Part 4

Tom Nero is now a hackney coachman, and displaying his disposition in his conduct to a horse. Worn out by ill-usage, and exhausted by fatigue, the poor animal has fallen down, overset the carriage, and broken his leg. The scene is laid at Thavie's Inn gate:[30] four brethren of the brawling bar, who have joined to pay threepence each for a ride to Westminster Hall, are in consequence of the accident overturned, and exhibited at the moment of creeping out of the carriage. These ludicrous periwig-pated personages were probably intended as portraits of advocates eminent in their day; their names I am not able to record.

A man taking the number of the coach is marked with traits of benevolence, which separate him from the savage ferocity of Nero or the guilty terror of these affrighted lawyers.

As a further exemplification of extreme barbarity, a drover is beating an expiring lamb with a large club. The wheels of a dray pass over an unfortunate boy, while the drayman, regardless of consequences, sleeps on the shafts.[31]

In the background is a poor overladen ass: the master, presuming on the strength of this patient and ill-treated animal, has mounted upon his back, and taken a loaded porter behind him. An over-driven bull, followed by a crowd of heroic spirits, has tossed a boy.[32] Two bills pasted on the wall advertise cock-fighting and Broughton's Amphitheatre[33] for boxing, as further specimens of national civilisation.

Parts of this print may at first sight appear rather overcharged, but some recent examples convince us that they are not so. In the year 1790, a fellow was convicted of lacerating and tearing out the tongue of a horse; but there being no evidence of his bearing any malice towards the proprietor, or doing it with a view of injuring _him_, this diabolical wretch, not having violated any then existing statute, was discharged without punishment.

CRUELTY IN PERFECTION.

"To lawless love, when once betray'd, Soon crime to crime succeeds; At length beguil'd to theft, the maid By her beguiler bleeds.

"Yet learn, seducing men, not night, With all its sable cloud, Can screen the guilty deed from sight: Foul murder cries aloud!

"The gaping wounds, the blood-stain'd steel, Now shock his trembling soul; But ah! what pangs his breast must feel When death his knell shall toll!"

An early indulged habit of wanton cruelty strengthens by time, chokes every good disposition, corrupts the mind, and sears the heart. We cannot say to the malevolent passions,

"Thus far shall ye go, and no further."

The hero of this print began by torturing a helpless dog; he then beat out the eye of an unoffending horse; and now, under the influence of that malignant rancorous spirit, which by indulgence is become natural, he commits murder--most foul and aggravated murder!--for this poor deluded girl is pregnant by the wretch who deprives her of life. He tempts her to quit a happy situation; to plunder an indulgent mistress, and meet him with the produce of her robbery. Blinded by affection, she keeps the fatal appointment, and comes loaded with plate. This remorseless villain, having previously determined to destroy her, and by that means cancel his promise of marriage, free himself from an expected encumbrance, and silence one whom compunction might at a future day induce to confess the crime and lead to his detection, puts her to death!

This atrocious act must have been perpetrated with most savage barbarity, for the head is nearly severed, and the wrist cut almost through. Her cries are heard by the servants of a neighbouring house, who run to her assistance. 'Tis too late. The horrid deed is done! The ethereal spirit is forced from its earthly mansion,

"Unhousell'd, unappointed, unaneal'd!"

but the murderer, appalled by conscious guilt, and rendered motionless by terror, cannot fly. He is seized without resistance, and consigned to that punishment which so aggravated a violation of the laws of nature and his country demand.

The glimpses of the moon, the screech-owl and bat hovering in the air, the mangled corpse, and above all, the murderer's ghastly and guilty countenance, give terrific horror to this awful scene.[34]

By the pistol in his pocket and watches on the ground, we have reason to infer that this callous wretch has been committing other depredations in the earlier part of the evening. The time is what has been emphatically called "the witching hour!"--the iron tongue of midnight has told ONE!

The letter found in his pocket gives a history of the transaction; it appears to be dictated by the warmest affection, and written by the woman he has just murdered, previous to her elopement:--

"DEAR TOMMY,--My mistress has been the best of women to me, and my conscience flies in my face as often as I think of wronging her; yet I am resolved to venture body and soul to do as you would have me; so do not fail to meet me as you said you would, for I shall bring along with me all the things I can lay my hands on. So no more at present; but I remain yours till death.

"ANN GILL."

This is the simple effusion of a too credulous heart; whatever would lessen the solemnity of the scene is carefully avoided; neither bad spelling, nor any other ridiculous circumstances that might create laughter are introduced.

THE REWARD OF CRUELTY.

"Behold, the villain's dire disgrace, Not death itself can end; He finds no peaceful burial-place, His breathless corpse--no friend.

"Torn from the root that wicked tongue, Which daily swore and curst; Those eye-balls from their sockets wrung, That glow'd with lawless lust.

"His heart exposed to prying eyes, To pity has no claim; But dreadful! from his bones shall rise His monument of shame."

The savage and diabolical progress of cruelty is now ended, and the thread of life severed by the sword of justice. From the place of execution the murderer is brought to Surgeons' Hall, and now represented under the knife of a dissector. This venerable person, as well as his coadjutor, who scoops out the criminal's eye, and a young student scarifying the leg, seem to have just as much feeling as the subject now under their inspection.[35] A frequent contemplation of sanguinary scenes hardens the heart, deadens sensibility, and destroys every tender sensation.

Our legislators, considering how unfit such men are to determine in cases of life and death, have judiciously excluded both surgeons and butchers from serving upon juries.

Hogarth was most peculiarly accurate in those little markings which identify. The gunpowder initials T. N. on the arm, denote this to be the body of Thomas Nero. The face being impressed with horror has been objected to. It must be acknowledged that this is rather "o'er-stepping the modesty of nature;" but he so rarely deviates from her laws, that a little poetical licence may be forgiven where it produces humour or heightens character.

The skeletons on each side of the print are inscribed "James Field" (an eminent pugilist), and "Maclean" (a notorious robber). Both of these worthies died by a rope. They are pointing to the physician's crest which is carved on the upper part of the president's[36] chair, viz. a hand feeling a pulse; taking a guinea would have been more appropriate to the practice. The heads of these two heroes of the halter are turned so as to seem ridiculing the president, "Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp." Every countenance in this grisly band is marked with that medical importance which dignifies the professors. Some of them we discover to be "from Caledonia's bleak and barren clime."

A fellow depositing the intestines in a pail, and a dog licking the murderer's heart, are disgusting and nauseous objects. The vessel where the skulls and bones bubble-bubble, gives some idea of the infernal caldron of Hecate.

Of this print, and that preceding it, there are wooden blocks engraved upon a large scale, invented and published by "William Hogarth, Jan. 1, 1750; J. Bell, sculpt." They were executed by order of Mr. Hogarth, who wished to circulate the salutary examples they contain, by making the price low enough for a poor man's purse; but finding engraving on wood much more expensive than he had calculated, he altered his plan, and engraved them on copper.

BEER STREET AND GIN LANE.

"The nature and use of aliments maketh men either chaste or incontinent; either courageous or cowardly; either meek or quarrelsome: let those who deny these truths come to me; let them follow my counsel in eating and drinking, and I promise them they will find great helps thereupon towards moral philosophy. They will acquire more prudence, more diligence, more memory."--GALEN.

Fully impressed with the truth of this axiom, Mr. Hogarth engraved the two following prints, in which he has considered porter as the liquor natural to an English constitution; and that villanous distillation, gin, as pernicious and poisonous. While that noble beverage properly termed British Burgundy[37] refreshes the weary, exhilarates the faint, and cheers the depressed, an infernal compound of juniper and fiery spirits debases the mind, destroys the constitution, and brings its thirsty votaries to an untimely grave.

These, as well as the four preceding prints, are calculated for the lower orders of society, and exhibit such a contrast as must strike the most careless observer. In the first, we see healthy and happy beings inhaling copious draughts of a liquor which seems perfectly congenial to their mental and corporeal powers; in the second, a group of emaciated wretches who, by swallowing liquid fire, have consumed both.

BEER STREET.

"Beer, happy product of our isle, Can sinewy strength impart; And wearied with fatigue and toil, Can cheer each manly heart.

"Labour and art, upheld by thee, Successfully advance; We quaff the balmy juice with glee, And water leave to France.

"Genius of health, thy grateful taste Rivals the cup of Jove; And warms each English, generous breast, With liberty and love."

This admirable delineation is a picture of John Bull in his most happy moments. In the left corner, a butcher and a blacksmith are each of them grasping a foaming tankard of porter. By the _King's Speech_ and the _Daily Advertiser_ upon the table before them, they appear to have been studying politics, and settling the state of the nation. The blacksmith having just purchased a shoulder of mutton, is triumphantly waving it in the air. Next to him a drayman is whispering soft sentences of love to a servant-maid, round whose neck is one of his arms; in the other hand a pot of porter. Two fish-women, furnished with a flagon of the same liquor, are chaunting a song of Mr. Lockman's[38] on the British Herring Fishery. A porter having put a load of waste-paper[39] on the ground, is eagerly quaffing this best of barley wine.

On the front of a house in ruins, is inscribed "Pinch, pawnbroker," and through a hole in the door a boy delivers a full half-pint. In the background are two chairmen.[40] They have joined for threepenny-worth to recruit their spirits, and repair the fatigue they have undergone in _trotting between two poles_ with a ponderous load of female frailty. Two paviors are washing away their cares with a heart-cheering cup. In a garret window a trio of sailors are employed in the same way; and on a house-top are four bricklayers equally joyous. Each of these groups seem hale, happy, and well clothed; but the artist, who is painting a glass bottle from an original which hangs before him, is in a truly deplorable plight, at the same time that he carries in his countenance a perfect consciousness of his talents in this creative art.[41]

GIN LANE.

"Gin, cursed fiend! with fury fraught, Makes human race a prey; It enters by a deadly draught, And steals our life away.

"Virtue and Truth, driv'n to despair, Its rage compels to fly; But cherishes with hellish care, Theft, murder, perjury.

"Damn'd cup! that on the vitals preys, That liquid fire contains; Which madness to the heart conveys, And rolls it thro' the veins."

From contemplating the health, happiness, and mirth flowing from a moderate use of a wholesome and natural beverage, we turn to this nauseous contrast, which displays human nature in its most degraded and disgusting state. The retailer of gin and ballads,[42] who sits upon the steps with a bottle in one hand and a glass in the other, is horribly fine. Having bartered away his waistcoat, shirt, and stockings, and drank until he is in a state of total insensibility; pale, wan, and emaciated, he is a perfect skeleton. A few steps higher is a debased counterpart of Lazarus, taking snuff; thoroughly intoxicated, and negligent of the infant at her breast, it falls over the rail into an area, and dies an innocent victim to the baneful vice of its depraved parent. Another of the fair sex has drank herself to sleep. As an emblem of her disposition being slothful, a snail is crawling from the wall to her arm. Close to her we discover one of the lords of the creation gnawing a bare bone, which a bull-dog, equally ravenous, endeavours to snatch from his mouth. A working carpenter is depositing his coat and saw with a pawnbroker. A tattered female offers her culinary utensils at the same shrine: among them we discover a tea-kettle pawned to procure money to purchase gin.[43] An old woman, having drank until she is unable to walk, is put into a wheel-barrow, and in that situation a lad solaces her with another glass. With the same poisonous and destructive compound, a mother in the corner drenches her child. Near her are two charity-girls of St. Giles', pledging each other in the same corroding compound. The scene is completed by a quarrel between two drunken mendicants, both of whom appear in the character of cripples. While one of them uses his crutch as a quarterstaff, the other with great goodwill aims a stool, on which he usually sat, at the head of his adversary. This, with a crowd waiting for their drams at a distiller's door, completes the catalogue of the _quick_. Of the _dead_ there are two, besides an unfortunate child whom a drunken madman has impaled upon a spit.[44] One a barber, who, having probably drank gin until he has lost his reason, has suspended himself by a rope in his own ruinous garret; the other a beautiful woman, whom by direction of the parish beadle two men are depositing in a shell. From her wasted and emaciated appearance, we may fairly infer she also fell a martyr to this destructive and poisonous liquid. On the side of her coffin is a child lamenting the loss of its parent.

The large pewter measure hung over a cellar, on which is engraved "Gin Royal," was once a common sign; the inscription on this cave of despair, "Drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twopence, clean straw for nothing," is worthy observation; it exhibits the state of our metropolis at that period.

The scene of this horrible devastation is laid in a place which was a few years since properly enough called the Ruins of St. Giles'.[45] Except the pawnbroker's, distiller's, and undertaker's, the houses are literally ruins! These doorkeepers to Famine, Disease, and Death, living by the calamities of others, are in a flourishing state.[46]

Mr. Hogarth seems to have received the first idea of these two prints from a pair by Peter Breughel (frequently called _Breughel d'enfer_), which exhibit a similar contrast. In the one entitled "La Grosse" are a number of comely and well-fed personages; in the other, which is baptized "La Maigre Cuisine," the characters are meagre and wasted: seated on a straw mat are a mother and child, which very much resemble the wretched female we see upon the steps in the print under consideration.

To the perspective little attention is paid, but the characters are admirably discriminated. The emaciated retailer of gin is well drawn. The woman with a snuff-box has all the mawkish marks of debasement and drunkenness. The man gnawing a bone, a dog tearing it from him, and the pawnbroker, have countenances in an equal degree hungry and rapacious.

A print entitled the "Gin Drinkers," which bears strong marks of being one of Hogarth's early productions, may perhaps have been the first thought on which this print was built.

On the subject of these plates was published a catchpenny compilation from Reynolds' "God's Revenge against Murder," entitled "_A Dissertation on Mr. Hogarth's six prints--'Gin Lane,' 'Beer Street,' and the 'Four Stages of Cruelty.'_"

PAUL BEFORE FELIX.

_Designed and etched in the ridiculous manner of Rembrandt, by William Hogarth. Published according to the Act of Parliament, May 1, 1751._

"Each hero is a pillar of darkness, and the sword a beam of fire."[47]--FINGAL, Book I. p. 21.

For the etchings of Rembrandt, and a herd of servile imitators who, without any of his genius, copied his defects, Hogarth had the most sovereign contempt. He considered their productions as unmeaning scratches, as dingy and violent combinations of light and darkness, which would not bear to be tried by the criterion of either nature or art. How far he was right in his opinion is not my inquiry; but certain it is, that at the time of this publication they had the sanction of those who were deemed good judges, and produced most enormous prices. To correct this vitiated taste, and bring men back to reason and common sense, our whimsical artist etched this very grotesque print.

The Apostle, conformable to the general practice of the Flemish school, is represented as a mean and vulgar character. Among the Lilliputians he might have been a giant; among the Romans he must have been a dwarf. In the true spirit of Dutch allegory, a figure fat enough for a burgomaster, invested with wings "that clad each shoulder broad," is seated on the floor behind him as a guardian angel. At this unpropitious moment the guardian angel is asleep, and a little imp of darkness,[48] ever active in mischief, is busily employed with a hand-saw cutting through the leg of the Apostle's stool, which falling, must inevitably bring the orator to the ground, where he will probably be seized by the snarling dog on whose collar is engraved "Felix," and who seems to have an eye to the saint, though his nose is evidently pointed at his appalled master. Seated in a wicker chair, with the Roman eagle over his head, and the fasces at his left hand, Felix indeed trembles. On an adjoining seat is the all-accomplished Drusilla and her lap-dog. Her olfactory nerves, as well as those of her companion, are violently affected. With a sacrificing knife in his right hand, his left clenched, and a countenance irritated almost to madness, the High Priest appears ready to leap from the bench and put the Apostle to death, but is prevented by a more prudent senator. The audience are worthy of the judges; male and female, young and old, are in dress, deportment, and feature, perfectly Dutch. Of the same school is the statue of Justice, with a bandage over one eye, and grasping, in the place of a flaming sword, a butcher's knife.[49] She stands in awful state, laden with bags of gold, the rewards of legal decisions.

At a table beneath the bench are five curious characters. The first, maugre the thundering eloquence of St. Paul, is asleep; the next, mending a pen; two adjoining are highly offended with a noxious effluvia, while their bearded associate is grinning and pointing at the cause from which it emanates. Regardless of all other objects, an Hebrew counterpart of Shylock is expanding his hands in astonishment at the unguarded vehemence of the preacher. Not less exasperated is Tertullus, who, arrayed in the habit of an English serjeant-at-law,[50] has nothing Roman but his nose. Boiling with rage, and irritated almost to madness, he tears his brief: this, a devil, who to give him peculiar distinction has three horns, is carefully picking up and joining the remnants together.[51] The vase, and silver plates in a recess, the violent stream of light which dazzles the eyes of a priest _who stands with his back to it_, the boat, bark, and white sail glittering in the wave, and a village and windmill in the distance, are all of Rembrandt's school.

The plate was originally intended as a receipt-ticket to the large "Paul before Felix," and "Pharaoh's Daughter;" and the artist stained many early impressions with that yellow tint which time gives to old prints. For the Paul, and Moses, he afterwards engraved another design, and presented this to any of his friends who requested it; but finding applications increase, he fixed the price at five shillings.[52]

PLATE I.

_Engraved by William Hogarth, from his original painting in Lincoln's-Inn Hall, and published as the Act directs, Feb. 5, 1752._

"And as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled."

This print Mr. Hogarth intended as a serious and sublime representation of the scene which he had so inimitably burlesqued; yet so little are we qualified to judge of our own powers, that he has here produced a print as destitute of elevation and sentiment as are the works of those masters he so successfully ridiculed. With the Roman eagle he could not soar, and has drawn the royal bird like a sparrow-hawk, nailed to the bottom of a writing-desk. The Apostle, with his right foot resting on a lower step than the left, has neither grace, dignity, nor firmness. Felix has the appearance of a vinegar-faced apothecary feeling the pulse of a nervous female patient, and shocked at the velocity of our circulation, dropping the prescription from his left hand. The haughty High Priest biting his nails, is deficient in everything except his drapery: the Jew immediately behind him bears a strong resemblance to an old-clothes-man. The standard-bearer, and woman with her hands closed, are a degree better; but the Herculean advocate, with a brief in his right hand, looks like a journeyman hatter that has drank porter till he is drowsy; by the strength of his muscles and the stupidity of his countenance, he seems better fitted for a bruiser than a pleader.

The listening soldier, at the opposite corner, is meanly conceived and ill drawn.

At the bottom of one of the copies I once saw the following memorandum in the handwriting of Hogarth: "A print of the plate that was set aside as insufficient. Engraved by W. H."

PLATE II.

_From the original painting in Lincoln's-Inn Hall, painted by Wm. Hogarth._

This is engraved from the same design as the former, but the situation of the figures is reversed, and Drusilla omitted, it being thought that St. Paul's hand was rather improperly placed.

It is somewhat superior to the former, but the light is ill distributed, and the characters too individual for the dignity of historical composition.

Upon this and the following print Doctor Joseph Warton, in his _Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope_, made the following remark. Trusting to his memory, he confounded two prints together, and remembering to have seen a dog snarling at a cat in the fourth print of "Industry and Idleness," from an error in recollection, transferred them to the "Paul before Felix:"--