Part 10

These are heavy charges; but mark how a plain tale shall put them down. From the effects which are described as likely to result from this most seditious print, we are tempted to think it must have been designed, etched, engraved, printed off, and dispersed with so much expedition as to arrive in Scotland before the Guards whom it holds up to ridicule; for one of its designs was "to tell the Scots, in his way, how little the Guards were to be feared, and that they might safely advance." The march was in 1746, and the publication of this print in 1750; therefore[134] it could not have these most direful and dangerous effects! That he dedicated it to the King of Prussia, as an encourager of arts, is true; but this dedication was not inserted until another had been rejected, because it was misunderstood by the King of England; and George the Second, with all his virtues, was neither a judge of humour nor an encourager of the arts. These premises granted, I think we may fairly draw this conclusion: Had old Hogarth been a citizen of old Rome, or a member of any of the Grecian States, and published such a representation of his own times, he would not have been punished as a profligate citizen: he would neither have been flagellated, impaled, decollated, nor thrown from the Tarpeian rock; but his print would have been laughed at by every member of the State who had the least ray of humour, though--as in some cases that we have seen--the length of a grave orator's beard might hide the risible emotions of his muscles, and the amplitude of his robe conceal the shaking of his sides.

To detail the conclusion of this paper, about the dishonour of his being appointed pannel-painter to the King, never suffered to caricature any of the royal family, etc., is scarcely necessary. If the appointment was less respectable than his merits demanded, the disgrace did not fall upon him; but be it remarked, that the office was afterwards held by Sir Joshua Reynolds; and however elevated his taste, however superior his talents, his genius was long distinguished and admired by the public before he had the honour of taking the portraits of their Majesties.

Trusting that Hogarth's own works will sufficiently ascertain his character, I shall not attempt his further vindication, but proceed to the print.

A globe, which must here be considered as the world, though it appears to be no more than a tavern sign, is represented on fire, and Mr. Pitt, exalted on stilts, which are held by the surrounding multitude, blowing up the flames with a pair of large bellows.[135] His attendants are composed of butchers, with marrow-bones and cleavers, an hallooing mob armed with clubs, and a trio of London aldermen in the act of adoration. From the neck of this idol of the populace is suspended a millstone, on which is inscribed £3000 per annum, allusive to his pension, and intimating that so ponderous a load must in time sink his popularity.[136] While he is thus increasing the conflagration, a number of Highlanders,[137] grenadiers, sailors, etc., are busily working a fire-engine to extinguish it. The pipe is guided by a Union Office fireman at the top. Defended by an iron cap, and decorated with a badge inscribed "G. R.," this intrepid engineer pays no regard to three streams of water which are furiously driven at his rear from the windows of the Temple Coffeehouse. The Liliputian engines, through which these tiny showers descend, are directed by a nobleman and two garretteers. An inscription over the door determines the title of the former, who is delineated without features: the two gentlemen in the attic were, I believe, originally intended for Mr. Wilkes and Mr. Churchill, but previous to publication the faces were altered.[138] A surplice is still left on the figure over Lord Temple, and the Colonel's coat is lapelled. Upon a sign-iron beneath them is a slaughterman,[139] with a lighted candle in his hat, and a large knife in his pocket; thus intimating that he is ready either to fire a city or murder a citizen. Mounted to the situation he now occupies by a ladder, he is drawing up a sign of the Patriot's Arms, and in this good work is assisted by two strong-sinewed coadjutors, who are dragging the ropes to which it is suspended. The blazonry is four clenched fists in opposition to each other; the date, 1762.[140] This curious delineation will be placed in the front of the Temple Coffeehouse, for _the world to wonder at_. The Newcastle Arms, nearly broken down, bears allusion to the Duke's resignation.[141] A Highlander, carrying two buckets of water from the fire-plug to the engine, is likely to be impeded by a fellow with a wheelbarrow full of political papers, which are intended to feed the flames. This type of the distressed poet, said to be intended as a representative of the Duke of Newcastle, endeavours to overset the Scot, and burst the engine-pipe by the same operation.

Wholly engrossed by avarice, the crafty Dutchman, with a hand in each pocket and a pipe in his mouth, sits on his bales of goods, and laughs at the destruction raging around him. A fox, fair emblem of his cunning, is creeping out of a kennel beneath.

Close to him is a patriotic trumpeter, blowing the spirit-stirring tube, and pointing to a show-cloth, on which is painted a wild Indian. By the magisterial robe in which this trumpeter is arrayed, and the city arms on the banner of his windy instrument, he is decisively intended to personify Mr. Alderman Beckford, thrice Lord Mayor of London. Beneath the savage to whom he points, is written, "Alive from America." This grotesque figure is placed before two tobacco hogsheads, grasps in each hand a purse inscribed "£1000," and has tied round him, so as to form a sort of Indian dress, eight or ten little bags equally well filled. His countenance leads us to judge that he delights in the devastation by which he is a gainer; and seems to imply that our American brethren, like our Amsterdam allies, were eager to furnish friend or foe with the product of their respective countries. It may further intimate the Alderman's immense riches, and that a leading article of his trade was tobacco.

A table clock, inscribed "Airs by Harrington," representing a company of soldiers in a regular march, has an evident allusion to the military doctrine of man being a machine. "The Norfolk jig, G. T. _fecit_," hints at the Norfolk Militia, and Mr. George Townshend, who paid unremitting attention to the discipline and appearance of the corps raised in Norfolk.

"The Post Office," painted on a cracked board fastened against the wall, may possibly signify the office of Postmaster-General being then divided.[142]

In the opposite corner of the print, surrounded by his miserable and famished subjects, sits the heroic Frederick of Prussia. Regardless of their distress, and unmoved by their cries, tears, and execrations--like Nero, who fiddled while Rome burnt--he is lost to every feeling, except those which arise from the fine tones of his Cremona. The effects resulting from his insatiable thirst of glory are not confined to his own subjects. Fired by vaulting ambition, he scatters destruction through surrounding states; depopulates provinces, and lays waste kingdoms, to prove himself--a philosopher.

How far the rest of the figures in this group may refer to particular persons or nations, I cannot determine. The female, with clasped hands and eyes raised to heaven, has been supposed to be intended for the Empress Queen; a venerable matron, stealing away with a trunk under her arm, for the late Empress of Russia, Frederick's most inveterate enemy, who ended her earthly reign on the 2d of January 1762. They may be so intended, though I must acknowledge I do not discover anything which will wholly establish the supposition, but am more inclined to consider them as merely exemplifying the horrors of war.

The _fleur-de-lis_ hung from one of the houses in flames, and the black eagle from the other, sufficiently indicate the powers intended to be pointed out. The sign of the Salutation alludes to the treaty between France and Spain, for the dexter figure is Louis Baboon; and the sinister, Lord Strut.

The flames rage with so much violence as to prevent the fluttering dove from alighting on any of the buildings; notwithstanding which, this bird of peace, with an olive branch, hovers over them in the midst of ascending smoke.

The exact point of time is determined by the waggon, inscribed "Hermione," in the background.[143]

Such is my general idea of the preceding plate;[144] there may be those who will discover many things which I do not see, and which possibly never entered into the contemplation of the artist. As the whole alludes to the politics of his own day, all the characters introduced were his contemporaries, and several of them had been his intimate friends, he might intentionally leave some parts obscure;[145] or conceiving his meaning sufficiently obvious to those who lived at the time, forget that it would become impervious to posterity.

I have before observed that in allegory he was not happy; and the dissimilar combinations here brought together are a proof of the assertion. Soldiers and sailors, whose business it is to increase the flames of war, carrying water to extinguish them, is not quite consonant to our general ideas of their dispositions. Highlanders, being universally considered as the soldiers of Europe, make but an awkward appearance in the character of peacemakers.

A sign of the globe on fire, flames bursting out of the Globe Tavern and three other buildings, with each an alehouse sign, to explain what nations are meant, borders upon the bathos. Another nation personified by the sovereign fiddling to his expiring subjects, is not a bad thought, but here it is incongruous. It has not that general unison with the other parts of the picture which either writing or painting demands. Separated from the accompaniments, this group might have made a good print; with the Globe Tavern, the Temple Coffeehouse, the garretteers, and the aldermen, it does not assimilate.

My last remark I shall take the liberty of borrowing from Mr. Wilkes, for in this one point I have the honour of agreeing with him: "The print is too much crowded with figures."

PLATE II.

"The Times are out of joint."

A painter engaging in the political disputes of his day, is in a situation similar to a gentleman beginning to rebuild a family mansion. The pencil of one, dipped in these troubled streams, or the fingers of the other but touch-brick and mortar,--it is not in the tables of De Moivre to calculate the conclusion of their labours. Each of them sets out upon a certain plan, determines that he will go so far, and no further: but the gentleman is induced to make a first addition to his original plan, because it will be more convenient; a second, because it will be _magnifique_; and a third and fourth _must be_, because without them the building will not be uniform.

The artist engraves a political print, which raises an host of enemies, who buzz about him like a nest of disturbed hornets. To them, wording not being the painter's province, he replies by a second print, which produces a second volume of abuse; "another and another still succeeds," and he must either sink under this load of obloquy, or devote the residue of his days to the defence of his character. Such at least was the political progress of Hogarth.

By his first print of "The Times" he roused two very formidable adversaries, and they treated him with as much ceremony as two deputies from the Bow Street magistrates would an incendiary or an assassin. They did not consider him as a man whose conduct it was needful to investigate, or whose opinions it was necessary to confute, but as a criminal, whose aggravated crimes had outraged every law of society, and whom they would therefore drag to the place of execution. To defend himself from these furious assailants, he had no shield but a copperplate, no weapons but a pencil and a burin. The use he made of them may be seen in the two last prints; but though this was engraved during the time of the contest, it was not published while he lived. Whether a sudden change in politics, a supposed ambiguity in part of his design, or the advice of judicious or timid friends, induced him to suppress his work, cannot now be ascertained; but whatever were the reasons, his widow's respect for his memory induced her to adopt the same conduct. She retained a reverence for even the dust of her husband, and dreaded its being raked from the sepulchre where he had been quietly inurned, mixed with the poisonous aconite of party, and by sacrilegious hands cast into the agitated cauldron of politics. If we add to this the specimen of political candour which she had experienced in her own person, can we wonder that she cautiously avoided whatever could be tortured into a provocation to the renewal of hostilities? From these considerations she never suffered more than one impression to be taken, and that was struck off at the earnest request of Lord Exeter.

In withholding this plate from the public she acted prudently; in attempting to describe it, I may be thought to act otherwise. To enter into a discrimination of characters who now live, "or step upon ashes which are not yet cold," is liable to invidious construction. Let it be remembered, that though I have endeavoured to point out the characters delineated by Hogarth, it does not follow that my explanation will always be right.

Though several of the figures are marked in a style so obtrusive that they cannot be mistaken, there are others where I can only guess at the originals. From those who were engaged in the politics of that day I have sought information, but their communications have been neither important nor consistent with each other. They generally ended in an acknowledgment, that "in thirty years they had forgotten much which they once knew, and which, if now recollected, would materially elucidate." To this was added what I am compelled to admit, that parts of the print are obscure. I have before observed that neither politics nor allegory were Hogarth's _forte_, and this delineation was made under the impression of resentment.

The exact time of its being engraved I cannot positively ascertain, but conjecture it must have been some time in the year 1762. A small part of the sky was left unfinished, and in that state still remains, as the present proprietors would not suffer any other engraver to draw a line on the copperplate of Hogarth.

On a pedestal in the centre of the print is a statue of the present King in his coronation robes, inscribed "A Ramsay delt;" his right hand is placed on his side, and the left leans upon a plummet, which seems to have been Mr. Ramsay's guide in the delineation; for the drapery is in squares, decided as the ground glass stopper of a decanter, and the whole figure is composed of straight lines. Of these upright figures Hogarth had given his opinion in the _Analysis_;[146] and Mr. Ramsay being portrait-painter to his Majesty, a post Hogarth thought himself better qualified to fill, he took this opportunity of throwing his manner into ridicule.[147] The head of a lion in _bas relief_ with a leaden pipe in his mouth,[148] being on the front of the pedestal, intimates its connection with a reservoir; and the royal statue on the top denotes this to be the fountain of honour. The able-bodied figure turning a fire-plug is evidently intended for Lord Bute; his employment seems to intimate that he has the power of accelerating or retarding the stream of royal bounty, and wheresoever he willeth it shall flow, there it floweth. A baronial escutcheon, keys, stars, coronets, croziers, mitres, maces, lie close to the pedestal, around which are placed a number of garden pots with shrubs. Two rose trees most plentifully sprinkled by streams from the fountain of favour have been originally inscribed "James III.;" but James being now blotted out, George is put above it, and by a little hyphen beneath the lowest figure, marked as belonging to the lowest line. Three orange trees have the initials "G. R.," and beneath the letters is inscribed "Republican." These also receive drops of favour; but a large laurel planted in a capacious vase, raised upon the base of a pillar, and inscribed "Culloden," is watered by the dew of heaven,--by a copious shower poured from the urn of Aquarius. Besides these six flourishing plants, there are a number of yew and box trees, clipped into true taste by a Dutch gardener. Some of them retain their old situations, but an active labourer is busily clearing the grounds of all these ancient formalities. Many of them he has already wheeled out of their places, and thrown into the ditch that surrounds the platform, into which situation he is now tumbling two venerable box trees of a most orderly and regular cut: each of them having the letters G. R., may apply to the favourites either of George the First or Second. This I suppose is meant to express, by an allegorical figure, the great number of old place-men who resigned on the accession of his present Majesty.

The late Henry Fox, afterwards Lord Holland, being at that time a leading character in the House of Commons, and deemed the partisan of Lord Bute, is here represented as removing these antiquated plants from the vivifying hothouse of royalty to the cold and dank ditch of despair. Hogarth, not thinking a sable countenance and ebon eyebrows would sufficiently indicate the person meant, has given the outline of a fox's head to his cap. In his reforming business he is somewhat impeded by a garden roller, on which is written "£1,000,000,000," meaning possibly the national debt. On the platform lies a broom, shovel, and rake, necessary implements in clearing gardens; and in the surrounding _fosse_ such a collection of fantastic _nevergreens_, as decked the pleasure-grounds of our ancient sovereigns, "trimm'd with nice art," and cut into the shapes of pyramids, fortifications, globes, and birds. On one of them, clipped into the form of a human head, is a mask, well expressing the taste of our ancestors.

It is observable that Lord Bute and Mr. Henry Fox are the only persons on the platform: one of these gentlemen was, I believe, supposed to have the highest confidence of his sovereign; and the other, a most powerful influence over the people's representatives.

A group in the dexter corner is principally made up of members of the Upper House. A senatorial figure in the chair under the king's arms is intended for Sir John Cust, then Speaker. That beneath him, wiping his forehead, evidently from perturbation of mind, for William Duke of Cumberland. Below him is Lord Mansfield, and still lower Lord Temple, presenting his snuff-box to his Grace of Newcastle, who had a short time before joined the opposition. We also recognise Earl Winchelsea, and George Doddington, afterwards Lord Melcombe.

Who are intended to be hinted at by a number of persons asleep, I do not know: it, however, proves that there were at that period men who were not to be kept awake by the most important interests of their country. Had this print borne relation to the orators of 1790 instead of the speakers of 1762, there would have been no cause for astonishment. Considering the hour at which our present race of senators meet to do business, and that one oration frequently lasts from the twilight of evening to the crowing of the cock, could it excite wonder if half the assembly were under the dominion of Somnus before what one of our fashionable prints so familiarly calls the peroration?

On the other side of a rail, intended, I believe, to divide the Commons from the Lords, are a number of figures firing at the emblem of Peace, which is fluttering in the air near the signs of the zodiac. Mr. Pitt we are enabled to identify, not only by his features, but by his gouty legs. His gun has much the longest barrel, and while he fires it off he prudently turns away his face, fearing a flash in the pan may scorch his eyebrows; or perhaps acting as a waterman, looking one way and rowing another. A figure behind him discharges a blunderbuss; and in the sinister hand of one immediately before him is a horse-pistol. The household artillery of all the band (and from the smoke which is diffused over the centre of the group it appears they are numerous) is directed to the same object. One prudent personage, a little before Mr. Pitt, seems to be in the act of desertion; for though yet seated on the gunpowder bench, he has got his head under the rail, and is half on the other side. This may be pointed at one of that class who go under the denomination of Trimmers, or may intimate that the gentleman is in the way of getting a place or a peerage; but what is his name, or was his future title, I am not enough read in the red book[149] to determine. The next figure resembles Henry Bilson Legge. A hand with an ear-trumpet may perhaps allude to Lord Chesterfield, whose deafness was at this period proverbial. Two figures above him are distinguished, one by a muff, and the other by a pair of spectacles; "to whom related, or by whom begot," baffles my conjecture: the lowest figure has a resemblance to the first Lord Holland, but _he_ is exhibited on the platform. A dog immediately behind Lord Bute, having his eye fixed on the urn of Aquarius, I suppose to be barking at the shower which pours on the laurel inscribed "Culloden." He is a Caledonian cur, and on his collar is written the word "Mercy," allusive, perhaps, to the cruelties said to have been exercised in Scotland in 1745, which accounts for the natives of that country thinking the Duke had more liberal rewards and more distinguished honours than he fairly merited.

Thus much must suffice for the dignified personages who then drove the state machine: to regret that I cannot point out more of the characters would be useless. I am not deeply studied in the political history of that day; to those who are, must be delegated the task of more particular explanation.

The two most distinguished persons in the opposite group are exalted to the pillory. Over a figure of Fanny the Phantom, who is dressed in a white sheet, the engraver has written "Conspiracy." In one hand she holds a small hammer, and in the other a lighted taper, with which she sets fire to a _North Briton_ that is fastened on the breast of Esquire Wilkes, above whose head is written "Defamation." The patriot is depicted with a most rueful countenance and empty pockets. On the steps below are such a company as we generally see assembled on these great occasions. Two Highlanders, one of whom is grasping a purse, and with most significant grin pointing to the _profane cheeld_ who had dared to abuse his clan, and reprinted Howell's _Description of Scotland_:[150] by his belt and lapels he appears to be military, and is perhaps meant for Colonel Martin. Close to him is a Liliputian chimney-sweeper, and a fellow blowing a cow's horn with force that gives a Boreas-like distension to his cheeks.[151] This resounding clangour is softened by the cheering notes of the sweet-sounding violin, while the growling bagpipe gives a thorough bass to the whole. Still further to keep up the spirits of the company, a woman is retailing gin from a keg inscribed with the two initials "J. W.," and a schoolboy amusing himself, _à la Teniers_, with Mr. Wilkes' shoes. To complete his degradation, the Bishop's Abigail so skilfully trundles her well-soaked mop, that he enjoys the full benefit of her mud-coloured drops.