WILLIAM HOGARTH.

THE

WORKS

OF

WILLIAM HOGARTH;

IN A

SERIES OF ENGRAVINGS:

WITH

DESCRIPTIONS,

AND

A COMMENT ON THEIR MORAL TENDENCY,

BY THE

REV. JOHN TRUSLER.

TO WHICH ARE ADDED,

ANECDOTES OF THE AUTHOR AND HIS WORKS,

BY J. HOGARTH AND J. NICHOLS.

London:
PUBLISHED BY JONES AND CO.
TEMPLE OF THE MUSES, (LATE LACKINGTON’S,) FINSBURY SQUARE.

1833.

C. BAYNES, PRINTER, 13 DUKE STREET, LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS.[Pg 1]

THE LIFE OF HOGARTH.

William Hogarth is said to have been the descendant of a family
originally from Kirby Thore, in Westmorland.

His grandfather was a plain yeoman, who possessed a small tenement
in the vale of Bampton, a village about fifteen miles north of
Kendal, in that county; and had three sons.

The eldest assisted his father in farming, and succeeded to his little
freehold.

The second settled in Troutbeck, a village eight miles north west of
Kendal, and was remarkable for his talent at provincial poetry.

Richard Hogarth, the third son, who was educated at St. Bees, and
had kept a school in the same county, appears to have been a man of some
learning. He came early to London, where he resumed his original occupation
of a schoolmaster, in Ship-court in the Old Bailey, and was
occasionally employed as a corrector of the press.

Mr. Richard Hogarth married in London; and our artist, and his
sisters, Mary and Anne, are believed to have been the only product of
the marriage.

William Hogarth was born November 10, and baptised Nov. 28, 1697,
in the parish of St. Bartholomew the Great, in London; to which parish,
it is said, in the Biographia Britannica, he was afterwards a benefactor.

The school of Hogarth’s father, in 1712, was in the parish of St.
Martin, Ludgate. In the register of that parish, therefore, the date of
his death, it was natural to suppose, might be found; but the register
has been searched to no purpose.

Hogarth seems to have received no other education than that of
a mechanic, and his outset in life was unpropitious. Young Hogarth
was bound apprentice to a silversmith (whose name was Gamble) of
some eminence; by whom he was confined to that branch of the trade,
which consists in engraving arms and cyphers upon the plate. While
thus employed, he gradually acquired some knowledge of drawing; and,[Pg 2]
before his apprenticeship expired, he exhibited talent for caricature.
“He felt the impulse of genius, and that it directed him to painting,
though little apprised at that time of the mode Nature had intended he
should pursue.”

The following circumstance gave the first indication of the talents
with which Hogarth afterwards proved himself to be so liberally endowed.

During his apprenticeship, he set out one Sunday, with two or three
companions, on an excursion to Highgate. The weather being hot, they
went into a public-house; where they had not long been, before a quarrel
arose between some persons in the same room; from words they soon
got to blows, and the quart pots being the only missiles at hand, were
sent flying about the room in glorious confusion. This was a scene too
laughable for Hogarth to resist. He drew out his pencil, and produced
on the spot one of the most ludicrous pieces that ever was seen; which
exhibited likenesses not only of the combatants engaged in the affray,
but also of the persons gathered round them, placed in grotesque attitudes,
and heightened with character and points of humour.

On the expiration of his apprenticeship, he entered into the academy
in St. Martin’s Lane, and studied drawing from the life: but in this his
proficiency was inconsiderable; nor would he ever have surpassed mediocrity
as a painter, if he had not penetrated through external form to
character and manners. “It was character, passions, the soul, that his
genius was given him to copy.”

The engraving of arms and shop-bills seems to have been his first
employment by which to obtain a decent livelihood. He was, however,
soon engaged in decorating books, and furnished sets of plates for several
publications of the time. An edition of Hudibras afforded him the first
subject suited to his genius: yet he felt so much the shackles of other
men’s ideas, that he was less successful in this task than might have been
expected. In the mean time, he had acquired the use of the brush, as
well as of the pen and graver; and, possessing a singular facility in seizing
a likeness, he acquired considerable employment as a portrait-painter.
Shortly after his marriage, he informs us that he commenced painter of
small conversation pieces, from twelve to fifteen inches in height; the
novelty of which caused them to succeed for a few years. One of the
earliest productions of this kind, which distinguished him as a painter, is
supposed to have been a representation of Wanstead Assembly; the figures
in it were drawn from the life, and without burlesque. The faces were[Pg 3]
said to bear great likenesses to the persons so drawn, and to be rather
better coloured than some of his more finished performances. Grace,
however, was no attribute of his pencil; and he was more disposed to
aggravate, than to soften the harsh touches of Nature.

A curious anecdote is recorded of our artist during the early part of
his practice as a portrait painter. A nobleman, who was uncommonly
ugly and deformed, sat for his picture, which was executed in his happiest
manner, and with singularly rigid fidelity. The peer, disgusted at this
counterpart of his dear self, was not disposed very readily to pay for a
reflector that would only insult him with his deformities. After some time
had elapsed, and numerous unsuccessful applications had been made for
payment, the painter resorted to an expedient, which he knew must alarm
the nobleman’s pride. He sent him the following card:—”Mr. Hogarth’s
dutiful respects to Lord ——; finding that he does not mean to have the
picture which was drawn for him, is informed again of Mr. Hogarth’s
pressing necessities for the money. If, therefore, his lordship does not
send for it in three days, it will be disposed of, with the addition of a tail
and some other appendages, to Mr. Hare, the famous wild beast man;
Mr. H. having given that gentleman a conditional promise on his lordship’s
refusal.” This intimation had its desired effect; the picture was
paid for, and committed to the flames.

Hogarth’s talents, however, for original comic design, gradually unfolded
themselves, and various public occasions produced displays of his
ludicrous powers.

In the year 1730, he clandestinely married the only daughter of Sir
James Thornhill, the painter, who was not easily reconciled to her union
with an obscure artist, as Hogarth then comparatively was. Shortly after,
he commenced his first great series of moral paintings, “The Harlot’s
Progress:” some of these were, at Lady Thornhill’s suggestion, designedly
placed by Mrs. Hogarth in her father’s way, in order to reconcile him to
her marriage. Being informed by whom they were executed, Sir James
observed, “The man who can produce such representations as these, can
also maintain a wife without a portion.” He soon after, however, relented,
and became generous to the young couple, with whom he lived in great
harmony until his death, which took place in 1733.

In 1733 his genius became conspicuously known. The third scene
of “The Harlot’s Progress” introduced him to the notice of the great: at a
Board of Treasury, (which was held a day or two after the appearance of[Pg 4]
that print), a copy of it was shown by one of the lords, as containing,
among other excellences, a striking likeness of Sir John Gonson, a celebrated
magistrate of that day, well known for his rigour towards women
of the town. From the Treasury each lord repaired to the print-shop for
a copy of it, and Hogarth rose completely into fame.

Upwards of twelve hundred subscribers entered their names for the
plates, which were copied and imitated on fan mounts, and in a variety of
other forms; and a pantomime taken from them was represented at the
theatre. This performance, together with several subsequent ones of a
similar kind, have placed Hogarth in the rare class of original geniuses
and inventors. He may be said to have created an entirely new species of
painting, which may be termed the moral comic; and may be considered
rather as a writer of comedy with a pencil, than as a painter. If catching
the manners and follies of an age, living as they rise—if general satire on
vices,—and ridicule familiarised by strokes of Nature, and heightened by
wit,—and the whole animated by proper and just expressions of the passions,—be
comedy, Hogarth composed comedies as much as Moliere.

Soon after his marriage, Hogarth resided at South Lambeth; and being
intimate with Mr. Tyers, the then spirited proprietor of Vauxhall Gardens,
he contributed much to the improvement of those gardens; and first
suggested the hint of embellishing them with paintings, some of which
were the productions of his own comic pencil. Among the paintings were
“The Four Parts of the Day,” either by Hogarth, or after his designs.

Two years after the publication of his “Harlot’s Progress,” appeared
the “Rake’s Progress,” which, Lord Orford remarks, (though perhaps superior,)
“had not so much success, for want of notoriety: nor is the print of
the Arrest equal in merit to the others.” The curtain, however, was now
drawn aside, and his genius stood displayed in its full lustre.

The Rake’s Progress was followed by several works in series, viz.
“Marriage a-la-Mode, Industry and Idleness, the Stages of Cruelty, and
Election Prints.” To these may be added, a great number of single comic
pieces, all of which present a rich source of amusement:—such as, “The
March to Finchley, Modern Midnight Conversation, the Sleeping Congregation,
the Gates of Calais, Gin Lane, Beer Street, Strolling Players in a
Barn, the Lecture, Laughing Audience, Enraged Musician,” &c. &c.
which, being introduced and described in the subsequent part of this
work, it would far exceed the limits, necessarily assigned to these brief
memoirs, here minutely to characterise.[Pg 5]

All the works of this original genius are, in fact, lectures of morality.
They are satires of particular vices and follies, expressed with such strength
of character, and such an accumulation of minute and appropriate circumstances,
that they have all the truth of Nature heightened by the
attractions of wit and fancy. Nothing is without a meaning, but all either
conspires to the great end, or forms an addition to the lively drama of
human manners. His single pieces, however, are rather to be considered
as studies, not perhaps for the professional artist, but for the searcher into
life and manners, and for the votaries of true humour and ridicule. No
furniture of the kind can vie with Hogarth’s prints, as a fund of inexhaustible
amusement, yet conveying at the same time lessons of morality.

Not contented, however, with the just reputation which he had acquired
in his proper department, Hogarth attempted to shine in the highest branch
of the art,—serious history-painting. “From a contempt,” says Lord
Orford, “of the ignorant virtuosi of the age, and from indignation at the
impudent tricks of picture dealers, whom he saw continually recommending
and vending vile copies to bubble collectors, and from having never
studied, or indeed having seen, few good pictures of the great Italian masters,
he persuaded himself that the praises bestowed on those glorious works
were nothing but the effects of prejudice. He talked this language till he
believed it; and having heard it often asserted (as is true) that time gives a
mellowness to colours, and improves them, he not only denied the proposition,
but maintained that pictures only grew black and worse by age, not
distinguishing between the degrees in which the proposition might be true
or false. He went farther: he determined to rival the ancients, and unfortunately
chose one of the finest pictures in England as the object of his
competition. This was the celebrated Sigismonda of Sir Luke Schaub,
now in the possession of the Duke of Newcastle, said to be painted by
Correggio, probably by Furino.”—”It is impossible to see the picture,”
(continues his lordship,) “or read Dryden’s inimitable tale, and not feel
that the same soul animated both. After many essays, Hogarth at last produced
his Sigismonda,—but no more like Sigismonda than I to Hercules.”

Notwithstanding Hogarth professed to decry literature, he felt an
inclination to communicate to the public his ideas on a topic connected
with his art. His “Analysis of Beauty” made its appearance in one
volume quarto, in the year 1753. Its leading principle is, that beauty
fundamentally consists in that union of uniformity which is found in the
curve or waving line; and that round swelling figures are most pleasing[Pg 6]
to the eye. This principle he illustrates by many ingenious remarks and
examples, and also by some plates characteristic of his genius.

In the year 1757, his brother-in-law, Mr. Thornhill, resigned his office
of king’s serjeant-painter in favour of Hogarth, who received his appointment
on the 6th of June, and entered on his functions on the 16th of July,
both in the same year. This place was re-granted to him by a warrant of
George the Third, which bears date the 30th October, 1761, with a salary
of ten pounds per annum, payable quarterly.

This connexion with the court probably induced Hogarth to deviate
from the strict line of party neutrality which he had hitherto observed,
and to engage against Mr. Wilkes and his friends, in a print published in
September, 1762, entitled The Times. This publication provoked some
severe strictures from Wilkes’s pen, in a North Briton (No. 17.) Hogarth
replied by a caricature of the writer: a rejoinder was put in by Churchill,
in an angry epistle to Hogarth (not the brightest of his works); and in
which the severest strokes fell on a defect the painter had not caused, and
could not amend—his age; which, however, was neither remarkable nor
decrepit; much less had it impaired his talents: for, only six months
before, he had produced one of his most capital works. In revenge for
this epistle, Hogarth caricatured Churchill, under the form of a canonical
bear, with a club and a pot of porter.

During this period of warfare (so virulent and disgraceful to all the
parties), Hogarth’s health visibly declined. In 1762, he complained of
an internal pain, the continuance of which produced a general decay of
the system, that proved incurable; and, on the 25th of October, 1764,
(having been previously conveyed in a very weak and languid state from
Chiswick to Leicester Fields,) he died suddenly, of an aneurism in his
chest, in the sixty-seventh or sixty-eighth year of his age. His remains
were interred at Chiswick, beneath a plain but neat mausoleum, with the
following elegant inscription by his friend Garrick:—

LIST OF ENGRAVINGS.

VOL. I.

[Pg 9][Pg 8]

HOGARTH’S WORKS.

THE RAKE’S PROGRESS.

Of all the follies in human life, there is none greater than that of extravagance,
or profuseness; it being constant labour, without the least ease or
relaxation. It bears, indeed, the colour of that which is commendable, and
would fain be thought to take its rise from laudable motives, searching
indefatigably after true felicity; now as there can be no true felicity without
content, it is this which every man is in constant pursuit of; the learned,
for instance, in his industrious quest after knowledge; the merchant, in his
dangerous voyages; the ambitious, in his passionate pursuit of honour; the
conqueror, in his earnest desire of victory; the politician, in his deep-laid
designs; the wanton, in his pleasing charms of beauty; the covetous, in his
unwearied heaping-up of treasure; and the prodigal, in his general and
extravagant indulgence.—Thus far it may be well;—but, so mistaken are we
in our road, as to run on in the very opposite tract, which leads directly to
our ruin. Whatever else we indulge ourselves in, is attended with some
small degree of relish, and has some trifling satisfaction in the enjoyment,
but, in this, the farther we go, the more we are lost; and when arrived at
the mark proposed, we are as far from the object we pursue, as when we first
set out. Here then, are we inexcusable, in not attending to the secret
dictates of reason, and in stopping our ears at the timely admonitions of
friendship. Headstrong and ungovernable, we pursue our course without
intermission; thoughtless and unwary, we see not the dangers that lie
immediately before us; but hurry on, even without sight of our object, till[Pg 10]
we bury ourselves in that gulf of woe, where perishes at once, health, wealth
and virtue, and whose dreadful labyrinths admit of no return.

Struck with the foresight of that misery, attendant on a life of debauchery,
which is, in fact, the offspring of prodigality, our author has, in the scenes
before us, attempted the reformation of the worldling, by stopping him as it
were in his career, and opening to his view the many sad calamities awaiting
the prosecution of his proposed scheme of life; he has, in hopes of
reforming the prodigal, and at the same time deterring the rising generation,
whom Providence may have blessed with earthly wealth, from entering into
so iniquitous a course, exhibited the life of a young man, hurried on through
a succession of profligate pursuits, for the few years Nature was able to support
itself; and this from the instant he might be said to enter into the
world, till the time of his leaving it. But, as the vice of avarice is equal to
that of prodigality, and the ruin of children is often owing to the indiscretion
of their parents, he has opened the piece with a scene, which, at the same
time that it exposes the folly of the youth, shews us the imprudence of the
father, who is supposed to have hurt the principles of his son, in depriving
him of the necessary use of some portion of that gold, he had with penurious
covetousness been hoarding up, for the sole purpose of lodging in his coffers.[Pg 11]

PLATE I.

THE YOUNG HEIR TAKING POSSESSION.

Hoadley.

The history opens, representing a scene crowded with all the monuments of avarice,
and laying before us a most beautiful contrast, such as is too general in the world, to
pass unobserved; nothing being more common than for a son to prodigally squander
away that substance his father had, with anxious solicitude, his whole life been amassing.—Here,
we see the young heir, at the age of nineteen or twenty, raw from the
University, just arrived at home, upon the death of his father. Eager to know the
possessions he is master of, the old wardrobes, where things have been rotting time
out of mind, are instantly wrenched open; the strong chests are unlocked; the parchments,
those securities of treble interest, on which this avaricious monster lent his
money, tumbled out; and the bags of gold, which had long been hoarded, with griping
care, now exposed to the pilfering hands of those about him. To explain every little
mark of usury and covetousness, such as the mortgages, bonds, indentures, &c. the piece
of candle stuck on a save-all, on the mantle-piece; the rotten furniture of the room,
and the miserable contents of the dusty wardrobe, would be unnecessary: we shall
only notice the more striking articles. From the vast quantity of papers, falls an old
written journal, where, among other memorandums, we find the following, viz. “May
the 5th, 1721. Put off my bad shilling.” Hence, we learn, the store this penurious
miser set on this trifle: that so penurious is the disposition of the miser, that notwithstanding
he may be possessed of many large bags of gold, the fear of losing a single
shilling is a continual trouble to him. In one part of the room, a man is hanging it
with black cloth, on which are placed escutcheons, by way of dreary ornament; these
escutcheons contain the arms of the covetous, viz. three vices, hard screwed, with the
motto, “Beware!” On the floor, lie a pair of old shoes, which this sordid wretch is
supposed to have long preserved for the weight of iron in the nails, and has been soling
with leather cut from the covers of an old Family Bible; an excellent piece of
satire, intimating, that such men would sacrifice even their God to the lust of money.
From these and some other objects too striking to pass unnoticed, such as the gold[Pg 12]
falling from the breaking cornice; the jack and spit, those utensils of original hospitality,
locked up, through fear of being used; the clean and empty chimney, in which a
fire is just now going to be made for the first time; and the emaciated figure of the cat,
strongly mark the natural temper of the late miserly inhabitant, who could starve in
the midst of plenty.—But see the mighty change! View the hero of our piece, left to
himself, upon the death of his father, possessed of a goodly inheritance. Mark how
his mind is affected!—determined to partake of the mighty happiness he falsely imagines
others of his age and fortune enjoy; see him running headlong into extravagance,
withholding not his heart from any joy; but implicitly pursuing the dictates of his
will. To commence this delusive swing of pleasure, his first application is to the
tailor, whom we see here taking his measure, in order to trick out his pretty person.
In the interim, enters a poor girl (with her mother), whom our hero has seduced,
under professions of love and promises of marriage; in hopes of meeting with that
kind welcome she had the greatest reason to expect; but he, corrupted with the
wealth of which he is now the master, forgets every engagement he once made, finds
himself too rich to keep his word; and, as if gold would atone for a breach of honour,
is offering money to her mother, as an equivalent for the non-fulfilling of his promise.
Not the sight of the ring, given as a pledge of his fidelity; not a view of the many
affectionate letters he at one time wrote to her, of which her mother’s lap is full; not
the tears, nor even the pregnant condition of the wretched girl, could awaken in him
one spark of tenderness; but, hard hearted and unfeeling, like the generality of wicked
men, he suffers her to weep away her woes in silent sorrow, and curse with bitterness
her deceitful betrayer. One thing more we shall take notice of, which is, that this
unexpected visit, attended with abuse from the mother, so engages the attention of our
youth, as to give the old pettifogger behind him an opportunity of robbing him. Hence
we see that one ill consequence is generally attended with another; and that misfortunes,
according to the old proverb, seldom come alone.

THE RAKE’S PROGRESS.
PLATE 1.
THE YOUNG HERO TAKES POSSESSION OF THE MISER’S EFFECTS.

[Pg 13]

PLATE II.

SURROUNDED BY ARTISTS AND PROFESSORS.

Hoadley.

We are next to consider our hero as launched into the world, and having equipped
himself with all the necessaries to constitute him a man of taste, he plunges at once
into all the fashionable excesses, and enters with spirit into the character he assumes.

The avarice of the penurious father then, in this print, is contrasted by the giddy
profusion of his prodigal son. We view him now at his levee, attended by masters of
various professions, supposed to be here offering their interested services. The foremost
figure is readily known to be a dancing-master; behind him are two men, who at
the time when these prints were first published, were noted for teaching the arts of
defence by different weapons, and who are here drawn from the life; one of whom is
a Frenchman, teacher of the small-sword, making a thrust with his foil; the other an
Englishman, master of the quarter-staff; the vivacity of the first, and the cold contempt
visible in the face of the second, beautifully describe the natural disposition of the two
nations. On the left of the latter stands an improver of gardens, drawn also from the
life, offering a plan for that purpose. A taste for gardening, carried to excess, must be
acknowledged to have been the ruin of numbers, it being a passion that is seldom, if ever,
satisfied, and attended with the greatest expense. In the chair sits a professor of music,
at the harpsichord, running over the keys, waiting to give his pupil a lesson; behind
whose chair hangs a list of the presents, one Farinelli, an Italian singer, received the
next day after his first performance at the Opera House; amongst which, there is notice
taken of one, which he received from the hero of our piece, thus: “A gold snuff-box,
chased, with the story of Orpheus charming the brutes, by J. Rakewell, esq.” By
these mementos of extravagance and pride, (for gifts of this kind proceed oftener from
ostentation than generosity,) and by the engraved frontispiece to a poem, dedicated to
our fashionable spendthrift, lying on the floor, which represents the ladies of Britain
sacrificing their hearts to the idol Farinelli, crying out, with the greatest earnestness,
“one G—d, one Farinelli,” we are given to understand the prevailing dissipation and
luxury of the times. Near the principal figure in this plate is that of him, with one hand
on his breast, the other on his sword, whom we may easily discover to be a bravo; he
is represented as having brought a letter of recommendation, as one disposed to under[Pg 14]take
all sorts of service. This character is rather Italian than English; but is here
introduced to fill up the list of persons at that time too often engaged in the service of
the votaries of extravagance and fashion. Our author would have it imagined in the
interval between the first scene and this, that the young man whose history he is painting,
had now given himself up to every fashionable extravagance; and among others,
he had imbibed a taste for cock-fighting and horse-racing; two amusements, which, at
that time, the man of fashion could not dispense with. This is evident, from his rider
bringing in a silver punch-bowl, which one of his horses is supposed to have won, and
his saloon being ridiculously ornamented with the portraits of celebrated cocks.
The figures in the back part of this plate represent tailors, peruke-makers, milliners,
and such other persons as generally fill the antichamber of a man of quality, except one,
who is supposed to be a poet, and has written some panegyric on the person whose
levee he attends, and who waits for that approbation he already vainly anticipates.
Upon the whole, the general tenor of this scene is to teach us, that the man of fashion
is too often exposed to the rapacity of his fellow creatures, and is commonly a dupe to
the more knowing part of the world.

THE RAKE’S PROGRESS.
PLATE 2.
SURROUNDED BY ARTISTS & PROFESSORS.

[Pg 15]

PLATE III.

THE TAVERN SCENE.

Mr. Ireland having, in his description of this Plate, incorporated whatever is of
value in Dr. Trusler’s text, with much judicious observation and criticism of his own,
the Editor has taken the former verbatim.

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

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

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

“This design may be a very exact representation of what were then the nocturnal
amusements of a brothel;—so different are the manners of former and present times,
that I much question whether a similar exhibition is now to be seen in any tavern of the
metropolis. That we are less licentious than our predecessors, I dare not affirm; but
we are certainly more delicate in the pursuit of our pleasures.[Pg 16]

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

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

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

THE RAKE’S PROGRESS.

PLATE 3.

TAVERN SCENE.

[Pg 17]

PLATE IV.

ARRESTED FOR DEBT.

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

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

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

THE RAKE’S PROGRESS.

PLATE 4.

ARRESTED FOR DEBT AS GOING TO COURT.

[Pg 19]

PLATE V.

MARRIES AN OLD MAID.

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

The ceremony passes in the old church, Mary-le-bone, which was then considered at
such a distance from London, as to become the usual resort of those who wished to be
privately married; that such was the view of this prostituted young man, may be fairly
inferred from a glance at the object of his choice. Her charms are heightened by the
affectation of an amorous leer, which she directs to her youthful husband, in grateful
return for a similar compliment which she supposes paid to herself. This gives her
face much meaning, but meaning of such a sort, that an observer being ask, “How
dreadful must be this creature’s hatred?” would naturally reply, “How hateful
must be her love!“

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

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

A dog (Trump, Hogarth’s favorite), paying his addresses to a one-eyed quadruped
of his own species, is a happy parody of the unnatural union going on in the church.

The commandments are broken: a crack runs near the tenth, which says, Thou
shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife; a prohibition in the present case hardly necessary.[Pg 20]
The creed is destroyed by the damps of the church; and so little attention has been
paid to the poor’s box, that it is covered with a cobweb! These three high-wrought
strokes of satirical humour were perhaps never equalled by any exertion of
the pencil; excelled they cannot be.

On one of the pew doors is the following curious specimen of church-yard poetry,
and mortuary orthography.

This is a correct copy of the inscription. Part of these lines, in raised letters, now form
a pannel in the wainscot at the end of the right-hand gallery, as the church is entered
from the street. The mural monument of the Taylor’s, composed of lead, gilt over,
is still preserved: it is seen in Hogarth’s print, just under the window.

A glory over the bride’s head is whimsical.

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

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

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

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

The commandments being represented as broken, might probably give the hint to
a lady’s reply, on being told that thieves had the preceding night broken into the
church, and stolen the communion-plate, and the ten commandments. “I suppose,”
added the informant, “that they may melt and sell the plate; but can you divine for
what possible purpose they could steal the commandments?”—”To break them, to be
sure,” replied she;—”to break them.”

THE RAKE’S PROGRESS.

PLATE 5.

MARRIES AN OLD MAID.

[Pg 21]

PLATE VI.

SCENE IN A GAMING HOUSE.

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

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

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

At the table a person in mourning grasps his hat, and hides his face, in the agony
of repentance, not having, as we infer from his weepers, received that legacy of which[Pg 22]
he is now plundered more than “a little month.” On the opposite side is another, on
whom fortune has severely frowned, biting his nails in the anguish of his soul. The
fifth completes the climax; he is frantic; and with a drawn sword endeavours to
destroy a pauvre miserable whom he supposes to have cheated him, but is prevented by
the interposition of one of those staggering votaries of Bacchus who are to be found in
every company where there is good wine; and gaming, like the rod of Moses, so far
swallows up every other passion, that the actors, engrossed by greater objects, willingly
leave their wine to the audience.

In the back-ground are two collusive associates, eagerly dividing the profits of the
evening.

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

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

THE RAKE’S PROGRESS.

PLATE 6.

GAMING HOUSE SCENE.

[Pg 23]

PLATE VII.

PRISON SCENE.

By a very natural transition Mr. Hogarth has passed his hero from a gaming
house into a prison—the inevitable consequence of extravagance. He is here represented
in a most distressing situation, without a coat to his back, without money,
without a friend to help him. Beggared by a course of ill-luck, the common attendant
on the gamester, having first made away with every valuable he was master of, and
having now no other resource left to retrieve his wretched circumstances, he at last,
vainly promising himself success, commences author, and attempts, though inadequate to
the task, to write a play, which is lying on the table, just returned with an answer from the
manager of the theatre, to whom he had offered it, that his piece would by no means
do. Struck speechless with this disastrous occurrence, all his hopes vanish, and his most
sanguine expectations are changed into dejection of spirit. To heighten his distress,
he is approached by his wife, and bitterly upbraided for his perfidy in concealing from
her his former connexions (with that unhappy girl who is here present with her child,
the innocent offspring of her amours, fainting at the sight of his misfortunes, being
unable to relieve him farther), and plunging her into those difficulties she never shall be
able to surmount. To add to his misery, we see the under-turnkey pressing him for
his prison fees, or garnish-money, and the boy refusing to leave the beer he ordered,
without being first paid for it. Among those assisting the fainting mother, one of
whom we observe clapping her hand, another applying the drops, is a man crusted
over, as it were, with the rust of a gaol, supposed to have started from his dream, having
been disturbed by the noise at a time when he was settling some affairs of state;
to have left his great plan unfinished, and to have hurried to the assistance of distress.
We are told, by the papers falling from his lap, one of which contains a scheme for paying
the national debt, that his confinement is owing to that itch of politics some
persons are troubled with, who will neglect their own affairs, in order to busy them[Pg 24]selves
in that which noways concerns them, and which they in no respect understand,
though their immediate ruin shall follow it: nay, so infatuated do we find him, so
taken up with his beloved object, as not to bestow a few minutes on the decency of his
person. In the back of the room is one who owes his ruin to an indefatigable search
after the philosopher’s stone. Strange and unaccountable!—Hence we are taught by
these characters, as well as by the pair of human wings on the tester of the bed, that
scheming is the sure and certain road to beggary: and that more owe their misfortunes
to wild and romantic notions, than to any accident they meet with in life.

In this upset of his life, and aggravation of distress, we are to suppose our prodigal
almost driven to desperation. Now, for the first time, he feels the severe effects of pinching
cold and griping hunger. At this melancholy season, reflection finds a passage to his
heart, and he now revolves in his mind the folly and sinfulness of his past life;—considers
within himself how idly he has wasted the substance he is at present in the utmost need
of;—looks back with shame on the iniquity of his actions, and forward with horror
on the rueful scene of misery that awaits him; until his brain, torn with excruciating
thought, loses at once its power of thinking, and falls a sacrifice to merciless despair.

THE RAKE’S PROGRESS.

PLATE 7.

PRISON SCENE.

[Pg 25]

PLATE VIII.

SCENE IN A MADHOUSE.

See our hero then, in the scene before us, raving in all the dismal horrors of hopeless
insanity, in the hospital of Bethlehem, the senate of mankind, where each man may
find a representative; there we behold him trampling on the first great law of nature,
tearing himself to pieces with his own hands, and chained by the leg to prevent any
further mischief he might either do to himself or others. But in this scene, dreary and
horrid as are its accompaniments, he is attended by the faithful and kind-hearted female
whom he so basely betrayed. In the first plate we see him refuse her his promised
hand. In the fourth, she releases him from the harpy fangs of a bailiff; she is present
at his marriage; and in the hope of relieving his distress, she follows him to a prison.
Our artist, in this scene of horror, has taken an opportunity of pointing out to us the
various causes of mental blindness; for such, surely, it may be called, when the intuitive
faculties are either destroyed or impaired. In one of the inner rooms of this gallery
is a despairing wretch, imploring Heaven for mercy, whose brain is crazed with lip-labouring
superstition, the most dreadful enemy of human kind; which, attended with
ignorance, error, penance and indulgence, too often deprives its unhappy votaries of
their senses. The next in view is one man drawing lines upon a wall, in order, if possible,
to find out the longitude; and another, before him, looking through a paper, by
way of a telescope. By these expressive figures we are given to understand that such
is the misfortune of man, that while, perhaps, the aspiring soul is pursuing some lofty
and elevated conception, soaring to an uncommon pitch, and teeming with some grand
discovery, the ferment often proves too strong for the feeble brain to support, and lays
the whole magazine of notions and images in wild confusion. This melancholy group
is completed by the crazy tailor, who is staring at the mad astronomer with a sort of[Pg 26]
wild astonishment, wondering, through excess of ignorance, what discoveries the heavens
can possibly afford; proud of his profession, he has fixed a variety of patterns in
his hat, by way of ornament; has covered his poor head with shreds, and makes his
measure the constant object of his attention. Behind this man stands another, playing
on the violin, with his book upon his head, intimating that too great a love for music
has been the cause of his distraction. On the stairs sits another, crazed by love, (evident
from the picture of his beloved object round his neck, and the words “charming
Betty Careless” upon the bannisters, which he is supposed to scratch upon every wall
and every wainscot,) and wrapt up so close in melancholy pensiveness, as not even to
observe the dog that is flying at him. Behind him, and in the inner room, are two
persons maddened with ambition. These men, though under the influence of the same
passion, are actuated by different notions; one is for the papal dignity, the other for
regal; one imagines himself the Pope, and saying mass; the other fancies himself a
King, is encircled with the emblem of royalty, and is casting contempt on his imaginary
subjects by an act of the greatest disdain. To brighten this distressful scene, and
draw a smile from him whose rigid reasoning might condemn the bringing into public
view this blemish of humanity, are two women introduced, walking in the gallery, as
curious spectators of this melancholy sight; one of whom is supposed, in a whisper,
to bid the other observe the naked man, which she takes an opportunity of doing by a
leer through the sticks of her fan.

Thus, imagining the hero of our piece to expire raving mad, the story is finished,
and little else remains but to close it with a proper application. Reflect then, ye parents,
on this tragic tale; consider with yourselves, that the ruin of a child is too
often owing to the imprudence of a father. Had the young man, whose story we have
related, been taught the proper use of money, had his parent given him some insight
into life, and graven, as it were, upon his heart, the precepts of religion, with an abhorrence
of vice, our youth would, in all probability, have taken a contrary course,
lived a credit to his friends, and an honour to his country.

THE RAKE’S PROGRESS.

PLATE 8.

SCENE IN BEDLAM.

[Pg 27]

THE DISTRESSED POET.

This Plate describes, in the strongest colours, the distress of an author without
friends to patronise him. Seated upon the side of his bed, without a shirt, but
wrapped in an old night-gown, he is now spinning a poem upon “Riches:” of their
use he probably knoweth little; and of their abuse,—if judgment can be formed from
externals,—certes, he knoweth less. Enchanted, impressed, inspired with his subject,
he is disturbed by a nymph of the lactarium. Her shrill-sounding voice awakes one
of the little loves, whose chorus disturbs his meditations. A link of the golden chain
is broken!—a thought is lost!—to recover it, his hand becomes a substitute for the
barber’s comb:—enraged at the noise, he tortures his head for the fleeting idea; but,
ah! no thought is there!

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

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

The sloping roof, and projecting chimney, prove the throne of this inspired bard
to be high above the crowd;—it is a garret. The chimney is ornamented with a dare
for larks, and a book; a loaf, the tea-equipage, and a saucepan, decorate the shelf.[Pg 28]
Before the fire hangs half a shirt, and a pair of ruffled sleeves. His sword lies on the
floor; for though our professor of poetry waged no war, except with words, a sword
was, in the year 1740, a necessary appendage to every thing which called itself “gentleman.”
At the feet of his domestic seamstress, the full-dress coat is become the resting-place
of a cat and two kittens: in the same situation is one stocking, the other is half
immersed in the washing-pan. The broom, bellows, and mop, are scattered round
the room. The open door shows us that their cupboard is unfurnished, and tenanted
by a hungry and solitary mouse. In the corner hangs a long cloak, well calculated
to conceal the threadbare wardrobe of its fair owner.

Mr. Hogarth’s strict attention to propriety of scenery, is evinced by the cracked
plaistering of the walls, broken window, and uneven floor, in the miserable habitation
of this poor weaver of madrigals. When this was first published, the following quotation
from Pope’s “Dunciad” was inscribed under the print:

All his books, amounting to only four, was, I suppose, the artist’s reason for
erasing the lines.

THE DISTRESSED POET.

[Pg 29]

THE BENCH.

CHARACTER, CARICATURA, AND OUTRE.

It having been universally acknowledged that Mr. Hogarth was one of the most
ingenious painters of his age, and a man possessed of a vast store of humour, which
he has sufficiently shown and displayed in his numerous productions; the general
approbation his works receive, is not to be wondered at. But, as owing to the false
notions of the public, not thoroughly acquainted with the true art of painting, he has
been often called a caricaturer; when, in reality, caricatura was no part of his profession,
he being a true copier of Nature; to set this matter right, and give the
world a just definition of the words, character, caricatura, and outré, in which
humorous painting principally consists, and to show their difference of meaning, he,
in the year 1758, published this print; but, as it did not quite answer his purpose,
giving an illustration of the word character only, he added, in the year 1764, the
group of heads above, which he never lived to finish, though he worked upon it the
day before his death. The lines between inverted commas are our author’s own
words, and are engraved at the bottom of the plate.

“There are hardly any two things more essentially different than character and
caricatura; nevertheless, they are usually confounded, and mistaken for each other;
on which account this explanation is attempted.

“It has ever been allowed, that when a character is strongly marked in the living
face, it may be considered as an index of the mind, to express which, with any degree
of justness, in painting, requires the utmost efforts of a great master. Now that,
which has of late years got the name of caricatura, is, or ought to be, totally divested
of every stroke that hath a tendency to good drawing; it may be said to be a species
of lines that are produced, rather by the hand of chance, than of skill; for the early
scrawlings of a child, which do but barely hint the idea of a human face, will always
be found to be like some person or other, and will often form such a comical resemblance,
as, in all probability, the most eminent caricaturers of these times will not be[Pg 30]
able to equal, with design; because their ideas of objects are so much more perfect
than children’s, that they will, unavoidably, introduce some kind of drawing; for all
the humorous effects of the fashionable manner of caricaturing, chiefly depend on
the surprise we are under, at finding ourselves caught with any sort of similitude in
objects absolutely remote in their kind. Let it be observed, the more remote in their
nature, the greater is the excellence of these pieces. As a proof of this, I remember
a famous caricatura of a certain Italian singer, that struck at first sight, which consisted
only of a straight perpendicular stroke, with a dot over. As to the French
word outré, it is different from the rest, and signifies nothing more than the exaggerated
outlines of a figure, all the parts of which may be, in other respects, a perfect
and true picture of nature. A giant or a dwarf may be called a common man, outré.
So any part, as a nose, or a leg, made bigger, or less than it ought to be, is that part
outré, which is all that is to be understood by this word, injudiciously used to the
prejudice of character.”—Analysis of Beauty, chap. vi.

To prevent these distinctions being looked upon as dry and unentertaining, our
author has, in this group of faces, ridiculed the want of capacity among some of our
judges, or dispensers of the law, whose shallow discernment, natural disposition, or
wilful inattention, is here perfectly described in their faces. One is amusing himself
in the course of trial, with other business; another, in all the pride of self-importance,
is examining a former deposition, wholly inattentive to that before him; the next is
busied in thoughts quite foreign to the subject; and the senses of the last are locked
fast in sleep.

The four sages on the Bench, are intended for Lord Chief Justice Sir John Willes,
the principal figure; on his right hand, Sir Edward Clive; and on his left, Mr. Justice
Bathurst, and the Hon. William Noel.

THE BENCH.

[Pg 31]

THE LAUGHING AUDIENCE.

“From the first print that Hogarth engraved, to the last that he published, I do
not think,” says Mr. Ireland, “there is one, in which character is more displayed
than in this very spirited little etching. It is much superior to the more delicate
engravings from his designs by other artists, and I prefer it to those that were still
higher finished by his own burin.

“The prim coxcomb with an enormous bag, whose favours, like those of Hercules
between Virtue and Vice, are contended for by two rival orange girls, gives an admirable
idea of the dress of the day; when, if we may judge from this print, our grave
forefathers, defying Nature, and despising convenience, had a much higher rank in the
temple of Folly than was then attained by their ladies. It must be acknowledged
that, since that period, the softer sex have asserted their natural rights; and, snatching
the wreath of fashion from the brow of presuming man, have tortured it into such
forms that, were it possible, which certes it is not, to disguise a beauteous face——But
to the high behest of Fashion all must bow.

“Governed by this idol, our beau has a cuff that, for a modern fop, would furnish
fronts for a waistcoat, and a family fire-screen might be made of his enormous bag.
His bare and shrivelled neck has a close resemblance to that of a half-starved greyhound;
and his face, figure, and air, form a fine contrast to the easy and degagée
assurance of the Grisette whom he addresses.

“The opposite figure, nearly as grotesque, though not quite so formal as its companion,
presses its left hand upon its breast, in the style of protestation; and, eagerly
contemplating the superabundant charms of a beauty of Rubens’s school, presents her
with a pinch of comfort. Every muscle, every line of his countenance, is acted upon
by affectation and grimace, and his queue bears some resemblance to an ear-trumpet.

“The total inattention of these three polite persons to the business of the stage,
which at this moment almost convulses the children of Nature who are seated in the[Pg 32]
pit, is highly descriptive of that refined apathy which characterises our people of
fashion, and raises them above those mean passions that agitate the groundlings.

“One gentleman, indeed, is as affectedly unaffected as a man of the first world.
By his saturnine cast of face, and contracted brow, he is evidently a profound critic,
and much too wise to laugh. He must indisputably be a very great critic; for, like
Voltaire’s Poccocurante, nothing can please him; and, while those around open
every avenue of their minds to mirth, and are willing to be delighted, though they do
not well know why, he analyses the drama by the laws of Aristotle, and finding those
laws are violated, determines that the author ought to be hissed, instead of being
applauded. This it is to be so excellent a judge; this it is which gives a critic that
exalted gratification which can never be attained by the illiterate,—the supreme power
of pointing out faults, where others discern nothing but beauties, and preserving a
rigid inflexibility of muscle, while the sides of the vulgar herd are shaking with
laughter. These merry mortals, thinking with Plato that it is no proof of a good
stomach to nauseate every aliment presented them, do not inquire too nicely into
causes, but, giving full scope to their risibility, display a set of features more highly
ludicrous than I ever saw in any other print. It is to be regretted that the artist has
not given us some clue by which we might have known what was the play which so
much delighted his audience: I should conjecture that it was either one of Shakespear’s
comedies, or a modern tragedy. Sentimental comedy was not the fashion of
that day.

“The three sedate musicians in the orchestra, totally engrossed by minims and
crotchets, are an admirable contrast to the company in the pit.”

THE LAUGHING AUDIENCE.

[Pg 33]

GATE OF CALAIS.

O, THE ROAST BEEF OF OLD ENGLAND!

The thought on which this whimsical and highly-characteristic print is founded,
originated in Calais, to which place Mr. Hogarth, accompanied by some of his friends,
made an excursion, in the year 1747.

Extreme partiality for his native country was the leading trait of his character; he
seems to have begun his three hours’ voyage with a firm determination to be displeased
at every thing he saw out of Old England. For a meagre, powdered figure,
hung with tatters, a-la-mode de Paris, to affect the airs of a coxcomb, and the importance
of a sovereign, is ridiculous enough; but if it makes a man happy, why should[Pg 34]
he be laughed at? It must blunt the edge of ridicule, to see natural hilarity defy
depression; and a whole nation laugh, sing, and dance, under burthens that would
nearly break the firm-knit sinews of a Briton. Such was the picture of France at
that period, but it was a picture which our English satirist could not contemplate
with common patience. The swarms of grotesque figures who paraded the streets
excited his indignation, and drew forth a torrent of coarse abusive ridicule, not much
to the honour of his liberality. He compared them to Callot’s beggars—Lazarus on
the painted cloth—the prodigal son—or any other object descriptive of extreme contempt.
Against giving way to these effusions of national spleen in the open street,
he was frequently cautioned, but advice had no effect; he treated admonition with
scorn, and considered his monitor unworthy the name of Englishman. These satirical
ebullitions were at length checked. Ignorant of the customs of France, and considering
the gate of Calais merely as a piece of ancient architecture, he began to make
a sketch. This was soon observed; he was seized as a spy, who intended to draw a
plan of the fortification, and escorted by a file of musqueteers to M. la Commandant.
His sketch-book was examined, leaf by leaf, and found to contain drawings that had
not the most distant relation to tactics. Notwithstanding this favourable circumstance,
the governor, with great politeness, assured him, that had not a treaty between the
nations been actually signed, he should have been under the disagreeable necessity of
hanging him upon the ramparts: as it was, he must be permitted the privilege of providing
him a few military attendants, who should do themselves the honour of waiting
upon him, while he resided in the dominions of “the grande monarque.” Two sentinels
were then ordered to escort him to his hotel, from whence they conducted him
to the vessel; nor did they quit their prisoner, until he was a league from shore;
when, seizing him by the shoulders, and spinning him round upon the deck, they said
he was now at liberty to pursue his voyage without further molestation.

So mortifying an adventure he did not like to hear recited, but has in this print
recorded the circumstance which led to it. In one corner he has given a portrait of
himself, making the drawing; and to shew the moment of arrest, the hand of a serjeant
is upon his shoulder.

The French sentinel is so situated, as to give some idea of a figure hanging in
chains: his ragged shirt is trimmed with a pair of paper ruffles. The old woman,
and a fish which she is pointing at, have a striking resemblance. The abundance of
parsnips, and other vegetables, indicate what are the leading articles in a Lenten
feast.

Mr. Pine, the painter, sat for the friar, and from thence acquired the title of Father
Pine. This distinction did not flatter him, and he frequently requested that the countenance
might be altered, but the artist peremptorily refused.

GATE OF CALAIS.

“O THE ROAST BEEF OF OLD ENGLAND.”

[Pg 35]

THE POLITICIAN.

One of our old writers gives it as his opinion, that “there are onlie two subjects
which are worthie the studie of a wise man,” i.e. religion and politics. For the first,
it does not come under inquiry in this print,—but certain it is, that too sedulously
studying the second, has frequently involved its votaries in many most tedious and
unprofitable disputes, and been the source of much evil to many well-meaning and
honest men. Under this class comes the Quidnunc here pourtrayed; it is said to be
intended for a Mr. Tibson, laceman, in the Strand, who paid more attention to the
affairs of Europe, than to those of his own shop. He is represented in a style somewhat
similar to that in which Schalcken painted William the third,—holding a candle
in his right hand, and eagerly inspecting the Gazetteer of the day. Deeply interested
in the intelligence it contains, concerning the flames that rage on the Continent, he is
totally insensible of domestic danger, and regardless of a flame, which, ascending to
his hat,—

From the tie-wig, stockings, high-quartered shoes, and sword, I should suppose it
was painted about the year 1730, when street robberies were so frequent in the
metropolis, that it was customary for men in trade to wear swords, not to preserve
their religion and liberty from foreign invasion, but to defend their own pockets from
“domestic collectors.”

The original sketch Hogarth presented to his friend Forrest; it was etched by
Sherwin, and published in 1775.

THE POLITICIAN.

[Pg 37]

TASTE IN HIGH LIFE,
IN THE YEAR 1742.

The picture from which this print was copied, Hogarth painted by the order of
Miss Edwards, a woman of large fortune, who having been laughed at for some singularities
in her manners, requested the artist to recriminate on her opponents, and
paid him sixty guineas for his production.

It is professedly intended to ridicule the reigning fashions of high life, in the year
1742: to do this, the painter has brought into one group, an old beau and an old lady
of the Chesterfield school, a fashionable young lady, a little black boy, and a full-dressed
monkey. The old lady, with a most affected air, poises, between her finger
and thumb, a small tea-cup, with the beauties of which she appears to be highly
enamoured.

The gentleman, gazing with vacant wonder at that and the companion saucer
which he holds in his hand, joins in admiration of its astonishing beauties!

This gentleman is said to be intended for Lord Portmore, in the habit he first appeared
at Court, on his return from France. The cane dangling from his wrist, large
muff, long queue, black stock, feathered chapeau, and shoes, give him the air of

The old lady’s habit, formed of stiff brocade, gives her the appearance of a squat
pyramid, with a grotesque head at the top of it. The young one is fondling a little
black boy, who on his part is playing with a petite pagoda. This miniature Othello
has been said to be intended for the late Ignatius Sancho, whose talents and virtues[Pg 38]
were an honour to his colour. At the time the picture was painted, he would have
been rather older than the figure, but as he was then honoured by the partiality and
protection of a noble family, the painter might possibly mean to delineate what his
figure had been a few years before.

The little monkey, with a magnifying glass, bag-wig, solitaire, laced hat, and
ruffles, is eagerly inspecting a bill of fare, with the following articles pour diner;
cocks’ combs, ducks’ tongues, rabbits’ ears, fricasee of snails, grande d’œufs buerre.

In the centre of the room is a capacious china jar; in one corner a tremendous
pyramid, composed of packs of cards, and on the floor close to them, a bill, inscribed
“Lady Basto, D^r to John Pip, for cards,—£300.”

The room is ornamented with several pictures; the principal represents the Medicean
Venus, on a pedestal, in stays and high-heeled shoes, and holding before her a
hoop petticoat, somewhat larger than a fig-leaf; a Cupid paring down a fat lady to a
thin proportion, and another Cupid blowing up a fire to burn a hoop petticoat, muff,
bag, queue wig, &c. On the dexter side is another picture, representing Monsieur
Desnoyer, operatically habited, dancing in a grand ballet, and surrounded by butterflies,
insects evidently of the same genus with this deity of dance. On the sinister, is
a drawing of exotics, consisting of queue and bag-wigs, muffs, solitaires, petticoats,
French heeled shoes, and other fantastic fripperies.

Beneath this is a lady in a pyramidical habit walking the Park; and as the companion
picture, we have a blind man walking the streets.

The fire-screen is adorned with a drawing of a lady in a sedan-chair—

As Hogarth made this design from the ideas of Miss Edwards, it has been said
that he had no great partiality for his own performance, and that, as he never would
consent to its being engraved, the drawing from which the first print was copied, was
made by the connivance of one of her servants. Be that as it may, his ridicule on the
absurdities of fashion,—on the folly of collecting old china,—cookery,—card playing,
&c. is pointed, and highly wrought.

At the sale of Miss Edwards’s effects at Kensington, the original picture was purchased
by the father of Mr. Birch, surgeon, of Essex-street, Strand.

TASTE IN HIGH LIFE.

[Pg 39]

THE HARLOT’S PROGRESS.

PLATE I.

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

This series of prints gives the history of a Prostitute. The story commences with
her arrival in London, where, initiated in the school of profligacy, she experiences the
miseries consequent to her situation, and dies in the morning of life. Her variety of
wretchedness, forms such a picture of the way in which vice rewards her votaries, as
ought to warn the young and inexperienced from entering this path of infamy.

The first scene of this domestic tragedy is laid at the Bell Inn, in Wood-street,
and the heroine may possibly be daughter to the poor old clergyman who is reading
the direction of a letter close to the York waggon, from which vehicle she has just
alighted. In attire—neat, plain, unadorned; in demeanor—artless, modest, diffident:
in the bloom of youth, and more distinguished by native innocence than elegant symmetry;
her conscious blush, and downcast eyes, attract the attention of a female fiend,
who panders to the vices of the opulent and libidinous. Coming out of the door of
the inn, we discover two men, one of whom is eagerly gloating on the devoted victim.
This is a portrait, and said to be a strong resemblance of Colonel Francis Chartres.[Pg 40]

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

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

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

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

THE HARLOT’S PROGRESS.

PLATE 1.

ENSNARED BY A PROCURESS.

[Pg 41]

THE HARLOT’S PROGRESS.

PLATE II.

Entered into the path of infamy, the next scene exhibits our young heroine the
mistress of a rich Jew, attended by a black boy,[1] and surrounded with the pompous
parade of tasteless profusion. Her mind being now as depraved, as her person is decorated,
she keeps up the spirit of her character by extravagance and inconstancy. An
example of the first is exhibited in the monkey being suffered to drag her rich head-dress
round the room, and of the second in the retiring gallant. The Hebrew is represented
at breakfast with his mistress; but, having come earlier than was expected, the
favourite has not departed. To secure his retreat is an exercise for the invention of both
mistress and maid. This is accomplished by the lady finding a pretence for quarrelling
with the Jew, kicking down the tea-table, and scalding his legs, which, added to the
noise of the china, so far engrosses his attention, that the paramour, assisted by the
servant, escapes discovery.

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

Under the protection of this disciple of Moses she could not remain long. Riches
were his only attraction, and though profusely lavished on this unworthy object, her[Pg 42]
attachment was not to be obtained, nor could her constancy be secured; repeated acts
of infidelity are punished by dismission; and her next situation shows, that like most of
the sisterhood, she had lived without apprehension of the sunshine of life being darkened
by the passing cloud, and made no provision for the hour of adversity.

In this print the characters are marked with a master’s hand. The insolent air of
the harlot, the astonishment of the Jew, eagerly grasping at the falling table, the start
of the black boy, the cautious trip of the ungartered and barefooted retreating gallant,
and the sudden spring of the scalded monkey, are admirably expressed. To represent
an object in its descent, has been said to be impossible; the attempt has seldom succeeded;
but, in this print, the tea equipage really appears falling to the floor; and, in
Rembrandt’s Abraham’s Offering, in the Houghton collection, now at Petersburg, the
knife dropping from the hand of the patriarch, appears in a falling state.

Quin compared Garrick in Othello to the black boy with the tea-kettle, a circumstance
that by no means encouraged our Roscius to continue acting the part. Indeed, when
his face was obscured, his chief power of expression was lost; and then, and not till
then, was he reduced to a level with several other performers. It has been remarked,
however, that Garrick said of himself, that when he appeared in Othello, Quin, he supposed,
would say, “Here’s Pompey! where’s the tea-kettle?”

THE HARLOT’S PROGRESS.

PLATE 2.

QUARRELS WITH HER JEW PROTECTOR.

[Pg 43]

THE HARLOT’S PROGRESS.

PLATE III.

We here see this child of misfortune fallen from her high estate! Her magnificent
apartment is quitted for a dreary lodging in the purlieus of Drury-lane; she is at breakfast,
and every object exhibits marks of the most wretched penury: her silver tea-kettle
is changed for a tin pot, and her highly decorated toilet gives place to an old leaf table,
strewed with the relics of the last night’s revel, and ornamented with a broken looking-glass.
Around the room are scattered tobacco-pipes, gin measures, and pewter pots;
emblems of the habits of life into which she is initiated, and the company which she now
keeps: this is farther intimated by the wig-box of James Dalton, a notorious street-robber,
who was afterwards executed. In her hand she displays a watch, which might
be either presented to her, or stolen from her last night’s gallant. By the nostrums
which ornament the broken window, we see that poverty is not her only evil.

The dreary and comfortless appearance of every object in this wretched receptacle,
the bit of butter on a piece of paper, the candle in a bottle, the basin upon a chair, the
punch-bowl and comb upon the table, and the tobacco-pipes, &c. strewed upon the
unswept floor, give an admirable picture of the style in which this pride of Drury-lane
ate her matin meal. The pictures which ornament the room are, Abraham offering up
Isaac, and a portrait of the Virgin Mary; Dr. Sacheverell and Macheath the highwayman,
are companion prints. There is some whimsicality in placing the two ladies under
a canopy, formed by the unnailed valance of the bed, and characteristically crowned by
the wig-box of a highwayman.

When Theodore, the unfortunate king of Corsica, was so reduced as to lodge in a
garret in Dean-street, Soho, a number of gentlemen made a collection for his relief.
The chairman of their committee informed him, by letter, that on the following day, at
twelve o’clock, two of the society would wait upon his majesty with the money. To
give his attic apartment an appearance of royalty, the poor monarch placed an arm-chair[Pg 44]
on his half-testered bed, and seating himself under the scanty canopy, gave what he
thought might serve as the representation of a throne. When his two visitors entered
the room, he graciously held out his right hand, that they might have the honour of—kissing
it!

A magistrate, cautiously entering the room, with his attendant constables, commits
her to a house of correction, where our legislators wisely suppose, that being confined
to the improving conversation of her associates in vice, must have a powerful tendency
towards the reformation of her manners. Sir John Gonson, a justice of peace, very
active in the suppression of brothels, is the person represented. In a View of the Town
in 1735, by T. Gilbert, fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, are the following lines:

Pope has noticed him in his Imitation of Dr. Donne, and Loveling, in a very elegant
Latin ode. Thus, between the poets and the painter, the name of this harlot-hunting
justice, is transmitted to posterity. He died on the 9th of January, 1765.

THE HARLOT’S PROGRESS.

PLATE 3.

APPREHENDED BY A MAGISTRATE.

[Pg 45]

THE HARLOT’S PROGRESS.

PLATE IV.

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

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

One of the girls appears scarcely in her teens. To the disgrace of our police, these
unfortunate little wanderers are still suffered to take their nocturnal rambles in the most
public streets of the metropolis. What heart, so void of sensibility, as not to heave a
pitying sigh at their deplorable situation? Vice is not confined to colour, for a black
woman is ludicrously exhibited, as suffering the penalty of those frailties, which are
imagined peculiar to the fair.[Pg 46]

The figure chalked as dangling upon the wall, with a pipe in his mouth, is intended
as a caricatured portrait of Sir John Gonson, and probably the production of some
would-be artist, whom the magistrate had committed to Bridewell, as a proper academy
for the pursuit of his studies. The inscription upon the pillory, “Better to work than
stand thus;” and that on the whipping-post near the laced gambler, “The reward of
idleness,” are judiciously introduced.

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

Such well dressed females, as our heroine, are rarely met with in our present houses
of correction; but her splendid appearance is sufficiently warranted by the following
paragraph in the Grub-street Journal of September 14th, 1730.

“One Mary Moffat, a woman of great note in the hundreds of Drury, who, about a
fortnight ago, was committed to hard labour in Tothill-fields Bridewell, by nine justices,
brought his majesty’s writ of habeas corpus, and was carried before the right honourable
the Lord Chief Justice Raymond, expecting to have been either bailed or discharged;
but her commitment appearing to be legal, his lordship thought fit to remand her back
again to her former place of confinement, where she is now beating hemp in a gown
very richly laced with silver.”

THE HARLOT’S PROGRESS.

PLATE 4.

SCENE IN BRIDEWELL.

[Pg 47]

THE HARLOT’S PROGRESS.

PLATE V.

Released from Bridewell, we now see this victim to her own indiscretion breathe
her last sad sigh, and expire in all the extremity of penury and wretchedness. The two
quacks, whose injudicious treatment, has probably accelerated her death, are vociferously
supporting the infallibility of their respective medicines, and each charging the other with
having poisoned her. The meagre figure is a portrait of Dr. Misaubin, a foreigner, at
that time in considerable practice.

These disputes, it has been affirmed, sometimes happen at a consultation of regular
physicians, and a patient has been so unpolite as to die before they could determine on
the name of his disorder.

While the maid servant is entreating them to cease quarrelling, and assist her dying
mistress, the nurse plunders her trunk of the few poor remains of former grandeur. Her
little boy, turning a scanty remnant of meat hung to roast by a string; the linen hanging
to dry; the coals deposited in a corner; the candles, bellows, and gridiron hung upon
nails; the furniture of the room; and indeed every accompaniment; exhibit a dreary display
of poverty and wretchedness. Over the candles hangs a cake of Jew’s Bread,
once perhaps the property of her Levitical lover, and now used as a fly-trap. The
initials of her name, M. H. are smoked upon the ceiling as a kind of memento mori to
the next inhabitant. On the floor lies a paper inscribed “anodyne necklace,” at that
time deemed a sort of charm against the disorders incident to children; and near the
fire, a tobacco-pipe, and paper of pills.

A picture of general, and at this awful moment, indecent confusion, is admirably
represented. The noise of two enraged quacks disputing in bad English; the harsh,
vulgar scream of the maid servant; the table falling, and the pot boiling over, must pro[Pg 48]duce
a combination of sounds dreadful and dissonant to the ear. In this pitiable situation,
without a friend to close her dying eyes, or soften her sufferings by a tributary
tear; forlorn, destitute, and deserted, the heroine of this eventful history expires! her
premature death, brought on by a licentious life, seven years of which had been devoted
to debauchery and dissipation, and attended by consequent infamy, misery, and disease.
The whole story affords a valuable lesson to the young and inexperienced, and proves
this great, this important truth, that A DEVIATION FROM VIRTUE IS A DEPARTURE
FROM HAPPINESS.

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

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

THE HARLOT’S PROGRESS.

PLATE 5.

EXPIRES WHILE THE DOCTORS ARE DISPUTING.

[Pg 49]

THE HARLOT’S PROGRESS.

PLATE VI.

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

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

In this plate there are some local customs which mark the manners of the times when
it was engraved, but are now generally disused, except in some of the provinces very
distant from the capital; sprigs of rosemary were then given to each of the mourners:
to appear at a funeral without one, was as great an indecorum as to be without a white[Pg 50]
handkerchief. This custom might probably originate at a time when the plague depopulated
the metropolis, and rosemary was deemed an antidote against contagion. It
must be acknowledged that there are also in this print some things which, though they
gave the artist an opportunity of displaying his humour, are violations of propriety and
customs: such is her child, but a few removes from infancy, being habited as chief
mourner, to attend his parent to the grave; rings presented, and an escutcheon hung up,
in a garret, at the funeral of a needy prostitute. The whole may be intended as a burlesque
upon ostentatious and expensive funerals, which were then more customary than
they are now. Mr. Pope has well ridiculed the same folly;

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

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

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

THE HARLOT’S PROGRESS.

PLATE 6.

THE FUNERAL.

[Pg 51]

THE LECTURE.

DATUR VACUUM.

I was once told by a fellow of a college, says Mr. Ireland, that he disliked Hogarth,
because he had in this print ridiculed one of the Universities. I endeavoured to defend
the artist, by suggesting that this was not intended as a picture of what Oxford is now,
but of what it was in days long past: that it was that kind of general satire with which
no one should be offended, &c. &c. His reply was too memorable to be forgotten. “Sir,
the Theatre, the Bench, the College of Physicians, and the Foot Guards, are fair objects
of satire; but those venerable characters who have devoted their whole lives to feeding
the lamp of learning with hallowed oil, are too sacred to be the sport of an uneducated
painter. Their unremitting industry embraced the whole circle of the sciences, and in
their logical disputations they displayed an acuteness that their followers must contemplate
with astonishment. The present state of Oxford it is not necessary for me to
analyze, as you contend that the satire is not directed against that.”

In answer to this observation, which was uttered with becoming gravity, a gentleman
present remarked, as follows. “For some of the ancient customs of this seminary of
learning, I have much respect, but as to their dry treatises on logic, immaterial dissertations
on materiality, and abstruse investigations of useless subjects, they are mere
literary legerdemain. Their disputations being usually built on an undefinable chimera,
are solved by a paradox. Instead of exercising their power of reason they exert their
powers of sophistry, and divide and subdivide every subject with such casuistical minuteness,
that those who are not convinced, are almost invariably confounded. This custom,
it must be granted, is not quite so prevalent as it once was: a general spirit of reform
is rapidly diffusing itself; and though I have heard cold-blooded declaimers assert, that
these shades of science are become the retreats of ignorance, and the haunts of dissipation,
I consider them as the great schools of urbanity, and favourite seats of the belles
lettres. By the belles lettres, I mean history, biography, and poetry; that all these are
universally cultivated, I can exemplify by the manner in which a highly accomplished
young man, who is considered as a model by his fellow-collegians, divides his hours.

“At breakfast I found him studying the marvellous and eventful history of Baron
Munchausen; a work whose periods are equally free from the long-winded obscurity of
Tacitus, and the asthmatic terseness of Sallust. While his hair was dressing, he[Pg 52]
enlarged his imagination and improved his morals by studying Doctor what’s his name’s
abridgement of Chesterfield’s Principles of Politeness. To furnish himself with biographical
information, and add to his stock of useful anecdote, he studied the Lives of
the Highwaymen; in which he found many opportunities of exercising his genius and
judgment in drawing parallels between the virtues and exploits of these modern worthies,
and those dignified, and almost deified ancient heroes whose deeds are recorded in
Plutarch and Nepos.

“With poetical studies, he is furnished by the English operas, which, added to the
prologues, epilogues, and odes of the day, afford him higher entertainment than he could
find in Homer or Virgil: he has not stored his memory with many epigrams, but of
puns has a plentiful stock, and in conundra is a wholesale dealer. At the same college
I know a most striking contrast, whose reading”—But as his opponent would hear no
more, my advocate dropped the subject; and I will follow his example.

It seems probable, that when the artist engraved this print, he had only a general reference
to an university lecture; the words datur vacuum were an after-thought. Some
prints are without the inscription, and in some of the early impressions it is written with
a pen.

The scene is laid at Oxford, and the person reading, universally admitted to be a Mr.
Fisher, of Jesus College, registrat of the university, with whose consent this portrait was
taken, and who lived until the 18th of March, 1761. That he should wish to have such
a face handed down to posterity, in such company, is rather extraordinary, for all the
band, except one man, have been steeped in the stream of stupidity. This gentleman
has the profile of penetration; a projecting forehead, a Roman nose, thin lips, and a long
pointed chin. His eye is bent on vacancy: it is evidently directed to the moon-faced
idiot that crowns the pyramid, at whose round head, contrasted by a cornered cap, he with
difficulty suppresses a laugh. Three fellows on the right hand of this fat, contented
“first-born transmitter of a foolish face,” have most degraded characters, and are much
fitter for the stable than the college. If they ever read, it must be in Bracken’s Farriery,
or the Country Gentleman’s Recreation. Two square-capped students a little beneath
the top, one of whom is holding converse with an adjoining profile, and the other lifting
up his eyebrows, and staring without sight, have the same misfortune that attended our
first James—their tongues are rather too large. A figure in the left-hand corner has
shut his eyes to think; and having, in his attempt to separate a syllogism, placed the
forefinger of his right hand upon his forehead, has fallen asleep. The professor, a little
above the book, endeavours by a projection of his under lip to assume importance; such
characters are not uncommon: they are more solicitous to look wise, than to be so. Of
Mr. Fisher it is not necessary to say much: he sat for his portrait, for the express purpose
of having it inserted in the Lecture!—We want no other testimony of his talents.

THE LECTURE.

[Pg 53]

THE CHORUS.

REHEARSAL OF THE ORATORIO OF JUDITH.

The Oratorio of Judith, Mr. Ireland observes, was written by Esquire William
Huggins, honoured by the music of William de Fesch, aided by new painted scenery
and magnifique decoration, and in the year 1733 brought upon the stage. As De
Fesch[2] was a German and a genius, we may fairly presume it was well set; and there
was at that time, as at this, a sort of musical mania, that paid much greater attention to
sounds than to sense; notwithstanding all these points in her favour, when the Jewish
heroine had made her theatrical début, and so effectually smote Holofernes,

the audience compelled her to make her exit. To set aside this partial and unjust
decree, Mr. Huggins appealed to the public, and printed his oratorio. Though it was
adorned with a frontispiece designed by Hogarth, and engraved by Vandergucht, the
world could not be compelled to read, and the unhappy writer had no other resource
than the consolatory reflection, that his work was superlatively excellent, but unluckily[Pg 54]
printed in a tasteless age; a comfortable and solacing self-consciousness, which hath, I
verily believe, prevented many a great genius from becoming his own executioner.

To paint a sound is impossible; but as far as art can go towards it, Hogarth has
gone in this print. The tenor, treble, and bass of these ear-piercing choristers are so
decisively discriminated, that we all but hear them.

The principal figure, whose head, hands, and feet are in equal agitation, has very
properly tied on his spectacles; it would have been prudent to have tied on his periwig
also, for by the energy of his action he has shaken it from his head, and, absorbed in an
eager attention to true time, is totally unconscious of his loss.

A gentleman—pardon me, I meant a singer—in a bag wig, immediately beneath his
uplifted hand, I suspect to be of foreign growth. It has the engaging air of an importation
from Italy.

The little figure in the sinister corner, is, it seems, intended for a Mr. Tothall, a
woollen-draper, who lived in Tavistock-court, and was Hogarth’s intimate friend.

The name of the performer on his right hand,

I cannot learn, nor do I think that this group were meant for particular portraits, but a
general representation of the violent distortions into which these crotchet-mongers draw
their features on such solemn occasions.

Even the head of the bass-viol has air and character: by the band under the chin, it
gives some idea of a professor, or what is, I think, called a Mus. D.

The words now singing, “The world shall bow to the Assyrian throne,” are extracted
from Mr. Huggins’ oratorio; the etching is in a most masterly style, and was originally
given as a subscription ticket to the Modern Midnight Conversation.

I have seen a small political print on Sir Robert Walpole’s administration, entitled,
“Excise, a new Ballad Opera,” of which this was unquestionably the basis. Beneath it
is the following learned and poetical motto:

THE CHORUS.

[Pg 55]

COLUMBUS BREAKING THE EGG.

By the success of Columbus’s first voyage, doubt had been changed into admiration;
from the honours with which he was rewarded, admiration degenerated into envy. To
deny that his discovery carried in its train consequences infinitely more important than
had resulted from any made since the creation, was impossible. His enemies had
recourse to another expedient, and boldly asserted that there was neither wisdom in the
plan, nor hazard in the enterprise.

When he was once at a Spanish supper, the company took this ground, and being by
his narrative furnished with the reflections which had induced him to undertake his
voyage, and the course that he had pursued in its completion, sagaciously observed, that
“it was impossible for any man, a degree above an idiot, to have failed of success. The
whole process was so obvious, it must have been seen by a man who was half blind!
Nothing could be so easy!”

“It is not difficult now I have pointed out the way,” was the answer of Columbus:
“but easy as it will appear, when you are possessed of my method, I do not believe
that, without such instruction, any person present could place one of these eggs upright
on the table.” The cloth, knives, and forks were thrown aside, and two of the party,
placing their eggs as required, kept them steady with their fingers. One of them swore
there could be no other way. “We will try,” said the navigator; and giving an egg,
which he held in his hand, a smart stroke upon the table, it remained upright. The
emotions which this excited in the company are expressed in their countenances. In
the be-ruffed booby at his left hand it raises astonishment; he is a DEAR ME! man, of
the same family with Sterne’s Simple Traveller, and came from Amiens only yesterday.
The fellow behind him, beating his head, curses his own stupidity; and the whiskered
ruffian, with his fore-finger on the egg, is in his heart cursing Columbus. As to the
two veterans on the other side, they have lived too long to be agitated with trifles: he
who wears a cap, exclaims, “Is this all!” and the other, with a bald head, “By St.
Jago, I did not think of that!” In the face of Columbus there is not that violent and
excessive triumph which is exhibited by little characters on little occasions; he is too
elevated to be overbearing; and, pointing to the conical solution of his problematical
conundrum, displays a calm superiority, and silent internal contempt.[Pg 56]

Two eels, twisted round the eggs upon the dish, are introduced as specimens of the
line of beauty; which is again displayed on the table-cloth, and hinted at on the knife-blade.
In all these curves there is peculiar propriety; for the etching was given as a
receipt-ticket to the Analysis, where this favourite undulating line forms the basis of his
system.

In the print of Columbus, there is evident reference to the criticisms on what Hogarth
called his own discovery; and in truth the connoisseurs’ remarks on the painter were
dictated by a similar spirit to those of the critics on the navigator: they first asserted
there was no such line, and when he had proved that there was, gave the honour of
discovery to Lomazzo, Michael Angelo, &c. &c.

COLUMBUS BREAKING THE EGG.

[Pg 57]

A MIDNIGHT MODERN CONVERSATION.

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

Mrs. Piozzi was of opinion that the divine with a cork-screw, occasionally used as a
tobacco-stopper, hanging upon his little finger, was the portrait of parson Ford, Dr.
Johnson’s uncle; though, upon the authority of Sir John Hawkins, of anecdotish
memory, it has been generally supposed to be intended for Orator Henley. As both
these worthies were distinguished by that rubicundity of face with which it is marked,
the reader may decree the honour of a sitting to which he pleases.

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

The lawyer, who sits near him, is a portrait of one Kettleby, a vociferous bar-orator,
who, though an utter barrister, chose to distinguish himself by wearing an enormous
full-bottom wig, in which he is here represented. He was farther remarkable for a
diabolical squint, and a satanic smile.

A poor maudlin miserable, who is addressing him, when sober, must be a fool; but,
in this state, it would puzzle Lavater to assign him a proper class. He seems endeavouring
to demonstrate to the lawyer, that, in a poi—poi—point of law, he has been[Pg 58]
most cruelly cheated, and lost a cau—cau—cause, that he ought to have got,—and all
this was owing to his attorney being an infernal villain. This may very probably be
true; for the poor man’s tears show that, like the person relieved by the good Samaritan,
he has been among thieves. The barrister grins horribly at his misfortunes, and
tells him he is properly punished for not employing a gentleman.

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

The justice, “in fair round belly, with good capon lin’d,”—the justice, having hung up
his hat, wig, and cloak, puts on his nightcap, and, with a goblet of superior capacity before
him, sits in solemn cogitation. His left elbow, supported by the table, and his right by a
chair, with a pipe in one hand, and a stopper in the other, he puffs out the bland vapour
with the dignity of an alderman, and fancies himself as great as Jupiter, seated upon the
summit of Mount Olympus, enveloped by the thick cloud which his own breath has created.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A MIDNIGHT MODERN CONVERSATION.

[Pg 59]

CONSULTATION OF PHYSICIANS—THE UNDERTAKERS’ ARMS.

This plate is designed, with much humour, according to the rules of heraldry, and is
called The Undertakers’ Arms, to show us the connexion between death and the quack
doctor, as are also those cross-bones on the outside of the escutcheon. When an
undertaker is in want of business, he cannot better apply than to some of those gentlemen
of the faculty, who are, for the most part, so charitably disposed, as to supply the
necessities of these sable death-hunters, and keep them from starving in a healthy time.
By the tenour of this piece, Mr. Hogarth would intimate the general ignorance of such
of the medical tribe, and teach us that they possess little more knowledge than their
voluminous wigs and golden-headed canes. They are represented in deep consultation
upon the contents of an urinal. Our artist’s own illustration of this coat of arms, as he
calls it, is as follows: “The company of undertakers beareth, sable, an urinal, proper
between twelve quack heads of the second, and twelve cane heads, or, consultant. On
a chief, Nebulæ, ermine, one complete doctor, issuant, checkie, sustaining in his right
hand a baton of the second. On the dexter and sinister sides, two demi-doctors, issuant
of the second, and two cane heads, issuant of the third; the first having one eye,
couchant, towards the dexter side of the escutcheon; the second faced, per pale, proper,
and gules guardant. With this motto, Et plurima mortis imago. The general image
of death.”

It has been said of the ancients, that they began by attempting to make physic a
science, and failed; of the moderns, that they began by attempting to make it a trade,
and succeeded. This company are moderns to a man, and, if we may judge of their
capacities by their countenances, are indeed a most sapient society. Their practice is
very extensive, and they go about, taking guineas,

Many of them are unquestionably portraits, but as these grave and sage descendants of
Galen are long since gone to that place where they before sent their patients, we are
unable to ascertain any of them, except the three who are, for distinction, placed in the
chief, or most honourable part of the escutcheon. Those who, from their exalted situation,
we may naturally conclude the most distinguished and sagacious leeches of their[Pg 60]
day, have marks too obtrusive to be mistaken. He towards the dexter side of the
escutcheon, is determined by an eye in the head of his cane to be the all-accomplished
Chevalier Taylor, in whose marvellous and surprising history, written by his own hand,
and published in 1761, is recorded such events relative to himself and others, as have
excited more astonishment than that incomparable romance, Don Belianis of Greece, the
Arabian Nights, or Sir John Mandeville’s Travels.

The centre figure, arrayed in a harlequin jacket, with a bone, or what the painter
denominates a baton, in the right hand, is generally considered designed for Mrs. Mapp,
a masculine woman, daughter to one Wallin, a bone-setter at Hindon, in Wiltshire.
This female Thalestris, incompatible as it may seem with her sex, adopted her father’s
profession, travelled about the country, calling herself Crazy Sally; and, like another
Hercules, did wonders by strength of arm.

On the sinister side is Dr. Ward, generally called Spot Ward, from his left cheek
being marked with a claret colour. This gentleman was of a respectable family, and
though not highly educated, had talents very superior to either of his coadjutors.

For the chief, this must suffice; as for the twelve quack heads, and twelve cane
heads, or, consultant, united with the cross bones at the corners, they have a most mortuary
appearance, and do indeed convey a general image of death.

In the time of Lucian, a philosopher was distinguished by three things,—his avarice,
his impudence, and his beard. In the time of Hogarth, medicine was a mystery, and
there were three things which distinguished the physician,—his gravity, his cane-head,
and his periwig. With these leading requisites, this venerable party are most amply
gifted. To specify every character is not necessary; but the upper figure on the dexter
side, with a wig like a weeping willow, should not be overlooked. His lemon-like aspect
must curdle the blood of all his patients. In the countenances of his brethren there is
no want of acids; but, however sour, each individual was in his day,

CONSULTATION OF PHYSICIANS.

[Pg 61]

DANIEL LOCK, ESQ. F.A.S.

Daniel Lock was an architect of some eminence. He retired from business with
an ample fortune, lived in Surrey-street, and was buried in the chapel of Trinity College,
Cambridge. This portrait was originally engraved by J. M’Ardell from a painting by
Hogarth, and is classed among the productions of our artist that are of uncertain date.

DANIEL LOCK, ESQ. F.A.S.

[Pg 63]

THE ENRAGED MUSICIAN.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE ENRAGED MUSICIAN.

[Pg 65]

MASQUERADES AND OPERAS.

BURLINGTON GATE.

This print appeared in 1723. Of the three small figures in the centre the middle
one is Lord Burlington, a man of considerable taste in painting and architecture, but
who ranked Mr. Kent, an indifferent artist, above his merit. On one side of the peer
is Mr. Campbell, the architect; on the other, his lordship’s postilion. On a show-cloth
in this plate is also supposed to be the portrait of king George II. who gave 1000l.
towards the Masquerade; together with that of the earl of Peterborough, who offers
Cuzzoni, the Italian singer, 8000l. and she spurns at him. Mr. Heidegger, the regulator
of the Masquerade, is also exhibited, looking out of a window, with the letter H
under him.

The substance of the foregoing remarks is taken from a collection lately belonging to
Captain Baillie, where it is said that they were furnished by an eminent connoisseur.

A board is likewise displayed, with the words, “Long Room. Fawks’s dexterity
of hand.” It appears from the following advertisement that this was a man of great
consequence in his profession: “Whereas the town hath been lately alarmed, that
the famous Fawks was robbed and murdered, returning from performing at the duchess
of Buckingham’s house at Chelsea; which report being raised and printed by a person
to gain money to himself, and prejudice the above-mentioned Mr. Fawks, whose unparalleled
performance has gained him so much applause from the greatest of quality, and
most curious observers: We think, both in justice to the injured gentleman, and for
the satisfaction of his admirers, that we cannot please our readers better than to acquaint
them he is alive, and will not only perform his usual surprising dexterity of hand,
posture-master, and musical clock: but, for the greater diversion of the quality and
gentry, has agreed with the famous Powell of the Bath for the season, who has the
largest, richest, and most natural figures, and finest machines in England, and whose
former performances in Covent Garden were so engaging to the town, as to gain the
approbation of the best judges, to show his puppet-plays along with him, beginning
in the Christmas holidays next, at the Old Tennis-court, in James’s-street, near the
Haymarket; where any incredulous persons may be satisfied he is not left this world,[Pg 66]
if they please to believe their hands, though they can’t believe their eyes.”—”May 25,”
indeed, “1731, died Mr. Fawks, famous for his dexterity of hand, by which he had
honestly acquired a fortune of 10,000l. being no more than he really deserved for his
great ingenuity, by which he had surpassed all that ever pretended to that art.”

This satirical performance of Hogarth, however, was thought to be invented and
drawn at the instigation of Sir James Thornhill, out of revenge, because Lord Burlington
had preferred Mr. Kent before him to paint for the king at his palace at
Kensington. Dr. Faustus was a pantomime performed to crowded houses throughout
two seasons, to the utter neglect of plays, for which reason they are cried about in a
wheel-barrow.

MASQUERADES AND OPERAS, BURLINGTON GATE.

[Pg 67]

MORNING.

This withered representative of Miss Bridget Alworthy, with a shivering foot-boy
carrying her prayer-book, never fails in her attendance at morning service. She is a
symbol of the season.—

she looks with scowling eye, and all the conscious pride of severe and stubborn virginity,
on the poor girls who are suffering the embraces of two drunken beaux that are just
staggered out of Tom King’s Coffee-house. One of them, from the basket on her arm,
I conjecture to be an orange girl: she shows no displeasure at the boisterous salute of
her Hibernian lover. That the hero in a laced hat is from the banks of the Shannon,
is apparent in his countenance. The female whose face is partly concealed, and whose
neck has a more easy turn than we always see in the works of this artist, is not formed
of the most inflexible materials.

An old woman, seated upon a basket; the girl, warming her hands by a few withered
sticks that are blazing on the ground, and a wretched mendicant,[3] wrapped in a tattered
and parti-coloured blanket, entreating charity from the rosy-fingered vestal who is going
to church, complete the group. Behind them, at the door of Tom King’s Coffee-house,
are a party engaged in a fray, likely to create business for both surgeon and magistrate:
we discover swords and cudgels in the combatants’ hands.

On the opposite side of the print are two little schoolboys. That they have shining
morning faces we cannot positively assert, but each has a satchel at his back, and
according with the description given by the poet of nature, is

The lantern appended to the woman who has a basket on her head, proves that these
dispensers of the riches of Pomona rise before the sun, and do part of their business by
an artificial light. Near her, that immediate descendant of Paracelsus, Dr. Rock, is[Pg 68]
expatiating to an admiring audience, on the never-failing virtues of his wonder-working
medicines. One hand holds a bottle of his miraculous panacea, and the other supports
a board, on which is the king’s arms, to indicate that his practice is sanctioned by royal
letters patent. Two porringers and a spoon, placed on the bottom of an inverted basket,
intimate that the woman seated near them, is a vender of rice-milk, which was at that
time brought into the market every morning.

A fatigued porter leans on a rail; and a blind beggar is going towards the church:
but whether he will become one of the congregation, or take his stand at the door, in
the hope that religion may have warmed the hearts of its votaries to “Pity the sorrows
of a poor blind man,” is uncertain.

Snow on the ground, and icicles hanging from the penthouse, exhibit a very chilling
prospect; but, to dissipate the cold, there is happily a shop where spirituous liquors are
sold pro bono publico, at a very little distance. A large pewter measure is placed upon
a post before the door, and three of a smaller size hang over the window of the house.

The character of the principal figure is admirably delineated. She is marked with
that prim and awkward formality which generally accompanies her order, and is an
exact type of a hard winter; for every part of her dress, except the flying lappets and
apron, ruffled by the wind, is as rigidly precise as if it were frozen. It has been said
that this incomparable figure was designed as the representative of either a particular
friend, or a relation. Individual satire may be very gratifying to the public, but is
frequently fatal to the satirist. Churchill, by the lines,

lost a considerable legacy; and it is related that Hogarth, by the introduction of this
withered votary of Diana into this print, induced her to alter a will which had been
made considerably in his favour: she was at first well enough satisfied with her resemblance,
but some designing people taught her to be angry.

Extreme cold is very well expressed in the slip-shod footboy, and the girl who is
warming her hands. The group of which she is a part, is well formed, but not sufficiently
balanced on the opposite side.

The church dial, a few minutes before seven; marks of little shoes and pattens in
the snow, and various productions of the season in the market, are an additional proof
of that minute accuracy with which this artist inspected and represented objects, which
painters in general have neglected.

Govent Garden is the scene, but in the print every building is reversed. This was
a common error with Hogarth; not from his being ignorant of the use of the mirror,
but from his considering it as a matter of little consequence.

MORNING.

[Pg 69]

NOON.

Among the figures who are coming out of church, an affected, flighty Frenchwoman,
with her fluttering fop of a husband, and a boy, habited à-la-mode de Paris, claim our
first attention. In dress, air, and manner, they have a national character. The whole
congregation, whether male or female, old or young, carry the air of their country in
countenance, dress, and deportment. Like the three principal figures, they are all
marked with some affected peculiarity. Affectation, in a woman, is supportable upon
no other ground than that general indulgence we pay to the omnipotence of beauty,
which in a degree sanctifies whatever it adopts. In a boy, when we consider that the
poor fellow is attempting to copy what he has been taught to believe praiseworthy, we
laugh at it; the largest portion of ridicule falls upon his tutors; but in a man, it is
contemptible!

The old fellow, in a black periwig, has a most vinegar-like aspect, and looks with
great contempt at the frippery gentlewoman immediately before him. The woman, with
a demure countenance, seems very piously considering how she can contrive to pick the
embroidered beau’s pocket. Two old sybils joining their withered lips in a chaste salute,
is nauseous enough, but, being a national custom, must be forgiven. The divine seems
to have resided in this kingdom long enough to acquire a roast-beef countenance. A
little boy, whose woollen nightcap is pressed over a most venerable flowing periwig, and
the decrepit old man, leaning upon a crutch-stick, who is walking before him, “I once
considered,” says Mr. Ireland, “as two vile caricatures, out of nature, and unworthy the
artist. Since I have seen the peasantry of Flanders, and the plebeian youth of France,
I have in some degree changed my opinion, but still think them rather outré.”

Under a sign of the Baptist’s Head is written, Good Eating; and on each side of[Pg 70]
the inscription is a mutton chop. In opposition to this head without a body, unaccountably
displayed as a sign at an eating-house, there is a body without a head, hanging out
as the sign of a distiller’s. This, by common consent, has been quaintly denominated
the good woman. At a window above, one of the softer sex proves her indisputable right
to the title by her temperate conduct to her husband, with whom having had a little
disagreement, she throws their Sunday’s dinner into the street.

A girl, bringing a pie from the bakehouse, is stopped in her career by the rude
embraces of a blackamoor, who eagerly rubs his sable visage against her blooming cheek.

Good eating is carried on to the lower part of the picture. A boy, placing a baked
pudding upon a post, with rather too violent an action, the dish breaks, the fragments
fall to the ground, and while he is loudly lamenting his misfortune, and with tears
anticipating his punishment, the smoking remnants are eagerly snatched up by a poor
girl. Not educated according to the system of Jean Jacques Rousseau, she feels no
qualms of conscience about the original proprietor, and, destitute of that fastidious delicacy
which destroys the relish of many a fine lady, eagerly swallows the hot and
delicious morsels, with all the concomitants.

The scene is laid at the door of a French chapel in Hog-lane; a part of the town at
that time almost wholly peopled by French refugees, or their descendants.

By the dial of St. Giles’s church, in the distance, we see that it is only half past eleven.
At this early hour, in those good times, there was as much good eating as there is now
at six o’clock in the evening. From twenty pewter measures, which are hung up before
the houses of different distillers, it seems that good drinking was considered as equally
worthy of their serious attention.

The dead cat, and choked kennels, mark the little attention shown to the streets by
the scavengers of St. Giles’s. At that time noxious effluvia was not peculiar to this
parish. The neighbourhood of Fleet-ditch, and many other parts of the city, were
equally polluted.

Even at this refined period, there would be some use in a more strict attention to the
medical police of a city so crowded with inhabitants. We ridicule the people of Paris
and Edinburgh for neglecting so essential and salutary a branch of delicacy, while the
kennels of a street in the vicinity of St. Paul’s church are floated with the blood of
slaughtered animals every market-day. Moses would have managed these things
better: but in those days there was no physician in Israel!

NOON.

[Pg 71]

EVENING.

It is not easy to imagine fatigue better delineated than in the appearance of this
amiable pair. In a few of the earliest impressions, Mr. Hogarth printed the hands of
the man in blue, to show that he was a dyer, and the face and neck of the woman in
red, to intimate her extreme heat. The lady’s aspect lets us at once into her character;
we are certain that she was born to command. As to her husband, God made him, and
he must pass for a man: what his wife has made him, is indicated by the cow’s horns;
which are so placed as to become his own. The hopes of the family, with a cockade in
his hat, and riding upon papa’s cane, seems much dissatisfied with female sway. A
face with more of the shrew in embryo than that of the girl, it is scarcely possible to[Pg 72]
conceive. Upon such a character the most casual observer pronounces with the decision
of a Lavater.

Nothing can be better imagined than the group in the alehouse. They have taken
a refreshing walk into the country, and, being determined to have a cooling pipe, seat
themselves in a chair-lumbered closet, with a low ceiling; where every man, pulling off
his wig, and throwing a pocket-handkerchief over his head, inhales the fumes of hot
punch, the smoke of half a dozen pipes, and the dust from the road. If this is not rural
felicity, what is? The old gentleman in a black bag-wig, and the two women near
him, sensibly enough, take their seats in the open air.

From a woman milking a cow, we conjecture the hour to be about five in the afternoon:
and, from the same circumstance, I am inclined to think this agreeable party is
going to their pastoral bower, rather than returning from it.

The cow and dog appear as much inconvenienced by heat as any of the party: the
former is whisking off the flies; and the latter creeps unwillingly along, and casts a
longing look at the crystal river, in which he sees his own shadow. A remarkably hot
summer is intimated by the luxuriant state of a vine, creeping over an alehouse window.
On the side of the New River, where the scene is laid, lies one of the wooden pipes
employed in the water-works. Opposite Sadler’s Wells there still remains the sign of
Sir Hugh Middleton’s head, which is here represented; but how changed the scene
from what is here represented!

EVENING.

[Pg 73]

NIGHT.

Mr. Walpole very truly observes, that this print is inferior to the three others;
there is, however, broad humour in some of the figures.

The wounded free-mason, who, in zeal of brotherly love, has drank his bumpers to the
craft till he is unable to find his way home, is under the guidance of a waiter. This has
been generally considered as intended for Sir Thomas de Veil, and, from an authenticated
portrait which I have seen, I am, says Mr. Ireland, inclined to think it is,
notwithstanding Sir John Hawkins asserts, that “he could discover no resemblance.”
When the knight saw him in his magisterial capacity, he was probably sober and
sedate; here he is represented a little disguised. The British Xantippe showering her
favours from the window upon his head, may have its source in that respect which the
inmates of such houses as the Rummer Tavern had for a justice of peace. On the
resignation of Mr. Horace Walpole, in February, 1738, De Veil was appointed
inspector-general of the imports and exports, and was so severe against the retailers of
spirituous liquors, that one Allen headed a gang of rioters for the purpose of pulling
down his house, and bringing to a summary punishment two informers who were there
concealed. Allen was tried for this offence, and acquitted, upon the jury’s verdict
declaring him lunatic.

The waiter who supports his worship, seems, from the patch upon his forehead, to
have been in a recent affray; but what use he can have for a lantern, it is not easy to
divine, unless he is conducting his charge to some place where there is neither moonlight
nor illumination.

The Salisbury flying coach oversetting and broken, by passing through the bonfire, is
said to be an intended burlesque upon a right honourable peer, who was accustomed to
drive his own carriage over hedges, ditches, and rivers; and has been sometimes known
to drive three or four of his maid servants into a deep water, and there leave them in
the coach to shift for themselves.[Pg 74]

The butcher, and little fellow, who are assisting the terrified passengers, are possibly
free and accepted masons. One of them seems to have a mop in his hand;—the pail is
out of sight.

To crown the joys of the populace, a man with a pipe in his mouth is filling a capacious
hogshead with British Burgundy.

The joint operation of shaving and bleeding, performed by a drunken ‘prentice on a
greasy oilman, does not seen a very natural exhibition on a rejoicing night.

The poor wretches under the barber’s bench display a prospect of penury and wretchedness,
which it is to be hoped is not so common now, as it was then.

In the distance is a cart laden with furniture, which some unfortunate tenant is
removing out of the reach of his landlord’s execution.

There is humour in the barber’s sign and inscription; “Shaving, bleeding, and teeth
drawn with a touch. Ecce signum!”

By the oaken boughs on the sign, and the oak leaves in the free-masons’ hats, it seems
that this rejoicing night is the twenty-ninth of May, the anniversary of our second
Charles’s restoration; that happy day when, according to our old ballad, “The king enjoyed
his own again.” This might be one reason for the artist choosing a scene contiguous
to the beautiful equestrian statue of Charles the First.

In the distance we see a house on fire; an accident very likely to happen on such a
night as this.

On this spot once stood the cross erected by Edward the First, as a memorial of
affection for his beloved queen Eleanor, whose remains were here rested on their way to
the place of sepulture. It was formed from a design by Cavalini, and destroyed by the
religious fury of the Reformers. In its place, in the year 1678, was erected the animated
equestrian statue which now remains. It was cast in brass, in the year 1633, by Le
Sœur; I think by order of that munificent encourager of the arts, Thomas Howard, Earl
of Arundel. The parliament ordered it to be sold, and broken to pieces; but John
River, the brazier who purchased it, having more taste than his employers, seeing, with
the prophetic eye of good sense, that the powers which were would not remain rulers
very long, dug a hole in his garden in Holborn, and buried it unmutilated. To prove
his obedience to their order, he produced to his masters several pieces of brass, which he
told them were parts of the statue. M. de Archenholtz adds further, that the brazier,
with the true spirit of trade, cast a great number of handles for knives and forks, and
offered them for sale, as composed of the brass which had formed the statue. They were
eagerly sought for, and purchased,—by the loyalists from affection to their murdered
monarch,—by the other party, as trophies of triumph.

The original pictures of Morning and Noon were sold to the Duke of Ancaster for
fifty-seven guineas; Evening and Night to Sir William Heathcote, for sixty-four guineas.

NIGHT.

[Pg 75]

SIGISMONDA

Hogarth’s Epistle.

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

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

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

The author of the Mysterious Mother sought for sublimity, where the artist strictly
copied nature, which was invariably his archetype, but which the painter, who soars into
fancy’s fairy regions, must in a degree desert. Considered with this reference, though
the picture has faults, Mr. Walpole’s satire is surely too severe. It is built upon a
comparison with works painted in a language of which Hogarth knew not the idiom,[Pg 76]—trying
him before a tribunal, whose authority he did not acknowledge, and from the picture
having been in many respects altered after the critic saw it, some of the remarks become
unfair. To the frequency of these alterations we may attribute many of the errors: the
man who has not confidence in his own knowledge of the leading principles on which
his work ought to be built, will not render it perfect by following the advice of his
friends. Though Messrs. Wilkes and Churchill dragged his heroine to the altar of
politics, and mangled her with a barbarity that can hardly be paralleled, except in the
history of her husband,—the artist retained his partiality; which seems to have increased
in exact proportion to their abuse. The picture being thus contemplated through the
medium of party prejudice, we cannot wonder that all its imperfections were exaggerated.
The painted harlot of Babylon had not more opprobrious epithets from the first race of
reformers than the painted Sigismonda of Hogarth from the last race of patriots.

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

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

SIGISMONDA,
WITH THE HEART OF HER HUSBAND

[Pg 77]

MARTIN FOLKES, ESQ.

Martin Folkes was a mathematician and antiquary of much celebrity in the philosophical
annals of this country. He was at the early age of twenty-four admitted a
member of the Royal Society, where he was greatly distinguished. Two years afterwards
he was chosen one of the council, and was named by Sir Isaac Newton himself as
vice president: he was afterwards elected president, and held this high office till a short
time before his death, when he resigned it on account of ill-health. In the Philosophical
Transactions are numerous memoirs of this learned man: his knowledge in coins, ancient
and modern, was very extensive: and the last work he produced was concerning the English
Silver Coin from the Conquest to his own time. He was president of the Society of
Antiquaries at the time of his death, which happened on the 28th of June, 1754, at the
age of sixty-four. A few days before his death he was struck with a fit of the palsy,
and never spoke after this attack.

PORTRAIT OF MARTIN FOLKES, ESQ.

[Pg 78]

THE COCKPIT.

The scene is probably laid at Newmarket, and in this motley group of peers,—pick-pockets,—butchers,—jockies,—rat-catchers,—gentlemen,—gamblers
of every denomination,
Lord Albemarle Bertie, being the principal figure, is entitled to precedence. In
the March to Finchley, we see him an attendant at a boxing match; and here he is
president of a most respectable society assembled at a cockpit. What rendered his
lordship’s passion for amusements of this nature very singular, was his being totally
blind. In this place he is beset by seven steady friends, five of whom at the same
instant offer to bet with him on the event of the battle. One of them, a lineal descendant
of Filch, taking advantage of his blindness and negligence, endeavours to convey a bank
note, deposited in our dignified gambler’s hat, to his own pocket. Of this ungentlemanlike
attempt his lordship is apprised by a ragged post-boy, and an honest butcher: but
he is so much engaged in the pronunciation of those important words, Done! Done!
Done! Done! and the arrangement of his bets, that he cannot attend to their hints; and
it seems more than probable that the stock will be transferred, and the note negociated
in a few seconds.

A very curious group surround the old nobleman, who is adorned with a riband, a
star, and a pair of spectacles. The whole weight of an overgrown carpenter being laid
upon his shoulder, forces our illustrious personage upon a man beneath; who being thus
driven downward, falls upon a fourth, and the fourth, by the accumulated pressure of
this ponderous trio, composed of the upper and lower house, loses his balance, and
tumbling against the edge of the partition, his head is broke, and his wig, shook from
the seat of reason, falls into the cockpit.

A man adjoining enters into the spirit of the battle,—his whole soul is engaged.
From his distorted countenance, and clasped hands, we see that he feels every stroke
given to his favourite bird in his heart’s core,—ay, in his heart of hearts! A person at
the old peer’s left hand is likely to be a loser. Ill-humour, vexation, and disappointment
are painted in his countenance. The chimney-sweeper above, is the very quintessence
of affectation. He has all the airs and graces of a boarding-school miss. The
sanctified quaker adjoining, and the fellow beneath, who, by the way, is a very similar
figure to Captain Stab, in the Rake’s Progress, are finely contrasted.

A French marquis on the other side, astonished at this being called amusement, is
exclaiming Sauvages! Sauvages! Sauvages!—Engrossed by the scene, and opening
his snuff-box rather carelessly, its contents fall into the eyes of a man below, who,[Pg 79]
sneezing and swearing alternately, imprecates bitter curses on this devil’s dust, that
extorts from his inflamed eyes, “A sea of melting pearls, which some call tears.”

Adjoining is an old cripple, with a trumpet at his ear, and in this trumpet a person
in a bag-wig roars in a manner that cannot much gratify the auricular nerves of his
companions; but as for the object to whom the voice is directed, he seems totally insensible
to sounds, and if judgment can be formed from appearances, might very composedly
stand close to the clock of St. Paul’s Cathedral, when it was striking twelve.

The figure with a cock peeping out of a bag, is said to be intended for Jackson, a
jockey; the gravity of this experienced veteran, and the cool sedateness of a man registering
the wagers, are well opposed by the grinning woman behind, and the heated
impetuosity of a fellow, stripped to his shirt, throwing his coin upon the cockpit, and
offering to back Ginger against Pye for a guinea.

On the lower side, where there is only one tier of figures, a sort of an apothecary,
and a jockey, are stretching out their arms, and striking together the handles of their
whips, in token of a bet. An hiccuping votary of Bacchus, displaying a half-emptied
purse, is not likely to possess it long, for an adroit professor of legerdemain has taken
aim with a hooked stick, and by one slight jerk, will convey it to his own pocket. The
profession of a gentleman in a round wig is determined by a gibbet chalked upon his
coat. An enraged barber, who lifts up his stick in the corner, has probably been refused
payment of a wager, by the man at whom he is striking.

A cloud-capt philosopher at the top of the print, coolly smoking his pipe, unmoved by
this crash of matter, and wreck of property, must not be overlooked: neither should his
dog be neglected; for the dog, gravely resting his fore paws upon the partition, and
contemplating the company, seems more interested in the event of the battle than his
master.

Like the tremendous Gog, and terrific Magog, of Guildhall, stand the two cock-feeders;
a foot of each of these consequential purveyors is seen at the two extremities of
the pit.

As to the birds, whose attractive powers have drawn this admiring throng together,
they deserved earlier notice:

Having disposed of the substances, let us now attend to the shadow on the cockpit,
and this it seems is the reflection of a man drawn up to the ceiling in a basket, and
there suspended, as a punishment for having betted more money than he can pay.
Though suspended, he is not reclaimed; though exposed, not abashed; for in this
degrading situation he offers to stake his watch against money, in another wager on his
favourite champion.[Pg 80]

The decorations of this curious theatre are, a portrait of Nan Rawlins, and the King’s
arms.

In the margin at the bottom of the print is an oval, with a fighting cock, inscribed
ROYAL SPORT.

Of the characteristic distinctions in this heterogeneous assembly, it is not easy to speak
with sufficient praise. The chimney-sweeper’s absurd affectation sets the similar airs
of the Frenchman in a most ridiculous point of view. The old fellow with a trumpet
at his ear, has a degree of deafness that I never before saw delineated; he might have
lived in the same apartment with Xantippe, or slept comfortably in Alexander the copper-smith’s
first floor. As to the nobleman in the centre, in the language of the turf,
he is a mere pigeon; and the peer, with a star and garter, in the language of Cambridge,
we must class as—a mere quiz. The man sneezing,—you absolutely hear; and
the fellow stealing a bank note,—has all the outward and visible marks of a perfect and
accomplished pick-pocket; Mercury himself could not do that business in a more
masterly style.

Tyers tells us that “Pope, while living with his father at Chiswick, before he went
to Binfield, took great delight in cock-fighting, and laid out all his school-boy money,
and little perhaps it was, in buying fighting cocks.” Lord Orrery observes, “If
we may judge of Mr. Pope from his works, his chief aim was to be esteemed a
man of virtue.” When actions can be clearly ascertained, it is not necessary to
seek the mind’s construction in the writings: and we must regret being compelled
to believe that some of Mr. Pope’s actions, at the same time that they prove him
to be querulous and petulant, lead us to suspect that he was also envious, malignant,
and cruel. How far this will tend to confirm the assertion, that when a boy,
he was an amateur of this royal sport, I do, says Mr. Ireland, not pretend to decide:
but were a child, in whom I had any interest, cursed with such a propensity, my first
object would be to correct it: if that were impracticable, and he retained a fondness for
the cockpit, and the still more detestable amusement of Shrove Tuesday, I should hardly
dare to flatter myself that he could become a merciful man.—The subject has carried
me farther than I intended: I will, however, take the freedom of proposing one query
to the consideration of the clergy,—Might it not have a tendency to check that barbarous
spirit, which has more frequently its source in an early acquired habit, arising from
the prevalence of example, than in natural depravity, if every divine in Great Britain
were to preach at least one sermon every twelve months, on our universal insensibility
to the sufferings of the brute creation?

THE COCK PIT.

[Pg 81]

CAPTAIN THOMAS CORAM.

Captain Coram was born in the year 1668, bred to the sea, and passed the first
part of his life as master of a vessel trading to the colonies. While he resided in the
vicinity of Rotherhithe, his avocations obliging him to go early into the city and return
late, he frequently saw deserted infants exposed to the inclemencies of the seasons, and
through the indigence or cruelty of their parents left to casual relief, or untimely death.
This naturally excited his compassion, and led him to project the establishment of an
hospital for the reception of exposed and deserted young children; in which humane
design he laboured more than seventeen years, and at last, by his unwearied application,
obtained the royal charter, bearing date the 17th of October, 1739, for its incorporation.

He was highly instrumental in promoting another good design, viz. the procuring a
bounty upon naval stores imported from the colonies to Georgia and Nova Scotia. But
the charitable plan which he lived to make some progress in, though not to complete,
was a scheme for uniting the Indians in North America more closely with the British
Government, by an establishment for the education of Indian girls. Indeed he spent a
great part of his life in serving the public, and with so total a disregard to his private
interest, that in his old age he was himself supported by a pension of somewhat more
than a hundred pounds a year, raised for him at the solicitation of Sir Sampson Gideon
and Dr. Brocklesby, by the voluntary subscriptions of public-spirited persons, at the
head of whom was the Prince of Wales. On application being made to this venerable
and good old man, to know whether a subscription being opened for his benefit would
not offend him, he gave this noble answer: “I have not wasted the little wealth of
which I was formerly possessed in self-indulgence or vain expenses, and am not ashamed
to confess, that in this my old age I am poor.”

This singularly humane, persevering, and memorable man died at his lodgings near
Leicester-square, March 29, 1751, and was interred, pursuant to his own desire, in the
vault under the chapel of the Foundling Hospital, where an historic epitaph records his
virtues, as Hogarth’s portrait has preserved his honest countenance.

“The portrait which I painted with most pleasure,” says Hogarth, “and in which I
particularly wished to excel, was that of Captain Coram for the Foundling Hospital;[Pg 82]
and if I am so wretched an artist as my enemies assert, it is somewhat strange that this,
which was one of the first I painted the size of life, should stand the test of twenty years’
competition, and be generally thought the best portrait in the place, notwithstanding
the first painters in the kingdom exerted all their talents to vie with it.

“For the portrait of Mr. Garrick in Richard III. I was paid two hundred pounds,
(which was more than any English artist ever received for a single portrait,) and that too
by the sanction of several painters who had been previously consulted about the price,
which was not given without mature consideration.

“Notwithstanding all this, the current remark was, that portraits were not my
province; and I was tempted to abandon the only lucrative branch of my art, for the
practice brought the whole nest of phyzmongers on my back, where they buzzed like so
many hornets. All these people have their friends, whom they incessantly teach to call
my women harlots, my Essay on Beauty borrowed, and my composition and engraving
contemptible.

“This so much disgusted me, that I sometimes declared I would never paint another
portrait, and frequently refused when applied to; for I found by mortifying experience,
that whoever would succeed in this branch, must adopt the mode recommended in one
of Gay’s fables, and make divinities of all who sit to him. Whether or not this childish
affectation will ever be done away is a doubtful question; none of those who have
attempted to reform it have yet succeeded; nor, unless portrait painters in general
become more honest, and their customers less vain, is there much reason to expect they
ever will.”

Though thus in a state of warfare with his brother artists, he was occasionally
gratified by the praise of men whose judgment was universally acknowledged, and
whose sanction became a higher honour, from its being neither lightly nor indiscriminately
given.

CAPTAIN THOMAS CORAM.

[Pg 83]

THE COUNTRY INN YARD; OR, THE STAGE COACH.

E.

Among the writers of English novels, Henry Fielding holds the first rank; he was
the novelist of nature, and has described some scenes which bear a strong resemblance
to that which is here delineated. The artist, like the author, has taken truth for his
guide, and given such characters as are familiar to all our minds. The scene is a
country inn yard, at the time passengers are getting into a stage-coach, and an election
procession passing in the back-ground. Nothing can be better described; we become
of the party. The vulgar roar of our landlady is no less apparent than the grave,
insinuating, imposing countenance of mine host. Boniface solemnly protests that a bill
he is presenting to an old gentleman in a laced hat is extremely moderate. This does
not satisfy the paymaster, whose countenance shows that he considers it as a palpable
fraud, though the act against bribery, which he carries in his pocket, designates him to
be of a profession not very liable to suffer imposition. They are in general less sinned
against than sinning. An ancient lady, getting into the coach, is from her breadth a very
inconvenient companion in such a vehicle; but to atone for her rotundity, an old maid of
a spare appearance, and in a most grotesque habit, is advancing towards the steps.

A portly gentleman, with a sword and cane in one hand, is deaf to the entreaties of a
poor little deformed postilion, who solicits his customary fee. The old woman
smoking her short pipe in the basket, pays very little attention to what is passing around
her: cheered by the fumes of her tube, she lets the vanities of the world go their own[Pg 84]
way. Two passengers on the roof of the coach afford a good specimen of French and
English manners. Ben Block, of the Centurion, surveys the subject of La Grande
Monarque with ineffable contempt.

In the window are a very curious pair; one of them blowing a French-horn, and the
other endeavouring, but without effect, to smoke away a little sickness, which he feels
from the fumes of his last night’s punch. Beneath them is a traveller taking a tender
farewell of the chambermaid, who is not to be moved by the clangour of the great bar
bell, or the more thundering sound of her mistress’s voice.

The back-ground is crowded with a procession of active citizens; they have chaired a
figure with a horn-book, a bib, and a rattle, intended to represent Child, Lord Castlemain,
afterwards Lord Tylney, who, in a violent contest for the county of Essex, opposed
Sir Robert Abdy and Mr. Bramston. The horn-book, bib, and rattle are evidently
displayed as punningly allusive to his name.[4]

Some pains have been taken to discover in what part of Essex this scene is laid; but
from the many alterations made by rebuilding, removal, &c. it has not been positively
ascertained, though it is probably Chelmsford.

COUNTRY INN YARD.

[Pg 85]

INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS.

As our future welfare depends, in a great measure, on our own conduct in the outset
of life, and as we derive our best expectations of success from our own attention and
exertion, it may, with propriety, be asserted, that the good or ill-fortune of mankind is
chiefly attributable to their own early diligence or sloth; either of which becomes, through
habit in the early part of life, both familiar and natural. This Mr. Hogarth has made
appear in the following history of the two Apprentices, by representing a series of such
scenes as naturally result from a course of Industry or Idleness, and which he has
illustrated with such texts of scripture as teach us their analogy with holy writ. Now,
as example is far more convincing and persuasive than precept, these prints are,
undoubtedly, an excellent lesson to such young men as are brought up to business, by
laying before them the inevitable destruction that awaits the slothful, and the reward
that generally attends the diligent, both appropriately exemplified in the conduct of these
two fellow-‘prentices; where the one, by taking good courses, and pursuing those
purposes for which he was put apprentice, becomes a valuable man, and an ornament
to his country; the other, by giving way to idleness, naturally falls into poverty, and
ends fatally, as shown in the last of these instructive prints.

In the chamber of the city of London, where apprentices are bound and enrolled, the
twelve prints of this series are introduced, and, with great propriety, ornament the room.

PLATE I.

THE FELLOW-‘PRENTICES AT THEIR LOOMS.

The first print presents us with a noble and striking contrast in two apprentices at
the looms of their master, a silk-weaver of Spitalfields: in the one we observe a serene[Pg 86]
and open countenance, the distinguishing mark of innocence; and in the other a sullen,
down-cast look, the index of a corrupt mind and vicious heart. The industrious youth
is diligently employed at his work, and his thoughts taken up with the business he is
upon. His book, called the “‘Prentice’s Guide,” supposed to be given him for instruction,
lies open beside him, as if perused with care and attention. The employment of
the day seems his constant study; and the interest of his master his continual regard.
We are given to understand, also, by the ballads of the London ‘Prentice, Whittingham
the Mayor, &c. that hang behind him, that he lays out his pence on things that may
improve his mind, and enlighten his understanding. On the contrary, his fellow-‘prentice,
with worn-out coat and uncombed hair, overpowered with beer, indicated by
the half-gallon pot before him, is fallen asleep; and from the shuttle becoming the
plaything of the wanton kitten, we learn how he slumbers on, inattentive alike to his
own and his master’s interest. The ballad of Moll Flanders, on the wall behind him,
shows that the bent of his mind is towards that which is bad; and his book of instructions
lying torn and defaced upon the ground, manifests how regardless he is of any
thing tending to his future welfare.

INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS.

PLATE 1.

THE FELLOW ‘PRENTICES AT THEIR LOOMS.

[Pg 87]

PLATE II.

THE INDUSTRIOUS ‘PRENTICE PERFORMING THE DUTY OF A CHRISTIAN.

This plate displays our industrious young man attending divine service in the same
pew with his master’s daughter, where he shows every mark of decent and devout
attention.

Mr. Hogarth’s strong bias to burlesque was not to be checked by time or place. It
is not easy to imagine any thing more whimsically grotesque than the female Falstaff.
A fellow near her, emulating the deep-toned organ, and the man beneath, who, though
asleep, joins his sonorous tones in melodious chorus with the admirers of those two
pre-eminent poets, Hopkins and Sternhold. The pew-opener is a very prominent
and principal figure; two old women adjoining Miss West’s seat are so much in shadow,
that we are apt to overlook them: they are, however, all three making the dome ring
with their exertions.

The preacher, reader, and clerk, with many of the small figures in the gallery and
beneath, are truly ludicrous, and we regret their being on so reduced a scale, that they
are scarce perceptible to the naked eye. It was necessary that the artist should exhibit
a crowded congregation; but it must be acknowledged he has neglected the rules
of perspective. The print wants depth. In the countenance of Miss West and her
lover there is a resemblance. Their faces have not much expression; but this is atoned
for by a natural and pleasing simplicity. Character was not necessary.

INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS.

PLATE 2.

THE INDUSTRIOUS ‘PRENTICE PERFORMING THE DUTY OF A CHRISTIAN

[Pg 89]

PLATE III.

THE IDLE ‘PRENTICE AT PLAY IN THE CHURCH-YARD
DURING DIVINE SERVICE.

As a contrast to the preceding plate, of the industrious young man performing the
duties of a Christian, is this, representing the idle ‘prentice at play in the church-yard
during divine service. As an observance of religion is allowed to be the foundation of
virtue, so a neglect of religious duties has ever been acknowledged the forerunner of
every wickedness; the confession of malefactors at the place of execution being a melancholy
confirmation of this truth. Here we see him, while others are intent on the holy
service, transgressing the laws both of God and man, gambling on a tomb-stone with
the off-scouring of the people, the meanest of the human species, shoe-blacks, chimney-sweepers,
&c. for none but such would deign to be his companions. Their amusement
seems to be the favourite old English game of hustle-cap, and our idle and unprincipled
youth is endeavouring to cheat, by concealing some of the half-pence under the broad
brim of his hat. This is perceived by the shoe-black, and warmly resented by the
fellow with the black patch over his eye, who loudly insists on the hat’s being fairly
removed. The eager anxiety which marks these mean gamblers, is equal to that of
two peers playing for an estate. The latter could not have more solicitude for the turn
of a die which was to determine who was the proprietor of ten thousand acres, than is
displayed in the countenance of young Idle. Indeed, so callous is his heart, so wilfully
blind is he to every thing tending to his future welfare, that the tombs, those standing
monuments of mortality, cannot move him: even the new-dug grave, the sculls and
bones, those lively and awakening monitors, cannot rouse him from his sinful lethargy,
open his eyes, or pierce his heart with the least reflection; so hardened is he with vice,
and so intent on the pursuit of his evil course. The hand of the boy, employed upon[Pg 90]
his head, and that of the shoe-black, in his bosom, are expressive of filth and vermin; and
show that our hero is within a step of being overspread with the beggarly contagion. His
obstinate continuance in his course, until awakened by the blows of the watchful beadle,
point out to us, that “stripes are prepared for the backs of fools;” that disgrace and
infamy are the natural attendants of the slothful and the scorner; and that there are but
little hopes of his alteration, until he is overtaken in his iniquity, by the avenging hand
of Omnipotence, and feels with horror and amazement, the unexpected and inevitable
approach of death. Thus do the obstinate and incorrigible shut their ears against the
alarming calls of Providence, and sin away even the possibility of salvation.

The figures in this print are admirably grouped, and the countenances of the gamblers
and beadle strikingly characteristic.

INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS.

PLATE 3.

THE IDLE ‘PRENTICE AT PLAY IN THE CHURCH YARD

[Pg 91]

PLATE IV.

THE INDUSTRIOUS ‘PRENTICE A FAVOURITE AND INTRUSTED
BY HIS MASTER.

The industrious apprentice, by a discreet and steady conduct, attracts the notice of
his master, and becomes a favourite: accordingly, we behold him here (exquisitely continued
from the first and second prints) in the counting-house (with a distant view of the
looms, and of the quilsters, winding quills for the shuttles, from whence he was removed)
entrusted with the books, receiving and giving orders, (the general reward of honesty,
care, and diligence,) as appears from the delivery of some stuffs by a city porter, from
Blackwell-hall. By the keys in one hand and the bag in the other, we are shown that
he has behaved himself with so much prudence and discretion, and given such proofs of
fidelity, as to become the keeper of untold gold: the greatest mark of confidence he
could be favoured with. The integrity of his heart is visible in his face. The modesty
and tranquillity of his countenance tell us, that though the great trust reposed in him is
an addition to his happiness, yet, that he discharges his duty with such becoming diffidence
and care, as not to betray any of that pride which attends so great a promotion.
The familiar position of his master, leaning on his shoulder, is a further proof of his
esteem, declaring that he dwells, as it were, in his bosom, and possesses the utmost
share of his affection; circumstances that must sweeten even a state of servitude, and
make a pleasant and lasting impression on the mind. The head-piece to the London
Almanack, representing Industry taking Time by the fore-lock, is not the least of the
beauties in this plate, as it intimates the danger of delay, and advises us to make the
best use of time, whilst we have it in our power; nor will the position of the gloves, on[Pg 92]
the flap of the escritoire, be unobserved by a curious examiner, being expressive of that
union that subsists between an indulgent master and an industrious apprentice.

The strong-beer nose and pimpled face of the porter, though they have no
connexion with the moral of the piece, are a fine caricatura, and show
that our author let slip no opportunity of ridiculing the vices and
follies of the age, and particularly here, in laying before us the
strange infatuation of this class of people, who, because a good deal of
labour requires some extraordinary refreshment, will even drink to the
deprivation of their reason, and the destruction of their health. The
surly mastiff, keeping close to his master, and quarrelling with the
house-cat for admittance, though introduced to fill up the piece,
represents the faithfulness of these animals in general, and is no mean
emblem of the honesty and fidelity of the porter.

In this print, neither the cat, dog, nor the porter are well drawn, nor is much regard
paid to perspective; but the general design is carried on by such easy and natural
gradations, and the consequent success of an attentive conduct displayed in colours so
plain and perspicuous, that these little errors in execution will readily be overlooked.

INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS.

PLATE 4.

THE INDUSTRIOUS ‘PRENTICE A FAVOURITE, AND ENTRUSTED BY HIS MASTER.

[Pg 93]

PLATE V.

THE IDLE ‘PRENTICE TURNED AWAY AND SENT TO SEA.

Corrupted by sloth and contaminated by evil company, the idle apprentice, having
tired the patience of his master, is sent to sea, in the hope that the being removed from
the vices of the town, and the influence of his wicked companions, joined with the hardships
and perils of a seafaring life, might effect that reformation of which his friends
despaired while he continued on shore. See him then in the ship’s boat, accompanied
by his afflicted mother, making towards the vessel in which he is to embark. The
disposition of the different figures in the boat, and the expression of their countenances,
tell us plainly, that his evil pursuits and incorrigible wickedness are the subjects of
their discourse. The waterman significantly directs his attention to a figure on a gibbet,
as emblematical of his future fate, should he not turn from the evil of his ways; and
the boy shows him a cat-o’-nine-tails, expressive of the discipline that awaits him on
board of ship; these admonitions, however, he notices only by the application of his
fingers to his forehead, in the form of horns, jestingly telling them to look at Cuckold’s
Point, which they have just passed; he then throws his indentures into the water
with an air of contempt, that proves how little he is affected by his present condition,
and how little he regards the persuasions and tears of a fond mother, whose
heart seems ready to burst with grief at the fate of her darling son, and perhaps her
only stay; for her dress seems to intimate that she is a widow. Well then might
Solomon say, that “a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother;” for we here behold
her who had often rejoiced in the prospect of her child being a prop to her in the decline
of life, lamenting his depravity, and anticipating with horror the termination of his evil
course. One would naturally imagine, from the common course of things, that this
scene would have awakened his reflection, and been the means of softening the rugged[Pg 94]ness
of his disposition,—that some tender ideas would have crossed his mind and melted
the obduracy of his heart; but he continues hardened and callous to every admonition.

The group of figures composing this print has been copied by the ingenious Lavater;
with whose appropriate remarks we conclude our present description. “Observe,”
says this great analyst of the human countenance, “in the annexed group, that unnatural
wretch, with the infernal visage, insulting his supplicating mother; the predominant
character on the three other villain-faces, though all disfigured by effrontery, is cunning
and ironical malignity. Every face is a seal with this truth engraved on it: ‘Nothing
makes a man so ugly as vice; nothing renders the countenance so hideous as villainy.'”

INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS.

PLATE 5.

THE IDLE ‘PRENTICE TURNED AWAY AND SENT TO SEA.

[Pg 95]

PLATE VI.

THE INDUSTRIOUS ‘PRENTICE OUT OF HIS TIME, AND
MARRIED TO HIS MASTER’S DAUGHTER.

The reward of industry is success. Our prudent and attentive youth is now become
partner with his master, and married to his daughter. The sign, by which this circumstance
is intimated, was at first inscribed Goodchild and West. Some of Mr.
Hogarth’s city friends informing him that it was usual for the senior partner’s name to
precede, it was altered.

To show that plenty reigns in this mansion, a servant distributes the remains of the
table to a poor woman, and the bridegroom pays one of the drummers, who, according
to ancient custom, attend with their thundering gratulations the day after a wedding.
A performer on the bass viol, and a herd of butchers armed with marrow-bones and
cleavers, form an English concert. (Madame Pompadour, in her remarks on the
English taste for music, says, they are invariably fond of every thing that is full in
the mouth.) A cripple with the ballad of Jesse, or the Happy Pair, represents a man
known by the name of Philip in the Tub, who had visited Ireland and the United Provinces;
and, in the memory of some persons now living, was a general attendant at
weddings. From those votaries of Hymen who were honoured with his epithalamiums,
he received a small reward. To show that Messrs. West and Goodchild’s habitation
is near the monument, the base of that stately column appears in the back-ground. The
inscription which until lately graced this structure, used to remind every reader of
Pope’s lines,

The duke of Buckingham’s epigram on this magnificent pillar is not so generally
known:

A footman and butcher, at the opposite corner, compared with the other figures, are
gigantic; they might serve for the Gog and Magog of Guildhall.

It has been said that the thoughts in this print are trite, and the actions mean, which
must be in part acknowledged, but they are natural, and appropriate to the rank and
situation of the parties, and to the fashions of the time at which it was published.

INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS.

PLATE 6.

THE INDUSTRIOUS ‘PRENTICE OUT OF HIS TIME & MARRIED TO HIS MASTER’S DAUGHTER.

[Pg 97]

PLATE VII.

THE IDLE ‘PRENTICE RETURNED FROM SEA, AND IN A
GARRET WITH A COMMON PROSTITUTE.

The idle apprentice, as appears by this print, is advancing with rapid strides towards
his fate. We are to suppose him returned from sea after a long voyage; and to have
met with such correction abroad for his obstinacy, during his absence from England,
that though it was found insufficient to alter his disposition, yet it determined him to
pursue some other way of life; and what he entered on is here but too evident (from
the pistols by the bed-side, and the trinkets his companion is examining, in order to
strip him of) to be that of the highway. He is represented in a garret, with a common
prostitute, the partaker of his infamy, awaking, after a night spent in robbery and
plunder, from one of those broken slumbers which are ever the consequences of a life
of dishonesty and debauchery. Though the designs of Providence are visible in every
thing, yet they are never more conspicuous than in this,—that whatever these unhappy
wretches possess by wicked and illegal means, they seldom comfortably enjoy. In
this scene we have one of the finest pictures imaginable of the horrors of a guilty conscience.
Though the door is fastened in the strongest manner with a lock and two
bolts, and with the addition of some planks from the flooring, so as to make his retreat
as secure as possible; though he has attempted to drive away thought by the powerful
effects of spirituous liquors, plain from the glass and bottle upon the floor, still he is
not able to brave out his guilt, or steel his breast against reflection. Behold him roused
by the accidental circumstance of a cat’s coming down the chimney, and the falling of a
few bricks, which he believes to be the noise of his pursuers! Observe his starting up
in bed, and all the tortures of his mind imprinted in his face! He first stiffens into[Pg 98]
stone, then all his nerves and muscles relax, a cold sweat seizes him, his hair stands on
end, his teeth chatter, and dismay and horror stalk before his eyes. How different is
the countenance of his wretched bed-fellow! in whom unconcern and indifference to
every thing but the plunder are plainly apparent. She is looking at an ear-ring, which,
with two watches, an etwee, and a couple of rings, are spread upon the bed, as part of
last night’s plunder. The phials on the mantel-piece show that sickness and disease
are ever attendant on prostitution; and the beggarly appearance of the room, its
wretched furniture, the hole by way of window, (by the light of which she is examining
her valuable acquisition, and against which she had hung her old hoop-petticoat in
order to keep out the cold,) and the rat’s running across the floor, are just and sufficient
indications that misery and want are the constant companions of a guilty life.

INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS.

PLATE 7.

THE IDLE ‘PRENTICE RETURNED FROM SEA, AND IN THE A GARRET WITH A PROSTITUTE.

[Pg 99]

PLATE VIII.

THE INDUSTRIOUS ‘PRENTICE GROWN RICH, AND SHERIFF
OF LONDON.

From industry become opulent, from integrity and punctuality respectable, our young
merchant is now sheriff of London, and dining with the different companies in Guildhall.
A group on the left side are admirably characteristic; their whole souls seem
absorbed in the pleasures of the table. A divine, true to his cloth, swallows his soup
with the highest goût. Not less gratified is the gentleman palating a glass of wine.
The man in a black wig is a positive representative of famine; and the portly and oily
citizen, with a napkin tucked in his button-hole, has evidently burnt his mouth by
extreme eagerness.

The backs of those in the distance, behung with bags, major perukes, pinners, &c.
are most laughably ludicrous. Every person present is so attentive to business, that
one may fairly conclude they live to eat, rather than eat to live.

But though this must be admitted to be the case with this party, the following
instance of city temperance proves that there are some exceptions. When the Lord
Mayor, Sheriffs, Aldermen, Chamberlain, &c. of the city of London were once seated
round the table at a public and splendid dinner at Guildhall, Mr. Chamberlain Wilkes
lisped out, “Mr. Alderman B——, shall I help you to a plate of turtle, or a slice of the
haunch,—I am within reach of both, sir?” “Neither one nor t’other, I thank you,
Sir,” replied the Alderman, “I think I shall dine on the beans and bacon which are at
this end of the table.” “Mr. Alderman A——,” continued the Chamberlain, “which
would you choose, sir?” “Sir, I will not trouble you for either, for I believe I shall
follow the example of my brother B——, and dine on beans and bacon,” was the reply.
On this second refusal the old Chamberlain rose from his seat, and, with every mark of[Pg 100]
astonishment in his countenance, curled up the corners of his mouth, cast his eyes round
the table, and in a voice as loud and articulate as he was able, called “Silence!” which
being obtained, he thus addressed the pretorian magistrate, who sat in the Chair: “My
Lord Mayor, the wicked have accused us of intemperance, and branded us with the
imputation of gluttony; that they may be put to open shame, and their profane tongues
be from this day utterly silenced, I humbly move, that your Lordship command the
proper officer to record in our annals, that two Aldermen of the city of London prefer
beans and bacon to either turtle soup or venison.”

Notwithstanding all this, there are men, who, looking on the dark side, and perhaps
rendered splenetic, and soured by not being invited to these sumptuous entertainments,
have affected to fear, that their frequent repetition would have a tendency to produce a
famine, or at least to check the increase, if not extirpate the species, of those birds,
beasts, and fish, with which the tables of the rich are now so plentifully supplied. But
these half reasoners do not take into their calculation the number of gentlemen so
laudably associated for encouraging cattle being fed so fat that there is no lean left; or
that more ancient association, sanctioned and supported by severe acts of parliament,
for the preservation of the game. From the exertions of these and similar societies, we
may reasonably hope there is no occasion to dread any such calamity taking place;
though the Guildhall tables often groaning under such hecatombs as are recorded in the
following account, may make a man of weak nerves and strong digestion, shake his
head, and shudder a little. “On the 29th October, 1727, when George II. and Queen
Caroline honoured the city with their presence at Guildhall, there were 19 tables,
covered with 1075 dishes. The whole expense of this entertainment to the city was
4889l. 4s.“

To return to the print;—a self-sufficient and consequential beadle, reading the direction
of a letter to Francis Goodchild, Esq. Sheriff of London, has all the insolence of
office. The important and overbearing air of this dignified personage is well contrasted
by the humble simplicity of the straight-haired messenger behind the bar. The gallery
is well furnished with musicians busily employed in their vocation.

Besides a portrait of William the Third, and a judge, the hall is ornamented with
a full length of that illustrious hero Sir William Walworth, in commemoration of
whose valour the weapon with which he slew Wat Tyler was introduced into the city arms.

INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS.

PLATE 8.

THE INDUSTRIOUS ‘PRENTICE GROWN RICH, AND SHERIFF OF LONDON.

[Pg 101]

PLATE IX.

THE IDLE ‘PRENTICE BETRAYED BY A PROSTITUTE, AND
TAKEN IN A NIGHT CELLAR WITH HIS ACCOMPLICE.

From the picture of the reward of diligence, we return to take a further view of the
progress of sloth and infamy; by following the idle ‘prentice a step nearer to the
approach of his unhappy end. We see him in the third plate herding with the worst of
the human species, the very dregs of the people; one of his companions, at that time,
being a one-eyed wretch, who seemed hackneyed in the ways of vice. To break this vile
connexion he was sent to sea; but, no sooner did he return, than his wicked disposition
took its natural course, and every day he lived served only to habituate him to acts of
greater criminality. He presently discovered his old acquaintance, who, no doubt,
rejoiced to find him so ripe for mischief: with this worthless, abandoned fellow, he enters
into engagements of the worst kind, even those of robbery and murder. Thus blindly
will men sometimes run headlong to their own destruction.

About the time when these plates were first published, which was in the year 1747,
there was a noted house in Chick Lane, Smithfield, that went by the name of the Blood-Bowl
House, so called from the numerous scenes of blood that were almost daily carried
on there; it being a receptacle for prostitutes and thieves; where every species of delinquency
was practised; and where, indeed, there seldom passed a month without the
commission of some act of murder. To this subterraneous abode of iniquity (it being
a cellar) was our hero soon introduced; where he is now represented in company with
his accomplice, and others of the same stamp, having just committed a most horrid act
of barbarity, (that of killing a passer-by, and conveying him into a place under ground,
contrived for this purpose,) dividing among them the ill-gotten booty, which consists of[Pg 102]
two watches, a snuff-box, and some other trinkets. In the midst of this wickedness, he
is betrayed by his strumpet (a proof of the treachery of such wretches) into the hands
of the high constable and his attendants, who had, with better success than heretofore,
traced him to this wretched haunt. The back-ground of this print serves rather as a representation
of night-cellars in general, those infamous receptacles for the dissolute and
abandoned of both sexes, than a further illustration of our artist’s chief design; however,
as it was Mr. Hogarth’s intention, in the history before us, to encourage virtue and expose
vice, by placing the one in an amiable light, and exhibiting the other in its most heightened
scenes of wickedness and impiety, in hopes of deterring the half-depraved youth of
this metropolis, from even the possibility of the commission of such actions, by frightening
them from these abodes of wretchedness; as this was manifestly his intention, it
cannot be deemed a deviation from the subject. By the skirmish behind, the woman
without a nose, the scattered cards upon the floor, &c. we are shown that drunkenness
and riot, disease, prostitution, and ruin are the dreadful attendants of sloth, and the
general fore-runners of crimes of the deepest die; and by the halter suspended from the
ceiling, over the head of the sleeper, we are to learn two things—the indifference of
mankind, even in a state of danger, and the insecurity of guilt in every situation.

INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS.

PLATE 9.

THE IDLE ‘PRENTICE BETRAYED BY A PROSTITUTE.

[Pg 103]

PLATE X.

THE INDUSTRIOUS ‘PRENTICE ALDERMAN OF LONDON; THE
IDLE ONE BROUGHT BEFORE HIM, AND IMPEACHED BY HIS
ACCOMPLICE.

Imagine now this depraved and atrocious youth hand-cuffed, and dragged from his
wicked haunt, through the streets to a place of security, amidst the scorn and contempt
of a jeering populace; and thence brought before the sitting magistrate, (who, to heighten
the scene and support the contrast, is supposed to be his fellow-‘prentice, now chosen an
alderman,) in order to be dealt with according to law. See him then at last having run
his course of iniquity, fallen into the hands of justice, being betrayed by his accomplice;
a further proof of the perfidy of man, when even partners in vice are unfaithful to each
other. This is the only print among the set, excepting the first, where the two principal
characters are introduced; in which Mr. Hogarth has shown his great abilities, as well
in description, as in a particular attention to the uniformity and connexion of the whole.
He is now at the bar, with all the marks of guilt imprinted on his face. How, if his
fear will permit him to reflect, must he think on the happiness and exaltation of his
fellow-‘prentice on the one hand, and of his own misery and degradation on the other!
at one instant, he condemns the persuasions of his wicked companions; at another, his
own idleness and obstinacy: however, deeply smitten with his crime, he sues the magistrate,
upon his knees, for mercy, and pleads in his cause the former acquaintance that
subsisted between them, when they both dwelt beneath the same roof, and served the
same common master: but here was no room for lenity, murder was his crime, and[Pg 104]
death must be his punishment; the proofs are incontestable, and his mittimus is ordered,
which the clerk is drawing out. Let us next turn our thoughts upon the alderman, in
whose breast a struggle between mercy and justice is beautifully displayed. Who can
behold the magistrate, here, without praising the man? How fine is the painter’s thoughts
of reclining the head on one hand, while the other is extended to express the pity and
shame he feels that human nature should be so depraved! It is not the golden chain
or scarlet robe that constitutes the character, but the feelings of the heart. To show us
that application for favour, by the ignorant, is often idly made to the servants of justice,
who take upon themselves on that account a certain state and consequence, not inferior
to magistracy, the mother of our delinquent is represented in the greatest distress, as
making interest with the corpulent self-swoln constable, who with an unfeeling concern
seems to say, “Make yourself easy, for he must be hanged;” and to convince us that
bribery will even find its way into courts of judicature, here is a woman feeing the
swearing clerk, who has stuck his pen behind his ear that his hands might be both at
liberty; and how much more his attention is engaged to the money he is taking, than to
the administration of the oath, may be known from the ignorant, treacherous witness
being suffered to lay his left hand upon the book; strongly expressive of the sacrifice,
even of sacred things, to the inordinate thirst of gain.

From Newgate (the prison to which he was committed; where, during his continuance
he lay chained in a dismal cell, deprived of the cheerfulness of light, fed upon bread and
water, and left without a bed to rest on) the prisoner was removed to the bar of judgment,
and condemned to die by the laws of his country.

INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS.

PLATE 10.

THE INDUSTRIOUS ‘PRENTICE ALDERMAN OF LONDON. THE IDLE ONE IMPEACHED BEFORE HIM BY HIS ACCOMPLICE.

[Pg 105]

PLATE XI.

THE IDLE ‘PRENTICE EXECUTED AT TYBURN.

Thus, after a life of sloth, wretchedness, and vice, does our delinquent terminate his
career. Behold him, on the dreadful morn of execution, drawn in a cart (attended by
the sheriff’s officers on horseback, with his coffin behind him) through the public streets
to Tyburn, there to receive the just reward of his crimes,—a shameful ignominious
death. The ghastly appearance of his face, and the horror painted on his countenance,
plainly show the dreadful situation of his mind; which we must imagine to be agitated
with shame, remorse, confusion, and terror. The careless position of the Ordinary at
the coach window is intended to show how inattentive those appointed to that office are
of their duty, leaving it to others, which is excellently expressed by the itinerant preacher
in the cart, instructing from a book of Wesley’s. Mr. Hogarth has in this print,
digressing from the history and moral of the piece, taken an opportunity of giving us a
humorous representation of an execution, or a Tyburn Fair: such days being made
holidays, produce scenes of the greatest riot, disorder, and uproar; being generally
attended by hardened wretches, who go there, not so much to reflect upon their own
vices, as to commit those crimes which must in time inevitably bring them to the same
shameful end. In confirmation of this, see how earnestly one boy watches the motions
of the man selling his cakes, while he is picking his pocket; and another waiting to
receive the booty! We have here interspersed before us a deal of low humour, but
such as is common on occasions like this. In one place we observe an old bawd turning
up her eyes and drinking a glass of gin, the very picture of hypocrisy; and a man indecently
helping up a girl into the same cart; in another, a soldier sunk up to his knees[Pg 106]
in a bog, and two boys laughing at him, are well imagined. Here we see one almost
squeezed to death among the horses; there, another trampled on by the mob. In one
part is a girl tearing the face of a boy for oversetting her barrow; in another, a woman
beating a fellow for throwing down her child. Here we see a man flinging a dog
among the crowd by the tail; there a woman crying the dying speech of Thomas Idle,
printed the day before his execution; and many other things too minute to be pointed
out: two, however, we must not omit taking notice of, one of which is the letting off
a pigeon, bred at the gaol, fly from the gallery, which hastes directly home; an old
custom, to give an early notice to the keeper and others, of the turning off or death of
the criminal; and that of the executioner smoking his pipe at the top of the gallows,
whose position of indifference betrays an unconcern that nothing can reconcile with the
shocking spectacle, but that of use having rendered his wretched office familiar to him;
whilst it declares a truth, which every character in this plate seems to confirm, that a
sad and distressful object loses its power of affecting by being frequently seen.

INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS.

PLATE 11.

THE IDLE ‘PRENTICE EXECUTED AT TYBURN.

[Pg 107]

PLATE XII.

THE INDUSTRIOUS ‘PRENTICE LORD MAYOR OF LONDON.

Having seen the ignominious end of the idle apprentice, nothing remains but to
represent the completion of the other’s happiness; who is now exalted to the highest
honour, that of Lord Mayor of London; the greatest reward that ancient and noble city
can bestow on diligence and integrity. Our artist has here, as in the last plate, given
a loose to his humour, in representing more of the low part of the Lord Mayor’s show
than the magnificent; yet the honour done the city, by the presence of the Prince and
Princess of Wales, is not forgotten. The variety of comic characters in this print serves
to show what generally passes on such public processions as these, when the people
collect to gratify their childish curiosity, and indulge their wanton disposition, or natural
love of riot. The front of this plate exhibits the oversetting of a board, on which some
girls had stood, and represents them sprawling upon the ground; on the left, at the
back of the scaffold, is a fellow saluting a fair nymph, and another enjoying the joke:
near him is a blind man straggled in among the crowd, and joining in the general
halloo: before him is a militia-man, so completely intoxicated as not to know what he
is doing; a figure of infinite humour. Though Mr. Hogarth has here marked out two
or three particular things, yet his chief intention was to ridicule the city militia, which
was at this period composed of undisciplined men, of all ages, sizes, and height; some
fat, some lean, some tall, some short, some crooked, some lame, and in general so unused
to muskets, that they knew not how to carry them. One, we observe, is firing
his piece and turning his head another way, at whom the man above is laughing, and
at which the child is frightened. The boy on the right, crying, “A full and true
account of the ghost of Thomas Idle,” which is supposed to have appeared to the Mayor,[Pg 108]
preserves the connexion of the whole work. The most obtrusive figure in his Lordship’s
coach is Mr. Swordbearer, in a cap like a reversed saucepan, which this great
officer wears on these grand occasions. The company of journeymen butchers, with
their marrow-bones and cleavers, appear to be the most active, and are by far the most
noisy of any who grace this solemnity. Numberless spectators, upon every house and
at every window, dart their desiring eyes on the procession; so great indeed was the
interest taken by the good citizens of London in these civic processions that, formerly, it
was usual in a London lease to insert a clause, giving a right to the landlord and his
friends to stand in the balcony, during the time of “the shows or pastimes, upon the
day commonly called the Lord Mayor’s Day.”

Thus have we seen, by a series of events, the prosperity of the one and the downfall
of the other; the riches and honour that crown the head of industry, and the ignominy
and destruction that await the slothful. After this it would be unnecessary to say
which is the most eligible path to tread. Lay the roads but open to the view, and the
traveller will take the right of course; give but the boy this history to peruse, and his
future welfare is almost certain.

INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS.

PLATE 12.

THE INDUSTRIOUS ‘PRENTICE LORD MAYOR OF LONDON

[Pg 109]

SOUTHWARK FAIR.

The subject of the plate under consideration is that of the Borough Fair; a fair
held some time since in the Borough of Southwark, though now suppressed. This fair
was attended, generally, by the inhabitants of town and country, and, therefore, was one
that afforded great variety; especially as, before its suppression, it was devoted to every
thing loose and irregular. A view of the scene, of which the following print is a
faithful representation, will affirm this truth.

The principal view upon the left represents the fall of a scaffold, on which was
assembled a strolling company, pointed out, by the paper lantern hanging in front, to
be that belonging to Cibber and Bullock, ready dressed to exhibit “The Fall of
Bajazet.” Here we see merry-andrews, monkeys, queens and emperors, sinking in one
general confusion; and, that the crash may appear the greater, the stand beneath is
humorously supposed to consist of earthenware and china. Notwithstanding this fatal
overthrow, few below are seen to notice it; witness the boys and woman gambling at
the box and dice, the upright monkey, and the little bag-piper dancing his wooden
figures. Above this scaffold hangs a painting, the subject of which is the stage mutiny;
whose figures are as follow:—On one side is Pistol, (strutting and crying out, “Pistol’s
alive,”) Falstaff, Justice Shallow, and many other characters of Shakspeare. On the
other, the manager bearing in his hand a paper, on which is written, “it cost 6000l.”
a scene-painter, who has laid his brushes aside, and taken up a cudgel; and a woman
holding an ensign, bearing the words, “We’ll starve ’em out.” In the corner is a
man, quiet and snug, hugging a bag of money, laughing at the folly of the rest; and
behind, a monkey, perched upon a sign iron, supposed to be that of the Rose Tavern in
Drury-lane, squeaking out, “I am a gentleman.” These paintings are in general
designed to show what is exhibited within; but this alludes to a dispute that arose at
the time when this print was published, which was in the year 1733, between the
players and the patentee of Drury-lane Theatre, when young Cibber, the son of the[Pg 110]
Laureate, was at the head of the faction. Above, on one side, is an equilibrist swinging
on a slack rope; and on the other, a man flying from the tower to the ground, by means
of a groove fastened to his breast, slipping over a line strained from one place to the
other. At the back of this plate is Lee and Harper’s great booth, where, by the
picture of the wooden horse, we are told, is represented “The Siege of Troy.” The
next paintings consist of the fall of Adam and Eve, and a scene in Punch’s opera.
Beneath is a mountebank, exalted on a stage, eating fire to attract the public attention;
while his merry-andrew behind is distributing his medicines. Further back is a shift
and hat, carried upon poles, designed as prizes for the best runner or wrestler. In front
is a group of strollers parading the fair, in order to collect an audience for their next
exhibition; in which is a female drummer, at that time well known, and remarked for
her beauty, which we observe has caught the eye of two countrymen, the one old, the
other young. Behind these men is a buskined hero, beset by a Marshalsea Court
officer and his follower. To the right is a Savoyard exhibiting her farthing show; and
behind, a player at back sword riding a blind horse round the fair triumphantly, in all
the boast of self-important heroism, affecting terror in his countenance, glorying in his
scars, and challenging the world to open combat: a folly for which the English were
remarkable. To this man a fellow is directing the attention of a country gentleman,
while he robs him of his handkerchief. Next him is an artful villain decoying a couple
of unthinking country girls to their ruin. Further back is a man kissing a wench in
the crowd; and above, a juggler performing some dexterity of hand. Indeed it would
be tedious to enter into an enumeration of the various matter of this plate; it is sufficient
to remark that it presents us with an endless collection of spirited and laughable characters,
in which is strikingly portrayed the character of the times.

SOUTHWARK FAIR.

[Pg 111]

GARRICK IN THE CHARACTER OF RICHARD III.

Such is the exclamation of Richard, and such is the disposition of his mind at the
moment of this delineation. The lamp, diffusing a dim religious light through the
tent, the crucifix placed at his head, the crown, and unsheathed sword at his hand, and
the armour lying on the ground, are judicious and appropriate accompaniments.
Those who are acquainted with this prince’s history, need not be told that he was
naturally bold, courageous, and enterprising; that when business called him to the
field, he shook off every degree of indulgence, and applied his mind to the management
of his affairs. This may account for his being stripped no otherwise than of his armour,
having retired to his tent in order to repose himself upon his bed, and lessen the fatigues
of the preceding day. See him then hastily rising, at dead of night, in the utmost
horror from his own thoughts, being terrified in his sleep by the dreadful phantoms of
an affrighted imagination, seizing on his sword, by way of defence against the foe his
disordered fancy presents to him. So great is his agitation, that every nerve and
muscle is in action, and even the ring is forced from his finger. When the heart is
affected, how great is its influence on the human frame!—it communicates its sensibility
to the extreme parts of the body, from the centre to the circumference; as distant
water is put in motion by circles, spreading from the place of its disturbance. The
paper on the floor containing these words,

brought him by the Duke of Norfolk, saying he found it in his tent, and lying here
unattended to, as a mark of contempt, plainly informs us that however a man may[Pg 112]
attempt to steel himself against the arrows of conscience, still they will find a way to
his breast, and shake the sinner even in his greatest security. And indeed we cannot
wonder, when we reflect on the many murders he was guilty of, deserving the severest
punishment; for Providence has wisely ordained that sin should be its own tormentor,
otherwise, in many cases, the offender would, in this life, escape unpunished, and the
design of heaven be frustrated. But Richard, though he reached a throne, and by that
means was exempt from the sufferings of the subject, yet could not divest himself of
his nature, but was forced to give way to the workings of the heart, and bear the
tortures of a distracted mind. The expression in his face is a master-piece of
execution, and was a great compliment paid by Mr. Hogarth to his friend Garrick; yet
not unmerited, as all that have seen him in the part must acknowledge the greatness of
the actor. The figures in the distance, two of whom,

are properly introduced, and highly descriptive.

The tents of Richmond are so near

Considered as a whole, the composition is simple, striking, and original, and the
figures well drawn. The whole moral tenour of the piece informs us that conscience is
armed with a thousand stings, from which royalty itself is not secure; that of all
tormentors, reflection is the worst; that crowns and sceptres are baubles, compared with
self-approbation; and that nought is productive of solid happiness, but inward peace
and serenity of mind.

GARRICK.

In the Character of Richard the Third.

[Pg 113]

THE INVASION; OR, FRANCE AND ENGLAND.

In the two following designs, Mr. Hogarth has displayed that partiality for his own
country and contempt for France, which formed a strong trait in his character. He
neither forgot nor forgave the insults he suffered at Calais, though he did not recollect
that this treatment originated in his own ill humour, which threw a sombre shade over
every object that presented itself. Having early imbibed the vulgar prejudice that
one Englishman was a match for four Frenchmen, he thought it would be doing his
country a service to prove the position. How far it is either useful or politic to depreciate
the power, or degrade the character of that people with whom we are to contend,
is a question which does not come within the plan of this work. In some cases it may
create confidence, but in others lead to the indulgence of that negligent security by
which armies have been slaughtered, provinces depopulated, and kingdoms changed
their rulers.

PLATE I.

FRANCE.

The scenes of all Mr. Hogarth’s prints, except The Gate of Calais, and that now
under consideration, are laid in England. In this, having quitted his own country, he
seems to think himself out of the reach of the critics, and, in delineating a Frenchman,
at liberty to depart from nature, and sport in the fairy regions of caricature. Were[Pg 114]
these Gallic soldiers naked, each of them would appear like a forked radish, with a
head fantastically carved upon it with a knife: so forlorn! that to any thick sight he
would be invisible. To see this miserable woe-begone refuse of the army, who look
like a group detached from the main body and put on the sick list, embarking to
conquer a neighbouring kingdom, is ridiculous enough, and at the time of publication
must have had great effect. The artist seemed sensible that it was necessary to account
for the unsubstantial appearance of these shadows of men, and has hinted at their want
of solid food, in the bare bones of beef hung up in the window, the inscription on the
alehouse sign, “Soup maigre au Sabot Royal,” and the spider-like officer roasting
four frogs which he has impaled upon his sword. Such light and airy diet is whimsically
opposed by the motto on the standard, which two of the most valorous of this
ghastly troop are hailing with grim delight and loud exultation. It is, indeed, an
attractive motto, and well calculated to inspire this famishing company with courage:—”Vengeance,
avec la bonne Bière, et bon bœuf d’Angleterre.” However meagre the
military, the church militant is in no danger of starving. The portly friar is neither
emaciated by fasting nor weakened by penance. Anticipating the glory of extirpating
heresy, he is feeling the sharp edge of an axe, to be employed in the decollation of the
enemies to the true faith. A sledge is laden with whips, wheels, ropes, chains, gibbets,
and other inquisitorial engines of torture, which are admirably calculated for the propagation
of a religion that was established in meekness and mercy, and inculcates
universal charity and forbearance. On the same sledge is an image of St. Anthony,
accompanied by his pig, and the plan of a monastery to be built at Black Friars.

In the back-ground are a troop of soldiers so averse to this English expedition, that
their serjeant is obliged to goad them forward with his halberd. To intimate that agriculture
suffers by the invasion having engaged the masculine inhabitants, two women,
ploughing a sterile promontory in the distance, complete this catalogue of wretchedness,
misery, and famine.

FRANCE.

[Pg 115]

PLATE II.

ENGLAND.

From the unpropitious regions of France our scene changes to the fertile fields of
England.

Instead of the forlorn and famished party who were represented in the last plate, we
here see a company of well-fed and high-spirited Britons, marked with all the hardihood
of ancient times, and eager to defend their country.

In the first group a young peasant, who aspires to a niche in the temple of Fame,
preferring the service of Mars to that of Ceres, and the dignified appellation of soldier
to the plebeian name of farmer, offers to enlist. Standing with his back against the
halberd to ascertain his height, and, finding he is rather under the mark, he endeavours
to reach it by rising on tiptoe. This artifice, to which he is impelled by towering
ambition, the serjeant seems disposed to connive at—and the serjeant is a hero, and a
great man in his way; “your hero always must be tall, you know.”

To evince that the polite arts were then in a flourishing state, and cultivated by more
than the immediate professors, a gentleman artist, who to common eyes must pass for a
grenadier, is making a caricature of le grand monarque, with a label from his mouth
worthy the speaker and worthy observation, “You take a my fine ships; you be de
pirate; you be de teef: me send my grand armies, and hang you all.” The action is[Pg 116]
suited to the word, for with his left hand this most Christian potentate grasps his sword,
and in his right poises a gibbet. The figure and motto united produce a roar of approbation
from the soldier and sailor, who are criticising the work. It is so natural that
the Helen and Briseis of the camp contemplate the performance with apparent delight,
and, while one of them with her apron measures the breadth of this herculean painter’s
shoulders, the other, to show that the performance has some point, places her forefinger
against the prongs of a fork. The little fifer, playing that animated and inspiring tune,
“God save the King,” is an old acquaintance: we recollect him in the March to
Finchley. In the back-ground is a serjeant, teaching a company of young recruits
their manual exercise.

This military meeting is held at the sign of the Gallant Duke of Cumberland, who
is mounted upon a prancing charger,

Underneath is inscribed “Roast and Boiled every day,” which, with the beef and
beverage upon the table, forms a fine contrast to the soup maigre, bare bones, and
roasted frogs, in the last print. The bottle painted on the wall, foaming with liquor,
which, impatient of imprisonment, has burst its cerements, must be an irresistible
invitation to a thirsty traveller. The soldier’s sword laid upon the round of beef, and
the sailor’s pistol on the vessel containing the ale, intimate that these great bulwarks
of our island are as tenacious of their beef and beer, as of their religion and liberty.

These two plates were published in 1756; but in the London Chronicle for October
20, 1759, is the following advertisement: “This day are republished, Two prints
designed and etched by William Hogarth, one representing the preparations on the
French coast for an intended invasion; the other, a view of the preparations making
in England to oppose the wicked designs of our enemies; proper to be stuck up in
public places, both in town and country, at this juncture.”

The verses which were inserted under each print, and subjoined to this account, are,
it must be acknowledged, coarse enough. They were, however, written by David
Garrick.

ENGLAND.

Transcriber’s Note.

The following words were inconsistently hyphenated in the original text:

• down-cast / downcast
• footboy / foot-boy
• fore-finger / forefinger
• half-pence / halfpence

The orthography of the original text has been preserved. In particular
the following words are as they appear in the original:

• antichamber
• aukwardly
• corruscations
• corse
• Govent
• Martin Fowkes
• negociated
• pannel
• plaistering
• pourtrayed
• sculls
• stupifies
• tenour
• vender

The following words were inconsistently accented in the original text:

• a-la-mode / à-la-mode
• degagée / dégagée