, and philosopher, but as yet penniless, had the incon- ceivable impudence, not only to fall in love, but to run away. I rather think that Lady Thornhill connived at the surreptitious courtship, and was not inexorably angry when the stolen match took place ; but as for the knight, he would very probably just as soon have thought of Mars, Bacchus, Apollo and Virorum coming down from an allegorical staircase, and dancing a saraband to the tune of " Green Sleeves " on the north side of Covent Garden Piazza, as of his young protege and humble friend Willy Hogarth presuming to court or to marry his daughter. Oh ! it is terrible to think of this rich man, this father of a disobedient Dinah, walking his studio all round, vowing vengeance against that rascally Villikins, and declaring that of his large fortune she shan't reap the benefit of one single pin ! THE PAINTERS PROGRESS. I4I Oh ! cruel " parient," outraged papa, Lear of genteel life ! He frets, he fumes, he clashes his wig to the ground. He remembers him, perchance, of sundry small moneys he has lent to Hogarth, and vows he will have him laid by the heels in a spunging-house ere the day be out. Send for a capias, send for a mittimus ! Send for the foot-guards, the tipstaves, and the train- bands, for Jane Thornhill has levanted with William Hogarth ! They were married at old Paddington Church on the 23rd of March, 1729. Thus runs the parish register: " William Hogarth, Esq. and Jane Thornhill, of St. Paul's, Covent Garden." Marriage and hanging go together they say, and William and Jane went by Tyburn to have their noose adjusted. In the Historical Chronicle for 1729, the bridegroom is described as "an eminent designer and engraver ; " but in Hogarth's own family Bible, a worn, squat, red-inked, interlined little volume, printed early in the reign of Charles the First, and now reverentially preserved by Mr. Graves, the eminent print-publisher of Pall Mall, there is a certain flyleaf, which I have seen, and which to me is of infinitely greater value than Historical Chronicle or Paddington Parish Register, for there, in the painter's own hand- writing, I read — " W. Hogarth married Sir James Thornhill's daughter, March 23rd, 1729." Papa-in-law was in a fury, set his face and wig against the young couple, would not see them, would not give them any money, cast them out of the grand piazza mansion to starve, if they so chose, among the cabbage-stumps of the adjacent market. It behoved William to work hard. I don't think he ever resided 142 WILLIAM HOGARTH. with his wife in Cranbourn Alley. He had given that messuage up to his sisters. What agonies the member for Melcombe Regis, the scion of Henry the Third's Thornhills, must have endured at the thought of that abhorred " old frock-shop ! " There is reason to believe that for some time previous to his marriage Hogarth had resided in Thornhill's own house, and had so found opportunities for his courtship of the knight's daughter. Of young Thornhill, Sir James's son, he was the intimate friend and. comrade. Where he spent his honeymoon is doubtful ; but it was either in 1729 or 1730 that he began to take lodgings at South Lambeth, and to form the acquaintance of Mr. Jonathan Tyers, the lessee of Vauxhall Gardens. In the tranquillity and sobriety of a happy married life, Hogarth began for the first time deeply to philoso- phize. He had eaten his cake. He had sown his wild oats. He was to beat the town no more in mere indif- ference of carousal ; he was to pluck the moralist's flower from the strange wild nettles he had handled. In this age have been found critics stupid and malevolent enough to accuse every author who writes with a purpose, and who endeavours to draw attention to social vices, of imposture and of hypocrisy. He should be content, these critics hold, to describe the things he sees ; he is a humbug if he moralize upon them. It is not unlikely that the vicious Fribbles of Hogarth's time held similar opinions, and took Hogarth to be a reckless painter of riotous scenes, and who just infused sufficient morahty into them " to make the thing go off"." It was other\vise with him, I hope and believe. I am firmly convinced that the sin and shame of the evils he depicted were as THE painter's PROGRESS. I43 deeply as they were vividly impressed on Hogarth's mind — that he was as zealous as any subscriber to a Refuge, a Reformatory, or a Home can be now, to abate a dreadful social evil ; that his hatred for the wickedness of dissolute men, his sympathy for women fallen and betrayed, his utter loathing for those wretched scandals to their sex, the women whose trade it is to decoy women, was intense and sincere. I do not believe in the sincerity of Fielding, who could grin and chuckle over the orgies of the Hundreds of Drury and the humours of the bagnio. I find even the gentle and pure-minded Addison simpering in the FrccJioldcr about certain fre- quenters of Somerset House masquerades. But Hogarth's satire in the Harlot's Progress never makes you laugh. It makes you rather shudder and stagger, and turn pale. The six pictures which form this tragedy were painted immediately after his marriage. They were painted in the presence of a young, beautiful, and virtuous woman, who read her Bible, and loved her husband with unceasing tenderness ; and casting to the winds the mock morality and lip-virtue that fear to speak of the things depicted in this Progress, I say that no right-minded man or woman will be the worse for studying its phases. Some time before Hogarth painted the Harlofs Pro- gress, a hundred and thirty years ago, Edward Ward and Tom Brown had described in coarse, untranscribable, but yet graphic terms, the career of these unfortunates. The former, although a low-lived pottlepot at the best of times, makes some honest remarks concerning the barbarous treatment of the women in Bridewell* " It's * The clumsy police of the time seem to have entirely ignored the existence of unchaste women till they became riotous, were mixed up in 144 WILLIAM HOGARTH. not the way to reform 'em," he says plainly. But Hogarth first told the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. He first told the story of a courtesan without either ribald jesting or sickly sentimentality ; and he, much more than if he had been a royal duke mincingly handling trowel and mallet, laid the first stone of the Magdalen Hospital. " Ora" writes an appreciative Venetian biographer of Hogarth, " conduce una bclla dalla barca in cni nacque ad nn albergo di Londra, da nn inagnifico palaszo in nn Inpa- nare, dal Inpanare in prigione, dalla prig ione air ospitalc, tavern brawls, had given offence to the rich rakes, or, especially, were dis- covered to be the mistresses of thieves and highwaymen. Then they were suddenly caught up, taken before a justice, and committed to Bridewell — either the ergastolo in Bridge Street, or the presidio in Tothill Fields— I take the former. Arrived there, they were kept till noon on board-day, Wed- nesday. Then they were arraigned before the honourable Board of Gover- nors, the president with his hammer in his high-backed chair. The wretched Kate stands among the beadles clad in blue, at the lower end of the room, which is divided into two by folding doors. Then, the accusation being stated, the president cries, "How say you, gentlemen, shall Katherine Hackabout receive present punishment?" The suffrages are collected; they are generally against Kate, who is forthwith seized by the beadles, half unrobed, and receives the "ci\'ility of the house," i. e. the correction of stripes, which torture is continued (the junior beadle wielding the lash) till the president strikes his hammer on the table as a signal for execution to stop. "Knock ! Sir Robert; oh, good Sir Robert, knock!" was a frequent entreaty of the women under punishment; and "Knock, knock!" was shouted after them in derision by the boys in the street, to intimate that they had been scourged in Bridewell. Being sufficiently whealed, Kate was handed over to the taskmaster, to be set to beat hemp, and to be herself caned, or scourged, or fettered with a log like a stray donkey, according to his fancy and the interests of the hemp manufacture. Many women went through these ordeals dozens of times. "It's not the way to reform 'em," observes Ned Ward ; and for once, I think, the satirical publican, who travelled in "ape and monkey climes," is right. — Vide Smollett : Roderick 'Random ; Cunningham : Handbook of London ; and, Bridrcvell Hospital Reports, 1 720— 1 799. THE TAINTERS PROGRESS. 1 45 dair ospitalc alia fossa!' This is the tersest summary I know. The Venetian loses not a word. From the cottage where she was born to an inn ; from an inn to a palace ; thence to a bagnio, thence to prison, thence to a sick-room, thence to the grave. This is the history of Kate Hackabout. Each tableau in the Harlofs Progress is complete in itself; but there is a "solution of continuity" — the progression is not consecutive : more than once a hiatus occurs. Thus, it is Mother Needham, the horrible pro- curess, who first accosts the innocent country girl in the inn-yard ; and it is the infamous Colonel Charteris who is leering at her. The magnificent "palazzo" belongs, however, to a Jew financier ; and after the disturbance of the table kicked over, and the gallant behind the door, we can understand how she sinks into the mistress of James Dalton, the highwayman. But how comes she to be dressed in brocade and silver when she is beating hemp in Bridewell .'' The Gntb Street Journal tells us that the real Hackabout was so attired when by the fiat of nine justices she was committed to penitential fibre- thumping ; but the pictorial Kate in the preceding tableau, sitting under the bed-tester with the stolen watch in her hand, is in very mean and shabby attire. Do people put on their best clothes to go to the House of Correction } or, again, when being captured — Sir John Gonson allowed her to dress herself, discreetly waiting outside the door meanwhile — did she don her last unpawned brocaded kirtle and her showiest lappets, in order to captivate the nine stern justices withal .'' The fall to the garret, after her release from prison, I can well understand. Some years have elapsed. She has a ragged 10 146 WILLIAM HOGARTH. little wretch of a boy, who toasts a scrap of bacon before the fire, while the quacks squabble about the symptoms of her malady, and the attendant harridan rifles her trunk— it is the same old trunk with her initials in brass nails on it that we see in the yard of the Bell Inn, Wood Street, in Scene the First ! — of its vestiges of finery. The ragged boy is, perchance, James Dalton, the high- wayman's son, long since translated to Tyburnia. The real Hackabout's brother was indeed hanged with much completeness. But I can't at all understand how in the next tableau this poor creature, when her woes are all ended, has a handsome and even pretentious funeral, moribund, as we saw her, in her dismal garret but just before. Had Fortune cast one fitful ray on her as she sank into the cold dark house .-* Had a bag of guineas been cast to jingle on her hearse .'' She was a clergy- man's daughter, it seems. Had the broken-hearted old curate in the country sent up sufficient money to bury his daughter with decency .-' Had the sisterhood of the Hundreds of Drury themselves subscribed for the enlargement of obsequies which might excuse an orgy ? There is plenty of money from somewhere in this death- scene, to a certainty. The boy who sits at the coffin foot, winding the string round his top, has a new suit of mourning, and a laced hat. That glowering undertaker has been liberally paid to provide gloves and scarves ; the clergyman — I hope he's only a Fleet chaplain — has evidently been well entertained ; there is a whole Jordan of gin flowing : gin on the coffin-lid ; gin on the floor ; and on the wall there is even an " achievement of arms," the dead woman's scutcheon. On every scene in the Harlofs Progress a lengthy THE painter's PROGRESS. 1 47 essay might be written. Well, is not every stone in this city full of sermons ? Are there no essays to be written on the Kate Hackabouts who are living, and who die around us every day ? Better for the nonce to close that dreary coffin, wish that we were that unconscious child who is sitting at the feet of Death, and preparing to spin his pegtop amid the shadows of all this wretchedness and all this vice. 10 — 2 148 WILLIAM HOGARTH. V. Bchvecn London and Skeerness. As one, Reader, who concludes haply, through hearsay, that his uncle William has left him a ten pound legacy ; but, going afterwards to Doctors' Commons, paying his shilling, and reading that said uncle's will, — receiving letters from stately lawyers, full of congratulations, at seventy-pence a piece, — being bowed and kotoued to by people who were wont to cut him, and overwhelmed with offers of unlimited credit by tradesfolk who yester- day would not trust to the extent of a pair of woollen hose — discovers that he has inherited a fine fortune ; so may an author scarcely help feeling who has commenced a modest little series of papers in the hope that they would fill a gap and serve a turn, and who finds himself now, roaming through a vast countiy, inexhaustible in fertility, undermined with treasure, and overstocked with game : of all which he is expected to give a faithful and accurate report. Yes, the world Hogarthian is all before me, where to choose. Facilities ' for " opening up " the teeming territory present them- selves on every side. Authorities accumulate ; micro- scopes and retrospective spy-glasses are obligingly leift. The Chamberlain of London politely throws open his BETWEEN LONDON AND SHEERNESS. I49 archives. I am permitted to inspect a Hogarth-engraved silver-plate, forming part of the paraphernalia of the famous past-Overseers' box of St. Margaret's, West- minster. Father Prout sends me from Paris an old Hogarth etching he has picked up on the Quai Voltaire, and, withal, more humour and learning in a sheet of letter-paper than ever I shall have in my head in a life- time. A large-minded correspondent in Cheshire insists on tearing a portrait and biography of W, H. from an old book in his possession, and sending the fragments to me. From the blue shadows of the Westmoreland Fells comes, by book-post, a copy of "Aid Hoggart's " poems. A friend promises to make interest with the authorities of the Painters' Company for any Hogarthian memora- bilia their records may contain. Another friend advises that I should straightway memorialize the Benchers of the Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn, for informa- tion relative to W. H.'s entertainment by the " Sages de la Ley," A.D. 1750. I am bidden to remember that I should visit the Foundling Hospital, to see the March to FincJiley ; that there are original Hogarths in Sir John Soane's Museum, and in the church of St. Mary Red- clyffe, Bristol.* And, upon my word, I have a collection of correspondence about Hogarth that reads like an excerpt from the Clergy List. Their reverences could not be more prolific of pen and ink were I a heterodox Bampton Lecturer. How many times I have been cleri- cally reminded of a blunder I committed (in No. I.) in assigning a wrong county as the locality of St. Bee's * I was at Bristol in the summer of 1858 ; but the fine old church was then in process of restoration, and the Hogarths, I heard, liad been tem- porarily removed. Have those curious altar-pieces been since restored ? 150 WILLIAM HOGARTH. College. How many times I have been enlightened as to the derivation of the hangman's appellation of Jack Ketch. From rectories, parsonages, endowed grammar- schools, such corrections, such explanations, have flowed in amain. Not to satiety, not to nausea, on the part of their recipient. To him it is very good and pleasant to think that some familiar words on an old English theme can interest cultivated and thoughtful men. It is doubly pleasant to be convinced that he was not in error when, in the first section of these essays, he alluded to the favour with which William Hogarth had ever been held by the clergy of the Church of England. Yes, I have come into a fine fortune, and the balance at the banker's is prodigious. But how if the cheque- book be lost ? if the pen sputter, if the ink turn pale and washy, or thick and muddy ? Alnaschar ! it is possible to kick over that basketful of vitreous ware. Rash youth of Siamese extraction, it may have pleased your imperial master to present you with a white elephant. Woe ! for the tons of rice and sugar that the huge creature consumes, the sweet and fresh young greenstuff" for which he unceasingly craves ; — and }'ou but a poor day labourer ? You must have elephants, must you .-• Better to have gone about with a white mouse and a hurdigurdy : the charitable might have flung you coppers. Shallow, inept, and pretentious, to what a task have you not committed yourself! Thus to me have many sincere friends — mostly anonymous — hinted. These are the wholesome raps on the knuckles a man gets who attempts without being able to accomplish ; who inherits, and lacks the capacity to administer. Man}- a fine fortune is accompanied by as fine a lawsuit — BETWEEN LONDON AND SHEERNESS. 151 remember the legatee cobbler in Pickzvick — and dire is the case of the imprudent wight who finds himself some fine morning in contempt, with Aristarchus for a Lord Chancellor ! But I have begun a journey. The descent of Avernus is as facile as sliding down a Montague Russe; — sed revocare gradum : — no, one mustn't revoke, nor in the game of life, nor in the game of whist. We will go on, if you please ; and I am your very humble servant to command. The stir made by the publication of the set of engravings from the six pictures of the Harlofs Progress was tremendous. Twelve hundred copies of the first impression were sold. Miniature copies of some of the scenes were engraved on fan-mounts. Even, as occurred with George Cruikshank's Bottle, the story was drama- tized, and an interlude called The Jciv Deeoyed ; or a Harlofs Progress, had a must successful " run." It is worthy of observation that the perverse and depraved taste of the town took it as rather a humorous thing that the courtesan, splendidly kept by a Hebrew money- lender, should decoy and betray her keeper. The Jeiv Decoyed. Ho ! ho ! it was a thing to laugh at. Who sympathizes with M. Geronte in the farce — the poor feeble old dotard — when Arlechino runs off with his daughter, and Pierrot the gracioso half cuts his nose off while he is shaving him, picking his pocket and treading on his tenderest corns, meanwhile .? The trades- men and lodging-house keepers who are swindled and robbed by clown and pantaloon in the pantomime ; the image boys, fishmongers, and greengrocers whose stock in trade is flung about the stage ; the peaceable watch- maker, who tumbles over on the slide artfully prepared 152 WILLIAM HOGARTH. in front of his own door with fresh butter, by the mis- creant clown ; the grenadier bonneted with his own busby ; the young lady bereft of her bustle ; the mother of the baby that is sate upon, swung round by the legs, and crammed into a letter-box : is any pity evoked for those innocent and ill-used persons ? I am afraid there is none. I have seen a policeman in the pit roaring with laughter at the pummelling and jostling his simulated brother receives on the stage. It is remarkable to watch the keen delight with which exhibitions of petty cruelty and petty dishonesty, of a gay, lively description, are often regarded. I can understand the pickpocket detected by Charles the Second's keen eye in annexing a snuff-box at court, laying his finger by the side of his nose, and taking the monarch into his confidence. I can understand cynic Charles keeping the rogue's secret for the humour of the thing. And, verily, when I see children torturing animals, and senseless louts grin- ning and jeering, and yelling " Who shot the dog ! " after a gentleman in the street, because he happens to wear the honourable uniform of a volunteer, and persons who are utter strangers to one belated runaway joining in the enlivening shout and chase of " Stop thief!" I can begin to understand the wicked wisdom of the American Diogenes who coolly indited this maxim : " If you see a drowning man, throw a rail at him." Hogarth's engravings of the adventures of Kate Hackabout were extensively and grossly pirated. In those days, as in these, there were pictorial Curlls in the land. The author of the foregoing has had the honour to see some early and trifling pictorial performances of his own pirated upon pocket-handkerchiefs and shirt-fronts ; BETWEEN LONDON AND SHEERNESS. 1 53 but, dear me, what a legal pother would have arisen at Manchester if any one had pirated those beautiful patent cylinders on which the piracies must have been so neatly engraved ! Some vile imitations of Hackabout were even cut on wood ; and I should dearly like to know if any impressions of those blocks are extant. Mr. Ottley has none in his History of Chalcography ; but a series of woodcuts so longf after Albert Durer and Maso Fine- guerra, so long before Bewick the revivalist's time, would be deeply interesting.* Hogarth smarted under this injury, as well he might. The artist had always a strong admixture of the British tradesman in his com- position, and, as was his wont when injured, he bellowed lustily. He moved the Lords of the Treasury. He moved the Houses of Lords and Commons ; and, at last (1735), he obtained an Act of Parliament, specially protecting his copyrights in his prints. As usual, too, he celebrated the victory with a loud and jubilant cock- crow, and complimented Parliament on their recognition of the principles of truth and right, in an allegorical etching, with a flowery inscription. It is good to learn that the Legislature were tender to this artist even after his death, and that his widow, Jane Hogarth, obtained, by another special Act, a renewal of his copyrights for her sole use and benefit. In this age of photography * There is a mania just now for giving excessive prices for steel and copper ■ engravings. There is a millennium for artists' proofs. The auc- tioneers only know what a genuine Marc Antonio Raimondi is worth ; but I am told that a "Sunday" proof of the March to Finchley~-\\\^ original plate was dated on a Sunday, but the dies iion was subsequently erased by Hogarth— will fetch thirty guineas in the market. The price seems as e.xorbitant as those sometimes given for a "1 Bible. 154 WILLIAM HOGARTH. and electro-printing, do we not need a law of artistic copyright somewhat more definite and more stringent than the loose statutes that lawyers quibble about and interpret different ways ? Ere I quit the subject of the Harlofs Progress, it is meet to advert to a little dictum of good Mr. Fuseli, the ambidextrous Anglo-Swiss, who painted \\\q Lazar-house and other horrifying subjects, who used to swear so dreadfully at the clerks in Coutts' banking-house, and who called for his umbrella when he went to see Mr. Constable's showery pictures. " The characteristic dis- crimination and humorous exuberance," says Fuseli, in a lecture, " which we admire in Hogarth, but which, like the fleeting passion of a day, every hour contributes something to obliterate, will soon be unintelligible by time or degenerate into caricature : the chronicle of scandal, and the history-book of the vulgar." I have the highest respect for the learning and acumen of Fuseli ; but I think he is wholly wrong in assuming that Hogarth's humour or discrimination \\ill ever become " unintelligible by time," or will " degenerate into cari- cature." Look at this Harlot's Progress. Who cares to know, now, that Charteris continues to rot ; that he was guilty of every vice but prodigality and hypocrisy — being a monster of avarice and a paragon of impudence ; that he was condemned to death for a dreadful crime, and only escaped the halter by the interest of aristo- cratic friends ; that he was a liar, a cheat, a gambler, a usurer, and a profligate ; that he amassed an estate of ten thousand a year ; that he was accursed while living, and that the populace almost tore his body from his remote grave in Scotland .'' Who cares to know how BETWEEN LONDON AND SHEERNESS. I55 many times Mother Needham was carted — although you may be sure they were not half so frequent as she deserved. Is it important to know exactly whether the Caucasian financier was intended for Sir Henry Furnese, or for Rafael Mendez, or Israel Vanderplank. The quack Misaubin * and his opponent are forgotten. Stern Sir John Gonson-j- and his anti-Cyprian crusades are forgotten. For aught we can tell, the Bridewell gaoler, the Irish servant, the thievish harridan, the Fleet parson, the glowering undertaker, may all be faithful portraits of real personages long since gone to dust. It boots little even to know if Kate were really Kate or Mary Hack- about, or Lais, or Phryne, or Doll Common. She is * Dr. Misaubin lived at 96, St. Martin's Lane. Of his staircase, painted by Clermont, the Frenchman, I have ah-eady spoken. Those were the days when "Mrs. Powell, the coloiirman's mother, used to make a pipe of wine every year from the vines that grew in the garden in St. Martin's Lane." Traces of its old rurality may also be found in the name of one of its noisomest offshoots-.-the " Hop Gardens." Dr. Misaubin "flom-ished" in 1732. He was not a Frenchman born, V)ut of French Huguenot extrac- tion. He was an arrant and impudent quack, but a good-natured man, and dispensed tlie huge fortune he amassed liberally enough. More anent him when he grows older and more wrinkled in the Mar^-iage a la Mode. All this man's gold, however, turned in the end to dry leaves. His grandson, Angiband, dissipated the pill and nostrum fortune, and died of Geneva-on- the-brain in St. Martin's Workhouse. Engraver Smith (J. T.) says that Misaubin's father was a Protestant clergyman, and mentions a "family picture" representing the Doctor in all his glory, with his son on his knees, and his reverend papa at a table behind, and arrayed in full canonicals. f Everybody seems to have had Latin verses, eulogistic or abusive, addressed to him in those days. Thus the "Sapphics" of Mr. Leveling, a young gentleman of the university, to the rigorous Middlesex Justice : — " Pellicum, Gonsone, animosus hostis. Per minus castas Druria tabemas Lenis incedens, abeas Diones yEquus Alumnis ! " And so forth. 156 WILLIAM HOGARTH. dead, and will sin and suffer stripes no more. But the humour and discrimination -of the painter yet live, the types he pourtrayed endure to this hour. I saw Charteris the day before yesterday, tottering about in shiny boots beneath the Haymarket Colonnade. The quacks live and prosper, drive mail-phaetons, and enter horses for the Derby. The Jew financier calls himself Mr. Mont- morenci de Levyson, and lends money at sixty per cent., or as Julius McHabeas, Gent., one of her Majesty's attorneys-at-law, issues a writ at the suit of his friend and father-in-law Levyson. And Kate decoys and cozens the financier every day in a cottage ornce at Brompton or St. John's Wood. Kate ! there is her *' miniature brougham " gliding through -Albert Gate. There is her barouche on the hill at Epsom. There she is at the play, or in the garden, flaunting among the coloured lamps. There she is in the Haymarket, in the Strand, in the New Cut, in the workhouse, in the police cell, in the hospital. There she is on Waterloo Bridge, and there — God help her ! — in the cold, black river, having accomplished her " progress." Take away the w^hipping-post from Bridewell ; and for the boudoir paid for by the Jew, substitute the garish little sitting-room that Mr. Holman Hunt painted in his wonderful picture of the Aivakcncd Conscience, and one can realize the "humour" and "discrimination" of Hogarth in a tale as sad that progresses around us every day. Every one who has the most superficial acquaintance with a Hogarthian biography has heard the story of how Mrs. Hogarth, or her mamma. Dame Alice Thornhill, placed the six pictures of the Harlofs Progress in Sir James's breakfast parlour one morning, ready for the BETWEEN LONDON AND SHEERNESS. 157 knight on his coming down. "Very well, very well," cried the king's sergeant painter, rubbing his hands, and well nigh pacified : " the man who can paint like this wants no dowry with my daughter." I am glad to believe the story ; but I don't believe, as some male- volent commentators have insinuated, that Sir James Thornhill made his son-in-law's talent an excuse for behaving parsimoniously to the young couple after he had forgiven them. There is nothing to prove that Sir James Thornhill was a stingy man. He had a son who was a great crony of Hogarth, accompanied him on the famous journey to Rochester and Sheerness, and after- wards became sergeant-painter to the navy. I fancy that he was a wild young man, and cost his father large sums. It is certain, however, that Sir James frequently and generously assisted his daughter and son-in-law. He set them up in their house in Leicester Fields ; and he appears to have left Hogarth a considerable interest in his house at 104, St. Martin's Lane, whither he had removed from Covent Garden, and the staircase of which he had painted, according to his incorrigible custom, with " allegories." The great artists of those days used to employ one another to paint the walls and ceilings of each other's rooms. Thus Kneller gave commissions to the elder Laguerre, and Thornhill himself employed Robert Brown, the painter who was so famous for "crimson curtains," and who justified having painted two signs for the Paul's Head Tavern in Cateaton Street, on the ground that Correggio had painted the sign of the " Muleteer." Be it mentioned likewise, to Thornhill's honour, that he fruitlessly endeavoured to persuade Lord Halifax to found a Royal Academy in 158 WILLIAM HOGARTH. the King's Mews, Charing Cross. It would be better, perhaps, in this place to make an end of goodman Thornhill. Besides Worlidge's portrait, there is one by Hogarth in oil, of which a vigorous etching was executed by Samuel Ireland. The portrait was purchased of Mrs. Hogarth, in 1781, and was deemed by her an excellent likeness. Thornhill died at his seat, "Thornhill," near Weymouth, in 1734.* He had transferred his academy or drawing-school, call it what you will, from Covent Garden to St. Martin's Lane ; and to Hogarth he bequeathed all his casts and bustos, all his easels and drawing-stools, ^11 the paraphernalia of his studio. These William ultimately presented to the academy held in St. Peter's Court, St. Martin's Lane, in premises that had formerly been the studio of Roubiliac the sculptor. I told you that at about the time of his marriage our artist took summer lodgings at Vauxhall, and first made * He sat for Melcombe Regis in the two last parliaments of George the First. The borough was then a mere pocket one, in the gift of the back- stairs. Thornhill's "employments" were continued to him for some time by George the .Second ; but, like his predecessor. Sir Christopher Wren, he was removed to make way for place-men who, without any very high attainments, could be useful to the ministry. Thenceforth, the "goodman" amused himself by painting easel-pictures. He was taken for death in an access of gout, and died in his chair on the 4th of May, and was buried at Stalbridge on the 13th. He had greatly beautified the ancestral mansion and estate^ and had erected, on an adjacent hill, an obelisk to the memory of George the First, which was visible to all the country side. Hogarth himself records the death of his father-in-law, in Sylvanus Urban's obituary in the Gentleman' s Magazitie — then a veiy young publication, indeed. He says that he was "the greatest historj- painter this age has seen;" and states that, as king's sergeant painter, he had to decorate all his majesty's coaches, barges, and "the royal navy." Are we to understand from this that Thornhill was expected to cai-ve and gild the figure-heads of three- deckers ! BETWEEN LONDON AND SHEERNESS. 1 59 the acquaintance of Mr. Jonathan Tyers, the "enter- prizing " lessee of the once famous " Royal Property." With Tyers he ever maintained a fast friendship, and he materially and generously assisted him in the decoration of the gardens ; for, frugal tradesman as Hogarth was, and sturdily determined to have the rights he had bargained for, he was continually giving away something. We have noticed his donation to the Petro-Roubiliac Academy ; to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, of w^hich he was a governor, he gave the picture of the Pool of Bethesdn ; and the governors of the Foundling Hospital know how nobly munificent was this honest Christian man to the nascent charity. He gave them handsome pictures ; he gave them a large proportion in the shares of other picture auctions — shares as good as money : he painted a splendid portrait of Thomas Coram, the grand old sea-captain, who spent his fortune in cherishing deserted children, and in his old age was not ashamed to confess that he had spent his all in doing good ; that his fortune was funded in Heaven — let us trust he is drawing his dividends now, — and that here below he was destitute.* His example incited many more notable * Thomas Coram was born In 1668. He had amassed a competence in following the sea, and lived at Rotherhithe, like Captain Lemuel Gulliver, and that greater mariner, Captain Cuttle. In his way to and from the maritime districts of the town, his honest heart was frequently afflicted by the sight of destitute and abandoned children. Probably he had never heard of St. Vincent de Paul— this rough tarry-breeks of the Benbow and Cloudesley Shovel era— but he set about doing the selfsame work as that for which the foreign philanthropist was canonized. Coram had already effected much good by procuring an Act granting a bounty on naval stores imported to Georgia— where the colonists were frequently left destitute— and by devising an admirable scheme for the education of Indian girls. l60 WILLIAM HOGARTH. artists to contribute pictures to the charity : and the halls of the Foundling became the chief art-lounge in London. The Royal Academy Exhibition, even, with its annual revenue of infinite shillings, sprang from this odd germ. The Foundling Hospital, I have heard, has wandered from its original purpose ; and few of its first attributes are now recognizable in its constitution ; but I hope they still teach every little boy and girl foundling to murmur a prayer for Thomas Coram and William Hogarth. For the embellishment of the supper-boxes at Vauxhall, William made several designs ; but there is not much evidence to prove that he painted any of them Avith his own hand. The paintings were mostly executed by Hogarth's fast friend, Frank Hayman, and perhaps by Lanscroon, singer and scene-painter, son of old Lanscroon, Riario's condisciple with Laguerre's son-in- law Tijou, and the author' of a meritorious set of prints illustrating Hob at the Well. For Vauxhall, Hogarth made the designs of the Four Parts of the Day, which he afterwards himself engraved, and which had great success. Most of us have seen a very ugly, tasteless mezzo- tinto engraving representing Henry VHI. in an im- The Foundling hospital was, however, his gieat work. He obtained the charter of incoiiDoration for it, A.D. 1739. These were the words, of which I have given the sense above : — " I have not wasted the little wealth of which I was formerly possessed in self-indulgence or vain exjiense ; and am not ashamed to confess, that in this, my old age, I am poor." They raised a pension of a hundred a year for the benevolent veteran ; Sir Samson Gideon and Dr. Brocklesby being chief managers of the fund. Captain Coram did not live long to enjoy the pension ; and at his death, it was continued to poor old Leveridge, to whose volume of songs William Hogarth contributed a frontispiece. BETWEEN LONDON AND SHEERNESS. l6l possible attitude, leering at a coarse Anne Boleyn, I am always sorry to see the words " Hogarth pinxit,'' in the left-hand corner of this inelegant performance, and sorrier to know that he did indeed achieve that daub ; and that the picture was hung in the " old great room at the right hand of entry into the gardens." Indeed it is a barbarous thing. The background is, I suppose, intended to represent an apartment in Cardinal Wolsey's sumptous mansion at York Place ; but it would do better for a chamber at the " Rose," or at the " Three Tuns," in Chandos Street. I can speak of it no more with patience. Why paint it, William 1 Yet it had all the honours of the mezzotint scraper ; it is engraved like- wise in line ; and Allan Ramsay — " Gentle Shepherd " Ramsay — who should have known better, wrote some eulogistic verses by way of epigraph. Nor did Jonathan Tyers of Vauxhall look the gift horse in the mouth. He was glad to hang the sorry canvas in his old great room ; and in testimony of many kindnesses received from the painter, who had " summer lodgings at South Lambeth," presented him with a perpetual ticket of admission to the gardens for himself and friends. Fancy being on the free-list of Vauxhall for ever ! The ticket was of gold, and bore this inscription -i-^ In perpctuam irnrfiru nifmoriam. Hogarth was a frequent visitor at the " Spring Gardens," Vauxhall. There, I will be bound, he and his pretty young wife frequently indulged in that cool summer evening's stroll which the French call prendre lefrais. There he may have had many a bowl of arrack punch with Harry Fielding — he was to live to be firm friends II 1 62 WILLIAM HOGARTH. with the tremendous author of " Torn Jones ; " there I think he may have met a certain Ferdinand Count Fathom, and a Somersetshire gentleman of a good estate but an indifferent temper and conversation, by name Western, together with my Lady Bellaston (in a mask and a cramoisy grogram sack, laced with silver), and, once in a way, perhaps Mr. Abraham Adams, clerk. There is an authentic anecdote, too, of Hogarth standing one evening at Vauxhall listening to the band, and of a countryman pointing to the roll of paper with which the conductor was beating time, and asking what musical instrument " that white thing was } " " Friend," answered William, "it is a single handed drnm!'' — not a very bright joke, certainly ; but then, as has been pertinently observed, a quibble can be excused to Hogarth, if a conundrum can be pardoned to Swift. We would paint our pictures and our progresses in 1 730- 1 -2-3. We were gaining fame. The Lords of the Treasury, as related by old under-Secretary Christopher Tilson, could examine and laugh over our plates even at the august Council Board, in the Cockpit, and, adjourning, forthwith proceed to purchase impressions at Bakewell's shop, near Johnson's Court, in Fleet Street. " Frances Lady Byron " — more of her lord hereafter- — was sitting to us for her portrait. Theophilus Cibber had pantomimized us. "Joseph Gay" — the wretched pseudonym of some Grub Street, gutter-blood rag- galloper — had parodied in " creaking couplets " the picture-poem of Kate Hackabout* Vinny Bourne had * One moment ere I leave the male and female naughtinesses in this drama for good. Charteris, Hackabout, brother and sister, James Dalton, BETWEEN LONDON AND SHEERNESS. 1 63 headed his " hendecasyllables," Ad G:diclintim Hogarth YiaoaivkriKov- Somerville, author of the Chase, had dedi- cated his Hobbinol to us : we were son-in-law to a knight and M.P., but we were not yet quite emancipated from the highwayman, whose "wig-box" you see in plate iii. of the H. P., and Mother Needham, who continued the traditions of Dryden's Mother Dulake ("Wild Gallant,") to Foote's Mother Cole, all faded into space before 1733. The colonel " Don Francisco " — as people with a snigger called Charteris — was veiy nearly being hanged. He was cast for death ; but being immensely rich, and having, moreover, and luckily, a lord of the land, the Earl of Wemyss, for his son-in-law, he managed to escape. Not, indeed. Scot-free. He was compelled to make a handsome settlement on his victim, one Ann Bond, prosecutrix in the case for which Don Francisco had so close a riddance of " sus. per coll." being written against his name. The sheriffs of London, and the high bailiff of Westminster, had, moreover, made a seizure of his rich goods and chattels, immediately after his conviction. He had to compound with them for the restitution of his effects, and this cost him nearly nine thousand pounds. The profligate old miser had to sell his South Sea stock, to raise the amount ; a fact which the newspapers of the day record with much exultation. But Nemesis was not yet satisfied. The colonel's wife came back from Scotland on purpose to reproach her lord. The wretched man on his part fled to Scotland, and died in Edinburgh soon afterwards. ' Dalton, of the "wig-box," having been "boned," "babbled," or "snabbled," and confined for some time in the " Rumbo," or " Whid," finished his career at the "nubbing cheat," at the top of the Edgeware Road. Li other words — the first are the elegant terms used by the City marshal in his controversial pamphlet the Regulator, written in disparagement of Mr. Jonathan Wild the great — Mr. James Dalton was arrested, and after lying some time in Newgate, was duly tried, sentenced and hanged. " He was a thief from his cradle, and imbibed the principles of his art with his mother's milk." He went between his father's legs in the cart to his fatal exit at Tyburn. Sic itiir ad astra ; and thus Plutarch in the shape of the ordinary of Newgate. As for Mother Needham, she was sentenced to stand twice in the pillory. The first ordeal she underwent close to her o)vn house, in Park Place, St. James'. She was very ill, and lay "all along" under these Caudine forks, "thus evading the law, which required that her face should be exposed." Two days afterwards, "com- plaining of the ingratitude of the publick " — the mob had pelted her pitilessly — "and dreading the second pillorying to which, in Old Palace Yard, she was doomed, she gave up the ghost." II 2 164 WILLIAM HOGARTH. struggles, and hardship, and poverty. As yet we were very badly paid, and our small earnings were gnawed away by the villanous pirates soon to succumb to the protective Act of Parliament which Huggins was to draw — how strangely and frequently that detested name turns up — and draw not too efficiently on the model of the old literary copyright statute of Queen Anne. Morris had paid us the thirty pounds adjudged for the Element of EartJi : but no munificent, eccentric old maid had as yet arisen to gratify us with sixty guineas for a single comic design : Taste in High Life. We were poor, albeit not lowly. The wolf was not exactly at the door. He didn't howl from morning to night ; but, half-tamed, he built himself a kennel in the porch, and snarled sometimes over the threshold. Let it be told again that we, William, were " a punctual pay- master." So it' behoved us to paint as many portraits and conversations as we could get commissions for, and do an occasional stroke of work on copper-plate for the booksellers. Coypel and Vandergucht, both approved High Dutch draughtsmen of the time, shared the patronage of the better class of booksellers with us ; but none of us worked for the polecat Edmund Curll. One of us, however, made a smart onslaught about this time on Edmund Curll's most rancorous foe, Alexander Pope. Many pages ago I hinted at this attack, as almost the only one that could be traced directly to Hogarth ; although many claim to discern little portraits in disparagement of Pope Alexander in the print of the Lottery, in RicJis Triumphal Entry to Covent Garden (in which a suppositious Pope beneath the piazza is maltreating a copy of the Beggars' Opera BETWEEN LONDON AND SHEERNESS. 1 65 — why? had he not a hand in it ?), and in the Characters at Buttoiis Cojfee-Jwuse. There can be no mistake, however, about the Pope in the print known as False Taste, or the second Burlington Gate. There is no need that I should trench on the province of Mr. Carruthers, who, in his edition of Pope, has so admirably nar- rated the ins and outs of the quarrel between the poet and the magnificent Duke of Chandos, further than to express an opinion that the duke had treated the little man of Twickenham with, at least, courtesy ; and that Pope's description of " Timon's villa " was at best somewhat lacking in courtesy. Hogarth took the Chandos side in the squabble — the malevolent still hint in deference to Sir James Thornhill and his old grudge against Kent, the Corinthian petticoat man, and protege of Lord Burlington. In the print you see Pope perched on a scaffolding, and as he whitewashes Burlington Gate, bespattering the passing coach of the Duke of Chandos. It would have been well for William to have avoided these partisan personalities. They never brought him anything but grief He should have remembered Vinny Bourne's allocution — Qui mores hominum improbos, ineptos, Incidis .... Rogues, and rakes, and misers, and fanatics, and quacks, were his quarry. It was his to scourge the vices of the great ; ay, and to laugh at their foibles. He has, indeed, well generalized the mansion and villa building mania in the courtyard perspective of the Marriage a la Jllode, but he should have had nothing directly to do with Burlington Gate or with Canons. The real scope and bent of his genius were to be 1 66 WILLIAM HOGARTH. triumphantly manifested at this ver}' period by his wonderful composition The Modern MidnigJit Convcrsa- tioji. I don't think there is a single artistic design extant which exemplifies to the spectator so forcibly and so rapidly the vices of a coarse and sensual epoch. Most of us have seen that grand picture in the Luxem- bourg at Paris, the Decadence des Roinains of Coutuse, with those stern citizens of the old Brutus stamp gazing in moody sorrow on the enervated patricians, crowned with flowers, golden-sandalled, purple-robed, rouged, and perfumed, lapped in feasting and luxur}', and the false smiles of meretricious women ; listening to dulcet music ; sipping the Chian and Falernian, babbling the scandal of the bath to their freedmen, or lisping sophisms in emasculated Greek to their hireling philosophers. One has but to glance at that picture to know that the empire is in a bad way ; that certain Germanic barbarians are sharpening short swords or whittling clubs into shape far away, and that the Roman greatness is in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. I remember once seeing in an old curiosity shop of the Rue Lafitte a water-colour drawing, probably limned by some rapin for some Sophie Arnould of the quarter, and sold at one of her periodical boudoir-and-alcove auctions — a drawing almost as eloquent and as suggestive as the Decadence. A group of ragged little boys, in the peasant costume of Louis the Well-Beloved's time, have lifted up a heavy curtain. You see, beyond, the interior of 3. petite maison. Farmers general, marquises, abbes, are junketing with the Sophie Arnoulds of the epoch. The uplifted table- cloth shows the keys of a harpsichord beneath, on which one of the fair dames is tinkling. There arc no BETWEEN LONDON AND SHEERNESS. 1 67 servants to disturb the company ; the dainty dishes rise through noiseless traps. Artificial flowers, champagne, wax candles, Sevres china and vermeil plate, diamonds, and embroidery : of all these there is an abundance. Outside, where the little ragged hungry boys are, you see snow and naked trees, and a little dead babv in a dead mother's arms. A fanciful performance, and too violently strained, perhaps ; yet one that tells, undeni- ably, that the age is going ivrong ; that this champagne will one day turn red as blood ; that these wax candles will light a flame not to be put out, but that will burn the petite viaison about the ears of Farmers general, Sophie Arnoulds, and company ; that the strumming of yonder harpsichord will be inaudible when the dreadful tocsin begins to boom. I need but allude to the Dutch Kermesses of Teniers, and Ostade, and Jan Steen, and the camp-life pictures of Wouvermans and Dick Stoop, for those acquainted with those masters to understand the marvellous and instantaneous concentration of all the low, sordid, brutal passions and pastimes of the epoch ; the daily life and sports and duties of the boor who swigs the beer and smokes the pipe ; of the vrau, who peels the carrots, swaddles the child, and beats the servant-maid with a broomstick ; of the rufiian soldier, rubbing down his eternal white horse, braying away with his trumpet, gambling under the tilt of his tent, or brabbling with the baggage-waggon Avoman, who reclines yonder among her pots and kettles. These things come upon us at once ; and we are seised and possessed with the life of the time ; but the force and suggestiveness of the works I have named become weak and ambiguous Avhen compared with this Modem MidnigJit Convei'sation, this I 1 68 WILLIAM HOGARTH. picture paraphrase of the immortal ^^ Propos des Biivew's " of Francois Rabelais. You see an epoch of dull, brutish, besotted revelry : an epoch when my lord duke was taken home drunk in his sedan from the Rose to his mansion in Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields ; his chair-men and flambeau-men very probably as drunk as he ; and his chaplain and groom of the chambers receiving him with bloodshot eyes and hiccuping speech ; — when Jemmy Twitcher lay in the kennel as drunk as my lord duke ; only, there was nobod)' to take him home ; when there were four thousand ginshops in London ; and a grave publicist issued a broadsheet, giving " two hundred and sixty plain and practical reasons " for the legislative suppression of the trade in " the dreadful liquor called Geneva." I wish I could persuade the temperance societies that this is in comparison a sober age ; and that 1 30 years ago, not only did wine and punch slay their thousands among the upper classes, but gin and brandy — both of which were horribly cheap — slew their tens of thousands among the populace. Wait till we come to the Hogarthian tableaux of Beer Street and Gin Lane. In this Modern MidnigJit Conversation, everybody is tipsy. The parson, the doctor, the soldier, the gambler, and the bully — the very drawer himself — are all intoxicated. Few of the company can see out of more than one eye. Pipes are lighted, and go out again for want of sober puffing. Songs are commenced, and the second couplet forgotten. Wigs are pushed awry, or quite fall off. The furniture is overturned ; rivulets of punch flow over the table, and on to the puddled ground. Men, losing the reins of reason, not only see, but think double ; take BETWEEN LONDON AND SHEERNESS. 1 69 their own cracked voices for those of interlocutors ; quarrel with themselves ; give each other the lie, and vow they will draw upon themselves if they, themselves, say something — they know not what — again. This is the state of drunkenness that cankered, and bloated, and corrupted Church and State, in the debased reigns of the two first Brunswickers ; that sent the king fuddled to Heidegger's masquerade, and the minister reeling in his blue ribbon to the House, and made tavern roysterers of the young nobles of Britain. When one has had to wade through the minor chronicles of this time, it becomes distressingly easy to recognize the terrible truth of the ]\Iod€rn Midnight Conversation.^ Now although William Hogarth, now in his thirty- fifth year, was passably virtuous, and I have heard no instance of his indulging in any modern conversation at midnight or other times, to the extent of becoming over- taken in strong drinks — there was plenty of cakes and ale in the Hogarthian philosophy. He was a brisk man, liberal and hospitable in his own house, and not averse * The Modern Midnight Conve7-satioii had a great vogue abroad, and is still, perhaps, one of the best known of Hogarth's works. Copies, adapta- tions, paraphrases of it have been multiplied to a vast extent in Germany. There is a well-known French version, Socicte nocturne, nominee comtnune- ment Cotterie de Debanche en Punch ; and a collection of heads from the Conversation, catalogued as Tetes des onze iiieinbres, gravees par M. Riepen- hansen. One ingenious artist even formed a gallery of small wax models of the principal figures. And finally, I have seen the French Cotterie enamelled on a porcelain pipe at Leipsic, and on a golden snuffbox in the museum of the Hermitage at St. Petersburg. There is a humorous modem lithograph, representing a party of sapient-looking bibbers, assembled in solemn conclave over a hogshead of Rhine wine in a cellar ; and the hint for this — albeit, the grossness is softened down — is evidently taken from the M. M. C. 170 WltLIAM HOGARTH. from moderate conviviality abroad, sometimes partaking of the nature of the hilarious gambols known as " High Jinks." Brother, we must die. It needs not the digging Trappist to tell us so. It needs not the moralist with " Disce inori!" It needs not the looking-glass that shows us the wrinkled brow and grizzled locks. We must die ; and we are gravelled, and worn, and sick, and sorry ; and in the night we pray for morning, and in the morning cry out that it were night. But they need not be grim ghosts, those memories of the old pleasant follies and " High Jinks." They did not all belong to the folly and recklessness of wayward youth. They were jovial and exuberant, and merry and light-hearted; trivial, certainly, and, maybe, undignified, as when you, John Kemble, rode the hippopotamus at early dawn among the cabbages in Covent Garden ; as when you, grave senator and reverend senior, danced the Irish jig over the crossed broomsticks ; as when you, now stately dowager, then sprightly maid of honour, dis- guised yourself as a buy-a-broom girl ; as when you, grave philosopher, condescended, " on that occasion only," to lead the donkey that was the Rosinante of a fifth of November " Guy." But you didn't do any harm. You didn't exactly bring your parents' grey hair with sorrow to the grave when you broke the half-crown's worth of crockeryware ; nor were you ever brought to the pass of biting your mamma's ear off on the Place de Greve, because she didn't flay you alive for partaking of apples which you had not precisely acquired according to the " vendors' and purchasers' " doctrines of wise Lord St. Leonards. I say, that I hope we shall not all be brought to judgment for all the rejoicings of our youth ; BETWEEN LONDON AND SHEERNESS. 171 for the assize would surely be too black, and shuddering Mercy would tear the calendar. In 1732 there must have been "high jinks" on foot from time to time at the Bedford Coffee House, Covent Garden. Now, where was the Bedford Coffee House .'' Was it at that Bedford Hotel, under the piazza, so unceremoniously elbowed by that monstrous glass-house called the " Floral Hall "—the Bedford of which Mrs. Warner is so urbane a hostess .'' Or was it the " Bedford Head," in Maiden Lane, Govent Garden, a hostelry where to this day a club of bookworm men meet to lay the dust of ancient lore with frugal libations, and talk about Hogarth and Fielding, and Johnson, and the brave deeds and the brave men of the day that shall be no more .-' I confess that I incline to the " Bedford Head," and that I have purposely avoided taking counsel of London antiquaries more learned than myself on the point, lest I should be undeceived. Moreover, Tothall lived at the corner of Tavistock Court, Tavistock Street, which, as everybody knows, is over against Maiden Lane. It was nearer to Leicester Fields, where Hogarth dwelt, than the Bedford under the piazza, and HOGARTH and Tothall, with Thornhill, Forrest and Scott, were the immortal FiVE who, on the morning of Satur- day, the 27th of May, 1732, set out on a Kentish pilgrim- age, of which the aim and end were " High Jinks." A word as to the Pilgrims. A famous English writer in some lectures on the " English Humourists," familiar to us all, has described the pilgrimage as that of a "jolly party of tradesmen engaged at high jinks." Now, with the exception of Tothall, who had been pretty nearly everything, and a woollen draper among multifarious 1/2 WILLIAM HOGARTH. Other callings,* the party were all professional men. What Hogarth was, you know. He had come to the days when he could wear his sword and bag. Thornhill was * Tothall's career was a most curious one. He was the son of an apothecary, was left an orphan, taken care of by an uncle. He ran away to sea ; went to the West Indies, Newfoundland, and Honduras ; was on one occasion captured by hostile Spaniards, and marched "up the country," with no other clothing but a woollen cap and a brown waistcoat — a costume almost as primitive as that of an unhappy French governess taken prisoner by some followers of Schamyl, in a raid on the Russians, and driven before them to their mountain home, the poor lady having nothing oft but a pair of blue satin corsets. Tothall had his picture painted in the brown waist- coat. Coming afterwards to England, he entered the service of a woollen draper, in Tavistock Court ; who, after some time, told him he was a very honest fellow, and that as he the draper only sold cloth, Tothall might have half the shop to sell shalloons and trimmings. He lent him money to buy stock, and recommended him to liis chapmen. By-and-by, a relative of Tothall in the West Indies sent him a puncheon of nun as a present. The recipient was about to sell the alcohol for what it would fetch — perhaps to the landlord of the Bedford Head — when his master interposed. ' ' I have no use for my cellar," quoth this benevolent woollen draper. "Do you open the door to the street ; tap your puncheon, and draw it off in twopennyworths." Spirit licences were not yet known. Tothall followed the draper's advice, speedily sold all his rum at a good profit ; sent to the West Indies for more, and drove a merry trade in rum, shalloons, and trimmings, till it occuned to the woollen draper to infonn him one morning that he intended to retire, that he might have all his stock at prime cost, and pay him as he could. Why are there no such woollen drapers now-a-days ? Between the shop and the cellar Tothall contrived to realize a very considerable fortune. All this time, this odd man had been assiduously collecting fossils, minerals, and shells, of which he had, at last, a handsome museum. He retired to Dover, and, tnie to his old adventurous habits, entered into large speculations, in what his biographer modestly calls the "smuggling branch of business." But a "byeboat," laden with horses, in which he was interested, having been lost between Flushing and Ostend, and some other speculations turning out disastrously, Tothall became in his later days somewhat straitened in his circumstances. Hogarth used frequently to visit him at a little village near Dover, whither he retired, and where he died four years after our painter. He left 1,500/. in cash, and his collection of shells, &c. sold for a handsome BETWEEN LONDON AND SHEERNESS. 1 73 Sir James's son and heir. He was afterwards sergeant- painter to the navy, and preserved a good estate in the west. Scott was a marine painter, said by Lord Orford to be second only to Vandevelde ; and Forrest's poetic narrative of the Tour, in " Hudibrastic verse," is so fluent, and often so witty, as to show a capacity and a facihty very uncommon in those days among trades- men. The curiosity is that these five accomphshed men should have taken delight in diversions of the plainest and most inelegant kind. As my author quoted above justly remarks, this was indeed a "jolly party of trades- men," at least, of merrymakers who behaved as we should expect tradesmen to do ; but I suspect that the real London tradesman of the time would have been frightened out of his life at such wild doings ; and that these jovial Kentish jinks were engaged in by the five Bedfordians through sheer humorous eccentricity, tinged by that inherent coarseness and love of horseplay of the age, which we discover, not only in such holiday jaunts, but in such almost inconceivable frolics as that of Georg-e the Second, the Duke of Montague, with Heidegger at the masquerade ; the escapade of Lord Middlesex and his friends of the Calves' Head Club, and the hideous practical joke played off by Pope on Curll. Educated men seemed to share in those days the yearning of the French actress — the besoin de s ejtcanailler — the desire to disport themselves in a pigsty, more or less Epicurean ; and but for the knowledge of this prevalent low tone in cultivated society it is difficult to realize the fact of Hogarth going back to his lady wife, and Thornhill to the powdered and bewigged grandee, his papa. Forrest's narrative of the tour, which began, as I 1/4 WILLIAM HOGARTH. have said, on the twenty-seventh, and finished on the thirty-first of May, is far too elaborate for me to give anything beyond a very brief reflex of it here. I will quote, however, the opening lines : — 'Twas first of mom on Saturday The seven and twentieth of May, When Hogarth, Thomhill, Tothall, Scott, And Forrest, who this journal wrote, From Covent Garden took departure, To see the world by land and water. It appears that their hearts were light, and those nether garments, now fallen almost into desuetude, save among grooms, footmen, blackrods, and members of the diplomatic service, were thin. They started, singing after a carouse, during the small hours of the morning, and went down the river to Billingsgate. At the noted " Dark-house " they met the same sort of company as Mr. Edward Ward introduces us to in the London Spy, and Hogarth took a portrait, unfortunately not preserved, of a waterside humourist, known as the " Duke of Puddledock." Of Puddledock a porter grim, Whose portrait Hogarth in a whim Presented him in caricature. He pasted on the cellar door. Thence they went to Gravesend in the tilt-boat with a " mackrel gale," chanting lustily, and regaling on " biscuit, beef, and gin." At Gravesend they put up at " Mrs. Bramble's." They had previously seen at Purfleet three men-of-war, the Dursley Galley, the Gibraltar, and the Tartar Pink, the pilot of which last vessel begged them to " lend him a cast." Thence they walked to Rochester, and saw in the cathedral " th' unknown BETWEEN LONDON AND SHEERNESS. 1 75 person's monument." Pendente lite, they drank six pots of ale. They saw " Watts' Charity," and eulogized its hospitality, remarking only But the contagiously affected, And rogues and proctors are rejected, marvelling much as to the origin of the distaste con- ceived by Master Watts against " proctors." For dinner at the Crown at Strood they had " soles and flounders, with crab sauce ; " a stuffed and roasted calf's head, " with purt'nance minced and liver fried ; " and by way of a second course, roast leg of mutton and green peas. Peas were early, alas ! in May, '32. The cook was much commended for't, Fresh was the beer, and sound the port. At Chatham they went aboard two men-of-war, the Royal Sovereigji and the Marlborough. In the church- yard at Hoo they found a curious epitaph, written by a " servant maid turned poetaster," in honour of her master, who had left her all his money, and which Forrest thus, literally, transcribed — And. wHen. he. Died. you. plainly, see. Hee. freely, gave. al. to Sara. passaWee. And. in. Doing, so. it. DoTh. prevail, that. Ion. him. can. well. besTowthis. Rayel on. Year, sarved. him. it. is well, none But. Thanks, beto. God. it. is. all. my One. How they lay two in a bed, drawing lots who should be the fifth, fortunate enough to sleep " without a chum ;" how they were tormented with gnats, and tossed and tumbled, and, waking up in the morning, told their dreams and could make nothing of them ; how Hogarth and Scott played at " Scotch-hop " in the Town-hall, Rochester ; 176 WILLIAM HOGARTH. how they pelted and bemired one another in country- lanes and churchyards ; how they perambulated the " Isle of Greane " and the " Isle of Shepey," and came upon a party of men-o'-war's men, who had been left without provisions by their midshipman, and learnt how the same midshipman had afterwards got into dire disgrace for philandering with a married lady of Queens- borough ; how they ate cockles with the sailors, and sent to the alehouse for beer to regale them ; and treated a loquacious man of Oueensborough to " t'other pot," whereat the loquacious man began to abuse the mayor of that mighty borough as a mere custom-house officer ; how they found the Market-place Just big enough to hold the stocks And one if not two butchers' blocks ; how they abode at the " Swans," and the landlady threatened to have Scott up before the mayor ; how they heard the famous Isle of Sheppey legend of " Horse Church " and the wicked Lord of Shorland, so graphi- cally narrated in our own days by Thomas Ingoldsby in the story beginning " ' He won't,' said the Baron. 'Then bring me my boots ; ' " how at last they got back to Gravesend, put up at Mrs. Bramble's again, and returned per tilt-boat, very tired and jovial, to London. All these notable incidents are set down with a charming simplicity, and an unflagging humour and good nature. Forrest, as I have said, kept the journal. Hogarth and Scott illustrated it. Thornhill made the map, and Tothall was the treasurer. The original drawings, done with a pen and washed with Indian ink, and not unlike some of old Rowlandson's rough sketches, are now in BETWEEN LONDON AND SHEERNESS. 1 77 the Print Room of the British Museum. I believe this very interesting memorial of an English artist, this homely Liber Vcritatis, was secured for our National Collection at the cost of a hundred pounds. Some of the drawings are capital ; though all are of the very slightest. These boon companions were too much bent on enjoying themselves to work very hard. There is a view of Oueensborough Market-place and Hotel de Ville, the manner of taking the draught of which is thus described : — Then to our Swans returning, there Was borrowed a great wooden chair, And plac'd it in the open street, Where in much state did Hogarth sit To draw the townhouse, church and steeple. Surrounded by a crowd of people. Tagrag and bobtail stood quite thick there And cried "What a sweet pretty picture!" There is certainly nothing very elevated in good Mr. Forrest's Hudibrastics ; yet the jingle of his verse is by no means disagreeable ; and from his simple description it is easy to form a definite notion of sturdy little Will Hogarth " sitting in much state " in the great wooden chair borrowed from the " Swans " at Queensborough, and gravely sketching with the tagrag and bobtail staring open-mouthed around him. A still better word picture by Forrest illustrates Hogarth's drawing of Shaving in the Isle of Sheppey : Till six o'clock we quiet lay And then got out for the whole day ; To fetch a barber out we send ; Stripp'd and in boots he doth attend, For he's a fisherman by trade ; Tann'd was his face, and shock his head ; 12 178 WILLIAM HOGARTH. He flours our heads and trims our faces, And the top barber of the place is ; A bowl of milk and toasted bread Are brought, of which, while Forrest eats, To draw our picture Hogarth sits ; Thomhill is in the barber's hands ; Shaving himself, Will Tothall stands ; While Scott is in a comer sitting, And an unfinished sketch completing. There is also a very droll tailpiece of Hogarth's design, and freely, vigorously and racily touched. The " Hudibrastics," when the accounts were duly audited — and a rare chronicle these accounts are of pots of ale, cans of flip, bowls of punch, lobsters and tobacco — were handsomely bound to be preserved as a perpetual memorial of this famous expedition. By way of motto, Forrest prefixed to his poem a quotation of the inscrip- tion over Dulwich College porch, Abi tu, ct fac similiter. The great success of the Harlofs Progress had naturally incited William Hogarth with a strong and almost fierce desire to accomplish some other work of the same satirical force, of the same breadth of moral it}' 12 2 BETWEEN LONDON AND SHEERNESS. " l8l with that excellent performance. He determined that there should be on record a sequel, or at least a pendant to the drama whose lamentable action his pencil had just so poignantly narrated. He felt that it was in him, that it was his vocation, his duty to follow step by step the career of human vice, to point, with unerring finger, whither tend the crooked roads, to demonstrate as clearly as ever did mathematician — much more explicitly than ever did logician — that as surely as the wheels of the cart follow the hoofs of the horse, so surely will punishment follow sin. He was as yet but at the com- mencement of his trilogy : Clytemnestra might begin ; Orestes might succeed ; but the Eumenides had to come at last. He saw before him a whole ocean, seething, weltering, bubbling of pravities and impostures, and deadly lies, and evil passions. He heard the thorns crackling under the pot. He saw vice, not only stalking about with hungered looks, ragged garb and brandished bludgeon ; now robbing Dr. Mead's chariot in Holborn ; now stopping the Bristol mail ; now cutting Jonathan Wild's throat on the leads before the Sessions House, and being pressed to death for it ; now with sooty face and wild disguise of skins, stealing deer in the king's forests, and rioting in caves on surreptitious vension and smuggled Nantz ; * now being ducked for pocket-picking in the horse-pond behind the King's Mews, Charing Cross ; now cutting throats in night-cellars ; now going * Vide the statutes at large for the " Black Act," by which poaching in disguise was made a felony, punishment death ; and the curious relation of the gentleman who fell among a gang of "Blacks," and was courteously entreated by them, and regaled at a rich supper, at which the solids were composed exclusively of venison, on condition, only, of never revealing the place of these sooty poachers' retreat. 1 82 WILLIAM HOGARTH. filibustering and sufTering death for piracy, to be after- wards gibbeted at Halfway Creek and the Triptoptrees ; but Vice in embroidery and Mechlin lace, with a silver- hilted sword, and a snuff-box enamelled by Rouquet, at its side ; vice, painted and patched, whispering over fans, painted with Hogarth's own " Progress " at Heidegger's masquerade ; vice punting at the " Young Man's," stock- jobbing in the Alley, brawling with porters and common bullies at the Rose, chaffering with horse-jockeys at Newmarket, clustered round the Cock-pit, applauding Broughton the ex-yeoman of the guard, pugilist, and lending its fine Holland shirt to Mr. Figg the prize- fighter after a bout at back or broadsword,* dancing attendance on the impudent and ugly German women, for whom the kings of England forsook their lawful wives, duelling in Hyde Park, and taking bribes in the very lobby of the Parliament House. William Hogarth knew that he was enjoined to mark this duplex vice, to burn it in the hand, to force it into the pillory, to pile the hundredweights of his indignation upon it in his own pressyard, to scathe and strangle it, and hang it as high as Haman, to be the loathing and the scorn of better- minded men. lietween the summer lodgings at South Lambeth and other lodgings he took at Isleworth, between the portraits and conversations, and the book- plates and the benefit-tickets ; odds and ends of artists' work, done in the way of business for the lords and gentlemen who were good enough to employ him ; shop-bills, " illustrating the commerce of Plorence ;" " breaking-up " tickets for Tiverton School ; scenes from * Figg fought much more with the sword than with his fists. BETWEEN LONDON AND SHEERNESS. 1 83 Paradise Lost; busts of Hesiod ; tickets for Figg the prize-fighter, for Milward, Jemmy Spiller, Joe Miller, and other comedians ; coats of arms for his friend George Lambert ; caricatures of Orator Henley ; benefit cards even for Harry Fielding, illustrating scenes from Pasqidn and the Mock Doctor ; between high jinks and suburban jaunts, and pleasant evening strolls in Vauxhall Gardens ; between 1733 and 1735, he was planning, and maturing, and brooding over the Rakes Progress. The experiment was a dangerous one. The public are averse from tolerating Paradise Regained after Paradise Lost, the Drunkard's Childi-en after the Bottle, the Marriage of Figaro after the Barber of Seville. And who has not yawned and rubbed his eyes over the second Faust ? But William Hogarth saw his way clearly before him, and was determined to pursue it. The pictures, eight in number, were painted by the end of 1733. In 1734, the proposals of subscription to the plates were issued. The subscription ticket was the well-known etching of the L^a?ighingA ndience. The sums were one guinea and a half for nine plates ; the ninth promised being The Hninonrs of a Fair — no other than the far-famed SoutJizvark. Thus I sweep the stage, and sound the whistle for the curtain to draw up on the drama of The Rakes Progress, closing this paper with the form of receipt given by Hogarth to his subscribers : " Reed. Deer. i8th, of the Rt. Honble Lord Biron, half a guinea, being the first payment for nine plates, eiglit of which represents a Rake's Progress, and the ninth a Fair, Avhich I promise to deliver at Michaelmas next, on receiving one guinea more. Note. — The Fair will be delivered at Christmas next, at sight of this receipt. The prints of the Rake's Progress will be two guineas, after the subscription is over." "WILLIAM HOGARTH." 184 WILLIAM HOGARTH. VI. The Rakes Progress : A Drama in Eight Acts. AXD what if all this should be but a Barmecide Feast ? or worse, a meagre banquet of Dead Sea apples, husks and draff, peelings, and outside leaves of lettuces, and the like unpalatable food ? I have talked largely, for I don't know how many pages, of a succulent Hogarth ordinary — of rich viands and rare wines ; and lo ! I have nothing better to offer you than the skimmings of skimmed milk, and the gyle of thrice-brewed malt. Here is your mess of pottage ; here is your soup ci ta puree de pave ; but I give you simply the paving-stone, and have kept back the savoury stock of meat, and spices, and pungent herbs. Are my many good friends to be fed with ^olic digammas, and shall I fill their bellies with the east wind t Oh ! I can write out the bill of fare well enough : white and brown soups, 1iors-d'(£uvres, entrees, roasts, releves, dessert, coffee, and cJiasse. But, good Mr. Essayist, where is the dinner .'' or rather, where are tlie plates ? Can there be anything more meagre and unsatisfactory than the description of a series of pictorial performances without the pictures themselves .'' and of what avail are these dissertations upon William Hogarth, Painter and Engraver, without THE RAKES PROGRESS. 185 some of Hogarth's pictures by way of illustration ? Of little more tangible use, I fear, than the purse now empty, but which once held all those brave bank notes — of little more than a cask of home-brewed without a key, and with no gimlet handy — than the bill for a feast that is over and paid — than the gay hat and feathers which come home for the dear child who died yesterday. Have you ever opened a desk, and found a pair of cards, a large and a small one, tied together with a true-lover's knot in silver twist ? These were for your own wedding ; only that ceremony never came off as intended, as you know full well, grizzling over your gruel in those lonely chambers, with the laundress filching the contents of the caddy from under your nose, and muttering disparagement of yourself to the bootboy on the staircase. I should have liked to possess an empire, and I have but a little Elba of Essay. I should have wished my bald prose to serve but as a framework to Hogarth's rich pregnant pictures. I revel in dreams of a vast edition, a big book that you might knock down an enemy with — nay, barricade your door withal against the button-holding world. Isn't there a size called " elephant folio ? " " Ho ! there, thou Barmecidean cook ! Send me up such an elephantine Hogarth of my own, full of plates, line for line, touch for touch, tint for tint, of the master's handling. Serve me swiftly a catalogue raisonne of all my hero's pictures and all his engravings, to his minutest snuff-box achievements and pen-and-ink scratchings. Let me whet my palate with footnotes as with Spanish olives, and give me a varied appendix by way of dessert." The Barmecide says this. 1 86 WILLIAM HOGARTH. and claps his hands, and flourishes his table napkin ; but the cook doesn't serve up anything worthy of a name of a feast, hot or cold. Shamefaced, I glanced at a few tiny woodcuts which chequer these pages, and admit that at my banquet there have been little better beyond hand-clapping and napkin-flourishing, with some sparse halfpenny loaves, and latten spoons and forks, and a plated cruetstand. What happened to the Barmecide who boasted of his hot joints ? Alas ! /ic had his cars boxed. My own lobes tingle at the apologue. What happens to the finger-post which points out the way, and goeth not itself any way } It is consulted, and passed by in indifference. And what is the doom of the showman whose exhibition is always " going to begin," and never does begin at all } The public at last grow tired ; pouch up their pence, or wisely expend them at the next booth, where there is a real live armadillo and a spotted girl whom one can really pinch. Only — let this stand on record for all explanation and excuse — were I to give you even the sketchiest copy of every one of Hogarth's pictures to illustrate these Essays on his life and character, you would have to wait until the year 1870 for the delivery of volume the first of my elephant folio. For the writer's life is very short, and the engraver's art is very long. Cras niihi, it may be, O dear friends and brothers gone before ! and many a man vainly hoping to sit under his own umbrageous fig-tree and his own vine, finds a chill strike to his marrow, for indeed he is sitting in the cold shade of the cypress and the yew. I had some thoughts of issuing modest proposals for a subscription — I think ten thousand pounds would be THE rake's progress. 187 sufficient — to enable me to illuminate a copious biography of Hogarth, with facsimiles of his performances. You should see how the price of steel plates would rise forthwith in the market, and how I would set all the etching-needles and graving-tools of our Cousenses, our Lewises, our Barlows, to work. I had some thoughts of advertising for a patron — a nobleman preferred. I find the descendants of Lorenzo de' Medici numerous enough, and supplying the needy from their golden- balled palaces with funds to any amount ; but alas ! the Medici only lend at interest, and on tangible security. So, for the present, these papers must be without plates, and the drama of the Rake's Progress must be performed without dresses, scenery, properties, decora- tions, or even a shovelful of blue fire. Do we need a prologue to scene the first ? Here are a few lines that may serve, from Mr. Pope's epistle to Lord Bathurst : — Who sees pale Mammon pine amidst his store Sees but a backward steward for the poor : This year a reservoir to keep and spare ; The next a fountain, spouting through his heir.* * I admire the originahty of the image by which a spendthrift is compared to a conduit-pipe ; but, as often happens with Pope, his exquisite polish and musical rise and fall often conceal a careless, an illogical, and sometimes a mischievous argument. If "pale Mammon " be but a " back- ward steward to the poor," keeping and sparing in a reservoir which will afterwards spout up in his squandercash heir's grandes eaiix ! there is no such great harm done. The poor are only kept out of their dues for a time, and come to their own at last. If Pope's moral be taken tah' quale, alternate avarice and improvidence must be in the main very good things, and charity only lies fallow for a time to produce a more abundant harvest. Yet I have little doubt that had Pope been philosophizing in prose instead of verse he would have drawn a very different conclusion. Would it not be more rational to inculcate the position that excessive frugality and excessive i88 WILLIAM HOGARTH. And again : the reverend Doctor Hoadly's epigraph : — O vanity of Age untoward, Ever spleeny, ever froward ! Why those bolts and massy chains — Squint Suspicion's jealous pains ? Why, thy toilsome journey o'er, Lay'st thou in a useless store? Hope along with Time is flown — Nor canst thou reap of field thou'st sown. It is all very true. Why, indeed ? Yet the old gentleman who was the reservoir, and has now left all to his heir, at the sign of the Fountain, has only done as Harpagon, and Gripewcll, and Vulture Hopkins, and John Ehves, Esquire, delighted to do. The Rake's papa saved thousands of candle-ends. Young Squander comes and burns them at either extremity, setting the welkin in a blaze. Let me adopt a nomenclature that for the nonce may serve the purposes of showmanship. You see that Ralph Grindall Mucklethrift Moneypenny, Esq., of Foreclose Court, near Parchment-Regis, Bondshire, somewhere in the west of England it may be, is lavishness are both equally pernicious ? The miser keeps money out of circulation, stints his household, star\-es himself, and grinds the faces of the poor. The prodigal spends his long-hoarded gold, indeed, \\ ith a free hand ; but to whom does it go ? To sharpers, and bullies, and bona-robas, and rascal mountebacks, fiddlers, squallers, and tavem-drawers. It is as on the Derby day, lobsters, pigeon pies, and half-emptied champagne flasks are flung to the rapscallionry of pseudo-Bohemia and Ethiopia. Hogarth was a sounder philosopher than Pope. No honest man profits by the rake's fortune. It was all got over Lucifer's back, and it is all spent under his abdomen. Ce que vient par la fltlte, s'en va par le tambour. In contra- distinction to this, we see that when Francis Goodchild, the industrious apprentice, attains wealth, he feeds Lazarus blind and Lazaiiis crippled at his gate. THE rake's progress. 1 89 gathered to his fathers. He leaves all to his son Thomas, who speedily obtains the royal permission to assume the name and arms of Rakewell. His mamma was one of the Rakewells in Staffordshire, a family which in their time have entertained several crowned heads ;• and Tom's maternal grandfather left him a snug estate to swell the fortune— mainly a ready-money one — left him by his old scrivening father. So Tom has come into his property, and stands in the musty parlour of his father's house, eager, trembling, almost fevered with that odd sensation of Possession. Even princes, heirs-apparent, for years expectant of a crown, have been thus feverishly nervous on the great day when the old king has turned his face to the wall, and the courtiers have come trooping through the antechambers to pay homage and lip-service to the new monarch. So Frederick, who was to be called Great, was feverish and nervous when the Hof Kammerer told him that the drunken old corporal his father was dead, would never more thrash subjects with his cane, or scourge precentors' daughters, and that he, the bullied, despised Fritz, was " Konig von Preussen." And I have heard of a duke, who the day after he had ceased to be a marquis by courtesy, scribbled his ducal signature some two hundred and fifty times over his blotting-pad. The old miser's memorandum-book lies on the ground. Hogarth makes entry for him of the date when "my son Tom came from Oxford," when he " dined at the French ordinary " — treating Tom, doubtless, — and when he " put off his bad shilling." Young Thomas has done with Oxford and all its humours. He may dine at whatever ordinary he chooses ; and if he does not " put 190 WILLIAM HOGARTH. off his bad shilling," he will at least put off a great many good guineas of his own. For all the guineas are his, and the moidores, and pieces of eight, even to the hoard of worn Jacobuses which come tumbling from the rooftree (even as they did when the Heir of Lynn was about to hang himself) as the servant nails the black hangings to the cornice. A bale of black cloth has come from the draper's, and awaits hanging in its due place. How it would have twisted the heartstrings of the deceased curmudgeon to see this waste of stout Yorkshire in vain trappings ; and how he would have invoked the gibbet law of Halifax against those who were " backbarend " and " handhabend " with that precious store of well-teazled broadcloth ! The old man was the architect of his o\\n fortunes — chiefly built of cheese and mousetraps, with parchment dressings — you may be sure ; but the undertakers have found out a scutcheon for him to deck his funeral pomps withal. The bearings are, significantly, " on a field sable, three vices proper ; " motto, " Beware." Like almost everything our Hogarth does, the motto is as a two-edged sword, and cuts both ways. The motto is better word-play than the patrician Vcr non semper viret. The hard-screwed vices express not only the tenacity of the old man's love of gold ; and the motto acts not only as a caution to prodigals against falling into the clutches of a usurer ; but, to my thinking, there is a counter allusion to the " vices " of human nature ; and that the " Beware " may also be taken as a counsel to young Tom. Already this young man had sore need of warning. Look at that pair of sorrowing women — mother and THE rake's progress. 191 daughter — in the right-hand corner of the picture. Tom has wronged the girl, cruelly ; that is painfully manifest. Young Tom Moneypenny, screwed down to a starvation allowance by his papa, may have promised marriage to this poor mantua-maker — the miser's house- keeper's pretty daughter, perhaps ; but Thomas Rakewell, Esq., could not think of contracting so degrading an alliance. So he strives to cover that broken heart with a golden plaster. A handful of guineas must surely atone for the mere breach of a solemn oath. Tom gives freely enough, and the girl cries and points to the ring the traitor has bought her, while the mother — a virago every inch of her — scolds and objurgates. What does it matter — this tiny capful of wind on the great idle Lake of Pleasure .'' Tom's steward — the harsh-visaged man with the pen in his mouth — thinks that it does matter ; and that the richer is the heir, the greater care he should have of his ready money. He places his hand on a bag of gold which Master Tom has by him for present emergencies, and would prevent further disbursements if he could. The expression of his face, the mere action of the hand on the money-bag, half in remonstrance, half in the instinct of avarice — for he is a true disciple of the old money-spinner deceased — are very eloquent. The heir thinks merely to trim his barque by casting this golden ballast overboard : — so vogue la galhe. Sir Sans Pitie the False has disdainfully flung a handful of ducats to the damsel he has betrayed, and ridden away. Tom has other things than distressed damsels to think of. The tailor is measuring him for his fine new clothes. 192 WILLIAM HOGARTH. The steward tells him dazzling tales of the India bonds, the mortgages, leases and releases that he inherits. Before him stretches in glittering perspective the Pro- mised Land of Pleasure. The era of pinching and pining is over, and Plenty comes swaggering in with. a full horn. A decrtpit old woman comes to light a fire, for the first time these many years, in the fireplace, of which the grate is dull, and the bars rusty. Soon the faggots will crackle and leap up into a rare blaze : it would be as well to burn that apronful of love-letters beginning, " To Mrs. Sarah Young — My dearest life," which the exaspe- rated old mother displays to the false-swearer. The fire had need blaze away, even if it made a bonfire of ev^ery memento of the old man's penuriousness. He saved ever>'thing. There is a cupboard full of old clothes, w^orn-out boots, and the dilapidated cauls of periwigs. The lamp outside his door was smashed in a frolic by the Mohocks. The miser brought the wreck of iron and glass indoors, and saved it. He was bidden to Venture Hopkins, or some equally famous usurer's funeral. The miser purloined the gravedigger's spade, hid it under his cloak, and brought it home, to save it. He had bought a handsome Bible at the price of wastepaper. The sole of his shoe wanted mending ; and you see, in the fore- ground, how he has pieced it with a portion of the cover of the holy volume. He kept a cat which he nine-tenths starved. You see the wretched animal mewing over a chest crammed with massy plate, and wishing, doubtless, that the chased silver was wholesome paunch. There is a Flemish, picture on the wall — the usual miser gloating over the usual money-sacks ; but I will warrant the painting was not there merely for ornament. It must THE RAKES PROGRESS. IQj have served a turn many and many a time to eke out the little cash, and the great discount in a bill. A rusty spur, a pair of horn spectacle-frames without glasses, the old man's furred cap, his crutch, his walking-cane, a pair of battered swords he kept for fear of robbers, and a long-disused jack and spit, removed from the fireplace and thrown by in a cupboard, where they are hoarded as old iron — attest with eloquence difficult to be im- proved, all the self-torturing avarice of this poor, wealthy, griping wretch. Let us close the scene upon his sordid memory, and follow the fortunes of his heir.* * Gilpin — Essay on Prints — greatly and justly admires the perspective of this picture ; and it may be termed, without pedantiy, an ingenious isometrical projection. Thomas Cook, engraver, author of Hogarth Rest07-ed (London, 1813), and who himself engraved many unpublished Hogarths, speaks of the Rake's face, in this first stage of his histoiy, as "marked by that uneasy, unmeaning vacancy, which seems, by nature, the characteristic of a dupe." But I rather discern in poor young Tom's countenance the simplicity, the eagerness, and the carelessness of youth, as yet unmarred by the stamp of cynical sinfulness. The features are eminently beautiful ; and although he has already been a profligate, and ruined this unhappy Sarah Young, I fancy I can trace a struggle between conscience and shame, and the recklessness of the nascent spendthrift. Tom does not wholly belong to the Evil One yet, else he would be content with laughing at his victim, and would not take the trouble to give her any money. It is likewise the opinion of Thomas Cook, that the harsh-visaged man with the pen, whom I described as the miser's steward, is "a pettifogging attorney," and when he lays his hands on the bag of gold, is actuated by ' ' propensities too often attributed to certain practisers of the law," and "seizing the earliest opportunity of robbing his employer ; " but I believe in the steward's fidelity, and only think him to be remonstrating on the folly of spending money at all. Such men love gold, not for the sake of what it will purchase, but for its own sake, — because it is gold. When Lucrece Borgia, in Victor Hugo's play, asks Gubetta why he borrows money from the young nobles, he being so much richer than they, — he makes answer, " Pardieu! madaine, pour en avoir." To /^az't? money, and, having some, to have more. "All the baccy in the world," and then — "more baccy," was the sailor's notion of perfect happiness and unlimited riches. 13 194 WILLIAM HOGARTH. Thomas is himself again in Act the Second of this tragi-comedy, " The Rake s Lcvcc." He Hves in a splendid suite of apartments — say in Pall Mall, or in Soho Square, or in Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn. We don't see the ceiling in the picture ; else, I daresay, we should find it painted with the story of Danae, or that of the Golden Fleece. A splendid picture, in a frame as splendid, of the Judgment of Paris, is the principal ornament of the grand saloon ; but that it has been bought merely for show, and not through any love for art, is plain from its pair of pendants ; portraits of gamecocks in gaudy frames. An arched doorway exhibits beyond a gaudy antecham- ber, where the humbler class of courtiers cool their heels. There is a French tailor ; a poet — yes, a poet, who reads one of his own epistles to wile away the time ; and a milliner. Now the milliner — you know her by the long cardboard-box under her arm — is, I can't help thinking, our old friend, the deceived Sarah Young. Has the golden ointment healed her heart } Has she accepted the Rake's money, and gone into business for herself .'' Not at a mean frock-shop as Hogarth's own sisters did, selling (see engraved card) " y^ best and most fashionable ready-made frocks, stript dimity and flanel, blue and canvas frocks, and blue-coat boys' Dra'■^ Likewise tickens and Hollands at y^ piece." But rather as a fashionable modiste in the New Exchange, like that celebrated " white milliner," the Duchess of Tyrconnell, or " Mrs. Holt," who lived at the " Two Olive Posts in y*^ Broad part of the Strand," for whom Hogarth also engraved a card, and who sold " Lustrings, Sattins, Padesois, Velvets, Damasks, Fans, Legorne hats, Violin strings. Books of Essences, Venice treacle, Balsomes ; " THE rake's progress. I95 and in a back warehouse (!) " all sorts of Italian wines, Florence cordials, Oyl, Olives, Anchovies, Capers, Ver- micelli, Saussidges, Parmesan cheese, and Naples soap." Sarah Young, with that odd, half-vindictive, half-affec- tionate hankering after the man who has deceived her — a hankering by no means uncommon to her sex — has solicited the high honour of being milliner in ordinary to his worship Thomas Rakewell, Esq. — for gentlemen had female milliners in 1735 ; just as ladies had stay- makers and "taylors" of the ruder sex. Sarah, then, furnishes Thomas with his bands of Valenciennes and Point d'e Dunquerque, with his ruffles and laced night- caps, with essences and ribbons for his hair. And you may be certain that Thomas, who has quite forgotten those fervent billets in which she was his " dearest life," does not forget, while condescending to patronize, to run a long bill with her. Will Sarah turn out to be Nemesis .'' Will this deceived white milliner become Alba c//r(7, jump up behind Tom's chariot, and bid the coachman drive to Styx Old Stairs, where his worship will take water, in Charon's barge — like young Bibo — for Tartarus .'' Ah, no ! A vulgar melodramatist would, with much speed, have brought about this con- summation ; but William Hogarth knew better. Five thousand times better did he know the inexhaustible love, and tenderness, and longsuffering, and mercy, that are for ever welling, even from the bruised heart of a betrayed woman. Such love and tenderness are lost upon the graceless prodigal. Three years have elapsed. The uncouth, but not quite hardened hobbledehoy has cast off his awk- wardness and his conscience, and has all the allures of a 13—2 196 WILLIAM HOGARTH. fine gentleman. He holds levees. His mode of life may be quoted from Brampton's Man of Taste : — ^Yithout Italian, and without an ear, To Bononcini's music I adhere. To boon companions I my time would give. With players, pimps, and parasites I'd live ; I would with jockeys from Newmarket dine, And to rough riders give my choicest wine ; My evenings all I would with sharpers spend, And make the thief-taker my bosom friend ; In Figg, the prizefighter, the day delight, And sup with Colley Gibber every night. Cioc, I would hotly dispute concerning Verdi and Donizetti, and go into ecstasies over the sixpenny libretto books, not knowing one word of Italian. I would affect to despise the grand old music of the English school, and give a guinea a lesson to some lantern-jawed sallowface, who, before he turned music- master, was a barber at Bologna. I would stop late in my club billiard-rooms and smoking-rooms, and have my toadies and my convenient men. Yes, I would dine with Newmarket jockeys, and give rough riders Clos Vougeot ; and look in at night at the subscription hazard-tables ; and sometimes, for fun, go the rounds of Thieves' Kitchens and Rats' Castles, under the guidance and guardianship of Inspector Bull's-eye. I should be sure to attend the '* international " prizefights, and be full of solicitude as to the designs of the Staleybridge Chicken upon the vacant belt ; and I might sup with the low comedian at night, and make the man who sings nigger-songs tipsy with champagne. And upon my word, I, Thomas Rakewell, suppositious prodigal, must be 125 years old ; for in this present year, i860, I am precisely the same Thomas Rakewell, and indulge in THE rake's progress. 197 precisely the same refined and agreeable pleasures that marked my Progress in 1735. " Thou hast it now," Thomas ; " King, Cawdor, Glamis all." In the grand saloon the Rake receives his courtiers of the first class. There is the fencing-master, with his " saha ! " his carte and his tierce, and his raison demon- strative.^ There is the Improver of Gardens, designed by Hogarth for a certain Bridgeman, " a worshipper of the modern style, who attempted to create landscape, to realize painting, and to improve nature" — in short, an archetype of " Capability Brown." There is the kneeling Horse Jockey, the descendant of Cromwell's Dick Pace, of " coffin mare " celebrity, who holds a silver race-cup, inscribed, " Won at Epsom by Silly Tom," a very appro- priate name for Squire Rakewell's " Crack." Observe the turned-up shade to the jockey's cap, his easy tunic, the loose turnover tops to his boots, and the tremendous weight of his Avhip.f There is the hired bravo, the Sparafucile, the Saltabadil to this young monarch qui s amuse — who kills or cudgels in town or country, with promptitude and despatch — with his bloated form, black * The fencing-master is intended for the portrait of one Dubois, a niaitre d^armes of much i^enown. He was killed in a duel ■\\'ith one of the same name. See Gnib Street yournal (May 16, 1734). "Yesterday, between two and three in the afternoon, a duel was fought in Marylebone fields, between Mr. Dubois, a P'renchman, and Mr. Dubois, an Irishman, both fencing-masters, the fonner of which was run through the body, but walked a considerable way from the place, and is now under the hands of an able surgeon, who hath gi-eat hopes of his recoveiy." But afterwards, in the same journal, under date of May 23 : "Yesterday morning, died Mr. Dubois, of a wound he received in a duel." f " Feather weights " were unknown in those early days of the turf. Heats were not ridden by pigmies ; and race-horses were strong, muscular, large-limbed animals, not satin-skinned, greyhound-like, hot-house plants. 198 WILLIAM HOGARTH. wig, dingy laced hat, and a patch over his nose. He has his hand, curiously, on his right side, as if he didn't know w^here his heart was ; but he knows well enough where to lay his right hand : namely, on the hilt of his hanger, as he enters into the stereotype protestations of fidelity. He has brought a characteristic letter of recommenda- tion to his new patron : — " Sir, the captain is a man of honour, and his sword may serve you. Yours, W" Stab." The foolish, sensuous rake, in 'broidered slippers and richly laced morning gown and cap, seems much inclined to take the honourable captain into his employ ; from which we may glean, that, fond as he may be of midnight frolics, beating the watch, roasting tradesmen, terrifying women and so forth, active courage is not among the characteristics of Thomas Rakewell, Esq., and that Jie needs the bravo's brawny arm to protect him in his pranks, and give impunity to his impertinences. There is a blower on the French-horn present too ; and a heavy, somewhat good-natured looking man with a couple of quarter-staves, whom we may take for Figg, the pugilist.* * There is some difficulty in "making out " likenesses in a period when almost eveiybody went clean shaven, and ^\•ore a wig ; but comparing the bewigged pugilist in tlie levee scene with the bare-polled prizefighter holding the broadsword, who stands on the platform, in the card etched by Simpson, after a design by Hogarth, for James Figg, there can be little doubt, I think, that both are meant for the same person. The inscription descril)es Figg as "master of ye noble science of defence ;" and states that he dwelt " on yc right hand in Oxford Road, near Adam and Eve Court ;" and that "he teaches gentlemen ye use of ye small backsword and quarter-staff, at home and abroad." There is not a Avord said about fisticuffs or the "gloves." Figg appears to have been in the "zenith of his gloiy" about 1 73 1. His portrait was also painted by Ellis, a man who imitated Hogarth in small "conversations;" and the Ellis-Figg portrait was engraved in THE RAKES PROGRESS. 199 The prominent figure standing to the left of the Rake is Essex, the dancing-master. He is even a greater mezzotint by Faber, and published in October of tlie year just mentioned. It is not at all uncommon, now, to see daubs in the curiosity-shops about Leicester-Square, which purport to be "original" portraits of Figg, by Hogarth. The admirers of Messrs. Sayers and Heenan may find delecta- tion in the following flight towards Parnassus anent this distinguished Mr. Figg : — The mighty combatant, the first in fame, The lasting glory of his native shame (?) Rash and unthinking men, at length be wise ; Consult your safety, and resign the prize : Nor tempt superior force, but timely fly The vigour of his arm, the quickness of his eye. In the name of the prophet — Figg ! Captain John Godfrey, in his quarto pamphlet on The Useful Science of Defoice {\'J\']), calls Figg "the Atlas of the sword;" " and may he long, " the captain continues, "remain the gladiating statue ! In him strength, resolution, and unparalleled judgment conspired to form a matchless master. There was a majesty shone in his countenance and blazed in all his actions beyond all I ever saw." And yet the captain was old enough to have seen Marlborough, and Peterborough,, and Eugene, and Tallard, and Vendome. Perhaps those heroes, although their actions were certainly "blazing," were not very "majestic " as to their countenances. Chetwood, in his History of the Stage, tells us that Figg informed him that he had not bought a shirt for twenty years, but had sold some dozens. The aristocracy were his purveyors of l)ody -linen. In the sixth volume of Dodsley's Collection of Fugitive Pieces, there are some verses by the witty Doctor Byrom of a sword contest between Figg and Sutton, in which the first was victorious. Figg appeared on the stage calm and sedate, " with a fresh shaven pate." They wore " armigers " too. Figg's arm was encircled with a blue ribbon ; Sutton's with a red one. The fortune of the day was for a long time suspended, till Figg hit his opponent a stroke on the knee, and so disabled him. At his amphitheatre in the Oxford Road he engaged with not only Sutton, but " William Holmes and Felix MacGuire, the two first (Hibernice) and most profound swordsmen of the kingdom of Ireland. 'Tis not," the advertisement sets forth, "the accidental blow which Mr.- Holmes received on his metacarpus the last time he fought \\A\\\ Mr. Figg has cooled his courage, or given room to Mr. MacGuire to decline his interest. An impression of Figg's card has been sold for eight guineas. 200 WILLIAM HOGARTH. dandy than Tom Rakcwell. Laced coat and ruffles, monstrous cuffs, resplendent wig, silk stockings and diamond buckles, deck his radiant person ; but for that unmistakable self-satisfied smirk, and that ridiculously diminutiv^e " kit," and that exquisitely pointed toe, you migbt mistake the predecessor of Vestris and D'Egville for a dancing-master. It is fated that the Rake — whether he have rings on his fingers, or bells on his toes, or not — shall have, for the present, music wherev^er he goes. Besides the twanging of the French horn — the probabilities are a little violated by its professor pre- suming to sound that instrument while his worship. Squire Thomas, is conferring with Captain Saltabadil — besides the squeaking of Mr. Essex's kit, we have the strumming of a harpsichord, touched by the figure with the enormous periwig, who sits with his back to the audience. He is trying over a new opera, TJic Rape of the Sabincs* The dramatis perso)icB appear on the fly- leaf, and include the name of Senesino. But majora caiiamns ! over the back of the maestro's chair there hangs, to trail at length far over the ground, a docu- ment, resembling several " yards of songs " tacked to a bill of costs in a Chancery suit, and inscribed with an enumeration of the gorgeous presents bestowed on the Italian opera-singer, Farinelli, by the nobility and gentry * The figure of the maestro at the harpsichord has by some commen- tators been held to be Handel, but there is no evidence to go to the jury. It must certainly be remembered that he who was afterwards to write the Messiah was at one period of his career manager of the Italian Opera ; but I don't think it likely that he would spend his mornings at Tom Rakewell's levees. Besides, Brampton makes his rake say, " To Bononcini's music I adhere." B. and H. were sworn foes. THE rake's PPOGRESS. 201 of this kingdom. The extremity of the schedule half covers an engraving, representing a lady of fashion kneeling at an altar erected before the statue of the illustrious soprano ; and exclaiming, label-wise, " One God, one Farinelli," an impious ejaculation attributed to some aristocratic female devotee of the signor. Poor Farinelli ! He was the friend of princes, and abounded in diamond snuff-boxes, but his singing, after all, must have resembled the tootle-tooing of a flute. This, then, is the morning's reflection bearing on the previous night's entertainment of T. R., Esq. It must be admitted that while evidences of vanity and frivolity are plentiful enough, young Tom's pursuits do not, as yet, appear outrageously vicious. On that long schedule over the chair you read that Thomas Rakewell, Esq., has presented a golden snuff-box, chased with the story of Orpheus charming the brutes, to Farinelli. By the way, why shouldn't the periwigged unknown at the harpsichord be the signor himself.'^ There is nothing so very unpardonable in making such gifts. At least, the apologist may urge, there are no soda-water bottles, betting books, ends of cigars — (were those vanities then invented.^) — about, to mark the sensual, unprofitable mode of life adopted by this deluded young man. Tom seems, at the worst, to be simply wasting his time ; and the student of Fielding, when he has well considered Hogarth's levee, will turn to the description of a fashion- able Do-nothing's day, as set forth in Joseph Andrezvs : " In the morning I arose, took my great stick, and walked out in my green frock, with my hair in papers (a groan from Adams), and sauntered about till ten. Went to the auction ; told Lady she had a dirty face ; 202 WILLIAM HOGARTH. laughed heartily at something Captain said,— I can't remember what, for I did not very well hear it ; whispered Lord ; bowed to the Duke of ; and was going to bid for a snuff-box, but did not, for fear I should have had it. From two to four dressed myself (A groan.) Four to six dined. (A groan.) Six to eight coffee-house .'' eight to nine Drury Lane playhouse ; nine to ten Lincoln's Inn Fields " — you see Fielding does not make Mr. Abraham Adams groan at the mention of co,ffee-houses and theatres — " Ten to twelve drawing-room. (A great groan.) At which Adams said with some vehemence, ' Sir, this is below the life of an animal, hardly above vegetation.' " And so it is ; but worse is to follow ; vice active in lieu of vice passive. Prompter, sound the whistle ; and shift the scene, ye carpenters. We come to the third tableau of the Rakes Progress. Orgie : and, I am afraid the less said about it the better ; yet there must be some definite record made of this stage in Tom's journey ; and after all, I am writing about William Hogarth's works and time ; about the suckling of fools indeed, but not the chronicles of small beer. Truth must out, and Tom is going to the dogs with dreadful swiftness. Act three represents a very different scene of dissipation to the dull sensuality of the topers in the Modern MidnigJit Conversation, for alas ! woman, vicious, and impudent, and fallen, but still, under Hogarth's pencil, angelically beautiful, is there. Tom is far gone in foreign wines, drunk on the splendid and disreputable premises he condescends to patronize. There are nine ladies, two ballad-singers, and a drawer (in the background) visible, but onl)' two gentlemen. THE rake's progress. 203 Tom has just been robbed of his watch by the fair one who declares she adores him. Fair one Number i passes the stolen property to fair one Number 2 ; and fair one Number 3 — a very hideous negress indeed — looks on with a grin of approval. Two fair ones have quarrelled, and one is squirting aqua-vitae from her mouth at her adversary ; the shot is a good one, and the range is long, at least three feet. In the background another daughter of Folly is setting fire to a map of the world. A rich mirror of Venice glass has been smashed in the scuffle ; but Thomas will pay for all, or will halve the damage with that other intoxicated gentleman, whose wig falling off reveals his neat black crop beneath. He is quite imbecile, and is as a sheep for the shearers. The por- traits of the twelve Caesars grace this abode of revelry ; while the Kitcat effigy of mine host, Pontac, looks clown in plethoric serenity on the agreeable scene. Mine host, you have the best of it ; the triumph of the fair ones is short-lived ; the beadles of Bridewell wait for them, and there is hemp galore to beat. After all — for apoplexy, an excise information, or a man killed at an orgie, may put a stop to Pontac's profits — those ragged minstrels and ballad-singers, who come bawling and twanging in, may derive most benefit from the joyous company and the gay life. They last, these scrapers and caterwaulers ; so do the beggars. We go to India, and returning, find our old vagabond acquaintances as ragged as. ever, and yet not older, so it seems. They watch the procession defile, the panorama unroll, the farce play itself through ; they watch and grin, and shout, and call us noble captains, and fair ladies, and have their share of our loose coppers, and see us all out. 204 WILLIAM HOGARTH.' Our friends die, but the vagabonds remain and flourish. And I Jiave seen the seed of the righteous begging their bread.* I cannot be more expHcit in describing young Thomas's. evening entertainment, beyond hinting that, to judge from the trophies in the foreground, he has been to a masquerade, and in a conflict with some semi- paralytic Avatchman — where is Captain Saltabadil .-* — has carried off the staff and lantern of the guardian of the night. Many more pages could be devoted to the consideration of the Pontacian symposium ; but I can't tell all the things that are on the tip of my tongue. I can't tell them, at least, on Cornhill. There is reverence due to young readers. You must wait until the advent of my elephant folio. Meanwhile, go you to Hogarth's own picture, and study its sad details. It is to be noted as an intentional feature of this young man's career, that from the first he is, as to the belongings of his own sex, Alone. The unlucky lad is an orphan, nay, most probably, has never known a mother's care. I can't discover in his after career, until his marriage, that he has any friends, nay, that any living soul save Mrs. Sarah Young, the milliner, cares anything * The Cresars, — only six of them are visible, but we may be permitted to assume the existence of the remaining half-dozen, — have been barbarously mutilated. The heads have been cut bodily from the canvas, with one exception, Nero. To complete the propriety of the exemption there should surely have been added to the Cresars a sil/iot/dfe, at least, of Elagabalus. Pray note the face and figure of the woman ballad-singer yelling out the " Black Joke," the melody of which questionable ditty was selected by Thomas Moore whereto to set the curiously antithetical words beginning "Sublime was the warning that liberty spoke." I think the air is also known by the title of the " Sprig of shamrock so green." THE rake's progress. 205 about him. He has, even, no associates, young and wild as himself; and knows nobody beyond tavern- drawers, prize-fighters, and buffoons. He is solitary in the midst of all this revelry and this vice. Probably Hogarth so isolated him to concentrate the tragic inte- rest of the drama in his person ; and yet, I think, some thought prepense must have moved him to teach us that a pocketful of money, lavishly spent, won't buy us friends, or even companions, more reputable than Cap- tain Saltabadil, or Lieutenant Sparafucile, or " Yrs. W"" Stab." Yet Thomas Rakewell, Esq., goes to Court. All kinds of queer people could make their bow at St. James's a century and a quarter ago ; and a birthday reception was almost as incongruous a medley as one of those New Years' night balls at the Czar's Winter Palace, to which almost every man in St. Petersburg who can manage to raise a dress-coat and a pair of patent leather boots, was invited. Moreover, in 1735, there were two excellent recipes for becoming a man of fashion : to wear fine clothes, and to frequent the coffee- houses. Now-a-days, dress has ceased to denote rank, and clubs and the ballot have done away with coffee- house life. Where can a man " drop in " now, and boast that he has mingled with " the wits ? " Bah ! the wits themselves have departed in peace. Grub Street is pulled down, and Buttons's, Wills's, Toms's, are shadows. Nevertheless, Thomas, in raiment of most astounding* splendour, shall go to Court. So Avills it Hogarth, in Act the Fourth of the Rake's Progress. It is the ist of March, the birthday of Queen Caroline, and likewise St. David's day. With his usual happy ingenuity. 206 WILLIAM HOGARTH. Hogarth has fixed the date by the introduction of a Welsh gentleman (doubtless a lineal descendant of Cap- tain Fluellen), who — a prodigious leek adorning his hat — is marching proudly along St. James's Street. This Cambro-Briton carries his hands in a muff — a somewhat strange ornament for a gentleman ; but muffs were much w^orn at this time. You may see a beau with a muff in Hogarth's Taste in High Life ; and I remember that Voltaire, in his Siecle de Louis Qiiinze, tell us, that \\hen Damiens attempted to assassinate the well-beloved king, the courtiers, in consequence of the intense cold, had their hands thrust in enormous muffs. Tom, embroidered, laced, and powdered up to the eyes, goes to Court in a sedan-chair. It is a hired one, No. 41, and the hinder chairman, by the leek in his hat, would also appear to be a Welshman. The rake's affairs have been going but badly lately. He is deeply dipped. He has made ducks and drakes of all the ready money, all the India bonds and mortgages, all the leases and re-leases. He has been shaking his elbow, my dear. Hogarth insists very plainly on the gambling element in his career. In front of his sedan a group of black- guard boys are gambling on the flags of St. James's Street. Two shoeblacks are deep in dice. Tw^o other ragged little losels — one a newshawker, it would appear by the post-horn in his girdle, and who carries a voting- ticket in his hat ; the other absurdly accoutred in the dilapidated periwig of some adult gambler gone to grief - — are equally deep in cards. The hand visible to the spectator — that of the boy in the wig — shows only black pips : and on a post you read the word " black." On the other hand a flash of lightning breaks through the THE RAKES PROGRESS. 20/ stormy sky* and points direct to White s notorious gaming-house. The alkision is passably significant. It is, doubtless, at White's that Tom has gambled away the paternal thousands ; but, be it as it may, it is in St. James's Street, going to the birthday drawing-room, that the rake feels the first practical effect of the heraldic monition — " Beware ! " The sheriff of Middlesex has been long running up and down in his bailiwick seeking for Tom ; and now two catchpoles march up to the sedan-chair, and capture the body of Thomas Rakewell, him to have and to hold at the suit of our sovereign Lord the King and somebody else — very possibly the tailor who had made that fine suit of laced clothes for him. The poor wretch, at best but a faint-hearted shirker of responsibilities, is quite overwhelmed and cowed at his . arrest. Not yet, however, is he to languish in the Fleet or the Marshalsea. Mrs. Sarah Young, the milliner, happens to be passing with her bandbox. Her tender heart is touched at the sight of the perfidious Tom's misery. Bless her for a good woman ! She lays her hand on the catchpole's arm. She " stays harsh justice in its mid career ; " she whips out a washleather bag full of money, and I declare that she pays Tom's debt and costs, and very presumably gives the catchpoles a guinea for themselves. Thomas, there is yet time. Thomas, you may make Sarah Young an honest woman, assist her in the milli- nery business, and become a reputable citizen, occasion- ally indulging in connubial junketings at Sadler's Wells, * The sky, and indeed the whole background of the fourth taljleau, are very badly engraved, and evidently, not by Hogarth. 2o8 WILLIAM HOGARTH. or at the Bell at Edmonton. There is time. The veiled lady comes on the eve of that fatal supper to warn the libertine, Don Juan. The Commendatore knocks a loud rap at the front door before he comes upstairs. Even Sganarelle was saved — although he lost his wages. He quaked and repented amid the terrors of that Feast of Stone. Turn again, Thomas ; ere thou herdest Avith swine. Alas ! I think the wretched youth might have turned indeed, if he had had a father or mother. He had none, and there was no fatted calf at home. There was Sarah Young ; and Thus he requites her in Act the Fifth — the last act in most dramas ; but there are more to come in Tom's life history. Released from the catchpole's claws, the ungrateful Rakewell, now become merpenary, hunts up what is called a " City fortune." A rich old maid, dreadfully ugly, and with a decided cast in her eye, is foolish enough to marry him ; and married the badly- assorted pair are in Marylebone Church. See them at the altar. The parson is purblind, the clerk is gaunt and hungry-looking. The rake has grown unhealthily fat. The bride is very splendid and hideous. Not so the little charity-boy, who adjusts the hassock for her to kneel upon. He has a pretty, innocent face, but his clothes are patched and ragged, as if the governors of the Charitable Grinders, to v/hose school he belongs, didn't treat him very liberally. Indeed, there is a woeful want of charity visible in the whole proceeding. Arachne has been busy with the poor-box ; and an over- grown spider's web has been woven over the orifice of that charitable coffer. A crack runs through the ninth commandment on the tablet within the communion- TflE RAKES PROGRESS. 209 rails. Two dogs are snarling at one another.* In the distant aisle, the pew-openers and almswomen are squabbling, and even coming to blows — clapperclawing one another with great fury — over the largess given by the bridegroom ; while — can I believe my eyes ? — there appears, meekly kneeling as bridesmaid, and holding up the bride's train, a comely young woman, who bears a remarkable resemblance to Mrs. Sarah Young. Surely, it is somewhat overdoing charity and longsuffering for her to officiate at the marriage of this wrinkled harridan with the man she has loved. Perhaps the likeness may be accidental ; or, perhaps, it may be acceptable as a supportable hypothesis that Sarah, deprived of her capital by her generosity to the rake in his distress, has been compelled to give up the millinery business, and go into service as lady's-maid to the squinting spinster, even as Lydia became handmaiden to the widow Green. Her mistress being married, she accompanies her to church, and tells not her love, but suffers, and loves on unre- piningly. The money Rakewell got by this marriage of perjury goes very soon in the pandemonium where his first patrimony was wasted. He gambles it away. The scene of the gaming-house is terrible. Artistically, it is one of the finest compositions ever designed by a painter. The rake, now haggard and battered, bare- * * The presence of these animals in the sacred edifice has been objected to as an anomaly ; but it must be remembered that church doors stood open somewhat wider than at present in Hogarth's time, and that it was one of the specified duties of the beadle to "whip THE DOGS out of the CHURCH." The beadle in Hogarth's picture is probably busied in counting his gains on the church -steps. 14 2IO WILLIAM HOGARTH. pated, carelessly arrayed, frantic *at his losses, kneels with uplifted arm and clenched fist, uttering vain impre- cations to Heavx^n. He is ruined, body and bones. A drunken lord hugs a bully who steals his silver-hilted sword. Another inagnifico, sumptuously attired, is borrowing money of an ancient usurer in rags ; — he knew Tom's father well, but would not lend the beggared profligate a guinea now. Of all the dreadful company the money-lender is sober, cool, and collected, and makes a neat entry in his memoranda of his loan to my lord. One man has gone to sleep ; another, an old gambler, seems stupefied by his reverses, and cannot hear the waiter-lad who brings him a glass of liquor, and bawls in his ear for payment. It is but a squalid kind of Hades, and there is no trust. A fierce black dog — he is the usurer's watch-dog Tearem, you may be sure — leaps up at the blaspheming rake, and adds by his yelling to the outcry of this demoniacal crew. A sharper, whose face we cannot see, but whose flabby, covetous hand is strangely suggestive, takes advantage of a sudden alarm to purloin the stakes on the table. Do you know what the alarm is .' It is Fire. Some crazed desperado has been brandishing a flambeau. The wainscot catches. The watch come bursting in, and Hades is in flames ! The race of "silly Tom," begun at Epsom, is nearly run. Tattenham Corner has been turned long ago, and he is fast approaching the post and the judge's chair. But he has a couple more stands to pass. Behold the penultimate in Act the Seventh of this eventful history. Tom is a hopeless captive for debt in the Fleet Prison. He has squandered the "city fortune" of his squinting THE RAKES PROGRESS. 211 wife. The gold is gone ; but the obHque-eyed lady remains to plague and torture him with her face and her reproaches. She visits him in prison, only to scold and abuse. Thomas is on his last legs. He has turned dramatic author, and has written a play, which he has sent to Manager Rich, and which Manager Rich won't have. " Sir, — I have read your play, and find it will not doe. Yours, J. R." Such is the impresario's curt form of refusal. The keeper — a crafty-looking successor of the far-famed Bambridge, with his big key and his yawning account-book, glozes over the shoulder of the penniless spendthrift, and demands " garnish." The boy from the neighbouring tavern won't leave the pot of porter unless he is paid for it. Trust is dead ; and the manuscript of the rejected play would not bring two- pence, even as waste paper. Hither, unalterable in her devotion, comes the poor wronged milliner to comfort the ruined man. Unhappily her visit is paid at the time when the vixen lady with the squint is present. There is a passage of arms, or rather of words, between the two. The ex-old maid has the best of the encounter over the ex-young one. Sarah faints ; the legitimate Mrs. Rakewell shaking her fist at, and vituperating her. Some pity is to be found even in this abode of woe. A miserable inmate assists the fainting Sarah. Poor wretch ! he has every mark of having long been an inhabitant of this dismal mansion. From his pocket is pendent a scroll, on which is written : " A scheme to pay the National Debt. By J. L., now a prisoner in the Fleet." All his attention is given to the debts of the Commonwealth. His own private liabilities he has forgotten. Sarah has a child with her — Tom's 14 — 2 212 WILLIAM HOGARTH. child, alas ! — and the cries of this infant serve — for you really hear them, as it were — to heighten the sad interest of the scene. On the tester of a bed are a huge pair of wings, doubtless the crack-brained invention of some prisoner who has striven to while away the weary hours ^ of his confinement by vain attempts to imitate Daedalus ; but there is a chemist in the background happily absorbed in contemplating his retort, and caring nothing for all the noise and squalor and wretchedness around him. We will drop the curtain, if you please. To raise it again in Act the Eighth, and last ; in one of the wards of Bedlam. Tom Rakewell has gone stark staring mad, and ends here — here among the maniacs that gibber, and those that howl, and those that fancy themselves kings and popes. He ends here on straw, naked and clawing himself, and manacled. But Sarah Young, the woman whom he has wronged, is with him to the last, and comforts and cherishes him ; and — Heaven be merciful to us all ! — so ends the Rakes Progress ; a drama in Eight Acts, as I have designated it, and assuredly, one of the saddest and most forcible dramas that was ever conceived by human brain, or executed by human hand. I have dwelt at this length upon it, because I think it exhibits, in the superlative degree, the development of those qualities in art and in philosophy which have made William Hogarth so justly famous. ( 213 ) VII. A Histo7'y of Hard Work. Is there anything in the world that cannot be accom- plished by sheer hard work ? Grant to any man, high or low, a sound natural capacity, and the essential faculties of insight and appreciation — or, if you will, call them discernment and judgment — and may he not aspire, with a reasonable degree of certainty, to the very grandest prizes which the Heads of the Houses of Life have to confer ? May he not say to his Will : " You are my steed, I mean to saddle and bridle you. I shall spare neither whip nor spur, and you must carry me to the great goal. Be your name Hare or Tortoise, you and I must win the race. I know full well that I must go into training for such a tremendous heat. I must rise at five in the morning, and sleep short hours upon hard beds. I must live on the simplest and scantiest fare. I must conciliate and be servile, until I can com- mand and be tyrannical. I must be always learning something, ahvays doing something, always saving something. I must never look back, even though behind me may be a poor man crying out that I have ridden over his one ewe lamb, or a widow weeping for the trampling of her tender vines under my horse's 214 WILLIAM HOGARTH. hoofs. My motto must not be ' Excelsiorl but rather Caesar Borgia's ' Avdnti !' or Bkicher's ' Vorwdrts ;' for the rewards of this world He straight ahead, not far above, and must be tilted at, not clambered for. And if I have a firm seat, and a hard hand, and a steady- eye, shall I not succeed 1 My hair may be powdered grey with the dust of the race ; but shall I not ride in some day, the crowd crying — Tandem triiimpJians f Shall I not be crowned with laurels in the capitol — foremost poet of the age ? Shall I not be the great painter : my hire a thousand guineas for six inches of coloured canvas .'' Shall I not have discovered the longitude and squared the circle. Shall I not be Rothschild, to hold crowns in pawn, and ticket sceptres in fasces as though they were fire-irons .-* Shall I not be borne on the shields of the legionaries, and saluted as Emperor of. the Eujaxrians, King of Politicopolis, and Protector of the Confederation of the Scamander .-' " Many a man asks himself these questions ; and digging his rowels into the sides of his stern Intent, rides away with his knees well set and his hand on his hip, defiant. What Caesar, and Napoleon, and Frederick, and Newton, and Bayle, and Milton, and Buonarotti, and Pascal, and Wolsey, and Ximenes, and Washington, and Francia, and Ganganelli, and Flaxman, and Callot did — you see I dip my hand in the lucky-bag and draw out the numbers as they come — was by pure and simple hard work : tne labour of the hand as well as the brain. Believe me that nothing is unavailing towards the great end, so long as it is work. The making of sundials and toy windmills helped Isaac of Grantham towards the Principia. Bacon was not wasting his time when he A HISTORY OF HARD WORK. 215 wrote about laying out gardens. Brougham took some- thing by his motion when he sat down to furnish nearly an entire number of the Edinburgh Reviciv. Leonardo was not wholly idle when he promulgated his rules for drawing " monsters : " — lions' flanks, fishes' tails, and " mulieT- fonnosa superrie." Burke found his account in writing summaries for ih.Q Aiuutal Register, and Canning in making jokes for the Anti-Jacobin. All these things " tell up." They are columned, and figured, and entered to our credit ; and some day the balance is declared, and we draw the splendid capital. And the reward — is it certain .'' Is it always splendid } Does every studious sub-lieutenant of artillery become an emperor } Is the mastership of the Mint v/aiting for every mathematician } Ah, vain and fallacious argu- ment ! Ah, sorry reckoning without our host ! Here is the day-room of a country workhouse, and here over the scanty fire is a paralytic, slavering dotard nearly a hundred years of age. Hard work ! Giles Clover, of the old men's ward, was working hard when New York and Virginia were English colonies. He had tilled the earth so long, that just before the spade dropped from his palsied hand he was digging a grave for his great- grandchild. His neighbour there, the patriarch of eighty, has helped to clear away the crumbling ruins of the house the bricks of which he worked so hard to mould the clay for. Hard work ! Look at that dod- dering old fellow in the scarlet blanketing creeping along the King's Road, Chelsea. He was at Valenciennes, at Walcheren, at Maida, at Vittoria, at Waterloo. He was in garrison at St. Helena in 1821, and lent his strong shoulder to carry the body of Napoleon to the grave. 2l6 WILLIAM HOGARTH. But he will be thankful, poor pensioner, for a halfpenny to buy snuff, and his granddaughter goes out washing, to furnish him with extra beer. Hard work ! Look at the pale-faced curate of St. Lazarus. He is full of Greek, and mathematics, and the Fathers. He marries, and buries, and baptizes, and preaches, and overlooks the schools, and walks twenty miles a day to visit the sick. And he has just written a begging letter to the benevolent society which supplies the clergy with old clothes. Perhaps these men, with all their industry, were dull. When genius is allied to perseverance, the golden mean must be reached indeed. Must it .'' Alack ! the reckoning of the host is still better than ours. He comes with a smile, and taps us on the shoulder, and says, " Oh, ho ! you are becoming famous, are you .' You shall go to a padded room, and howl for the rest of your days. And you who have heaped up riches, and have such a swollen cheque-book ? Here is a little pin, M'ith which I just perforate your skull. You tumble down in apoplexy, and farewell money-bags. And you, Monsieur le Due, with a field-marshal's baton you once carried in your knapsack .'' A tiny pellet of lead from a flintlock musket fired by a raw recruit will arrange all j'our affairs. And you, potent, and grave and wise, who sit in the king's council and rule the destinies of millions, — ah ! I have but to place a little pebble beneath the pastern of your park hackney, and lo ! he will stumble and fall, and four men with a stretcher \\ ill cany you home to die." Should these grim reminders cause men to shrink and faint, and lose their faith in the powers of Will and Hard Work .' Never, I hope. Should the fame that A HISTORY OF HARD WORK. 217 Hamilton gained by a speech, and Shenstone by a quaint imitation, or Campbell and Thomson by a volume of blank verse, cause us to drift into the far nicntc, to sit down contented with the success of a lucky hit, and allow the game to go on while we lie in bed, and are fed with a spoon like Fenton ; or, with our hands in our pockets, gnaw at the peaches on the walls, like the writer of the Seasons ? Not yet, I trust. The grandest and noblest monuments in the world are those of hard work. Look at the Decline and Fall. Look at the great porch of Notre Dame de Paris. Look at Bayle's Dictionary. Look at the lines of Torres Vedras. Look at the Divine Comedy. Look at Holman Hunt's Doctors in the Temple. Every one of these elaborately magni- ficent performances — you see I have been playing at loto again, and trusted to the chances of the lucky-bag — might have remained mere sketches, crude and vigorous, perhaps, as Coleridge's Kubla Khan, or as that strange Titan-daub of the lady at the pianoforte in this year's Academy's exhibition (i860), but dreamy, unsubstantial, and unsatisfactory, without hard work. Therefore I drink to hard work, with a will and on my knees ; and 'if ever I am sentenced to six months' imprisonment with hard labour, I will try to become an expert even at the treadmill or the crank, satisfied that some good will come of it some day. I remember with a friend, once, staring at the great golden dome of St. Izaak's church, at Petersburg, as it blazed in the sunset, and striving to calculate how many bottles of champagne, ball-dresses, diamond bracelets, carriages and horses, marriage settlements, were spread over that glittering cupola. But in a healthier frame of 2l8 WILLIAM HOGARTH. mind I began to ponder upon the immensity of human labour concentrated in that stately edifice. There were the men who beat the gold out into flimsy leaves, who spread it on the dome, who hewed the marble from the quarries, and polished and dragged it, and set it up, who formed those wondrous mosaics, and wrought those glowing paintings, who made the mould and cast the bronze for the statues, who hung the bells and laid the pavement, and illuminated the barbaric screen of the Ikonostast. Thousands of serfs and artisans were pressed, or poorly paid, to do this work. Numbers of brickmakers will build a pyramid, or wall all Babylon round ; yet that concentrated immensity is always astounding. How much more should I wonder at the pyramid of hard work that lies before me in the giant folio of William Hogarth's works ! There are 157 plates in the book, and yet many of his minor works are not here. How the man must have pored and peered, and stooped to grave these millions of lines and dots on the hard metal ! A large proportion of these performances was preceded by a sketch, a drawing, a finished oil picture. Every engraving required its separate drawing, tracing, retracing on copper, etching, biting in, engraving* deeper, touching up and finishing. Granted that for the later plates assistants were called in. Still, the vast mass of the stupendous work is by one man's hand. It was Jiis province alone to conceive, to determine, to plan the picture, to discover and to arrange the models. No falling off, no weakness, is apparent, from the Rakes Progress to the very end of his own honest career. He died in harness ; and the strength, the wit, the humour, and the philosophy of the Bathos thunder forth a lie to A HISTORY OF HARD WORK. 219 Wilkes and Churchill, in their sneers at his dotage and his infirmity. When an artist is in the full tide and swing of his productive power, — when his early struggles for bread are over, and he is married and pays rent and taxe.s, and being known, can command an adequate, if not a generous remuneration for his daily labour, — his life, if his lot fortunately be cast in a peaceful and civilized country, must necessarily be uneventful. Young Robert Strange, roaming about the Highlands in '45, with his " craig in peril," engraving banknotes for the Pretender, and sheltering himself beneath ladies' hoops from the hot pursuit of Duke William's soldiers, was a very wild and picturesque Bohemian. So was Callot, scampering from fair to fair in Italy, with Egyptians, vagabonds, and mountebanks. So was David, screeching applause at the Serment dn Jen de Paurnc, and rushing home to transfer the oath to canvas ; or, as some of the libellers assert, sitting at his easel at the scaffold's foot, and copying with red fidelity the facial contortions of those who died by the guillotine. But Strange becomes grave and portly Sir Robert, engraver to his Majesty, a worthy knight- bachelor, with a grand collection of antique prints and drawings, dwelling in his own house in King Street, Covent Garden. And you shall hardly recognize the erratic young companion of the Romany Rye, in the handsome, thoughtful cavalier in his point-lace, velvet justaucorps, and swaling plume to his beaver- — the noble Jacques Callot, who lives near the Luxembourg, and draws martyrologies to the great delight of the Petits Peres, and employs " M. Israel son amy " to grave his etching more forcibly. And who shall not marvel at 220 WILLIAM HOGARTH. the transformation of the ranting-club man of '93, long- haired, tricolour-sashed, nine-tenths sans-ailottc, into M. le Baron Louis David, Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour, who calls in his chariot to beg sittings from his Eminence the Cardinal, and his Grandeur the Arch-Chancellor, and Monseigneur the Archbishop, and messieurs the marshals, the senators, and the councillors of State, for the portraits that are to be introduced into the colossal picture of the coronation of his Majesty the Emperor, destined for the Salle du Sacre of Versailles ? William Hogarth's earliest life had not been, as you have seen, very fruitful in incident. No desperate adventures had chequered his path. No doubt but that in his case, as in that of every child of humanity, " the days passed and did not resemble each other ;" but still the days glided by without duels in Hyde Park or the fields behind Montagu House, without gallantries with my Lady Bellaston or Madame la Comtesse des Ouatres Vents, without committals to the Tower for participation in Jacobite plots. I daresay there were da}'s when the crust to the goose-pie was somewhat hard and flaky and the Derby ale was sour ; when Mis- tress Hogarth's temper was none of the sweetest, when a slight commotion in the painting-room was created by the outrageous behaviour of Mr. Shard ;* when my lord * Hogarth, save in the portraits of Wilkes and Churchill — in the which, if Lord Ellenborough's dictum is to be accepted, the magnitude of the libel must be estimated in proportion to its truth — was seldom malevolently personal. Still, his pictures must be as full as faces, as true to their proto- types in life as Mrs. Salmon's %yaxen effigy of "Ann Sigg on Cnitches," which stood at the door of the Salmonian museum by the Inner Temple Gate, near Gosling's banking-house. "Ann Sigg on Cratches" was as well known to London loiterers as Charles at Clearing or tlie bell-strikers A HISTORY OF HARD WORK. 221 would not pay for his picture, or when William's own temper was ruffled at the sight of some vile wood piracy of the Rakes Progress. It may sometimes have happened, also, that William took t'other bottle, had a curtain lecture at night, and a headache the next morning. There may have been wintry days, when it was too dark to paint, and sunshiny days, when palette and maulstick were flung by with a jolly laugh ; and the painter with his wife, or with some of the wags from the " Bedford," were off to take the air and their pleasure. There may have been days when a shortness of ready money reigned in the house in Leicester Fields. Such domestic incidents may have ruffled from time to time the placid stream of the honest life of an English working man. Even courtly Sir Joshua, in his painting room on the other side of Leicester Fields, may not have been at St. Dunstan's ; and Ann Sigg, a noted beggar, used to hobble past the wax-work show every day ; but she never turned on her crutches to inspect her counterfeit presentment, either ignorant of or disdaining to acknowledge its existence. Not so philosophically sensible was one Mr. Shard, son of Sir Isaac Shard, a rare money-spinner and money-clutcher. In Hogarth's picture of the Mise?'s Feast (?) he is said to have introduced a portrait of this Sir Isaac, which made much mirth. Comes fresh from the university and the grand tour, Mr. Shard, junior, a young gentleman of fine parts, but a hot temper. Hogarth, as was common with painters then (and is still with the Roman and Florentine artists), had a sort of show-room in which his finished pictures were exhibited. The young university blood asks the person who shows the pictures for whom such and such a lean, pinched face is intended, and on being told that it is thought to be uncommonly like one Sir Isaac Shard, he "straightway draws his sword and slashes the canvas." It does not appear that Hogarth took any steps to resent this outrage ; and one malignant biographer chuckles with much glee over his forbearance. I have queried the Misers Feast, in relating this anecdote, because I am unaware of the existence of such a picture. Some critics are of opinion that the steward or pettifogger who guards the money-bag in Act I. of the Fake's Progress, was the obnoxious portrait slashed by young Mr. Shard. 222 WILLIAM HOGARTH. exempt from such transient puffs of adverse winds : but in the main, I think the tenor of WilHam Hogarth's hfe from 1735 to 1745 — when the Jacobite rebelhon left, in some degree, its mark upon his hfe and work — was eminently smooth and even. Nor can I imagine any condition of existence much happier than this tranquil work-a-day life of an English painter. Ah ! it is very fine to be Sir Thomas, scampering off to congresses to limn popes and emperors and plenipotentiaries, to stand in one's grand saloon in tights and opera hat, receiving the flower of the peerage — but with that dreadful man in possession sitting in the parlour all the while. It is very dignified, no doubt, to be Barry, fiercely warring the Academy, entertaining Senator Burke with Spartan banquets of beefsteaks and porter, and dying at last in a dingy back parlour, just too late to enjoy a meagre annuity. It is wilder and more picturesque to be a jovial Bohemian, and paint pigs in a spunging-house like George Morland, or to be stark mad and a believer in the " ghosts of fleas " and the connection of " William Pitt and the New Jerusalem," like Blake ; but I think the 'balance of happiness is in favour of such quiet, unostentatious working lives as those led by William Hogarth and Joshua Reynolds ; by the equable Westall, and that stainless soul, Flaxman ; by honest David Wilkie, and our good painter LESLIE, just taken from us.* Surely it is reckoned in their favour : the blameless, spotless life, without turbulence, without intrigue, with- out place-seeking : the life devoted, from its dawn to its close, to the worship of nature in her most beautiful * This was written in i860. Leslie died 5th May, 1859. A HISTORY OF HARD WORK. 223 forms. And, O ye precisians ! who are apt to descry a positive naughtiness in the somewhat lavishly developed carnations and luscious morbidezsa of William Etty, do you know the squanderer of gorgeous hues lived the life of a hermit in his bachelor chambers in Buckingham Street, Strand } and that the dignified spinster, his lady-sister, found pleasure in seeking out the fairest models that money would persuade to sit, for her William to paint .'' I have called this section of my attempt, a history of hard work ; and although I must defer a long meditated dissertation on Hogarth's oil pictures* which would open a widely different field of contemplation, the pages that follow will not be unprofitably devoted to a careful consideration of the works engraved by W. H. between the stand-points of the Rakes Progress and the Marriage a la Mode. Gentlemen collectors, therefoi^e, will you be so good as to open your portfolios and • * Walpole and Allan Cunningham have said nearly all of Hogarth's merits in oil-painting that can be said ; and the latest edition of the Anec- dotes of Painting gives a commendably liberal list of the pedigree and present locality of the principal oil pictures and sketches by Hogarth extant. This list, however, is susceptible of many additions. It is quite as easy to fix upon an authentic W. H., as upon a veracious Gerard Uouw. His totuh was almost unique — a broad, firm, predetermined mark of the brush — and to imitate it without the possibility of detection, even in these halcyon days of picture forgery, would argue the possession of artistic qualities on the part of the forger well nigh equal to those of Hogarth himself. But I reserve bibliographical, genealogical, chalcographic, and auctioneer's lore about Hogarth's pictures for a more convenient occasion, staying now onlv to acknowledge the kindness of half a dozen courteous correspondents from Bristol, who tell me that the Hogarthian pictures which formerly adorned the chancel of St. Mary Redcliffe's fine old church, were jnuchased by Mr. Thomas Proctor, of Wall's Court, near Bristol, and by him pre- sented to the Fine Arts Academy at Clifton (Bristol). I am glad to hear that the pictures have suffered nothing in the way of " restoration." 224 WILLIAM HOGARTH. adjust your glasses while your humble cicerone tries to tell you what he has been able to find out respecting a few more of the dramatis persoiicB in the Human Comedy of the comic Dante? A few words may be spared for that capital free- handed etching of the Laughing Audience \s\\\c\\ I have already mentioned as delivered with the subscription- ticket to the life-drama of Thomas Rakewell, Esq. It is a suitably humorous prologue to that tragi-comedy; Taken as an etching it is executed entirely eon brio, and without — save in the background of the box — any symptom of the employment of mechanical line or rule. All is round, rich, and flexible ; and the easier is the artist's hand, the more lucid, I think, is the exposition of his thought. It is, pray observe, the audience in the pit, not those in the boxes of the theatre, who are laughing. They, good people, have paid their money to be amused, and are determined to have their three shillings' worth.* Their business cares are over for thqp * Three shilling would appear to have been' the statutory price of entrance to the pit of Covent Garden, Lincoln's Inn Fields, and Drury Lane Theatres. I find " 3J." marked in pen and ink on afniedallion in the benefit-ticket engraved by Hogarth for Milward, the comedian. Thos^ executed for Jemmy Spiller (the original Filch), " Macheath " Walker, Fielding, and Joe Miller, have merely " Pitt " written in, but no price. The beneficiaries probably asked what they liked — having previously purchased the tickets from the management — and took what they could get. In respect to the Georgian theatres, I should be glad to be enlightened on the point as to whether the footmen of the nobility and gentry — for whose use the gallery was reserved, and against whose fighting and gambling there, managers Rich, Highmore, and Gibber used so piteously to protest — paid for their admission. I don't think they did, seeing that the footmen's turbulence led to a managerial enactment that they should only be admitted "after the fourth act." Again, as to paying at the doors. In a stray paper of Fielding's, I find the shabby conduct of a Temple Buck censured. LAUGHING AUDIENCE. I^ i A HISTORY OF HARD WORK. 22/ day ; and they will laugh, and laugh heartily, or know the reason why. There are just eleven of these merry groundlings, and they exhibit almost every phase of the risible faculty. There is the old lady's sly chuckle — you know what I mean : the " Ah ! he's a wicked one," and " Go along with you ! " chuckle, accompanied by a wag of the good old soul's head ; the laugh of the man who is obliged to put his hand to his forehead and screw his eyelids tight — the laugh of him who fairly cries for mirth ; the grateful grin of the deaf man ivho sees the Joke, albeit he hears it not ; the jolly " Boo-hoo ! " of the fat matron, whose sides, I am sure, must be aching ; the grufif " Ha-ha ! " of the big man, who doesn't laugh often, but when he does, laughs with goodwill ; the charming, good-natured, " all-overish " smile of the fresh and comely young lass ; the broad bursting laugh of the stout old gentleman, who has been laughing any time these sixty years ; and the silly " Hee-hee ! " of the fool, who is wise enough, however, to know that it is better to laugh than cry : all these are deliciously portrayed. After blue pill, or a bill that has been presented, always look at the LmigJiiiig Audience. In the background even you shall see a man with a peaked nose, and a normally dissatisfied countenance. I am afraid that he has the toothache by twinges, or that his affairs are not going prosperously. Yet even he laughs sous eape, under his bent brows and his wig. I only wonder that William Hogarth did not introduce a laughing child to crown who takes advantage of the fourth act to go away without paying. Could there have been anything Hke theatrical credit in tliose unsophisticated days? or did the first crude scheme of "half price" give the spectator a right of election as to which half of the performance he should witness ? 15—2 228 WILLIAM HOGARTH. the gaiety of the scene. Laugh on, ye honest folks, and clap Milward or Jemmy Spiller to the echo ! I never hear a sour phiz groan out that this world is a vale of tears, but I think upon the Laughing Audience ; and often, as I sit in the fourth row of the Haymarket pit, I hear the loud cachinnations of the comfortable old ladies — substantial dividend-drawers and tradesmen's wives, who always pay, and would despise a "horder " as much as they do half-price, and who have come all the way from Camberwell or Dalston to laugh at Mr. Buckstone. And then more reverently do I recall the eloquent words of the great author of the Golden Grove, who in a sermon bids us rejoice and be merry at due times and seasons, and tells us that we have a Creator so kind and good, "that we cannot please Ilim unless wc be infinitely pleased ourselves." If we are never to be joyful, O Sourphiz ! why, if you please, do the lambs skip and the babies smile in their sleep, and the very dogs laugJi ? I believe that in the way of lineage I am more an ancient Roman than a Dane ; but if Sourphiz be in the right, and this is a vale of tears — save when in Heaven's wisdom the rain and the dew fall on us — I am a Dutch- man, doubly distilled. Mark this, notwitstanding, that the musicians in the orchestra do not laugh. These rosin-bows have other things to think of To scrape the intestines of the cat with the hair of the horse night after night, for a wage of twenty-shillings a week, is no laughing matter. The fiddlers and fifers have grown stale and accustomed to the witticisms of Messrs. Milward and Spiller ; and when they have forty bars rest they yawn and take snuff, and do not laugh. Let us hope that their merriment is A HISTORY OF HARD WORK. 229 reserved for the time when they draw their salaries and go home to a tripe supper, a mug of punch, and the society of their wives and families. Nor are the young ladies, who are the descendants of Orange Moll, and supply those golden fruit from pottle-shaped baskets, much given to laughter. 'Tis their vocation to pluck the beaux in the boxes by the sleeve and simulate a pleased interest in their bald chat. The beaux, of whom there are a pair most exquisitely attired, are sniggering and simpering, but not laughing.* They are very magnificent grandees, di.ang at Lebeck's or Pontack's,t * So Mons. Mephistopheles laughs in Goethe's Faust and Scheffer's pictures, and so lago, when he sings his Httle song in Cyprus to tipsy Cassio. And the Prophet, in the sacred writings, has liis " tjitter laugh." There is an appalling little Latin treatise, happily rare, written by some monastic Mephistopheles who had the misfortune to wear human flesh with some cold blood in it, and a friar's cowl over all. It is called the Risits Sardoniats, and contains such agreeable passages as "Aha ! you think that eternal punishment is merely figurative, do you? Hee-hee ! wait a little." And then he goes on to expatiate on the brimstone, and the molten pitch, and the burning marl — always with his " bitter laugh." Ugh ! the cynic. f I make my beaux dine at Pontack's — - with a k, through malice ]:)repense. You know that in the Rake's Frogi'css young Tom holds high festival at P.'s. In my simplicity I imagined Pontac to have been a living "mine host" actually contemporaiy with Thomas Rakewell, but I have since been better informed. Pontack's was at the old White Bear in Abchurch Lane. It was destroyed in the Great Fire, and rebuilt as a French restaurant by one Monsieur Pontack, a Frenchman, " son of the President of Bordeaux, owner of a district whence are imported into England some of the most celebrated claret." Proud of his descent, he set up a portrait of his presidential sire in official costume as a sign. The Fellows of the Royal Society, after the Fire, moved to the "Pontack's Head," and held their anniversaiy dinner there. In George II.'s reign, Pontack's, which had changed proprietors several times, was spoken of as a "guinea ordinary," where you could get a " ragout of fatted snails," and "chickens not two hours from the shell." The loose company depicted in the Progress would fix something like an imputation of evil manners on this celebrated tavern ; 230 WILLIAM HOGARTH. and using the Turk's Head o'nights ; but they would think it infinitely beneath them to laugh.* Passing over a companion etching to the above — a set of bewigged choristers singing from the oratorio of Juditli — let me come to the large and elaborate engraving from Hogarth's picture of Soutlnvark Fair : the plate was, )'ou will remember, included in the subscription for the Rakes Progress. I. saw the oil painting in the Art Treasures Exhibition at Manchester in 1857, and a magnificent work it is — second only in my opinion to the March to Fi)iclilcy. The scene, which is yet we read that on Thursday, January 15, 1736, a date that exactly suits my purpose — " William Pepys, banker in Lombard Street, was married at St. Clement's Church, in the Strand, to Mrs. Susannah Austin, who lately kejit Pontack's, where, with universal esteem, she acquired a considerable fortune." Perhaps the eulogy came from Grub Street, even as the sign came from Harp Alley. See Evelyn^s Diary, 1683 and 1694, passim ; the I\ [da inor phases of the To7i<)i, 1731 ; the IVeeh/y Oracle, 1736; and specially my fountain-head of Pontackian information, the remarkably learned and curious Catalogue of London Traders, 1 aveni and Coffee-liouse Tokens, in the Beaufoy collection, printed for the corporation of London (to whose lil^rarv the collection was presented), and written by Mr. Jacob H. Burn. 1855-' * In the Laughing Audience, the banier dividing the orchestra from the pit is garnished with iron spikes. In an era of theatrical anarchy, when the groundlings not unfrcquently invaded the stage, such precautions were by no means needless ; but to the credit of the French, the management of the Royal Opera in Paris were the first to remove these somewhat barbarous chevaux-defrise. Towards the close of King William lll.'s reign, a young English nobleman, visiting Paris and the Opera, had a quarrel with a French gentleman. Being a " muscular Christian," he seized his adversaiy round the waist, and pitched him bodily from the box tier into the orchestra. The poor Frenchman fell on the spikes, and was well nigh impaled ; and after this mishap, the authorities took away the spikes from the barrier, but placed two extra sentinels in the pit. There had already been soldiers on the stage. For the pit sentries, see Sterne's capital story of the little hunchback at the opera in the Sentimental yourney. A HISTORY OF HARD WORK. 23 1 literally crammed with life, incident, animation, and varied character, is artistically remarkable for the exquisite beauty of the central figure, the young woman with the Amazon hat and plume who beats the drum : not one of Lely's Beauties, and scarcely Rubens' CJiapcau de Paillc, can surpass the face and form of " La Belle an Tambour" in fresh, ruddy, pulpy comeliness. Mark the astonishment of the two bumpkins who are gazing at this parchment-drubbing beauty ; one, awed by her charms, has pulled off his hat. His mate wonders " with a foolish face of praise." The legend recounts that Hogarth, passing once through the fair, saw the original of the beautiful drummer being grossly maltreated — poor child ! — by some ruffian. The legend goes on to tell, and I delight in believing it, that Bill Hogarth — one must call him Bill when he uses his fists — beat the scoundrel soundly, and took pity on the young drummer- girl, whose fair face served him as a model in many of his after pictures. I hope Jane Thornhill wasn't jealous. There is an astonishing impression of Sound prevail- ing in this picture. It is a painted noise. It is an English Donnybrook ; and the only object quiet in the scene is the bell in the turret of the church. The platform erected for the strolling players who are performing the " Fall of Bajazet " gives way ; and down come poles and boards, Bajazet, Roxalana, grand viziers, scimitars, turbans, Kislar-agas and all the borough-orientalisms of the managers, Messrs. Gibber and Bullock. The country squire with a whip in one hand and another locked in the arm of a young girl, stares in mute astonishment at the gay doings around 232 WILLIAM HOGARTH. him, and a pickpocket takes a natural advantage of his amazement to ease him of his pocket-handkerchief. The Amazon with the drum has among her admirers, hkewise, two individuals, whose sober attire and starched visages w^ould point them out as members of Whitfield's congregation in Moorfields. Here are all the "humours of a fair," indeed; mountebanks, fiddlers, players, and buffoons ; rogues and proctors, sharpers and dupes, and those that live by bullying honest folk — Maint poudie qui n'a pas d'argent, Maint sabreur qui craint le sergent, Maint fanfaron qui toujours tremble, as sings Monsieur Scarron, " Malade de la Rcine," of the humours of a Parisian crowd. Here is the "sergent," in the form of a ruthless constable who collars Alexander the Great — or a poor player, at least, who is about to strut and fret his hour on the stage, made up in the likeness of that hero — on some charge for which he will have to find good and sufficient bail. The captor is a constable or headborough — not a sheriff's officer or catchpole, to judge by his brass-tipped staff. He has his follower with him, a truculent ruffian, who brandishes a bludgeon over the head of the hapless Alexander of Macedon. Or, stay : Can the plumed, periwigged, and buskined conqueror in the grasp of the constable be intended for Hector of Tro}- } I see that against the church tower in the middle distance they have reared a stage and a huge show-cloth, which, with its vast wooden horse giving ingress to Greeks, tells of the history of Troj Taken* There are other show- 1 * A *' droll," devised by the indefatigable compasser of "motions,'' A HISTORY OF HARD WORK, 233 cloths displayed, depicting Adam and Eve, and Punch wheeling- his Wife to the Evil One ; but the most remarkable effort in this branch of art — now alas ! fallen into decay and desuetude, — is the monstrous cartoon to the spectator's left, swinging high and secure above the Fall of Bojazet. . A history of a theatrical squabble, almost as momentous as the O. P. Row of 18 10, or the Coletti and Tamburini revolt of our own times, is there set forth. The Stage Mutijicers, or a Playhouse to Let, a tragi- comico-farcical ballad opera, published in 1733, will throw some light on this dramatic insurrection. Bankes' poetical epistle on the event states that Theophilus Cibber had stirred up a portion of the Drury Lane company to rebellion, and they accordingly seceded to the " little theatre in the Haymarket." The show-cloth in Hogarth's picture is mainly copied from a large etching descriptive of the dispute by John Laguerre, the scene-painter. The mutineers include portraits of the ringleader, Theo. Cibber as Pistol, and of Harper as Falstaff; and a naif com- mentator informs me that the lady waving the flag is " intended for the portraiture of the notorious Mistress Doll Tearsheet." The simple man imagined, no doubt, that Mistress Doll — "v,'hat stuff wilt have a kirtle of.^ I shall receive money on Thursday," — was a character as real as Mother Needham or Mary Moffat. Poor Doll ! it was full three centuries before the Southwark Fair, that the beadles, the " famished correctioners,'" dragged her to durance vile, there to have " whipping Elkanah Settle. Troy Taken was a great favourite at the fairs, and in 1 707 was even printed. 234 WILLIAM HOGARTH. cheer enough," and all because she was a friend of Dame Ouickley.* Raree shows, wax-work shows, the " royal," and the "whole court of France*," Faux's dexterity of hand, and acrobat swinging on the cordc zwlantc ; f a poor demented, tumbling Icarus of a creature, "flying " from the church steeple ; a fiery prise-fighter, broad-sword in hand, his bare pate covered with hideous scars and patches, and mounted on a wall-eyed steed — can this have been Holmes of " metacarpal " fame, or the renowned Felix Maguire ? — a black-boy (in attendance on the Amazon) blasting a clarion ; a little bagpiper, a military monkey, * The figure in the comer of the Hogarth-Laguerre show-cloth is meant for Colley Gibber, who had just sold his share in Drury Lane Theatre to Highmore. The purchase-money was 6,000/. The man in his shirt-sleeves is Ellis, the scene-painter of the T. R. D. L. Over the Drurj-ites is the inscription, "We'll starve 'em out." Over the Haymarket mutineers runs the legend, "We eat." I conjecture that alleged insufficient salaries and illiberal treatment were at tiic bottom of this, as of most theatrical revolts. A word as to Manager Highmore. He was a gentleman, and originally possessed a considerable fortune, but managed to dissipate it all between Drury Lane and White's gaming-house. Laguerre, indorsed by Hogarth, seems to sneer at Highmore's assumption of gentility in the figure of the monkey perched on the signboard of the "Rose Tavern," and with the label, " I am a gentleman." Highmore failed as a manager ; and he then, with little more success, turned actor. In 1743, according to an ingenious well-wisher of his, " he completed the climax by publishing a poem entitled Ddtingcn, which proved him a very indifferent writer." Poor broken- down Highmore ! f The swinger was Signor Violante, an eminent perfonner, both on the tight and slack rope. The Icarus descending from the steeple is the famous Mr. Gadman, who performed the same feat at the church of St. Martin's- in-the-Fields, from the steeple of which, by means of a running line, of course, he actually descended into the King's Mews. He tried the same experiment at Shrewsbur)', but the rope breaking, he was dashed to pieces. Who does not remember the lamentable end, in our own day, of Scott, the American diver, and poor Gale, the aeronaut ? A HISTORY OF HARD WORK. 235 a set of " fantoccini " on a foot-board, a Savoyard music- grinder, a galantee show, with a dwarf drummer, a woman kneeling with a tray and dice-box, just as the fellows with their three cards kneel on the hill that leads to Epsom racecourse : a knot of silly gamblers, a tavern bar, beneath the crashing platform of the " Fall of Bajazet," for which, and breakages for flagons and glasses, Messrs. Gibber and Bullock, proprietors, will have to pay a heavy bill : these, and the close-packed throng, and the green fields and Surrey Hills in the distance, make up the wonderfvil life-picture called Sout/ncaj'k Fair. Greenwich I have seen, and Ghalk Farm, and Bartlemy ; but Southwark Fair was abolished, I believe, before the close of the last century. The print of the Sleeping Congregation, to which I now pass, purports to have been invented, designed, engraved and published, by William Hogarth, pursuant to an Act of Parliament in 1736. Many of his best works were so engraved from a mere sketch, unhappily lost to us ; were it otherwise, it is to be hoped that our national collection would be much richer, and that the gallery of every wealthy private collector would contain at least one original Hogarth, in oil or water colours. The few pictures he left are easily traced ; and to tabulate them will be hereafter my task. He rarely executed replicas. There was no Giulio Romano to emulate, as a disciple, this Rafaelle of Leicester Fields ; but, on the other hand, the cupidity of picture-dealers, baffled by the paucity of genuine works from his hand, took refuge in barefaced fraud, and works by Hayman and Narcissus Laroon, and crowds of inferior would-be humourists, were, and are to this day, advertised as paintings by William Hogarth. 236 WILLIAM HOGARTH. The Sleeping Congregation is just the reverse to the droll medal of which the Laughing Audience is the obverse. Hogarth, ordinarily a decorous man in his theolog-y, has been guilty — humorous and apposite as is the quotation of the preacher's text — of a censurable piece of irreverence : the same that prompted the French eating-house keeper to adopt as a derivative for his new- fangled restaurant, the Ego rcstorabo vos of the Vulgate. The clergyman is, however, very fine : a hard-mouthed, short-sighted, droning-voiced divine, one of those un- comfortable preachers of Avhom the old Scotch lady, in Dean Ramsay's book, remarks, "If there's an ill text in a' the Bible, that creetur's sure to tak' it." The huge sounding-board above him seems to proclaim his defi- ciency in sonorous delivery, and the need there is for affording adventitious wings to his voice. The fat, sen- suous, beef-\Yitted and carnal-minded clerk, who screws his eyes with a furtive leer towards the sleeping girl — one of the most beautiful of Hogarth's fofiiale creations — is conceived in the purest spirit of comedy. There is a wonderful fat man snoring in the left-hand corner, his pudgy hand hanging over the pew, whom only William could have discovered and transferred to copperplate. The old women in their peaked hats, the slumberers in the gallery, the lanky cherubs who hold up the Royal arms, the heraldic lion in the same emblazonment, the very hats and hatchments, have a sleep-impressing, sleep- provoking look. So the Church slept in Hogarth's time, and was neglected or sneered at, and the parson drowsed on in his wig and cassock ; while in Moorfields or in Tottenham Court Road, or far away on the wild moors of Devon, and in the almost unknown regions of the A HISTORY OF HARD WORK. 237 Anglo-Phcenician stannaries, among the Cornish miners, earnest albeit fanatic men, who disdained cassocks and wore " their own hair loose and unpowdered," were crying out how Eutychus slept, and how he fell from the third loft, and was taken up dead. But the Church has become the Sleeper A wakened since then. ThQ Distressed Poet : ah ! the distressed poet ! Here is a picture one can almost gloat over. It is meant to be droll. It is funny enough in its incidents and cha- racter ; but there pervades the piece, to my mind, a tinge of sympathy and sadness most pitiful yet charming to consider. No poet, surely, of ancient or of modern times — were he Codrus or Camoens, Frangois Villon or El- kanah Settle, Savage or Johnson, in the days when he was writing London and wore the horseman's coat, and wolfed his victuals behind the screen that veiled him from the genteel guests at Cave's dinner-table — could have been more distressed than this creature of Hogarth's fancy — the fancy blended with the sad and stern ex- perience which he must have acquired of the sorrows of the Muse's sons. Many and many a time must William have mounted the crazy stairs to garrets or to cocklofts in Blood-bowl Court or Hanging-sword Alley, or, per- chance, to dens on the coffee-room flight of the Fleet, to confer with distressed poets about the frontispieces to the translations they were executing for scrivener's wages, or for the volumes of poems they had persuaded booksellers to publish for a pound a sheet. The date of the print is 1740. Mr. Thomson has been petted and caressed by the great — falling among the Philistines, nevertheless, in spunging-houses, sometimes ; Mr. Pope is waxing feeble, but he is famous and prosperous, and 238 WILLIAM HOGARTH. has ever a lord for a friend, and a bottle to give him. Mr. Pope can afford, uncudgelled, to sneer at old Sarah of Marlborough, and to blacken never too immaculate Lady Mary. He comes to town from ' Twitnam ' in his little coach, and a lane is made for him by the admiring spectators at the auctions which he frequents. The sentimental maunderer, Young, has done his best to yelp and whine himself into preferment, and his Night Thoughts have had chiefly reference to the degree of obsequiousness to be observed at the levee in the morn- ing. Mr. Fielding is a gentleman, and is " hail fellow well met " at White's and the Rose with St. James's beaux and Temple bucks, but his affairs are wofully embarrassed, and he does not disdain to pocket the receipts of a benefit night at the playhouse — as though he were Jemmy Spiller or Macheath Walker. And even the successful poets^Pope, and Gray, and Shenstone excepted — were, according to Lord Macaulay, some- times reduced to the low ebb of the bard who was " glad to obtain, by pawning his best coat, the means of dining on tripe at a cook-shop underground, where he could wipe his hands after his greasy meal on the back of a Newfoundland dog." Before 1 740, Samuel Johnson had written that same stern, strong poem of London, and had gotten ten guineas for the copyright thereof He was lucky even to get that, seeing that one publisher had advised him to abandon literature, take a porter's knot, and carry trunks. He slept on bulks, and amidst the hot ashes of lime-kilns and glass-houses. " He was repeatedly provoked into striking those who had taken liberties with him." He was scrofulous and hypochon- driacal, and without a change of clothes or body linen. A HISTORY OF HARD WORK. 239 Hogarth's " Distressed Poet" is quite as penniless, but not quite so wretched as Johnson, or so reckless as Savage. The poor fellow has a wife : not ugly, coarse, and a shrew, as I am afraid the Johnsonian " Tetty" was, but a tender, loving young woman ; very fair and delicate to look at in her poor patched garments. Codrus is hard at work at his table beneath the window in the lean-to roof of the garret. He racks his brains for rhymes in a poem on " Riches." Above him hangs, all torn, tattered, and rat-begnawed, " A View of the Gold Mines of Peru."* You see two of the consolations of his misery on the window-sill — a pipe and an oval box of Kirton's best tobacco. Another consolation, a little baby, is crying lustily in the bed. A cat and her kittens have made a comfortable couch on his coat. His sword, without a scabbard, and the blade somewhat bent, lies on the floor. It is evident that he can dress in gallant array sometimes ; but it is to be feared that the last time he went out with his sword by his side, he got either into a squabble for the wall, or a broil at a coffee-house or in a night-cellar. * In the earlier " states " of the Z'/j^;rwt'^ /*(?(?/', the "gold mines of Peru " do not appear. In their place is the copy of an engraving repre- senting Pope beating Curll. A mine of very curious disquisition is opened in the subject of the -s'arious states of the engravings of W. H., and in which consists their extreme value to modern collectors. Alterations — often of considerable magnitude and importance — become visible on comparison of different impressions of Hogarth's plates. Notably, these changes are found in the Rake's Progress (plate iv. ) ; in the Four Parts of the Day [Evening] ; in the four plates of An Election (scene i. ) ; in Beer Street and Gin Lane. Most of the alterations were from afterthought, and in correction by Hogarth himself ; but after his death, another important work, Credulity, Sitpeistition, and Fanaticism, was audaciously garbled and parodied, to suit the circumstances of the Johanna Southcote mania, by Samuel Ireland. 240 WILLIAM HOGARTH. and came home with his weapon thus damaged. House- hold utensils, mops and brooms, pails, and such matters are scattered here and there ; there is not a vestige of looking-glass ; but over the chimney, with the Bible, teacups and saucers, the loaf, and the little saucepan for the baby's pap, there is a target studded with bosses, and which has evidently come from the property-room of some theatre for which the poet has written.* Squalid, hopeless poverty is everywhere visible. The washing is done at home, as you may see from the sleeves and ruffles and bibs hung to dry over a line. A fencer's foil has been degraded into serving as a poker. There is a capacious cupboard quite empty. The walls are naked ; the roof is not watertight. A little pewter porter measure stands on the chair by the bed-side ; but w^hen we remember the wealth of flagons, and rummers, and noggins, w^ith which Hogarth heaps the foreground of some of the scenes in his Progresses, we may opine, either that the poet is too distressed to be a good * Here a learned commentator assures me that I am in error, and that the instrument I assume to be a target is, in reality, a "dare for larks," or circular board with pieces of looking-glass inserted, used, on sunshiny days, for the purpose of "daring" or "dazing" larks from their high soaring flight to within a distance convenient for shooting or netting them. I never saw any dares for larks in this country, but they are common enough abroad, where they are yet used by sportsmen and bird-fanciers to decoy larks. The "dare" I have seen resembles a cocked hat — or chapcau hras — - in form, and is studded with bits of looking-glass, not convex, but cut in facets inwards, like the theatrical ornament cast in zinc, and called a "logic." The setting is painted bright red, and the facets turn on pivots, and being set in motion by a string attached to the foot, the larks are sufficiently "dared," and come quite close over the fascinating toy. I don't see what such an instrument should do in the garret of the Distressed Poet, and adhere to my target theory. A HISTORY OF HARD WORK. 24I customer to the tavern, or that his trust, hke Rakewell's, is defunct, or that his potations are moderate. A Welsh milkwoman — an exceedingly good-looking, although strapping young person, the model, indeed, of a Blowsybella in Gay's Pastorals, has come to dun the unhappy stanza-hammerer for a milk-score. That strong- lunged baby takes so much pap ! The milkwoman is comfortably dressed. She wears high-heeled shoes and a coachwheel hat, and her petticoat is, doubtless, of the stoutest homespun dyed in grain. She brandishes the awful tally ; she expatiates on every notch on the board ; she ivill have her pound of flesh, or her handful of coppers, for her pint of milk. I think I hear the poet's pretty young wife striving to assuage the wrath of this angry milkwoman. Look at Mrs. Codrus' simple, loving, lovable face — Fielding's Amelia all over. Surely a glance at that visage is enough, O you seller of milk ! It seems to say, " Think how clever my husband is. Even lords with blue ribands have complimented him. See how hard he works. He has been up all night, finishing that heroic poem, for which, when completed, Mr. Osborne has promised him two pounds five shillings, a copy of Montaigne's Essays, and an order on his tailor for a new coat. Indeed, we are sorely pushed. Our baby has been very ill, and stands in need of all the nourishment we can give it. Even our landlady has been kind, and forbears to trouble us for the rent. Besides, Mr. Codrus has a tragedy, which he has sent to the managers, and " And while she pours out these plaintive apologies the little woman is hard at work. She is a gentleman's daughter, I daresay. She has been tenderly nurtured. She thinks her husband the bravest, kindest, cleverest 16 242 WILLIAM HOGARTH. of mankind ; and, upon my word, she is mending his smallclothes. Perhaps the milkwoman was touched by the pretty face and soft voice, and forbore to dun any more that day. But the milkwoman's dog has decidedly no pity for distressed poets, and putting his ugly head from behind her skirt, seizes with ravenous jaws on the scanty remains of yesterday's dinner, which had been put b)' on a plate. Just about this time, 1740-1741, young Mr. Horace Walpole is travelling in Italy. He writes to his friend Mr. West, that he has passed a place called Radicofani. " Coming down a steep hill with two miserable hackneys, one fell under the chaise, and while we were disengaging him, a chaise came by with a person in a red cloak, a white handkerchief on its head, and a black hat ; we thought it a fat old woman, but it spoke in a shrill little pipe, and proved itself to be Senesino." This Senesino, a soprano, clever enough in his shrill piping, was the friendly rival of Farinelli. Both realized immense fortunes in England. I don't so much grumble at Mr. Codrus's wretched earnings, or at the ten guineas which Johnson (really) received for London ; but I ma}' in justice notice Mr. Walpole's statement, that an Italian, the Abbe Vanneschi, and a certain Rolli, were paid three hundred guineas for the libretto of an opera. As to the singers, Monticelli and the Visconti had a thousand guineas for a season : Amorevoli had eight hundred and fifty, the "Moscovita" six hundred, including "secret services "^and I am entirely of the opinion of Doctor Pangloss concerning this being the very best of possible worlds. A HISTORY OF HARD WORK. 243 So, I daresay, thought William Hogarth, when he could get enough bread and cheese for his hard work. You have heard already of the Four Parts of the Day, as having been designed by Hogarth for Jonathan Tyers of Vauxhall Gardens. The auctioneers have persisted in proclaiming the pictures at old Vauxhall to have been by W. H. ; but I repeat that they were not, and were probably the work of Frank Hayman or of John Laguerre. Hogarth, however, subsequently com- pleted a set of four finished oil pictures from his first sketches. Two, Morning and Noon, were sold to the Duke of Ancaster for fifty-seven guineas. The Evening and Night were purchased by Sir William Heathcote for sixty-four guineas. The Abbe Vanneschi and the eminent Rolli would have turned up their noses at such remuneration. In 1738-9, the Four Parts of the Day were published in a series of plates of large dimensions, engraved mostly by Hogarth, but sometimes with the assistance of the Frenchman Baron. Amidst these constant labours, culminating in 1741 in the Enraged Musician and the Strolling A e tresses Dressing in a Baini, Hogarth could find leisure for the production of his large oil picture, TJie Pool of Bethesda, of which perhaps the less said the better. Why did he not attempt something in the style of the Briinnen des Jtingen of Lucas Crannach .-* At all events, a plea may be put in for the painter, for that he presented the Pool of Bethesda, together with his equally unsatisfactory painting of The Good Samaritan, to St. Bartholomew's Hospital. This generous donation took place not very long after he had published a very stinging caricature called The Company of Undertakers, reflecting A\'ith some 16 — 2 244 WILLIAM HOGARTH. severity on the chief notabilities of the medical profession. The work is one of his broad, bold etchings ; the motto, Et phwivia ino7'tis imago. The heads, monstrous peri- wigs and all, are supposed to be portraits ; and it is probable that the originals of the gold-headed canes represented are to this day reverently preserved in the Museum of the College of Physicians. Many of the portraits are, of course, through -lapse of time, no longer recognizable ; but tradition points to the counterfeit presentments of the Chevalier John Taylor, the oculist, who was called " Liar Taylor," from a romancing account of his life arid adventures which he published ; of Dr. Joshua Ward, commonly called " Spot Ward," from the "port-wine face" with which he was afflicted ; of Dr. Pierce Dod, of St. Bartholomew's ; and of Dr. Bamber. The corpulent figure in the centre, with a bone in its hand, is designed for a female doctor, Mrs. Mapp, daughter to one Wallin. She was othenvise known as " Crazy Sally," and used to travel about the country, re-setting dislocations by sheer strength of arm. The doctor in harlequin's attire has been conjectured — but only con- jectured — to be a quiz on Sir Hans Sloane. William Hogarth was now forty-three years of age, married, but childless ; busy, cheerful, and foremost man among English artists, and with another kind of personal celebrity entirely and exclusively his own. He never became rich, but his gains were large ; and he prospered, as he deserved, exceedingly. I rejoice that another chapter yet remains to me wherein to depict my hero in his golden prime. Then, alas ! must come the sere and yellow leaf, — which comes to all. ( 245 ; VIII. The Shadozo of the Forty-five. In the days of which I am writing, the EngHsh nation were much given to the eating of beef. There is a philosophy of meat, as well as of every other kind of matter ; and they who philosophize in a right spirit shall not fail to trace many symptoms of the influence of a beef diet upon William Hogarth. This was a man who despised soups, and set at nought the kickshaws of Lebeck and Pontack, of Recbell and Macklin's ordinaries. It was so ordered that Hogarth should not rise above the level of the English middle class, then hearty admirers of beef and other fleshmeats, — they had not degenerated into a liking for warmed-up stews served in electrotyped side dishes— and although when he became famous he was often bidden to great feasts, such as lord mayors' dinners, benchers' tables at Lincoln's Inn, Oxford commemoration banquets, and loyal Train Band gather- ings at the King's Arms, the ordering of those repasts was always intimately connected with ribs of beef, sirloins and briskets, shoulders of veal, venison pasties, ^ and pies made from the humbles of a deer. These entertainments, too, were of a public nature ; and though some noble patrons of Hogarth, — some Boyne, or 246 WILLIAM HOGARTH. Ancaster, or Castlemaine, or Arthur Onslow — may, from time to time, have asked him to dinner in Piccadilly or Soho, it is not likely that he enjoyed himself to any great extent at those symposia of the aristocratic meagre and the refined frivolous.* Horace Walpole records that he once sat next to Hogarth at dinner, and that he was either sulky or embarrassed, and would or could say nothing. The latter I take to have been the case, for the painter was the very opposite to a churl or a hypochon- * Dining out, even at the tables of the great, was not a very refined proceeding in Hogarth's time. When Dr. King dined with the Duke of Ormonde, Lords Marr, Jersey, Lansdown, Bishop Atterbury, and other magnificoes, the company were not deterred by the presence of a prelate of the Church of England from entering into a "jocular discourse concerning short prayers." At another dinner-table, that of Cardinal Polignac at Rome, his eminence, observing that Dr. King drank only water, told him that he had entertained five hundred of his countrymen during his embassy to the Pontifical court, and that he, the doctor, was the only water-drinking Englishman he had yet met with. When Pope dined with Lord Burlington, he could not relish his dinner until his host had ordered a large glass of cheriy-brandy to be set before him, by way of a dram. Moreover, when you had the honour to be invited to my lord's table, you had, to a certain extent, to pay for your dinner, for the impudent and extortionate lacqueys in the hall expected large donations, or "vails." There is a good story of one Lord Poor — query, De la Poer ? — a Roman Catholic peer of Ireland, who excused himself from dining oftener with the Duke of Ormonde on the ground that "he could not afford it ;" but added that if his grace would be kind enough to put a guinea in his hand at the conclusion of the banquet he should be happy to come. This was done, and Lord Poor was after- wards a frequent visitor at the duke's house in St. James's Square. But Lord Taafe, likewise in the peerage of Ireland, and who had been a general officer in the .Austrian sen'ice, more resolutely set his face against "vails," always attending his guests to the door himself, and when they made offer to put money into the servants' hands, preventing them, saying: "If you do give, give it to me, for it was I who did buy the dinner." Be it men- tioned, likewise, to the honour of William Hogarth, that he would not allow his domestics to take any fee or reward from visitors who came to sit for their portraits. THE SHADOW OF THE FORTY-FIVE. 247 driac, and by universal testimony was a sprightly, jovial, chirruping little man. The gravest accusation brought against him by those who were obliged to hate because they envied him, was that he was parsimonious. The only evidence that can be adduced in support of this charge is, on the one hand, that he had a habit of paying- ready money and never getting into debt, and that, on the other, he would have his due from the printsellers and the people who bought plates and pictures from him. For the remainder, any imputation of avarice must fall utterly to the ground when we remember his charities ; and he left so little, that five years after his death, his widow was poor. To return to the roasting-spit, and to my hero in his relation with butcher's meat. Throughout his works you will find a careful attention to, and laudable admiration of good, sound, hearty eating and drinking — tempered, however, by a poignant censure of gorman- dizing and immoderate libations. What mounds of beef, hecatombs of poultry, pyramids of pies and tartlets are consumed at the mayor's feast in Industry and Idleness ! What a tremendous gorge is that in the first scene of the Election ! Look at the leg of mutton so triumphantly brandished in Beer Street. Admire the vastiness of that roast beef of Old England in the Gates of Calais. Con- sider the huge pie which the pretty girl is bringing home from the bakehouse in Noon of the Four Parts of the Day. Observe the jovial fare of the soldiers who carouse at the table in the print of England, while the sergeant is measuring the bumpkin against his halbert, and the Giotto-like grenadier is scrawling a caricature on the wall of the French king. Hogarth was a man who, so 248 WILLIAM HOGARTH. soon as he could dine at all, dined every day and dined well. He did not eschew punch ; he had no grudge against the generous wines of Portugal ; but his faith was in the mighty, potent, and nourishing fermentation of malt and hops — in the "jolly good ale and old," that Bishop Hill sang so jolly a song about, in the Black Burgundy of Humphrey Parsons, and the Titanesque Entire of Harwood : — in beer. This liquid, which is, by the way, much esteemed by foreigners visiting England, and which I find mentioned in the Italian libretto to the opera of Maria as a potation — Che il Britanno rencle altier — Which makes the Briton haughty (!) was evidently a decided favourite with William. All his good and honest people drink beer, and plentifully, from the hugest of tankards and cans. His rascals and his rogues quaff French wines and strong waters. His vicious characters fare thinly and badly. The miserly alderman in the Marriage a la Mode is about to break- fast on an ^^^ stuck in a monticule of rice. There is certainly a pig's cheek, cold, on the table, but like the empty silver tankard it is merely there for show ; has been up to the table half a dozen times, and gone down, untouched, and so would depart again, but for the wary dog which, half-starved at most times, takes advantage of the commotion created by death, to distend his ribs with pork, to him unwonted. In his simple, straightforward way of thinking, it was evidently my painter's creed that virtuous people have hearty appetites and a good digestion. The French hold other^\■ise. " A good stomach and a bad heart," is THE SHADOW OF THE FORTY-FIVE. 249 their favourite gastronomic paradox. But Hogarth makes his dissipated countess take nothing for break- fast but tea and a starveling sHce of bread-and- butter ; and Kate, with her Hebrew admirer, can indulge in nothing more substantial than well-frothed chocolate in eggshell porcelain. Very different are these unsatis- factory refreshments to the solid meat breakfasts and ponderous dinners consumed by the pilgrims who started one morning from the Bedford Head, and took the tilt-boat for Gravesend, en route for Sheerness. I can imagine the horror which the sturdy little beefeater of Leicester Fields must have entertained for such a pinch- stomach as John Lord Hervey, who " never eat beef, nor horse, nor any of those things," * who breakfasted on an emetic, dined on a biscuit, and regaled himself once a week with an apple. The hard work, of which I sketched the history in the preceding section, was continued by William Hogarth, and without intermission, throughout the reign of George H. His popularity had not only become general, but it was safe. He could have many imitators, but no rivals. The airy patronage accorded to him by the aristocracy pleased them more than it did him. He had little to gain from commerce with the great. His great stay and holdfast were in the steady patronage and encouragement of the affluent middle classes. Vicious noblemen may have dreaded his satire ; and Hogarth was certainly not averse from administering a stinging stripe to the Charterises, the Whartons, or the Baltimores, whom he saw passing and misconducting An impertinence, since, and erroneously, attributed to Brummell. I daresay both beaux ate beefsteaks in private. 250 WILLIAM HOGARTH. themselves ; but to render the satirist justice, it seemed to him perfectly a matter of indifference whether his satire were directed against barons or against beggars. He curried favour neither in the ante-chamber of Chesterfield, nor in the cellar of Mother Midnight. If an oligarchy, haughty, ignorant, and dissolute, are treated with merited severity in the Marriage a la Mode, the ruffianly vices of the soldiery, the coarse and hardened cruelty of the lowest mob, the smug sanctimoniousness of precisians, the coarse self-indulgence of the citizens, are treated with equal and impartial severity. Hogarth quite as much disdained to glorify the virtues of a mechanic, because he had ten children and only one shirt, as to denounce a lord, because he possessed ten thousand acres and a blue ribbon. At least he was free from the most irrational and degrading vice of modern satire : the alternate blackening and whitening of persons occupying different grades in society, for the simple reason that they were born to occupy those grades. Is it a chimney-sweeper's fault that he is sooty, and hasn't a pocket-handkerchief, and lives in Hampshire Hog Lane, and cannot aspirate his lis ? Is it a gentleman's fault that he has parts and accomplishments, and a historic name and forty thousand a year ? Did we make ourselves, or choose for ourselves ? Are we any the better or the worse in our degree, or is there any need that we should fling stones at one another, because you, O my Aristarchus, were educated at the University of Oxford, and I at the University of France, or at Leyden, or Gottingen, or at the One Tun Ragged School ? Hogarth meted out justice to all classes alike ; and the depraved earl or the tipsy parson could not very well THE SHADOW OF THE FORTY-FIVE. 25 I complain of seeing himself gibbeted when the next victim might be Taylor the eye-doctor, or Philip-in-the- Tub. But the anchor which held Hogarth fastest to the public favour was the sincere and deliberate belief — prevalent among the serious and the substantial orders — that his works were in the highest degree moral, and that they conduced to the inculcation of piety and virtue. Pope has stigmatized vice in deathless couplets. We shudder and turn away sickened from Sporus and his gilded wings, from Curio and Atossa, from grubby Lady Mary and greedy Sir Balaam. We can scarcely help despising even while we pity the ragged fry of hacks who grovel in Grub Street or flounder in the Blackfriars' mud of the Dunciad ; but it is impossible for the most superficial student of those wonderful exercitations to overcome the impression that all Pope's satire subserves some mean and paltry purpose ; that he hated the rascals he flagellated, and wished to be revenged on them ; and, on the other side, one can as little trust the high-flown panegyric which he bestows on the pro- blematically perfect Man of Ross,* as the adulation with which he bestains Bolingbroke, a genius and a wit certainly, but whom all men know, — and whom the moral Pope must have known — to have been as politically false as Fouche, and as debauched as Mirabeau, and as unbelieving as Arouet. The acute and accomplished admired Pope ; the dull and the foolish wondered at and dreaded him ; but all the world understood and believed in Hogarth. I have said, that his surest anchorage was in the middle class, and that they had faith in him as a * One of whose merits in Pope's eyes may have been that he spelt his name " Kyrle," and not "Curll," as the hated Edmund was wont to do. 252 WILLIAM HOGARTH. moral teacher. All you who have seen his collected works know how coarse are many of the representations and the allusions in his tableaux. Were that elephant folio dream of mine to become a reality, it would be impossible, in this nineteenth century, to publish exact reproductions of all Hogarth's engravings. Modern taste would revolt at, and spurn them. So are there things in Pamela, in Clarissa Harloivc, in Defoe's Re- ligions CoiirtsJdp, in Brooke's Fool of Quality, in the chaste essays of Addison and Steele even, which it would be expedient, in our state of society, not to reprint. Official persons were obliged, the other day, to expurgate the Royal Proclamation against Vice, and Immorality, for the reason that there were words in it not fit for genteel ears. A hundred years ago such scruples did not exist. A spade was called a spade ; and the plain-spokenness of such a moralist as Hogarth was welcomed and applauded by clergymen, by schoolmasters, by pure matrons, by sober tradesmen, and decorous fathers of families. The series of Industry and Idleness was subscribed for by pious citizens, and the prints hung up in counting-rooms and workshops as an encouragement to the virtuous and a warning to the wicked, and scriptural texts were carefully selected by clerical friends to accompany the pictures of orgies at the Blood-Bowl House and carnivals at Tyburn. The entreaties that were made to him to publish appendices to the Marriage a la Mode, in the shape of a Happy Marriage, are on a parallel with the solicitations of the pious lady to Richardson, that he would cause Lovelace to be con- verted through the intermediary of a Doctor Christian. Both Hogarth and Richardson knew the world too well THE SHADOW OF THE FORTY-FIVE. 253 to enter upon such tasks. They saw the evil man setting out on his course, and knew that he would accomplish it to his destruction. Hogarth, however, might have incurred peril of lapsing into the drearily didactic had he been for ever tracing out the fatal progresses of Rakes to Bedlam and Kate Hackabouts to Bridewell, of frivolous earls and countesses to duels and elopements, or of naughty boys who play at pitch-and-toss on Sundays, or tease animals, to the Tyburn gallows, or the dissecting-room in Surgeon's Hall. William's hard work was diversified by a goodly stock of miscellaneous taskwork. The purely comic would sometimes assert itself, and his object would then be to make you laugh and nothing more. Thus, it is not apparent that he had any very grim design in view in those admirable subjects, more than once glanced at — the Four Parts of the Day. He shows you the abstract and brief chronicle of the time, and is content with painting four inimitably graphic scenes of life in London in 1738, without insisting on any particular ethical text. Let us see what this life in London is. We begin with a dark, raw winter's morning in Covent Garden Market. J'here is Inigo Jones's " Barn ;" and, although oddly reversed (to the confusion of topographical knowledge, in the engraving), the tall house, now Evans's Hotel, and the commencement of King Street. The Piazza we do not see. In front of the church is a sort of shebeen or barraquc, the noted Tom King's coffee- house — whether so named from the highwayman, who was the friend of Dick Turpin (and was shot by him), or from some popular landlord, I am unable to determine. The clock points to five minutes to eight. A rigid old 254 WILLIAM HOGARTH. maid of pinched and nipped appearance, but patched and beribboned and befanned, as though in the desperate hope that some beau who had been on the royster all night would suddenly repent and offer her his hand and heart, is going to matins, followed by a shivering little foot-page, who carries her prayer-book. Inside Tom King's there has been, as usual, a mad broil. Periwigs are flying about. Swords are crossed with cudgels, and the drawers are divided between fears for their sconces and anxiety to know who is to pay the reckoning for that last half-guinea bowl. Two stumpy little school- boys in enormous hats are cowering along on their way to school. It is so cold that they will find it almost a mercy to have their palms warmed with the ferule. The snow lies thick on the housetops, and the vagrant hangers-on to the market have lit a fire with refuse wood, and are warming one blue hand, begging piteously, meanwhile, with the other. More beaux and bloods have rambled into the market, their rich dresses all disordered, to make staggering love to apple-women and sempstresses going to their work. Early as it is, the touters in the employ of the quack. Dr. Rock, are abroad, and carry placards vaunting the doctor's cures, impu- dently headed by the royal arms. There is a foreground of carrots, turnips, and cabbage-leaves. ' Change the dresses ; clear away Tom King's coffee-house, and trans- plant its roysterers to some low tavern in the immediate neighbourhood, and Hogarth's Z^yt- in London is enacted every summer and winter morning in our present Covent Garden Market. But the scene changes. We are at high AW//. It is Sunday, and a congregation are coming out of church, or rather chapel ; for, although the tall THE SHADOW OF THE FORTY-FIVE. 255 spire of St. Martin's looms close by, our congregations are issuing from a brick meeting-house of the French Huguenot persuasion. A Parisian beau of the first water — on week days he is probably an enameller or a water-gilder in Bear or Spur Street, — is prattling to a coquettish lady in a sack, much apparently to the annoyance of an attenuated gentleman, not unlike M. de Voltaire in middle age. He is the husband, I think, of the lady of the sack, and is jealous of her ; for even Huguenots are susceptible of the green-eyed passion. They have a child with them, — an astonishing little mannikin made up as sprucely as a bushy wig, lace, embroidery, ruffles, buckles, a tiny sword, and a diminu- tive cane will allow him, — but who, for all his fine raiment, looks lovingly at a neighbouring puddle. Two ancient gossips are kissing one another. A demure widow, stiff"-wimpled, glances with eyes half closed at the flirtation between the beau and the lady in the sack. The widow is not talking, but she is evidently thinking, scandal. In the background, see the tottering old alms- men creeping away home to the house of charity, erected by some rich silk factor, who managed to save some- thing from the spoliation of the dragonades, and, after that, made a fortune in Soho or Spitalfields. And sweeping down the church steps, see the stern French Protestant pastor with Geneva bands and austere wig. Exiled, proscribed, and with but a barren benefice, he is yet as proud as the haughtiest prelate of the swollen Gallican church. He can bear persecution, the bitterest, — has borne it, is ready to bear it again, — but he never forgets that there was, years ago, a confessor of his creed, one Jean Chauvin, called Calvin ; and woe betide 256 WILLIAM HOGARTH. the day when he himself shall become a persecutor, and get some new Servetus into his power ; for, of a surety, he will roast him at the stake. There is no wasting going on to-day more fatal than that of meat, and yet there are wars and rumours of war about that. There is " good eating " at the sign of the " Baptist's Head," which is depicted duly decollated in a charger ; but next door, at the sign of the " Good Woman," who is painted, according to custom, headless, a gentleman and liis wife in the first-floor front have had a furious quarrel respecting a baked shoulder of mutton with potatoes under it, and the lady has flung the joint and its appurtenances, dish and all, out of the window. Below, mishaps as momentous have occurred. A bold Blackamoor has stolen a kiss from a very pretty girl who is taking home a pie. A shock-headed boy has stumbled against a post with the dish of viands he is carrying. All is smashed : the boy yelps with dismay, and scratches his tangled poll at the idea of the practical remonstrances which may be addressed to him by his parents on his return home ; and a hungry little tatter- demalion of a girl at the post's foot, crouches prone to the pavement, and greedily crams herself with the scattered waifs and strays of victual. Pass on io Evening. We are at Sadler's Wells tea and bun house,* and * Soon after tea became the fashionable beverage, several garden^ in the outskirts of London were opened as tea-gardens ; but the proprietors, finding the visitors wanted something else besides tea, accommodated them with ale, bottled beer, &c. In an old magazine, printed in the beginning of George III.'s reign, the writer, speaking of persons whose habit it was to resort to the various tea-gardens near London every Sunday, calculates them to amount to 200,000. Of these he considers that not one would go away without having spent 2s, 6ci. ; and, consequently,' the sum of 25,000/. THE SHADOW OF THE FORTY-FIVE. 257 hard by the Sir Hugh Middleton Tavern. A lean citizen, and his portly, gaily-bedizened wife, are taking the air by the New River side. Amwell Street and reservoirs as yet are not. The two elder children — boy and girl — are squabbling and nagging one another, even as the author of TJie Mill on the Floss tells us that children carp and nag. The lean husband is entrusted with the care of the youngest child, who is weakly and fatigued besides, and with a rueful countenance he cuddles the little innocent. This is not a happy marriage. There is a charming aspect of rurality about the scene ; and I would have been spent in the course of the day by this number of persons. Sunday afternoon and evening were a perfect carnival for the lower classes, and the " fields," as well as the tea-gardens, were crowded. " People who sell fruit, &c., in the iields, preparing to shut up their stalls and joyfully retire to the Geneva shops ; cold beef and carrot most vigorously attacked in public houses by hungry acquaintances just come out of the fields. The Court of Aldennen belonging to the Black Bull in Kentish Town clearing the afternoon reckoning, that they may walk to London before dark. . . . Divers companies of Jacobites censuring the- ministers in hedge publick houses, and by their discourse do mighty matters for the Pretenders. . . . The drawers at Sadler's Wells and the Prospect House near Islington, Jenny's Whim at Chelsea, the Spring Gardens at Newington and Stepney, the Castle at Kentish Town, and the Angel at Upper Holloway, each of them trying to cheat, not only the customers, but even the person who has the care of the bar ; and every room in these houses full of talk and smoke. Poor men, women, and children creeping out of the fields, the first half drunk, the others tired and hungry. . . . Men who keep hay-farms about this metropolis ordering their servants to prevent the too great devastation of new-mown hay by people who are tumbling about the fields. . . . Poor honest women at their bedsides, praying and coaxing their husbands to arise and take a walk with them in the fields." These notabilia are from a very rare and curious tract, called Lena Life ; or, One-Half of the World kiunos not /una the other half Live, ill a trite Description of a Sunday, as it is usually Spent within the Bills of Mortality, calculated for the Twenty-frst of June (Whit Sunday). The book is anonymous, but is dedicated to the ' ' ingenious and ingenuous Mr. Hogarth." ■^S," 17 258 WILLIAM HOGARTH. would that Hogarth had spared us that little bit of cynicism about the protuberance of the cow which is being milked in the background. It is not meet that I should be more explicit regarding the connection of the cow with the lean tradesman's wig, than to refer you to a Roman poet who tells us that there are twin gates to Sleep, through which our dreams issue — and even married tradesmen must sleep and dream, — and that one of the gates is of ivory, and the other of horn. And what of Night ? — night, when " wicked dreams abuse the curtained sleep." Hogarth shows us night in its more jovial, reckless aspect, not in that murtherous, purse-cutting, marauding guise of which Fielding, as a Westminster justice, was so searchingly aware. Xantippe is showering her favours from the window of the Rummer Tavern. Two Freemasons — one said to.be a portrait of the well-known Justice De Veil — are staggering home after a banquet of extraordinary liberality. By the oak boughs decking the windows and the Freemasons' hats, the night would seem to be that of the twenty-ninth of May — Restoration Day. The equestrian statue of Charles I. is shadowed in the distance, but the locality does not at all resemble Charing Cross. In the extreme background a house is in flames — the conflagration probably due to one of the numerous bonfires on which the Hanoverian government for years strove to put an extinguisher, but which the populace, with all their hatred of Popery, brass money, and wooden shoes, and love for the Protestant succession, as resolutely kept alight. Through an open window you see a fat man undergoing the operation of shaving. He is probably being dandified in honour of some tavern supper to THE SHADOW OF THE FORTY-FIVE. 259 which he is invited, in celebration of Restoration Day. The date should, properly, be nearer Michaelmas or Ladyday ; for a tenant to whom the payment of rent has become irksome is removing his goods in a cart — " shooting the moon " by the light of the bonfires and the blazing house. To complete the scene, the " Salis- bury Flying Coach " has broken down ; the ofif-wheel has tumbled into one of the pyres of rejoicing ; and the immured passengers are vainly entreating assistance at the hands of the inebriated watch. I come now to the work, Strolling A ctrcsscs Dressing in a Barn, — " invented, painted, designed, and published by William Hogarth." The wisest authorities concur in according the very highest meed of praise to this splendid composition. Horace Walpole says of it, that " for wit and imagination, without any other end, this is the best of all our artist's works ;" and the German, Lichtenberg, observes, " Never, perhaps, since the graver and pencil have been employed in the service of satire has so much lively humour been compressed within so small a compass as here." Indeed the picture-print is an exceedingly fine one ; and save that tragic interest is lacking, shows almost all that of which Hogarth was artistically, physically, and mentally capable. It has been suggested that the title Strolling Actresses is incomplete, and that " Actors " should be added ; but it is worthy of remark that the beau dressing has a face and figure of such feminine beauty, that Hogarth's model might well have been Peg Woffington. in that character of Sir Harry Wildair, in which she made the men jealous and the women fall in love with her ; or else William's famous Drum-Majoress from Southwark 17—2 26o WILLIAM HOGARTH. fair, invested, " for this occasion only," with more than Amazonian grace. The children attired as cupids, demons, &c., may be accepted as of the epicene gender ; and the rest of the dramatis pcrsonce are unquestionably women, either young or old. In the first impression of the plate the playbill informs the public that the part of Jupiter will be performed by " Mr. Bilk Village ;" but in later impressions the name is concealed by a deep shadow from another bill cast over it ; and the rest of the characters, so far as I can make them out with a magnifying glass, are all by Mrs. So-and-So. The manager is not represented here : and, indeed, decorum would forbid Mr. Lamp being present in the ladies' dressing-room, although the theatre was but a barn. You must remember that this picture is, to a certain extent, an artistic Diinciad. It tears away a veil, it rolls up the curtain ; it shows all the squalor, misery, degradation of the player's life in Hogarth's time. It is repugnant to think that my William could be for once in his life so pusillanimous as to satirize women when he dared not depict men. Such, however, seems to have been the case. Moreover, the ladies are nearly all exquisitely beautiful ; and a woman will pardon almost any affront in the world so long as you respect her beauty. But once ignore her pretty countenance, and gave anx onglcs ! No sooner had the unhappy Essex been detected in making a face at his ruddled, wrinkled Royal Mistress, than his head was virtually off his shoulders. A w-oman may be beaten, starved, trampled on, betrayed, and she will forgive and smile ; but there is no forgiveness after such a deadly insult as was hurled THE SHADOW OF THE FORTY-FIVE. 26 1 by Clarendon in Castlemaine's pretty face : " Woman, you will one day become Old." And Hogarth may have feared the menfolk of the side-scenes and the footlights, even had he drawn no portraits and named no names. Some periwig-pated fellow would have been sure to declare that he was libelled in Jupiter Bilk Village. I am given to under- stand that in this present era the players are peaceable gentry enough ; that Mr. Robson is by no means a fire- eater, and that Mr. Wigan is no shedder of man's blood. But in the days when Colley Gibber wrote his fantastic Apology, and long before, the actors had been a strange, wild, and somewhat desperate set. In James's time, Ben — he was, to be sure, an author as well as an actor, and both constitutionally and professionally choleric — was a very Pandarus of Troy, and always ready to measure swords with an opponent. The comedians of King Charles I. gallantly took service on the Royal side, and at Edgehill and Wiggan Lane did so slash and curry the buff jerkins of the Roundheads, as to diminish our wonder at all players being rigorously proscribed during the Protectorate. The stage-players of the Restoration and the following reigns were notorious swashbucklers. Actors had often to fight their way by dint of rapier up to the " leading business." Betterton fought half a dozen duels. Mountford, in a quarrel with Lord Mohun, was stabbed by one of the companions of that noble bravo. Powell cudgelled an insolent dandy at Wills' Coffee House. Hildebrand Horden, a young actor of great promise, quarrelled with a Colonel Burgess, who had been resident at Venice, fought with him and was slain ; and Macklin, who was always in 262 WILLIAM HOGARTH. some difficulty or another, was tried at the Old Bailey for killing a man in the playhouse dressing-room on some farthing-token turmoil about a property wig. No wonder that Hogarth forbore — after his early escapades of the Beggar's Opera and the players in Sout/nuaj'k Fair — further to provoke so irascible a race. 'Twas all very well to paint Walker in AlacJieatJi and Garrick in Richard, or to etch benefit tickets for the gentlemen of the Theatres Royal ; but 'ware hawk when he came to twit them on their poverty and their rags ! In mere assumption, therefore, I take all the company in the barn to be of the non-combative sex. The comedians are announced as " from London ; " the piece to be performed is The Devil to Pay in Heaven. Diana, Flora, Juno, Night, a Ghost, three witches, a Tragedy Queen, two demons, Jupiter's eagle — who is feeding a swaddled baby from a little pap-saucepan, super- posed on a copy of the Act against Strolling Players, which again is placed on a regal crown — the sun, moon, and stars, two kittens, and a monkey, seem to be among the characters. The handsome youth, whom I conjecture to be an Amazon, is to play Jupiter. The eagle — with a child's face peeping from beneath the beak — is feeding the baby, perhaps Jupiter's baby, at his or her feet. The central female figure. Flora, it would appear — although from the extremely airy state of her draper}-, she is not susceptible of reproduction as a modern example — must ever remain a cynosure to all sincere admirers of William Hogarth. Nothing can be more gracefully beauteous than the composition and drawing of this figure, the only exception to which (in addition to aeriness of drapery) is that some aberration of the THE SHADOW OF THE FORTY-FIVE. 263 laws of pneumatics must have disarranged and held in suspense the folds of the sole garment which the goddess Flora, at this stage of her toilet, condescends to wear. She is, indeed, too much preoccupied just now, to think of dressing ; and in the ardour of recitation — she is going through the grand tirade of the evening, and tramples on the very hoop that she will presently assume. To make amends, her head is elaborately powdered, jewelled, and plumed, and her fair neck is encircled by a rich necklace, composed, without doubt, of stones as precious as any of those in the large hamper which serves as a dressing table for the seconda donna, and which, to judge by its distinguishing label, contains the regalia of the entire company. Heroine number two, who is kneeling before this hamper, has reached the more advanced stage of having donned a petticoat of vast amplitude of material and rigid circumference of basket-work : a few rents, however, in the fabric, would appear to show that the hoop has seen some service. This lady is further sacrificing to the Graces, to the extent of greasing her locks with a tallow candle ; and on the hamper top, by the candle in its sconce, the shell that holds the carmine, and the comb that wants a tooth, lies ready to the heroine's hand that flour-dredger from whose perforated dome shall speedily issue the snowy shower so essential to the frosting of that fair head. See yet another heroine, beautiful, majestic, severe, as Belvidera, as Sophonisba, or as Lindamira, and not unlike Hogarth's own Sigismunda, duly equipped in veil and tiara and regal robe, and with certainly as comely a pair of hands and arms as any well-grown young woman could desire to have. This is the Tragedy Queen. She 264 WILLIAM HOGARTH. is conning her part for the last time ; but is not too proud to rest her exquisite leg and foot on a wheel- bench in order that a faithful comrade, the suivante in the drama, may darn a rent in her stocking. Briefly- must the rest of the wondrous tableau be glanced at. Look at the noble matron who holds a squalling and clawing kitten, while the atrocious harridan near her snips off the tip of the poor animal's tail with a pair of scissors, and allows the blood to drip into a broken basin. Is rose-pink, or, at least, red ochre so scarce that real blood is necessary for the bedaubing of some stage assassin } Why, Farmer Hodge, to whom the barn belongs, would surely lend some of the red pigment \\ith which he ruddles his sheep. Jupiter — lady or gentleman as the case may be — does not disdain to take some comfort in the glass of celestial ichor, othenvise gin, which a young lady attired as a mermaid pours from a black bottle and hands to the Olympian potentate, a daughter of Night looking on in pleased contemplation. An ape in a corner is making himself comfortable with the plumed helmet of Alexander the Great, and the kittens are tranquilly playing with a regal orb and the lyre of Apollo. A Virgin of the Sun (apparently, in everyday life, mamma to Cupid) points with that deity's bow to a pair of stockings hanging over a scene to dry ; and the obedient urchin, wigged, winged, and quivered, ascends a ladder to fetch down the required hose. A considerable portion of the company's body linen, all more or less tattered, is suspended for drying purposes over a prosaic clothe's-line. For the rest, drums, trumpets, violoncellos, and the stage thunder ; fragments of scenery — now a forest and now a Roman temple ; the THE SHADOW OF THE FORTY-FIVE. 265 dips stuck in potatoes cut in halves that are to illumine the stage and the auditory ; a classical altar with rams' heads at the angles, and behind which the two demons are contending as to who shall take the first draught from a mighty tankard of home-brewed ; the child's crib, a homely gridiron, an S.P.Q.R. standard, the palette, pipkins, and brushes of the scene-painter, canvas clouds and pasteboard griffins, Flora's car, and the union-jack, make up the accessories in this curious medley. The originally agricultural character of the place is shown by the flail hanging over the sheaves of straw, and through a hole in the thatch, a gaping rustic stares at the strange scene beneath him. Poor mummers ; poor rogues and vagabonds by Act of Parliament ! They seem merry enough, for all their raggedness and all their misery. It Avas a very nice thing, in those days, to be Signor Farinelli, or Senesino, or Faustina, or Cuzzoni. It was not so bad to write libretti, like the Abbe Vanneschi. It was genteel and courtly to be an architect, author and opera manager combined, like Sir John Vanbrugh. It was even tolerable to be the patentee of one of the great houses, like Rich, with his diamond buckles, or Colley Cibber, who was a fine gentleman and a macaroni, and whom " all the town went to see," says Horace Walpole, when, at seventy years of age, and at an honorarium of fifty guineas a night, he condescended to play such parts as Pandulph, in his own play of Papal Tyranny. But at the time Hogarth was painting his wonderful picture, the lot of an actor, even the most eminent, was painful, was precarious, was replete with unspeakable degradations. A man against whom no stronger accu- 266 WILLIAM HOGARTH. sation could be brought than that he hved by the honourable exercise of the talents which the Almighty had given him, was exposed to affronts the most brutal and the most wanton at the hands of every fool of quality, or of every rascal with a cockade in his hat who called himself captain. With the exception of the outrage on Dryden by the bravoes of Rochester, and that on Voltaire by the lacqueys of the duke he had offended, there is not on record a more cowardly and ruffianly transaction than the slaughter of poor Will Mountford by Captain Hill and the wretch Mohun, for the reason, forsooth, that Mrs. Bracegirdle chose to look with favour on him. It was to be expected that noblemen would hold players of but little account : it was bad enough to be excommunicated by the clergy, and vilified by the critics : but the players' humiliations did not end here ; and not an Irish ensign, not a beggarly son to some creeper of the backstairs, not a student of the inns of court, not a Somersetshire esquire whose grandfather was hanged for being at Sedgemoor, but thought himself infinitely superior to such men as Wilks, and Booth, and Doggett. It was long ere this irrational superciliousness declined ; even at this very day in which I write it is not eradicated. The wise, and learned, and pious Johnson, the gifted and polished Reynolds, the stately Warburton, the eloquent Burke, did not disdain the company and friendship of a play-actor ; but hearken to the terms in which a perchance War Office clerk addressed the Roscius of the English stage : " Vagabond ! keep to your pantomimes." It was thus that the party-writer, Junius, wrote to DAVID Garrick ; and I doubt not but that had he been in Mr. Secretarv Cecil's office two THE SHADOW OF THE FORTY-FIVE. 267 centuries before, he would, just as contemptuously, have apostrophized WiLLIAM Shakspeare. If such was the status of the London actor, in what light was looked upon the wretched stroller, the Bilk Village, who wandered from fair to fair and from barn to barn, to rant the tirades of the drivelling Shadwell and the crazy Nat Lee, for the amusement of Lobbin Clout and Dorothy Draggletail. The stroller was a vagabond by law. The tipsy justices whom Gay satirized in the "What d'ye call it?" might send the constable after him, might lay him by the heels in the cage, and deliver his wife and daughters to the tender mercies of the beadle and the whipping-post. The unpatented player was caput Inpinum. He was a social outlaw. He was driven from tithing to tithing, or clapped up in Bridewell, while quacks as impudent as Misaubin, and as extortionate as Rock, lived in ease and splendour, unmolested, battened on the plunder of the public, and drove about the town in gilded carriages. One can understand the bigoted French clergy demur- ring as to the Christian burial of Moliere — had he not written Tartiijfe ? but it is difficult to comprehend what harm the English players had ever done to Church or State, or in what degree even the lowest strollers were inferior to the effete Italian mountebanks upon whom the English nobility delighted to heap gold in thousands. The print of the Enraged Musician has been said by many to be capable, at most, of deafening those who looked upon it. It is, in truth, a noisier picture than Sonthtvai'k Fair ; but the noise it exhibits is less tolerable. There is no cheerful murmur, no busy hum, 268 WILLIAM HOGARTH. no babbling of human brooks ; but rather one sustained, jarring, clanging, maddening " row." The unhappy musician, who is composing a inotctt, or scoring an overture, in his tranquil parlour, and — it being summer time- — has left his window open, has every cause to be enraged and exasperated by this persistent concourse of discordant sounds. The raven himself would be hoarse were he to strive to croak down these hideous noises. There is a little girl springing her rattle; a needy knife- grinder plying his wheel and whistling meanwhile ; a beggar-woman with a squalling bantling, excruciatingly swaddled, yelping out the ballad of the Ladies' Fall ;'^ a pretty young milkwoman, with her open milk-pail on her head — not yoked with a brace of cans, as in our time — who is giving " milk O !" with all the strength of her robust lungs ; a dustm.an passes bawling with his cart ; a small-coal man utters his lugubrious chant ; a vendor of fish vaunts the freshness and succulence of his wares ; a child, accoutred in all the absurdity of the reigning mode, and who might be twin-brother to the overdressed little urchin in Noon, is thwacking the parchment of a toy drum ; from the chimney-top of a neighbouring house a sweep, having completed his task, gives utterance to his jodil, implying the crowning of the work by the end ; it is the king's birthday, or some other national /r/r, and while the banner flaunts from the steeple, the joy-bells are vociferously ding-donging forth ; and an additional contribution is made to this ear-piercing din by the vicinity of a whitesmith, one " John Long, Pewterer," * The "Ladies' Fall'''' was the harmonic predecessor of the " Unfor- 1 1171 ate Miss Bailey." THE SHADOW OF THE FORTY-FIVE. 269 whose journeymen are doubtless hammering away with might and main. One is puzzled to imagine what new phase of noise could have been devised by Hogarth to complete this atrocious tintamarre. He might have had, perhaps, a wedding-party next door to the musician's, and the marrowbones and cleavers outside congratulating the newly wedded couple with rough music* The parish beadle might have been bellowing out an " Oh yes !" relative to purses stolen or pug-dog strayed ; a schoolmaster might have been thrashing a boy at an open window ; or a butcher ringing the nose of a pig in some outhouse close by. I see, however, that William, disregarding for once the proprieties of time, has sketched two members of the feline family vigorously caterwauling on the tiles. Observe that the musician is said to be " enraged," yet his ire takes no form more aggressive than is manifested by stopping his ears, clenching his fists, and making a wry face at his tormentors. If the disturbance continues, he may probably take a further revenge by snapping his violin strings, breaking his bow, or smashing one of the keys of his harpsichord ; but were the scene to have taken place in i860, instead of 1740! I tremble to think of the exemplary vengeance which would be taken by the enraged musician on the miscreants who had done this violence to his tympanum. The needy knifegrinder * The Marrowbones and Cleavers Societies' Books for the parish of .St. George's, Hanover Square, are still extant, and in the one year, 1745, their earnings reach the amount of 380/., all given in guineas by the aristocracy patronizing that Temple of Hymen. The gratuity became at last a perfect black mail, and the interference of the law became at last necessary to put a stop to an organized extortion. 270 WILLIAM HOGARTH. would, for a certainty, be hauled before Justice Old- mixon, and put in the stocks for a vagrant ; Bridewell would be the doom of the pretty milkwoman, and the birch or bread-and-water the fate of the little boy with his drum, and the little girl with her rattle. Rigorous Acts of Parliament would be invoked against the dustman and the industrial who sells small coal ; the cats would be sent to the pieman, and the chimney- sweep compelled to carry the penal and sable fasces of Ramonage ; "John Long, Pewterer," would be indicted as a nuisance, and the ballad-singer and hautboy-player be sent for seven days to the House of Correction. Oh ! for a week of despotism to put down itinerant musicians and street noises ; and should we require a fortnight of the despotism, I wonder, if the week were granted to our desires .'' The Enraged Musician is stated to be a portrait of Handel. There is nothing to prove the assertion. His countenance does not at all resemble that of the immortal composer of the Messiah ; and if we are to take the Harmonious Blacksmith as a test of the power of endurance of extraneous sounds possessed by George Frederick Handel, he would more probably have extracted something melodious from the odd charivari going on before his window, than have been driven to rage thereby. Not to be passed over in mention of these one-act dramas, such as the Strolling Actresses, Southivark Fair, the Distressed Poet, the Enraged Musician, &c. &c., is the oddly humourous picture called Taste in High Life. It was painted by Hogarth as a commission from a wealthy and eccentric lady residing at Kensington — a THE SHADOW OF THE FORTY-FIVE. 2/3 Miss Edwards, — who, having been sharply satirized in society for her own personal oddities, took a sufficiently originalvengeance, in commanding Hogarth to perpetuate with his pencil the preposterous absurdities of the dress worn by the most exalted society of her time. There never has been, surely, before or since, a more ludicrous beau than the exquisite who is in raptures with the fine lady in the sack, over the diminutive cup and saucer they have just picked up at a sale. Admire his cross- barred coat, his prodigious queue, his cuffs, his ruffles, the lady's muff he carries. The beau is said to be intended for my Lord Portmore, in the dress he wore at the birthday drawing-room in 1742. We have seen the magnificent accoutrement of Tom Rakewell, when, bound for St. James's on a birthday, he was dragged* by unkind bailiffs from his sedan-chair. We read in Walpole's letters with what solicitude the virtuoso Horace was possessed lest the birthday clothes which he had ordered of a tailor in Paris should fail him in his need. They had been bespoken a month, and he has heard nothing of them, he tells one of his correspondents, plaintively ; but none of these suits of attire, gorgeous, radiant as they may have been, could have equalled in * Three fellows called Duel, Morice, and Hague, were the most notorious catchpoles, bailiffs, or sheriffs' officers in 1730-40. The bailiffs were Christians after a sort ; the Jews, who were as yet not legally tolerated in England, could not ofiiciate even as the lowest myrmidoms of the law ; and it was not until late in George III.'s time that the Israelites took to executing ca sa's and y? fah. Still the vocation of bailiff was, and had been for a long time, deemed infamous by the English people ; and Dutchmen and Flemings were often employed to do the shoulder-tapping branch of business. Perhaps Messrs. Morice and Hague were of Low Country extraction. 18 274 WILLIAM HOGARTH. transcendency the gala " full fig " of my Lord Portmore. The fashionable lady is equally ineffable in her array. Her younger companion is exquisitely dressed ; the black boy — designed, it is reported, for the celebrated Ignatius Sancho in his sable youth — is an oriental dandy of the first water ; and the very monkey who is reading the list of purchases made at the auction of articles of virth, is attired in the height of the fashion. Apart from this picture being admirably drawn and composed, and sparkling with very genuine humour — apart from its containing a very stinging satire on the extravagance of fashion in 1742, it is remarkable as a poignant burlesque and lampoon on our own crinoline mania of 1855-60. Just look at the monstrous hoops worn by two ladies. That of the elder one is half concealed by her brocaded sack; but the flagrancy of the younger \-3iAy s, panier is patent and palpable to the naked eye. She is chucking the little black boy under the chin. Hogarth has, as usual, symbolized a portion of his meaning in pictures on the wall. There are pendants to these pictures of " Taste," in portraits of celebrated male ballet-dancers of the Italian theatre. This picture was, as I have remarked, painted expressly for Miss Edwards. Either she or Hogarth would never consent to an engraving being taken from it ; and it was not until after his death that it was engraved — rather softly and cloudily — in stipple or taille doitce. All these things were executed in the " shadow of the Forty-five " — in the years immediately preceding the great Jacobite outbreak in Scotland, which ended in the defeat at Culloden, the flight of Charles Edward, and the beheading of the rebel lords on Tower Hill. To THE SHADOW OF THE FORTY-FIVE. 2/5 the Forty-five — its prologue, its drama, and its epilogue, — belong Hogarth's master-works of the Marriage a la Mode, the March to FincJiley, and the portrait of Lord Lovat ; and of those I must treat, even on the threshold of the scene from which I must soon depart altogether. I 8—2 2/6 WILLIAM HOGARTH. IX. Tail-Piece. In twenty pages, or thereabouts, I have to glance at nineteen years of the history of a man's life and works. But the rough macadam of my path is smoothed and levelled, comparatively, by the knowledge that the great events in the career of my hero have been, if not fully narrated, at least enumerated in their due order. To recapitulate a little. You have seen William Hogarth born, apprenticed to Mr. Gamble, taught graving and design. You have seen him teach himself to draw with ease, to paint with grace and vigour. You have watched him learn to think, to use his knowledge of men and cities, to cover Theocritus' sad face with the droll mask of Democritus. You have seen him marry his master's daughter — Sir James's, not Ellis Gamble's ; — and were this a novel, not a life-study, it would be fitting to end the history just where the parson gives his benediction. When a married pair are childless, and become pros- perous, and the man renowned, and keep their coach and their country-house, the fairy-tale peroration is perhaps the most appropriate : " And they lived long and happily, beloved by everybody." But the childish couch may be thorny, and there may be hyssop in the TAIL-PIECE. 277 cup of renown ; and cannot poisonous laurel-water be distilled from the crisp leaves which the conqueror is crowned with ? The fine coach may jolt, the wheels stick in the ruts sometimes. The country-house may be damp. There may be ratsbane in the creamiest porridge, and halters in the grandest pew. So until the end, telling of the evil and the good in an active life, I will, if you please, proceed : but be not impatient. A term is coming to your weariness and my prolixity. See how swiftly the sands are running, and how inexor- ably the clock-needles are moving towards the last minute of the last hour — moving sharply and cruelly, and like arrows wounding. Vjilnerant ojiincs, ultima necat, is written on the dial. The bell will soon toll, and it will be time to split up this pen, and blot this sheet. But as a shrewd devisor making his testamentary dispositions, let me first endeavour to set my artistic property in order : to see what rich treasures, as well as little waifs and strays of value, remain to make up the grand inheritance left by William Hogarth to his country. " All my messuages and tenements — all my plate, pictures, furniture, and linen — all my bonds and securities : " — well, the schedule is lengthy enough ; but a few pages may suffice to let the reader know how much, pictorially, the good man died worth. First, of that " Forty-five," whose shadow crossed my path as I journeyed towards the eighth stage of these travels in search of Hogarth. In the stormy time of the Jacobite troubles (1745-6-7 — let the generic term be the " Forty-five," — have not Stanhope and Chambers put their seal upon it, so }) Hogarth was busiest, cleverest, most prolific, and most popular. This jolly cabbage- 2/8 WILLIAM HOGARTH. rose of the English garden of painting was in full bloom and beauty and odour : yea, and the dried leaves in the Hogarthian vase are redolent of sweet savours to this day. As a man who took the keenest interest in the transactions, manners, humours, and vices of his time, William could scarcely help been affected, politically, one way or the other, by that all-absorbing war of the English succession. The painter who dwelt at the sign of the " Golden Head " was a staunch Hanoverian, and the political Hanoverian was in that day generally the staunchest of Englishmen. Of the German kings who were good enough to come from Herrenhausen, and sit on our throne — the kings who were always scampering over to Vaterland, who talked French at court, and did not know enough of the English language to deliver their own royal speeches, nay, scarcely knew to what rank in the State their servants were eligible,* — Hogarth could not have been a great admirer ; nor, I should imagine, did the artist trouble himself much con- cerning the reputed descent of the Hanoverian monarchs from Odin (!), Radag, Frond, Freidger, lVi^{l), &c. &c. &c., as set forth in the pompous, lying Brunswick Genealogy, published by the "person of quality" who continued CJiamberlayne s State of England. He simply hated Jacobitism as the vast body of the middle classes hated it, for the reason that, to his mind, the success of the Stuart cause was associated with sonpe maigre, * When, ill the early part of the second George's reigii, a new Lord Chancellor had to be appointed, the name of a certain great lawyer was canvassed at the council board as fittest to hold the seals. "No ! no ! " cried Konig George. " Gif me te man who read te tying sbeech zo peautiful." He meant the Recorder of London, whose duty it was to deliver the periodical report on the condemned criminals in Newgate. TAIL-PIECE. 279 fricasseed frogs, and foreign ascendancy, with surreptitious warining-pans, popery, brass-money, and wooden shoes. My dear romantic friends, I am afraid that in the " Forty-five " the " respectable classes " in England were almost to a man against the chivalrous Charles Edward. 'Tis distance, and that wonderful romance of "sixty years since" — a hundred and fifteen' now — that lend enchantment to the view of " Bonny Prince Charlie." Even the noblemen who espoused his cause were either attainted titulars — as Perth, as Tullibardine, and as poor Charles Ratclifife were — or else came to his standard as to an Adullam, wofully dipped, out at elbows, and discontented with the normal state of things, as were Kilmarnock and Balmerino. The lowest mob in London was sometimes for the Elector, and sometimes for the Chevalier — mainly following with the fluctuations of the Geneva market ; but I think mob-Jacobitism in '45 must very ipuch have resembled mob-chartism in our own ^^48. The accounts of the preparations made for the defence of London, when the rebels reached Derby, form a curious parallel to the proceedings prior to that loth of April which we all remember. The stage carpenters of Covent Garden and Drury Lane sworn in as specials ; the Bank sandbagged and barricaded ; the Artillery Company under arms : the gentlemen of the Inns of Court breathincr defiance to St. Germains and Rome from behind field-pieces and locked gates — all these read like prototypes of our little panic of the' year of revolution. Oxford was Jacobitical in 1745, but it pre- ferred drinking the king's health "over the water" in snug college rooms, to praying for King James, just before being turned off in that frightful Tyburn publicity. 28o WILLIAM HOGARTH. There were plenty of rich Jacobite baronets and squires in Cheshire and Lancashire ; but few cared to leave their heads on Tower Hill, while their broad acres went to enrich Greenwich Hospital. They remembered Derwent- water, and remained prudently quiet. I grant the noble, self-denying chivalry of the brave Scottish gentlemen who joined in this great quarrel — the heroism of such Paladins as Cameron of Lochiel, Cluny Macpherson, Clanronald, Macdonald of Keppoch, and the ducal Drummond of Perth ; but on this side the Tweed — ah me ! I fear that the people who had whole coats and small- clothes, and money in their pockets, were, in posse if not in esse, for King George. It is very nice and picturesque, now-a-days, to be a Jacobite in theory ; it was not so pleasant in the " Forty-five " to be a Jacobite in practice — to lie in the condemned hold at Newgate, with seventy pounds weight of iron on your legs, and to be half strangled, wholly decapitated, disembowelled, and ulti- mately distributed piecemeal on spikes affixed to the gates and bridges of London, all in consequence of your political opinions. Cavalier Sir Walter Scott even remembered that Edward Waverley was his rich uncle's heir, and discreetly drew him out of the hempen circle of overt Jacobitism, just in time to succeed to the family estate, and marry pretty Rose Bradwardine. There is something so suggestive of mendacity lingering about the very name of the IRELAND family, that I have been very chary, in the course of this under- taking, of quoting as an irrefragable authority any writings of the father of the notorious forger of Vortigc7'7t. I have been compelled to mention him from time to time, for Samuel Ireland has really written well and TAIL-PIECE. 281 judiciously, as well as copiously, concerning the minor Hogarthiana. Now if Samuel is to be believed, Hogarth designed the headpiece or title for Henry Fielding's short-lived periodical, TJte Jacobite s Jouriial : edited by John Trott Plaid, Esq. The impression I have seen is from a woodcut, one of the vilest in drawing and execution that ever penetrated beyond Seven Dials. A monk is represented leading an ass, mounted on which are a man and woman in an absurd Scotch costume ; the plaid on the woman's dress being in saltire X , and evidently produced by rough " crisscross " slashings on the surface of the block. This lady bran- dishes in one hand a sword ; and to the donkey's tail is appended a (seemingly) tavern sign, with three flower- de-luces on its field, and the name of " Harrington " as legend. Harrington may have been the host of some tavern which was the place of meeting of a more than ordinarily noted Jacobite club. From the Scotchman's mouth issues a scroll with "huzza !" in very big letters. He holds a glass of (presumably) whisky ; and to the ass's bridle is tacked a file of the London Evcnins: Post.^ * Here is a sample, in the shape of a suppositious diary of pul:)lic events, from H. Fielding's other anti-Jacobite journal, The True Patriot, setting forth the dreadful results which London loyalists of the bourgeois class were taught to believe would inevitably follow from the restoration of the Stuarts. "Jan. 3. — Queen Anne's statue in St. Paul's Churchyard taken away, and a large cnicifix erected in its room. yaii. 10. — Three anabaptists committed to Newgate for pulling down the crucifix, yan. 12. — Being the first Sunday after Epiphany, Father Macdagger, the I'oyal confessor, preached at St. James's — sworn afterwards of the Privy Council. Arrived, the French ambassador, with a numerous retinue, yan. 26. — This day the Gazette informs us that Portsmouth, Berwick, and Plymouth, were delivered into the hands of French commissaries as cautionaiy towns ; and also twenty ships of the line, with their guns and rigging, pursuant to treaty. 282 WILLIAM HOGARTH. London antiquaries may derive some edification from counting the spires — with St. Paul's dome in the midst — in the riverain view of London forming the background : which is, by the way, a curious counterpart of the well- known engraved heading to the I Ihistrated London News. It is not probable that W. H. did more than make the roughest sketch for this atrocious lignoon ; and I daresay he was ashamed even of his slight co-operation when the wretched thing chopped out was printed. The headpiece was discontinued after the twelfth number of the publi- cation : the alleged reason being that it was not cut deep enough, and that the impressions were too faint. The famous portrait-etching of Si^iion Lord Lovat must for ever connect William Hogarth with the " Forty- five." Not till the termination of that momentous struggle was this old coronetted fox trapped. I suppose there never was, in the annals of villany, such an ancient, disreputable reprobate as this said Simon Fraser. The Regent Orleans' Abbe Dubois was a sufficiently atrocious rogue. Don Francisco, otherwise Charteris, was bad enough. Both were cheats, and ruflfians, and profligates, and the last was an usurer ; but the noble baron was all 27. — Tom Blatch, the small-coal man, committed to the Compter for a violent attack on Father Macdagger and three young friars who had assaulted his daughter Kate The writ de haretico combii- rendo abolished. Father Poignardini an Italian Jesuit, made Privy Seal. Four heretics burnt in Smithfield, assisted in their last moments by Father O'Blaze, the Dominican. The pope's nuncio makes his public entiy, met at the Royal Exchange by the Lord Mayor, a Frenchman. A grand office opened the same night in Drury Lane for the sale of jiardons and indul- gences. March 9. — My little boy Jacky taken ill of the itch. He had been on the parade with his godfather the day before, to see the Life Guards, and had just touched one of their plaids." TAIL-PIECE. 283 these, and something more. A finished scamp in early hfe, Captain Fraser narrowly escaped a capital conviction for a hideous outrage upon a lady whom he abducted and forced to marry him. He ratted to and from St. James's and St. Germain's a hundred times. He was as consummate a hypocrite as he was impudent a cynic. He lied and cozened, and played fast and loose with the English government, until he was nearly eighty years of age. At last they had him on the hip ; and the execu- tioner swept his wicked, clever, plotting 61d head off his decrepit shoulders.* He was as flowery as Barere, and as bloodthirsty as Fouquier Tinville. He was as treacherous as Reynard the Fox, and as astute as Macchiavelli. He was as malicious as Voltaire, and as depraved as Aretin, and as cruel as Claverhouse ; and he died with a high-flown Latin quotation in his mouth, '' Didcc ct decorum est,'' &c. &c., just after he had given utterance to a heartless witticism — " the very fiend's arch-mock." Old Simon had been in alternate correspondence with the Stuarts and the Guelphs for years ; but he was false to the last, and while protesting his unalterable devotion to King George's government, was sending his son, the Master of Lovat, with the Clan Fraser, to join the Pretender. He would doubtless have betrayed * Immense crowds were collected on Tower Hill to see him executed. Amphitheatres of benches were erected, and seats were at a premium. As he was mounting the steps of the scaffold, the supports of one of the neigh- bouring stands gave way. Numbers of persons -were thrown to the ground, and two were crushed to death. Says the moribund jester to the sheriff, who directed his attention to the terrible accident, " The mair mischief the better sport, " — an old Scotch proverb, and one that suited his lips better than " dnlce et decorum. " 284 WILLIAM HOGARTH. Charles Edward, had there been time ; but Culloden came, and Simon's last trump was played. He had fled from his own house. Castle Downie, when affairs had begun to look badly ; had escaped from the Earl of Loudoun, who manifested a strong inclination to detain him a prisoner at Inverness ; and had set up a Patmos in the house of one Mr. Eraser, of Gortlich, in Strather- rick, " whither he was wont to repair in summer-time to drink the goat-whey." There the ruined, fugitive Chevalier foiind the greyhaired rogue in terrible tribula- tion. He could say nothing but " Chop off my head, chop off my head ! my own family and all the great clans are undone. Chop off my head ! " We shall see that his aspirations were attended to, presently. Simon afterwards remarked that he had now nothing to trust to but the humanity of the Duke of Cumberland (" of whom his lordship," says my contemporary account, " here took occasion to say several very handsome things"). Vimx Blagtieiir ! It was of no use. The game was up. Simon was ultimately taken by the duke's soldiers. He w^as found concealed in a hollow- tree in the middle of a pond, with two blankets wrapped round his old legs. They brought him by easy stages to London, making much of him as a captive of the highest importance. He halted at St. Alban's, where, it suiting his purpose to fall ill, he put up at the White Hart Inn, groaning piteously. It so chanced that the physician. Dr. Webster, called in to attend him, was one of Hogarth's intimate friends. At Dr. Webster's invita- tion, William posted down to St. Alban's, and was introduced to the state-prisoner, who received him with much cordiality, " even to the kiss fraternal" — not so TAIL-PIECE. 285 very pleasant an embrace at that moment, as Lord Lovat was under the barber's hands. The old Judas ! with his kisses and slobberings. The painter had several interviews with this venerable traitor, whose appetite, notwithstanding his illness, for minced veal and burnt brandy, reminds one of Mr. James Blomfield Rush's solicitude, when confined in Nonvich Gaol, for roast pig " and plenty of plum sauce ;" and Hogarth had ample time to make the drawing from which, with great celerity, he executed that amazing etching I speak of. The prisoner is supposed to be counting on his fingers the principal Highland chieftains, and the number of claymores they could bring into the field before the rebellion. Thus, " Lochiel had so many, Cluny Mac- pherson so many more," and the like. There are few accessories to the portrait. Old Simon's coat and wig — an astonishing wig — and buckled shoes, are quite enough. There is not a wrinkle in his face, not a crease in his ravenous-looking hands, but tells of cunning, treachery, and lawless desire. The strangest thing about this aged desperado was, that in addition to being witty, he was an uncommonly jovial and good-tempered com- panion, was affable to his dependants, and bounteously hospitable to all his dJmink-wassels., He kept up a grand, although rude, state, at Castle Downie, where he maintained a bard to sing his praises in Gaelic, and where claret for the gentry, and usquebaugh for the commonalty, were continually flowing. Every Fraser was free of the kail-kettle and the meal-tub at Castle Downie. The clansmen pigged together at night in stables and outhouses ; and with a touching and charac- teristic spirit of impartiality, the lord of the castle 286 WILLIAM HOGARTH. allowed hi^ lady, while she lived, no other accommodation than her sleeping apartment, of which he resigned to her the full enjoyment, and where she lay, like the Margery Daw famed in nursery legend, on straw. Old Simon's affectionate conduct to his son, the Master of Lovat, whom, while he himself remained snugly in hiding, he bade march with his clansmen into the jaws of death, has already been alluded to. "Diabolical cunning, monstrous impiety ! " exclaimed Sir William Young, one of the managers appointed by the Commons to prosecute the impeachment against him, when he came to touch upon that episode in the prisoner's career. When the portrait was etched, a bookseller offered its weight in gold for the copper-plate.* Lovat was quite as popular a criminal as Thurtell or as Palmer. The impressions could not be taken off with sufficient rapidity to supply the anxious purchasers, though the rolling-press was at work day and night for eight or ten days. For several weeks Hogarth received money at the rate of twelve pounds a day for prints of his etching. Shortly after Lovat's execution (in 1747) a mezzotinto engraving was published, said to be from a sketch by Hogarth, and having for title Lovafs, Ghost on Pil- grimage. The scene is a cemetery by moonlight. A headless figure, in the habit of a Capuchin monk, a staff in his hand, barefooted, is wandering through the Garden of Death, " his old feet stumbling at graves :" supported by his sinister arm is the mocking, satyr-like head of * The plate may have weighed two pounds and a half. Allow 45/. per pound as the price of gold : this would give 112/. \os. TAIL-PIECE. 287 Lovat, wigless now, and trunkless. The inscription to the plate is trivial enough : — . Doomed for my crimes in pilgrimage to roam, With weary steps I seek my native home. To the right of the headless monk is a vault, on one side of which you read — " This monument was erected by Simon Lord Fraser of Lovat," &c., and on another side is a bas-relief representing a skull and crossbones, a skeleton, an hour-glass, and the headman's axe, with these words beneath — "To the memory of Thomas Lord Fraser of Lovat." This monument has puzzled me. It was Simon, not Thomas, who was beheaded. Anon, I thought I could discern a sly touch of Hogarthian humour in the inscription. The old lord, it is clear, deliberately intended to sacrifice his son in case of the failure of the Jacobite undertaking. As it happened, the Master of Lovat escaped, while the lord was executed ; and Hogarth may have intended to hint how the biter was bitten, when old Simon erected a monu- ment in anticipation of the probable end of his son, not foreseeing his own fate. But then Thomas Fraser was but the " master," the heir-apparent to the barony of Lovat ; he never succeeded to the title : so here my conjectures break down.* Firmly, indissolubly to the " Forty-five," although not completed until three or four years afterwards, belong the plate and the picture of the March of the Guards tozvards Scotland in the year 1745, more familiarly known as' TJie March to FincJdey. It is well known that * The attainder was reversed by our gracious Queen Victoria about the time of her coronation, and there is now a worthy Simon Fraser Lord Lovat. 288 WILLIAM HOGARTH. Hogarth intended to dedicate the engraving to King George II., and a proof before letters was consequently- taken to St. James's to be submitted to the descendant of Odin and Wig. A British nobleman was good enough to bring this work of art for the inspection of the Duke of Cumberland's august papa. The following dialogue^ is said to have taken place on the occasion : — Descendant of Odin and Wig. — " Who is dis Hogart .-'" BritisJi Nobleman. — " May it please your Majesty, a painter." D. of C!s august papa. — " Bah ! I do hate bainting and boetry doo. Dos dis vellow mean to laugh at my garts } " BritisJi Nobleman {modestly, and yet zvitJi a eomplacent consciousness that he is saying a neat thing). — " The piece, my liege, must undoubtedly be considered as a burlesque." Descendant of Odin and Wig. — " Was sagst Du ? A bainter purlesque mein zoldiers ! He teserves to be bicketed for his inzolence ! Dake de drompery out of my zight. {Exit the D. of C's august papa in a huff. The British nobleman returns crestfallen to Leicester Fields, and, telling Hogarth of the ill-success of his mission, asks him to dinner that very evening to make amends.) To make himself amends, sturdy William Hogarth sat down to his yet unlettered plate, and with furious graver proceeded to dedicate the March to Finchley to " His Majesty the King of Prussia, an Encourager of Arts and Sciences," adding a big note of admiration (sarcastic dog !) and a tremendous flourish. I don'-t know what notice, if any, the flute-playing friend of the devout TATL-PIECE. 289 Voltaire, and the " Protestant Hero " of English evan- gelical circles, took of this dedication ; but I am afraid that Ids papa, Mr. Carlyle's Friedrich Wilhelm, would have marked /«> sense of the "bainter's" familiarity, not only by subjecting him to the punishment of the picket, but by belabouring him with his beloved cane, could he have got William to Potsdam. There is something to be said on both sides regarding this historical misunderstanding between the king and the artist. Hogarth was certainly the greatest English painter of the time ; and, moreover, as Sir James Thornhill's son-in-law, thought he had some claim to that which he subsequently enjoyed — the royal patron- age. He was in the right to feel himself aggrieved at being contemptuously snubbed and ignored ; but, on the other hand, it was somewhat too much to expect the King of England, as a king, to bestow his favour on a production in which the soldiers who had just saved the crown from tumbling off his head were depicted under the most ludicrous and degrading circumstances. The guards who march to Finchley are a riotous and tipsy mob. The drummer staggers, the grenadiers are wallowing in the kennel ; the rear rank are exchanging disorderly endearments with inebriated females ; the sergeant is battering right and left with his halberts, and very nearly the only sober person in the tableau is the pretty little fifer-boy tootle-tooing away in the corner. Now, only imagine that in the year 1854, Messrs. John Leech and Richard Doyle had conspired to produce a graphic, humorous cartoon, called the March of the Guards towards Gallipoli. Imagine that these jocose draughts- men had drawn the Fusiliers and Coldstreams in all 19 290 WILLIAM HOGARTH. kinds of absurd and ignoble attitudes — beating the police with their belts, for instance, depriving the toll- taker on Waterloo Bridge of his copper-bottomed aprons, bartering their bearskins and cartouch-boxes for drink, blackening the eyes of their relations, and so forth. Imagine our two artists going up to Buckingham Palace, and coolly begging her Majesty's gracious permission to inscribe this facetious libel with her royal name ! What would the first Lady in Christendom have said to such a request .'' What would his Royal Highness have thought .'' I daresay our art-loving Queen and Prince have a right ro}^al "tall" copy of Hogarth's works on some snug shelf in their library ; but in these genteeler days the aberrations of the Guards and other British warriors should figure only in the police reports. The battle and camp pictures of Wouvermans and Vandermeulens would not do now. We are grown more refined. Battles are fought in white kid gloves, and the camp at Aldershott gets into the Court Circular. For very many reasons — the chief and plainest being, that I am uttering my last dying speech on Cornhill, having been convicted of a barbarous attempt on the life of William Hogarth, deceased, and that I am even now traversing the cart, and after taking leave, though feeling loth to depart, — my notices of the remaining things that make up Hogarth's WORK can be little more than a curt catalogue raisouuc. Let me mention them : — Mr. Garrick in the Character of Richard the Third. — The original picture was commissioned by a munificent Yorkshire squire, Mr. Buncombe, of Buncombe Park. The price paid was the then handsome one of 200/. TAIL-PIECE. . 291 Hogarth shows us the tent-scene. The great tragedian, in a spurious kind of EHzabethan costume, is starting from his conscience-haunted couch. The head is very characteristic ; the outstretched hand wonderfully well drawn, and full of expression ; but the frame is burly and muscular enough for the body of a Lifeguardsman. In this great hulking, cowardly tyrant, we quite lose the notion of " little Davy." On the long and cordial friendship that existed between Hogarth and Garrick, I may not dwell minutely. 'Tis just right, however, to mention that William made the design for Garrick's chair, as President of the Shakspeare Club. The chair was of mahogany, richly carved ; and at the back was a bust of the poet, carved by Hogarth from the Statford- on-Avon Mulberry-Tree. What has become of this chair .'' Who is the fortunate possessor of this renowned mulberry-cum-mahogany-tree that brings together three such good men and true as Shakspeare, Garrick, and Hogarth ? * * Garrick chanced to visit Hogartli one morning when the artist was engaged in his painting-room ; and being about to retire hastily, "old Ben Ives, " the servant, called out to him to staj^ a moment, as he had something to show him, which he was sure would please him. He took Garrick into the parlour, and showed him an exquisite chalk- drawing, personifying Diana (but the original model has not been discovered), and exclaimed, with something like rapture : "There, sir, there's a head! they say my master can't paint a portrait. Look at that head." I know not which is the most gratifying feature in this story ; the faithful servant praising his master's work, or the fact that he grew grey and became "old Ben Ives" in his service. Among the Hogarth anecdotes, few are so well known ' as that giving Garrick the credit for having sate for a posthumous portrait of Fielding, and by his extraordinary powers of facial mimicry, "making-up" a capital model of his deceased friend. If this be true, Garrick must have surpassed, as a mime, that famous harlequin who used to imitate a man eating fruit, and from whose mere gestures and grimaces, you could at once 19 2 292 . WILLIAM HOGARTH. For a little interlude, called the Farmer s Return, good-naturedly written by Garrick for Mrs. Pritchard's benefit, Hogarth drew, first a rough chalk ebandie, and next a beautifully finished crayon study, light and graceful, and which was engraved by Basire, and appended as frontispiece to the printed copy of the interlude. It is chronicled in this place, as Garrick passes rapidly across my stage ; but in point of chronology, the Farmer' s Return is one of the latest of Hogarth's works, being dated 1761, just after the coronation of George the Third. Garrick is drawn smoking a pipe. His flapped hat, leathern belt and buckle, ample collar, and buff boots, make him look far more like the stage Falstaff than a farmer, and thus accoutred, he contrasts remarkably with that type of the British agriculturist with whom Gilray (about thirty years after^vards) made us so familiar. The Farmer s Return seems to have been a kind of '' monopolylogue," to use the classic verbiage of " entertainment-givers ; " tell the fmit he was pretending to eat ; now he was pulling currants from the stalk, now sucking an orange, now biting an unripe pear, now swallow- ing a cherrj', and now exhausting a gooseberry. Then there is the account of Garrick sitting to Hogarth for his own picture, and mischievously giving so many varied casts of expression to his countenance, that the painter at last threw down his brush in a pet, and declared he could do no more, unconsciously imitating the Irish swineherd, who declared that he had counted all his porcine charge save one little pig ; but that he "jumped about so that he couldn't count him. " A better authenticated story than any of these is the relation of a trifling unpleasantness between Hogarth and Garrick, about the latter's portrait, for which he had given W. H. several sittings. Da\'id declared that the picture wasn't like him — perhaps he didn't think it handsome enough. Then they fell out about the price, and finally Hogarth drew his bnish across the face, and turned the picture to the wall of his studio. Long years afteiwards, the widow Hogarth sent the picture as a gift to the widow Garrick. TAIL-PIECE. 293 and the versatile David sang a song, described the humours of the coronation, and gave " imitations" of the Cock Lane Ghost. The Marriage a la Mode (1745-6)* is to those whom * Note specially in the Marriage a la Mode, in Scene I., the pride of the old lord shown in the coronet broidered on his crutch, and his ostenta- tious prodigalit)' in the unfinished wing of his palace seen through the open window, begun through arrogance, left unfinished through lack of funds. Obsei-ve Miss in her teens twirling the ring on her handkerchief ; the beau bridegroom admiring himself in the glass ; the dogs coupled together, and the handsome roiiic barrister mending his pen. He must have been a special pleader, and have confined himself to chamber practice : was called in probably to draw Viscount Squanderfield's marriage settlement : wears, as you see, his wig and gown in private life ; precisely as the clei'g)' wore their bands and cassocks. In Scene II., note the one receipted bill on the attenuated steward's file ; the crowded, costly, tasteless ornaments on the mantelpiece ; the ya\\ning servant in the vista of the huge saloon, tardily getting through his household work, and telling plainly of late hours over- night at Squanderfield House. The perspective in this scene is very masterly. In Scene III., there is much to be noted, but little that can be dilated upon, beyond the admirably expressive faces of the actors, and the perfect drawing and pose of the quack doctor. In Scene IV., mark the contrast between the portrait of the grave divine on the wall, and the sensuous copies from Italian pictures ; the basketful of expensive trumpery bought an poids d'or at. an auction, and over which the black-boy is grinning ; the humours of a masquerade painted on the screen ; the fat dilettante quavering from the music-book ; the inimitable beau drinking coffee with his hair in papers ; the country cousin who has gone to sleep ; the French hairdresser, — and pray, who is the lady with the red liair, the moniing wrapper, and the Pamela hat ? The old lord is dead by this time. Hogarth quietly announces the event by the bed in the alcove being sur- mounted by an earl's coronet. In Scene V. mark the wondrous falling attitude of the murdered earl, who is absolutely dying — hush ! he falls, he is dead — in this scene, as is the Pierrot in M. Gerome's masterpiece, Le Duel apres le Bal. No blood is needed to tell that the bowl is for ever shattered, and the wheel broken at the cistern. The hues of the dying man's face exactly fulfil the famous description of the Fades Hippocratica. Light and shade in this scene most excellent ; but none of the engravings (the originals by Ravenet) come up to the rich tones of the oil pictures. In Scene the last, observe the capital view of Old London Bridge, with the 294 WILLIAM HOGARTH. (without offence, I hope) I may call the lay admirers of Hogarth, decidedly the most widely known and appreciated of this artist's works. We have been familiar with this terribly picturesque drama for years in its picture form at the National Gallery, and latterly at the delightful and admirably conducted South Ken- sington Museum. The six tableaux have been engraved over and over again in every \'ariety of size and substance — from the lordly line engraving to the humble wood- block. Fortunately, too, while Hogarth's satire is in this performance at its keenest and most scathing point, there is an absence throughout of the hteral coarseness which, unhappily, confines so many of his works to the library portfolio. The truth is indeed told in the mid- night murder scene — but only by that man in the background, and that pamphlet on the floor ; and the sole plate in the series in which Vice in its most dreadful form is sub-understood, is, luckily, to the young and ignorant, inexplicable. The million see little beyond Doctor Misaubin receiving patients in his laboratory, amid skeletons and stuffed crocodiles, and machines for houses on it ; the aldeiTnanic pride shown in the stained glass escutcheon on the window-pane ; his thriftiness in the Dutch pictures on the wall ; his jMudence in the row of firebuckets in the vestibule ; his niggardliness in the meagre breakfast, and the half-starved ravenous dog, and the lean servant- man, whom the doctor collars and trounces for bringing in the "last dying speech and confession of Counsellor Silvertongue ; " his love of solitary conviviality in the punchbowl and tobacco-pipes in tlie cupboard ; his insatiable avarice in that act of his in drawing the ring from the finger of his dying daughter. The agony and remorse in the poor countess are tremendous. The old nurse, for all her hard lineaments, is tender and kindly. The little girl held up to kiss her mother is weakly and rachitic ; one of her poor legs strapped up in irons. The sins of tlie fatlicrs are visited upon the children I TAIL-PIECE. 295 curing dislocation of the shoulder. The Marriage is a grand work to ponder over. I chafe and fret to think I must dismiss it in a dozen lines, instead of a dozen pages. This is no three-volume novel of fashionatble life, written by my lord's footman, or my lady's maid, but an actual living drama, put on the stage by a man who had seen all his characters act their parts in the great world. Hogarth was no courtier, no beggar of dedications, nor haunter of antechambers ; yet I do not think that a Chesterfield or a Bonnell Thornton could have detected any important solecism in etiquette among the great personages here delineated. The people in the earl's saloon and the countess's drawing-room are as true to nature as are those in the alderman's house by London Bridge, the quack's study, or the fatal bedroom at the " Key " in Chandos Street. Costumes and accessories are all in perfect keeping. You may ask whence Hogarth drew this intimate acquaintance with the manners of 'Piccadilly and Hanover Square — he who was born in a back yard of the Old Bailey, and served his apprentice- ship to the silversmith in Cranbourn Alley .'' I answer, that the man was gifted with a wonderful power of observation and perception ; that nothing escaped him, and that he had taken stock of, and accurately remem- bered all the minutiae of the high life above stairs which he must have seen when noblemen sat to him for their portraits, and he painted " conversation pieces " and " assemblies " of noble families. Nor should it be forgotten that, haughty and magnificent as were the British aristocracy of the " Forty-five," they could bend, now and again, to artists most gracefully. 'Twas not alone Pope who was privileged to crack a bottle with 296 WILLIAM HOGARTH. Bolingbroke, or Swift who was Harley's " dear Jonathan." The uncouth manners of Johnson, indeed, may have repelled Chesterfield ; but Hogarth's simple, sturdy, plain-spoken ways do not seem to have stood in his way — with the memorable exception of his quarrel with the ugly lord to whose portrait he threatened to add a tail — in his intercourse with the proudest patricians. The great Lord Mansfield knew and loved him. So did Lord Temple. And that best of Irishmen, Lord Charle- mont, writing years after the painter's death, speaks of William Hogarth as his personal friend, whose memory he holds in honour, and whose reputation he will not suffer to be assailed. Industry and Idleness. — This " domestic drama " has been, from its moral tendency, almost infinitely multi- plied.* A few years since, a handsomely framed set of * Here is tlie sclieme, in Hogarth's own words, for Industry and Idle- ness : "Exemplified in the conduct of two fellow-'prentices, where the one by taking good courses, and pursuing those points for which he was put apprentice, becomes a valuable man, and an ornament to his country ; while the other, giving way to idleness, naturally falls into poverty, and most commonly ends fatally, as is expressed in the last print. As these prints were intended more for use than ornament, they were done in a way that might bring them within the purchase of those whom they might most concern ; and lest any part should be mistaken, a description of each print is engraved thereon." Again, Hogarth scribbled some memoranda which he seems to have addressed to the person whom he wished to continue the descriptions of his plates commenced by Rouquet. "These twelve plates were calculated for the instniction of young people, and eventhing addressed to them is fully described in words as well as figures, yet to foreigners a translation of the mottoes, the intention of the story, and some little description of each print, may be necessaiy. To this may be added a slight account of our customs, as, boys being generally bound for seven years, &c. Suppose the whole story describing in episode the nature of a night-cellar, a marrowbone concert, a Lord Mayor's show, &c. These prints I have found sell much more rapidly at Christmas than at any other season." TAIL-PIECE. 297 the prints formed an attractive ornament of the office of the Chamberlain of London. The two careers, now parallel, now meeting, now diverging, of Francis Good- child and Thomas Idle, are so well known, that a minute recapitulation of their features would be trite and weari- some. Tom is the model scamp ; sleeps at his loom, reads flash ballads, and ]\Ioll Flanders ; is caned by the beadle for diceing on a tombstone ; is sent to sea ; comes back ; turns thief ; sees the worst of all bad company ; is betrayed to the thief-catchers in a night-cellar for the forty-pounds blood-money ; is arraigned at Guildhall before his quondam fellow-'prentice, and finishes at Tyburn with his shoes on and a halter round his neck. His reverence the ordinary follows, as in duty bound, in his coach, the procession to Tyburn ; but it is an enthusiastic disciple of Wesley who sits by the convict's side in the fatal cart. As to Francis Goodchild, he is the model Lord Mayor and British merchant, of the approved Gresham and VVhittington pattern. He learns his trade ; reads the excellent old ballad of The Valiant Apprentice ; works hard ; pleases his master ; marries that worthy tradesman's daughter ; makes a fortune ; serves all the civic offices with intelligence and dignity ; dispenses hospitality to the poor — aided by his stout footmen, and encouraged by his virtuous spouse — in a very free-handed manner; makes out Tom Idle's mittimus — with a sigh, but makes it out, notwithstanding ; and is at last elected king of the city.* One side of Hogarth's drama has been made into a kind of stage-play : George Barmvell. The appropriate texts of .Scripture, forming the commentary on each plate, were selected by Hogarth's worthy friend, the Rev. Arnold King. * Note that the firm of " West and Goodchild" dwelt near Fish -Street Hill. In the distance you see the Monument ; and Hogarth — I really must 298 WILLIAM HOGARTH. " After the March to Finc/iky," says Hogarth, " the first plate I engraved was \h& Roast Beef of 0/d England, call him " Protestant Bill " for once — has taken care to give prominence to the old fibbing inscription on the pedestal (since in common decency, obliterated), touching "this Protestant city" having been destroyed by the malice of the "Popish faction." Mr. Goodchild perfoniis his Samaritan duties in an elegant morning gown and silk nightcap. Beggai-s are not excluded from his bounty. Cripples and cii/s de jattc are laden with broken victuals, and the marrowbones and cleavers liberally fee'd. Observe that the Lord Mayor's banquet took place, not at the Guildhall, but in the hall of one of the great companies. Ladies sat down to table ; and the enter- tainment was held by daylight. From the superscription of the letter which one of the ward beadles has just had handed to him, and which he is pompously scrutinizing, it would seem that the chief magistrate of London was not always dubbed "right honourable." The missive is addressed to the Worshipful Francis Goodchild, Esq. Note that the forks at table have but two prongs. The perspective in the night-cellar seems to be altogether faulty. There are at least half-a-dozen points of sight. The guests are unutterably hideous : nearly all Hogarth's wicked people are noseless. The body of a murdered man is being flung down a trap-door — a little phase in the manners of the time which, but for the discoveries made Avhen that old house in West Street, Smithfield, was pulled down some years ago, might seem exaggerated. Among the ruffians in the night-cellar is a soldier of the Footguards, who at this time were very little better than footpads. In the Tyburn tableau the convict wears a nightcap, and has the usual bouquet at his breast. The place of execution is quite in the open fields ; and the hangman, stretched on the cross-beams of the gallows, lazily watches with pipe in mouth the arrival of the procession. Xote the pigeon which the man in the stand is releasing to carry the intelligence of the moment of the criminal's arrival at Tyburn. In Scene the last, the Lord Mayor's show turning the south-east corner of St. I'aul's Churchyard into Cheapside, I cannot find a trace of St. Paul's school. Note the extremely absurd appearance of the train-bands. I don't think the royal couple in the canopied balcony can be intended for the king and queen. They are far too young ; moreover. Queen Caroline died long before Iitdiistiy and IdU'itess appeared. The rather do I imagine the distinguished pair to be intended for Frederick Prince of Wales and his consort. There may be in this a touch of the Hogarthian slyness. The sign of the house with the balcony is the King's Head. You see his majesty's painted countenance, crowned and periwigged, and through my glass he seems to turn his eyes with a very sulky expression towards the son whom he hated. TAIL-PIECE. 299 which took its rise from a visit I took to France in the preceding year." And from this short and not very pleasant trip arose the print generally known as The Gate of Calais. William proceeds to recall his impres- sions of French life and manners. It need scarcely be said that he does not approve of them. Farcical pomp of war ; pompous parade of religion ; much bustle with very little business ; poverty, slavery, and innate inso- lence, covered with an affectation of politeness ; dirty, sleek, and solemn friars ; lean, ragged, and tawdry soldiers ; fishwomen who are " absolute leather :" — in this uncompromising manner does William Hogarth of Leicester Fields, in the parish of St. Martin, in the county of Middlesex, painter — here is an " abuse of specification " for you ! — dispose of the magnificent nation, which its well-beloved king, its sumptuous clergy, its aristocratic military commanders, and its enlightened philosophers, then indubitably imagined to be at the very summit and apogee of European civilization. As Hogarth was sauntering about Calais and looking at the Gate, which was originally built by the English during their long occupation, he thought he could discern some traces of our royal arms sculptured on the masonry. Proceeding to make a sketch thereof, he was forthwith taken into custody by the soldiers of the MarccJiaiissee ; but not attempting to cancel any of his sketches or memoranda, and, perchance, M. Dessein of the Hotel coming forward to vouch for his being a painter and not a spy, the Commandant de Place did not, in his discretion, deem fit to cause the captive to be forwarded to Paris, but contented himself with placing him under close arrest at his lodging, whence, when the 300 WILLIAM HOGARTH. Avind changed, he was despatched per packet-boat to Dover. Hoi^arth's revenge for his churHsh treatment was amusingly characteristic. He painted a picture and engraved a plate representing Calais Gate, with tattered and hungry-looking French soldiers on guard ; a greasy and unwholesome friar ; withered fishwomen, with scapularies, and grinning like their own flat-fish^ cowled monks and penitents in the background ; and a lean French cook, carrying a mighty sirloin of beef, destined, by the label attached to it, for " Madame Grandshire." Perhaps she was Hogarth's landlady, and a jovial dame who loved good eating. The cook hugs and fondles the beef, but with a rueful twinge of muscle, as though it were his unkind fate to cook beef, but not to eat it. As well-bred spaniels civilly delight In mumbling of the game they dare not bite. In the right-hand corner crouches a cadaverous wretch in tartan jacket and trews, whom Hogarth himself describes as " a melancholy and miserable Highlander, browsing on his scanty fare, consisting of a bit of bread and an onion, and intended for one of the many that fled from their country after the rebellion in 1745." In the left corner, and the middle distance, Hogarth has drawn himself, plump, spruce, and cheerful, in curly wig; half-military roquelaure, and smartly cocked hat, with pencil and sketch-book in hand. The lean paw laid on his shoulder, and the tip of the halbert seen beyond the perpendicular of the wall's angle, suggest that his sketch is being disturbed by one of King Louis's soldiers, and may have been the first thought for that facetious diagram of abstract art which he afterwards drew, and which purported to show "A sergeant with his TAIL-PIECE. 301 halbert on his shoulder and accompanied by his dog entering an ale-house." Three lines and a little cross stick suffice to indicate the event and the actors. A C is the section of the ale-house b door ; B F is the sergeant's halbert ; D E is the \ dog's tail. Voild to7it* Beer Street and Gin Lane are said to have had for their first idea the pair of d pictures by Peter Breughel called, one Lo Grasse, and the other, La Maigre Cinsine. The moral of these pictures, one humorous, ^ the other terrific, is just as applicable at the present day as a hundred and ten years ago. I have no space to descant upon them, nor on the Lnu Yard, nor on the Four Stages of Cruelty, which are designed with as excellent a moral intention as that shown in Lndustry and Ldleness, but are from their very nature always repulsive, and sometimes intolerably disgusting. The autopsy of Tom Nero, at Surgeon's Hall, is specially revolting. The dog gnawing the heart of the dissected criminal has been frequently treated as a gross and inexcusable exaggera- * Mr, Pine, the well-known engraver, sat for the portrait of the Friar. He alleged that he did not know what use Hogarth intended to make of the sketch ; but he was unmercifully quizzed in consequence, and, among his acquaintances, went by the name of " Friar Pine." The scarecrow figure of the French soldier was long used, as a rough woodcut, as a heading for English recniiting placards ; and thus William Hogarth and Charles Dibdin were equally enabled, in different walks of art, to serve their country. The plate was chiefly engraved by C. Mosely ; but the heads are evidently by Hogarth. Lord Charlemont was the purchaser of the original picture ; but soon after it was sent home it accidentally fell down, and a nail ran through the cross at the top of the picture. Hogarth in vain attempted to repair the blemish, and at length he managed to conceal it by substituting a black crow, of hungry aspect, looking down on the beef. 302 WILLIAM HOGARTH. tion ; but I have read ugly stories of a hyena and a vulture maintained for the same horribld ends at schools of anatomy within the last forty years. The last capital work of Hogarth — executed, I mean, in the style to which he owes his renown — is the series entitled Four Prints of an Election. The first scene represents an "entertainment," or rather orgie, in the great room of the tavern of a provincial borough, the head-quarters of the contending political parties ; and while the " Blues " are gorging themselv^es to repletion, even to the point of impending apoplexy, necessitating the untying of cravats and the letting of blood, the " Buffs," or whatever may have been the opposing party's hue, are pelting them with stones and brickbats through the open window. The scene is crowded with figures ; is second only to the Modern Midnight Conversa- tion in its vigorous arrangement of composition, and its tremendous scope and direction of humour, observation, and satire ; and offers a hundred points of detail susceptible of the most careful consideration, but on which to enlarge, at this crisis of my undertaking, would be useless. Let it pass with a barren mention. Let the remaining scenes of Canvassing for Voters, Polling and Cliairing the Member, be just alluded to and dismissed. I can be, here, but the gentleman usher on the first landing, bawling out the name of the company to the groom of the chambers in the saloon above ; but time and opportunity may make amends. Meanwhile I must go back a little to the " Forty-five," and there, taking up Hogarth the ^L\X, leave his WORK, and continue the thread of the TIME that yet remains to him. By the special Act of Parliament for which he TAIL-PIECE. 303 had so doughtily battled, William had secured to himself the fair'^share of the emoluments accruing from his plates. Their popularity was enormous. He was for many years exclusively his own publisher ; but his works were bought much less as pictures than as graphic satires and lay sermons. The public taste for pictorial art in England was yet of the feeblest and most perverted nature ; and although William frequently received a commission for a single painting, he had much difficulty in selling his great series on canvas. In 1745 lie devised an elaborate but too complex scheme for disposing of those of his pictures which remained unsold, by a kind of half-public auction. The ticket of admission to the sale was the etching of the Battle of the Pictures, in which he very tartly symbolized his contempt for the old masters, or rather for the spurious imitations of their productions, which then monopolized the patronage of the wealthy classes. The semi-auction was a more than semi-failure. The entire series of the Rakes and the Harlot's Progress, together with the Four Parts of the Day and the Strolling Actresses, brought, in all, no more than 427/. ']s. Hogarth was bitterly and cruelly disappointed. As a satirist, he had come at the nick of time ; as a painter, he had been born forty years too soon. Good man ! how his ears would have tingled to hear of the price paid for The Awakened Conscience, or TJie Derby Day ! About this time, also, importuned by well-meaning friends, he projected a Happy Marriage, as a companion to the Marriage a la Mode ; but a besetting fear and more active horror of falling into the insipid and the inane, soon blotted out sketches for the Matrinionio 304 ^YILLTAM HOGARTH, felice. His reputation is the better, perhaps, for this reticence.* Shortly before 1750 he purchased a small, snug house at Chiswick, at which he resided in summer-time ; and he even set up a coach of his own, ensconced in which he and his wife made their pilgrimages in great state between the pleasant neighbourhood of the Mall and Leicester Fields. In the year '52, his scriptural piece of Pajil before Felix was placed in the hall at Lincoln's Inn. Lord Wyndham had bequeathed 200/, for the execution of a picture by some approved master for the hall ; and Hogarth's friend, Lord Mansfield, obtained the com- mission for him. The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn must have been well pleased with their artist, for they entertained him grandly at dinner in their hall. His large painting of Moses before Pharaoh's DaiigJiter — in which a curly-headed, chubby little English urchin is being smiled upon by a smiling comely English lass, whose embroidered lappets are supposed sufficiently to denote her connexion with the Pharaohs and their dusky land of mystery and darkened knowledge : a blackamoor making love to her waiting-maid, and a rabbinical gentle- man, apparently fresh from Houndsditch completing the tableau — he presented to the Foundling Hospital. Both * There is a stoiy fathered on Hogarth, assuming him to have been a very absent man, and narrating how, calling at the Mansion House, in his carriage, to visit the Lord Mayor, a violent storm of rain set in during his interview, at the conclusion of which the painter, quitting the municipal palace by another door to that at which he had entered, quite forgot that he possessed a carriage, walked home in the rain, and got wet through. Hogarth was the very reverse of an " absent " or distrait man ; and more- over, the stoiy is told of half-a-dozen other equally celebrated personages who " flourished " both before and after his time. TAIL-PIECE. 305 these pictures were elaborately engraved under his superintendence and with his co-operation. According to his usual custom, he executed a whimsical etching as a ticket for subscriptions for the plate, and the subject of this — nobody in the world but Hogarth would have ventured upon such a one — was a deliberate burlesque upon the big solemn picture he had just completed. His intention is said to have been to show, by contrast, the difference between the real sublime and the low, coarse conceptions of the Dutch painters. He shows us a stumpy Paul, mounted upon a three-legged stool, and haranguing an ignoble Felix and an assembly apparently composed of pettifoggers from Thavies Inn and old clothesmen from Duke's-place, seated in an area mean and squalid enough for a Court of Requests. A hulking Angel with a Lifeguardsman's torso backs up Paul ; but the Avvocato del Diavo lex's, present in the shape of a tiny Callotesque demon, who is busily engaged in sawing away one of the supports of the three-legged stool. It is dififi- cult to determine which is the funniest of the two Pauls, the one meant in earnest or the one meant in jest. Dr. Warton took occasion, shortly after Hogarth's unfortunate Horce PaiiliiKE, to remark in a note to his first edition of Pope, and on the line — " One science only can one genius fit" — that Hogarth was incapable of treating serious or dignified subjects. In a rage the painter proceeded to exhibit Warton and Warton's works from a most degrading point of view ; but through the interference of Garrick and Dr. John Hoadley, a recon- ciliation was brought about. In a subsequent edition Warton retracted his stricture, and paid William a very handsome compliment. 20 3o6 • WILLIAM HOGARTH. Well, he has been dead a hundred years and over. Criticisms, strictures, can do this valiant Englishman no harm now. It dims not one laurel-leaf of his real and glorious chaplet to admit that Warton, " scholiast " of my second essay — first severe, next complimentary — had some justice on his side from the first. Hogarth was not capable of the dignified in art. He could be serious indeed ; terribly and truly serious. Hang up the gambling-house scene, the duel in the bedroom scene, the harlot's death scene, or Gin Lane, by the side of Schefifer's Faust and Mcphisto on tJic Blocksbitrg, of Delaroche's Cromwell looking on the body of CJiarles I., of Decamp's Morte, of Edwin Landseer's Shepherd's Chief Mourner — and William Hogarth will keep his ground for solemn truth, for sober tragedy, for the reality, the domesticity of grief and terror. But can all the pictured Caesars that ever fell at the base of Pompey's statue, or the Jaels that hammered nails into Siseras, or the Judiths that chopped off Holofernes' heads — can all the Apollos that ever destroyed Pythons or flayed Marsyases, equal in tragic terror a Body that is lying on a bed covered with a sheet, or a coffin-lid leaning against a door whence, yesterday, hung the silk dress of a fair woman .' I maintain, for the last time, that Hogarth could be serious, and that he could be alike dramatic, tender, and terrible ; as in my limited comprehension I can realize the notions of tenderness or of terror. I grant his lack of dignity, just as I admit his deficiency in appreciation of poetic, ideal beauty. No women can be fairer than his ; but they are flesh and blood, not marble. His tragedies were best told in silccinct nervous prose. When on his firm-treading foot he placed the cothurnus, TAIL-PIECE. 307 he stumbled. When he attempted blank verse he stammered and broke down, and those who best loved the man could ill suppress a smile at his rugged deliver}- and his ungainly accents. I ask again, does all this matter now ? His worst scriptural pictures are but errors : they are ungraceful and prosaic, but they are yet too powerful ever to be contemptible. Had he painted three hundred instead of three or four unsuccessful works, his failures would not — should not mitigate against the endurance of his fame. They would not deprive him of the place among great men due to one who was as powerful a satirist as Juvenal, and not malevolent ; as keen as Swift, but not cruel ; and in his humble honest man's creed as pious (and as plain-spoken) as Hugh Latimer. Forget or remember his failures in the grand style as you will. Those failures will never wither the wreaths which posterity continues to hang on his tomb. Do failures dim the diadem of Dryden because he wrote rhyming tragedies as well as the Ode on St. Cecilia s Day ? Does it matter if De Balzac wrote Jeanne la Pale and Dom Gigadas — a whole cloud of worthless novels, before Le Pere Goriot and Eugenie Grandet ? Does Szvellfoot the Tyrant stand in the way of the Revolt of Islam ? and what does a hurried and inaccurate Life of Napoleon weigh against Waverley and the Bride of Lammermoor f I suppose that the Analysis of Beauty must be reckoned among Hogarth's failures. He wrote this now often-mentioned but seldom-studied treatise as a kind of defiance to the scholarly critics whose censures galled him, even as a burlesque writer twitted on his ignorance by learned but dully mediocre adversaries might devote himself to the study of Greek, and produce 20 — 2 308 WILLIAM HOGARTH. a commentary on Simonides or a new translation of Aristophanes. The Analysis, as an argument, certainly went to prove that a waving or serpentine line is a beautiful line. Beyond this it proved nothing. The fairest criticisms on the work itself are condensed in the oft-quoted rerpark of Nichols, that " the sources of beauty are so various and complicated, that every attempt to reduce them to any single principle, except that of association, has proved nugatory, and has foiled the ability of the most ingenious." The publication of the Analysis* brought nothing * The manuscript of the Analysis was submitted for correction to Hogarth's friend, Dr. Morell ; and, after that gentleman's decease, to the Rev. Mr. Townley, the Head Master of Merchant Taylore' School. The work was originally published in quarto, and Hogarth engraved a strange frontispiece for it, treating de omnibus rebus in art matters. There is a caricature of Quin in the character of Coriolanus ; Desnoyer the ballet- dancer ; a beau in court costume, made first in the likeness of George III. as a young man, but subsequently, " by desire," altered to the Duke of King- ston ; the Venus de' Medicis, Apollo ; busts, cranes, anatomical ecorches, a whole row of ladies' corsets of various design, and legions of strange whims and oddities besides. Walpole, Beattie, Lamb have written on the Analysis, but without being able to make much of it. Indeed, it is vei"y puzzling reading. Hogarth talks ot "parsley leaves," well composed nosegays, "common old-fashioned stove grates," Indian figs, torch thistles and candlesticks, and other incongnious matters. But the Hogarthian common-sense is not entirely absent. Witness this passage: " Nor can I help thinking but that churches, palaces, hospitals, prisons, dwelling and summer-houses might be built more in distinct characters than they are, by contriving orders suitable for eachi; whereas, were a modem architect to build a palace in Lapland or the West Indies, Palladio must be his guide, nor would he dare to stir a step without his book." Again, " What are all the niannei^s, as they are called, of even the greatest masters, which are known to differ so much from one another, and all of them from nature, but so many strong proofs of their inviolable attachment to falsehood, con- verted into established jiroof in their own eyes by self-opinion. Rubens would in all probability have been as much disgusted at the diy manner ot Poussin, as Poussin was at the extravagant of Rubens." Hogarth is a finn TAIL-PIECE. 309 but troublesome and irritating squabbles to a man now (1752) fifty-five years old, and who should have been safely moored in the haven of competence and peace. A German translation of the work by one Herr Mylius was prepared under the inspection of the author, and published in London. Another German translation, by Vok, appeared at Berlin in 1754. There are two or three translations of the Analysis in French : and in 1761 a version in Italian was produced at Leghorn. Very long since I mentioned that Hogarth presented the casts and models bequeathed to him by Sir James Thornhill to the Society of Artists, who held their drawing-room in St. Martin's Lane. To the scheme of a Royal Academy, however, which began to be mooted in 1755, he offered a more than negative opposition, "as tending to allure many young men into a profession in which they would not be able to support themselves." This was a tradesmanlike view of the question fit for the old apprentice of Ellis Gamble ; but Hogarth, qualified defender of the three-legged stool. How pleasing, he says, is the idea of firmness in standing conveyed to the eye by the three elegant claws of a table ; the three feet of a tea lamp, or the celebrated tripod of the ancients I He might have added a painter's easel, a camp-stool, or a pile of soldiers" muskets to his catalogue. While enthusiastic in his admiration for the Laocoon, he censures the absurdity of dwarfing the proportions of the children in order to bring the group within the pyramidal form of compo- sition. He is happy when he calls the pine-apple one of Nature's " works of fancy," in contra-distinction to such plain work-a-day esculents as apples, and potatoes, and cabbages. He insists on intricacy as one of the elements of pleasure in art. " Wherein," he asks, "would consist the joys of hunt- ing, fishing, shooting, ' and other diversions without the frequent turns, and difficulties, and disappointments, that are daily met with in the pursuit. How joyless does the sportsman return when the hare has not had fair play ! how lively, and in spirits even, when an old cunning one has baffled and outrun the dogs I " 3IO WILLIAM HOGARTH. his discouragement, arguing against the creation of a mob of artistic mediocrities by "degrading what ought to be a Hberal profession into a purely mechanical one." The Royal Academy have certainly borne some portion of Hogarth's warning in mind during the last half-century, by teaching as few young men to draw as possible. The last plate of the Election (Chairing) was not completed until 1758. In the interval between this year and 1755 Hogarth had published nothing of importance. He contributed the inimitably droll frontispiece to " Kirkby's Perspective',' showing the true and the false applications of that science ; and he engraved an odd conceit, called Crowns, Mitres, and Maces. Between '55 and '57, however, he was fortunate enough to get a lucrative commission from the churchwardens of St. Mary Redclifife, Bristol, for three oil paintings of sacred subjects : viz., TJie Annunciation, The High Priests and Servants sealing the Tomb, and The Three Maries. He went down to Bristol, and resided there some consider- able time while the pictures were in progress ; and a correspondent from that western city — to whom, not being able to decipher his signature, I hereby take the opportunity of returning my sincere thanks — has-been good enough to forward me the fac-simile of Hogarth's receipt for the amount of the commission — 500/. In 1757, William was elected a councillor and hono- rary member of the Imperial Academy of Augsburg ; and, notwithstanding old King George's hatred for " boetry and bainters," he condescended to overlook Hogarth's libel on the Footguards, and appointed him sergeant-painter to the king. The office was worth 200/. per annum ; and it must be recorded to the honour of TAIL-PIECE. 311 John Thornhill. the marine painter, Sir James's son, and Hogarth's fast friend, who had succeeded his father in the office, that he resigned it in favour of his illustrious colleague and companion. In 1758, Hogarth gave the public a capital portrait of himself sitting at his easel and painting the Comic Muse; as also a humorous etching called Character : or, the Bench, containing the portraits of most of the eminent judges of the day. In 1759, he published one of the best of what I may call his " one act comedies," the Cockpit Royal. 1759 gave birth also to that famous fresco picture of his, the Sigismunda. It is said that it was painted in absurd emulation of Correggio. Hogarth himself says, that as the sum of four hundred pounds had been paid for a picture of Sigismunda, falsely attributed to Correggio, but really the work of a Frenchman, he saw- no reason why he should not produce a version of the woe of Count Guiscardo's widow which should be worth as much money. Lord Charlemont had given him four hundred pounds for a sentimental picture, and now Sir Richard, afterwards Lord Grosvenor, commissioned a Sigismunda for the same price. The work was completed, but the critics concurred in abusing the performance. Sir Richard demurred from Sigismunda at any price. An angry correspondence between the patrician and the painter followed ; but the days of Joshua Morris and the Element of Earth were gone, to return no more. Hogarth did not go to law about his picture. He believed in its merit strongly ; but he was growing old, and querulous, and weary. He agreed to the cancelling of the bargain. The noble Grosvenor kept his money, and Hogarth his picture. Sigismunda was unlucky 312 WILLIAM HOGARTH. from first to last. To vindicate its excellence, Hogarth determined to have it engrav^ed, but he hesitated to undertake so large a work himself. His old coadjutor Ravenet was willing, but he was under articles to Boydell. Then Grignion took it in hand, and got through the preparatory etching ; but Hogarth became dissatisfied, and withdrew the plate from him. Basire followed, and outlined the face "after the manner of Edelink." He, too, gave it up, and our poor old artist, in despair, issued advertisements, stating that he. would engrave maun proprio the much-vexed widow. This was in January, '54 ; but he never lived to transfer Sigisvinnda to copper. To his widow he left strict injunctions never to part with the picture for a sum less than five hundred pounds. In this, as in all other behests Jane Hogarth obeyed her lord, and she faith- fully kept Sigisvmnda — no purchaser offering the required price — until her death. At the sale of her effects in 1790, the unlucky portrait was at length knocked down to Alderman Boydell for fifty-six guineas ; but better financial fate was reserved for it. It was made one of the prizes in the Shakspeare lottery ; w^as sold by Mr. Christie in 1807 for four hundred guineas, and was exhibited at the British Gallery in 18 14. Poor William could never bear to speak with patience of the criticism lavished on his attempt at the sublime — all provoked by a sale of questionable old masters, belonging to the courtier-connoisseur, Sir Luke Schaub- " The most virulent and violent abuse," he writes, " was thrown on it from a set of miscreants with whom I am proud of being ever at war. I mean tJie expounders of the mysteries of old pictures r TAIL-PIECE. 313 The end was drawing nigh. The ilkistrious man was old. He was obstinate. He was testy. But one more event of moment remains to be recorded in his career : — his quarrel with WiLKES and CHURCHILL. Hogarth had ever, as you know, been a Church and State man ; a Tory Brunswicker, so to speak ; and demagoguism, nay liberalism, were to him only a carica- ture of papistry and Gallicism. He had been convivially friendly for some time with the notorious editor of the NortJi Briton, but seldom was attraction visible in bodies so naturally fitted for repulsion. The decided democratic turn taken by Wilkes as a politician at the commence- ment of George HI.'s reign, contributed to estrange him from Hogarth ; the breach widened ; and, as ivill happen, even in purely political disputes, the painter began to remember something of the private character of the leveller. He began to be shocked at this hideous, profligate, witty, worthless satyr ; a demoniacally-minded man it would seem, but, like Mirabeau, permitted by Providence to appear and flourish for a season, that he might give utterance to some eternal constitutional truths. Hogarth, the decorous, rate-paying citizen, husband, and king's sergeant-painter, began to see beneath the flaming cap of liberty the Asmodeus linea- ments of the Monk of Medmenham. It is but just to confess that he commenced the attack on Wilke-s. In a print called TJie Times (the second under that title), he drew Wilkes in the pillory, with a rueful countenance, empty pockets, and a scroll inscribed " Defamation " above his head. Wilkes retorted by a severe but not undignified admonition to Hogarth in the North Briton (No. 17). Forthwith Hogarth etched that peculiar!}- r 314 WILLIAM HOGARTH. abhorrent portrait of Wilkes sitting in a chair, with the cap of liberty on a pole. TheWilkites could not forgive the scathing indignation that stamped as it were on adamant and for ever the frightful squint, the horned Pan's leer of their leader. Charles Churchill, ex-parson and ex-gentleman, Wilkes's fellow-railer, crony and boon companion, threw himself, fiercely panting for fisticuffs, into the quarrel. He published his cruel and unmanly Epistle to William Hogarth, in which he sneered at the artist's works, at his life, at his wife, at his avarice, at his age, at his infirmities — in which he dubbed him " dotard," and bade him " retire to his closet." I think William Hogarth might have well replied in the superb lines of Ben Jonson apostrophizing himself: — Leave things so prostitute, And take th' Alcaic lute, Or tkinc own Homer, or Anacreon's lyre ; Wami thee by Pindar's fire. And thd' thy nerz'es be shrunk, and blood be cold, Ere years have made thee old. Strike the disdainful heat, So loud to their defeat, As curious fools, and envious of thy strain, Shall blushing own no palsy's in thy brain. Hogarth had passed his sixty-third year, but he was no dotard, and no palsy was in his brain. For Alcaic lute, and Anacreon's lyre, and the fire of Pindar, Hogarth had, for all Support, his graver and etching-needle. He went to work, looked up an old copper, blocked out a portrait of himself, with his dog Trump by his side ({oidc portrait in South Kensington Museum), slightly altered Trump, and for his own efiigy substituted a caricature of Churchill as the B7-iiiser, or Ritssiaii Hercules — in other words, as a slavering, growling bear, with the torn i TAIL-PIECE. 315 canonicals of a clergyman, a pot of porter by his side, and a great ragged staff in his paw — each knot inscribed with " lye." This satire was not very ill-natured. It was a good knock-down blow, but not a stab with a poisoned dagger as ChurclTJU's Epistle was. Had Hogarth chosen to be malicious, he might have overwhelmed both his opponents with intolerable infamy. In one vignette he might have touched upon certain traits in the character of the patriot who wrote the Essay on Wojnan which would have made the world loathe Liberty Wilkes as though he had been a cagot or a leper. But so far he refrained to advance. He did' not tell half what he knew or what he thought of the clever, meteoric ruffian Churchill — the shooting-star that emitted such an un- savoury odour when it fell. Nor could Hogarth tell his clerical enemy— he had not the gift of prophecy — that both were squabbling on the verge of a grave half dug ; that one, Hogarth, was to die in peace and honour in the arms of the woman who loved him, and to leave a grand and unsullied name which remote posterity will not let die ; that another, Churchill, was to end bankrupt, drunken, alone, forlorn, in a mean town on the seashore, not to be remembered in this age save with a qualified admiration in which curiosity that is almost pruriency has the better part. For the time, Hogarth had the worst of the controversy. His foes were younger and active, and the mob were on their side. Churchill's Epistle is undoubtedly as clever as it is wicked ; but has it aught but a galvanized existence now t and is not every touch of William Hogarth living, vigorous, vascular, to this day .'' The Wilkites used to boast that they killed Hogarth. 3l6 WILLIAM HOGARTH. A year before his death, indeed, Churchill again alluded to the character Hogarth might draw were Hogarth living now. The " Bruiser " habitually spoke of him in the past tense, a conceit borrowed from Swift's attack on Partridge, the almanack-maker. Hogarth, however, lived full two years after the Wilkes and Churchill warfare. He produced that grand rebuke to the frenzied revivalism of his time, called " Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism." But he had long been ill, and more and more sensible of a gradual bodily decay. The last year of his life was occupied in retouching his favourite plates, with the assistance of several engravers whom he took with him to Chiswick. Still he was merry and convivial, and entertained his friends at his modest, hospitable table ; but Avith a sad presentiment that the end was coming. He drew and wholly engraved the last, the most pathetic of his works — "Finis ; or, the Bathos." It is the end of all things. Time with clipped wings, broken scythe, cracked hour-glass, has smoked his last pipe. The word Finis curls in the last puff from his lips. Around him all lies in ruins. The bottle is broken ; the broom is worn to the stump ; the bell is cracked ; the bow un- strung ; Phoebus and his horses are dead in the clouds ; the ship is wrecked ; the signpost of the World's End tavern tumbles down ; the moon is on the wane ; the crown is in pieces ; the playbook lies opened at Exciuit onincs ; the purse is empty ; the musket is shattered ; the clock has stopped ; the gibbet falls ; the skeleton is gone ; the chains drop. A statute of Bankruptcy is taken out against Nature. TAIL-PIECE. 317 " Nothing now remains but this," said the old man, and drew a painter's palette, broken. The print of The Bathos bears the date of the third of March, 1764 ; Hogarth never touched pencil or graver after its completion. He was, notwithstanding his growing weakness, cheerful to the last ; saw friends the day before his death, and ate a hearty dinner on the very day. On the twenty-fifth of October, 1764, he was removed from his Villa at Chiswick to his house in Leicester Fields, and there, the same night, and in the arms of his wife, he died. I need scarcely say that he was buried at Chiswick, and that the pathetic and affectionate epitaph on his tomb was written by his friend, David Garrick. Hogarth died in competence, but by no means in wealth. The most available jointure he could leave to his widow were the stock and copyright of his engravings, and these were deemed of sufficient value to be made chargeable with an annuity of 80/. to his sister Anne. Mrs. Hogarth survived her husband five and twenty years, dying on the 13th November, 1789. Here I pause. What more I have to say of the great Englishman who has been my theme in these pages during the last nine months, would fill very many and closely printed pages, in addition to those you already have. But of my essays on Hogarth, in this place, there is satiety, and I cease. I have endeavoured to touch upon the chief points in the painter's career, from his birth to his death, to notice his principal works, and as many of his minor productions as the space at my command would warrant. I am conscious of the commission of many errors and inaccuracies in the performance of my task ; but I humbly hope that the 3iS WTI.LTAM HOGARTH. opportunity will be afforded to me, at no distant date, of correcting my blunders elsewhere. This work — trivial as its results may be — has not been pursued without difficulty ; it is not concluded without reluctance ; but the remembrance of kindness and encouragement from troops of friends, the majority personally unknown to me, who have cheered me in my progress, softens the sigh with which I rise from the labour of sixty-seven happy nights — nights when the fruits of long years' stud}' of Hogarth and his time have been put to paper. I IMS ; OR, THE HAIHOS. Works by W, Af. Thackeray. THE VIRGINIANS. Illustrated by the Author. Two vols. 8vo. 2bs. *^* Cheap Edition, Crozvn 8zw. "js. THE NEWCOME.S. Illustrated by Richard Doyi.k. 2 vols. 8vo. 26.-. *i|.* Cheap Edition, Crcnvn %vo. ys. VANITY FAIR. Illustrated by the Author, One vol. 8vo. 2ls. * * * Cheap Editioi, C?vzuii 87'.,- /2l> -f -^2/2 '- ■Z..i ' -t/^^-^v-^ "'■^ . ^ ^ ^^l/^-ltx*^-^ --- _ I «^i-» .^V'^' ^9/ ^y y . 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