Part 1

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.

Bold text is denoted by =equal signs=.

Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources.

Footnotes have been moved to the end of the book text, and before the publisher's Book Catalog. Some Footnotes are very long.

The 3-star asterism symbol in the Catalog is denoted by ***.

More detail can be found at the end of the book.

HOGARTH'S WORKS:

WITH

_LIFE AND ANECDOTAL DESCRIPTIONS OF HIS PICTURES_.

FIRST SERIES.

HOGARTH'S WORKS:

WITH

_LIFE AND ANECDOTAL DESCRIPTIONS OF HIS PICTURES_.

BY

JOHN IRELAND AND JOHN NICHOLS, F.S.A.

_THE WHOLE OF THE PLATES REDUCED IN EXACT FAC-SIMILE OF THE ORIGINALS._

First Series.

London

CHATTO AND WINDUS, PUBLISHERS. (_SUCCESSORS TO JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN._)

LIST OF PLATES

DESCRIBED IN THE FIRST SERIES.

PAGE

PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM HOGARTH, WITH HIS DOG TRUMP, _Frontispiece_

FULL-LENGTH PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM HOGARTH, BY HIMSELF, ENGAGED IN PAINTING THE COMIC MUSE, 18

THE BATTLE OF THE PICTURES, 44

ANALYSIS OF BEAUTY--

PLATE I., 60

PLATE II., 64

SIGISMUNDA, 76

TIME SMOKING A PICTURE, 80

THE HARLOT'S PROGRESS--

PLATE I. At the Bell Inn, in Wood Street--Mary Hackabout and the Procuress, 102

PLATE II. The Jew's Mistress quarrelling with her Keeper, 106

PLATE III. The Lodging in Drury Lane--Visit of the Constables, 110

PLATE IV. Mary Hackabout beating Hemp in Bridewell, 112

PLATE V. The Harlot's Death--Quacks Disputing, 114

PLATE VI. The Funeral, 118

THE RAKE'S PROGRESS--

PLATE I. Tom Rakewell taking possession of the rich Miser's effects, 124

PLATE II. The young Squire's Levee, 128

PLATE III. The Night House, 132

PLATE IV. The Spendthrift arrested for Debt--Released by his forsaken Sweetheart, 136

PLATE V. Marylebone Church--Rakewell married to a Shrew, 140

PLATE VI. The Fire at the Gambling Hell, 144

PLATE VII. The Fleet Prison, 148

PLATE VIII. The Madhouse--The Faithful Friend, 154

SOUTHWARK FAIR, 162

A MIDNIGHT MODERN CONVERSATION, 184

THE SLEEPING CONGREGATION, 192

THE DISTRESSED POET, 200

THE ENRAGED MUSICIAN, 206

THE FOUR TIMES OF THE DAY--

MORNING. Miss Bridget Alworthy on her way to Church, 216

NOON. A Motley Congregation leaving Service, 222

EVENING. The Shrew and her Husband going home--By the New River at Islington, 226

NIGHT. The Drunken Freemason taken care of by the Waiter at the Rummer Tavern, 230

STROLLING ACTRESSES DRESSING IN A BARN, 240

MR. GARRICK IN THE CHARACTER OF RICHARD THE THIRD, 255

INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS--

PLATE I. The Fellow-apprentices, Thomas Goodchild and Thomas Idle, at their Looms, 270

PLATE II. The Industrious Apprentice performing the duty of a Christian, 272

PLATE III. The Idle Apprentice at play in the Churchyard during Divine Service, 274

PLATE IV. The Industrious Apprentice a favourite, and trusted by his Master, 276

PLATE V. The Idle Apprentice turned away and sent to sea, 278

PLATE VI. The Industrious Apprentice out of his time, and married to his Master's Daughter, 280

PLATE VII. The Idle Apprentice returned from sea, and in a Garret with a Common Prostitute, 282

PLATE VIII. The Industrious Apprentice grown rich, and Sheriff of London, 284

PLATE IX. The Idle Apprentice betrayed by a Prostitute, and taken in a Night-cellar with his Accomplice, 286

PLATE X. The Industrious Apprentice Alderman of London--The Idle one brought before him and impeached by his Accomplice, 288

PLATE XI. The Idle Apprentice Executed at Tyburn, 290

PLATE XII. The Industrious Apprentice Lord Mayor of London, 292

ROAST BEEF AT THE GATE OF CALAIS, 298

THE COUNTRY INN YARD--PREPARING TO START THE COACH, 306

PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION.

It is a singular fact, that, notwithstanding the enormous popularity enjoyed by Hogarth in the minds of English people, no perfectly popular edition has been hitherto brought before the public. Were a foreigner to ask an ordinary Briton who was the most thoroughly national painter in the roll of English artists, the answer would be undoubtedly William Hogarth; but the chances are that our countryman would not have at command a tangible proof that his statement was correct. Such editions as have hitherto appeared have been either expensive or unsatisfactory,--even the handsome and costly volume by Nichols is far from complete. To supply the want, the present issue has been projected. The illustrative text of Ireland--undoubtedly the best in existence--has been given in full, and is supplemented by addenda from the works of Nichols. The three volumes form certainly the most complete gallery of Hogarth's drawings yet given to the public. The rapid progress of science has provided means by which the pictures have been reduced from their original size to the compact form of this page; while, at the same time, the most perfect truthfulness has been preserved.

Hogarth is essentially English--brave, straight-forward, manly; never pandering to fashion or fancy. When he had to deal with sin and misery, he met them full in the face, bating no whit of their repulsiveness; and in all his works, wherever a moral is to be drawn, it is a noble and a healthy one. In his merry moods he is irresistibly comic; when he stands forward as a censor of morals, he is terrible in his truth; when he creates a character, it is always human and complete,--a true reflex of the age in which he lived. Times may change, and costumes, but humanity remains much the same. Take any series of the splendid list, and the people who crowd the canvas live and move amongst us with different names and other attire. Such suggestive cognomens as Mary Hackabout are not in use; nor do procuresses haunt such localities as Wood Street in pursuit of their vile calling. The course of fashion, as of empire, has taken its way westward; but the whole story of the Harlot's Progress is as fresh and as applicable to a season in 1873 as it was a hundred and forty years before. Have we not Tom Rakewells in scores among us; and had Hogarth been living now, would he not have interpolated another picture of the degradation attained by the spendthrift when he enters the employment of the moneylender as a decoy to poor flies such as he was himself at the beginning of the chapter? The function of the satirist is still needed, and there is no danger of the works of William Hogarth proving to be out of date. Probably no artist ever told stories so well; certainly no one ever acquired such a reputation, and there is no reason why his splendid monuments should be found only in the libraries of the wealthy. Every one should know something of him besides his moral lessons, since, of all the moral lessons he ever taught, his life formed the most pointed. Fearlessness and honesty were his watchwords from his early career of art, after being released from the silversmith's apprenticeship in 1720 until the day of his death in 1764, when he retired from mundane existence full of years and honours. As Ireland declares him to have asserted, his drawings were meant for the crowd rather than for the critics; and with that intention his book was commenced, the original design being to comprise in one volume "a moral and analytical description of seventy-eight prints;" but as the work advanced, such an amount of anecdote and illustrative comment suggested itself, that he was compelled to adopt the three-volume form which is here followed, with the further addition to which we have alluded, of such a full description and reproduction as the original compiler, from accident or design, omitted. These will be found in the third volume, and include many of the most important and meritorious works of the great artist. It has been found advisable to change the ornamental and sometimes indistinct lettering of the original plates, and to adopt a consistent and uniform style of titles. At the same time the elaborate catalogue compiled by Ireland is preserved, since it is still highly valuable as a chronological list of every effort of Hogarth's hand, although it would be folly to attempt a reproduction of every variation it contains. The system pursued by Ireland and Nichols is followed, and the Publishers venture to congratulate themselves on submitting to the notice of the artistic and literary world, as well as to the public generally, the best and cheapest edition of Hogarth's complete works ever brought forward.

INTRODUCTION.

Mr. Hogarth frequently asserted that no man was so ill qualified to form a true judgment of pictures as the professed connoisseur; whose taste being originally formed upon imitations, and confined to the manners of Masters, had seldom any reference to Nature. Under this conviction, his subjects were selected for the crowd rather than the critic;[1] and explained in that universal language common to the world, rather than in the _lingua technica_ of the arts, which is sacred to the scientific. Without presuming to support his hypothesis, I have endeavoured to follow his example.

My original design was to have comprised in one volume a moral and analytical description of seventy-eight prints; but as the work advanced, such variety of anecdote and long train of _et cetera_ clung to the narrative, that these limits were found too narrow. With the explanation of fifteen additional plates, the letterpress has expanded to near seven hundred pages.

Where the artist has been made a victim to poetical or political prejudice, without meaning to be his panegyrist, I have endeavoured to rescue his memory from unmerited obloquy. Where his works have been misconceived or misrepresented, I have attempted the true reading. In my essay at an illustration of the prints, with a description of what I conceive the comic and moral tendency of each, there is the best information I could procure concerning the relative circumstances, occasionally interspersed with such desultory conversation as frequently occurred in turning over a volume of his prints. Though the notes may not always have an immediate relation to the engravings, I hope they will seldom be found wholly unconnected with the subjects.

Such mottoes as were engraven on the plates are inserted; but where a print has been published without any inscription, I have either selected or written one. Errors in either parody or verse with the signature E, being written by the editor, are submitted to that tribunal from whose candour he hopes pardon for every mistake or inaccuracy which may be found in these volumes.

HOGARTH.

_ANECDOTES OF AN ARTIST._

"By heaven, and not a master, taught."

When Leonardo da Vinci lay upon his death-bed, Francis the First, actuated by that instinctive reverence which great minds invariably feel for each other, visited him in his chamber. An attendant informing the painter that the king was come to inquire after his health, he raised himself from the pillow, a lambent gleam of gratitude for the honour lighted up his eyes, and he made an effort to speak. The exertion was too much; he fell back; and Francis stooping to support him, this great artist expired in his arms. Affected with the awful catastrophe, the king heaved a sigh of sympathetic sorrow, and left the bed-chamber in tears. He was immediately surrounded by a crowd of those kind-hearted nobles who delight in soothing the sorrows of a sovereign; and one of them entreating him not to indulge his grief, added, as a consolatory reflection, "Consider, sire, this man was but a painter." "I do," replied the monarch; "and I at the same time consider, that though, as a king, I could make a thousand such as you, the Deity alone can make such a painter as Leonardo da Vinci."

Shall I be permitted to adopt this remark, and, without any diminution of the Italian's well-earned fame, assert that the eulogy is equally appropriate to the Englishman whose name is at the head of this chapter; for he was not the follower, but the leader of a class, and became a painter from divine impulse rather than human instruction.

The biographers who have written of artists, especially if the hero of their history was of the Dutch school, generally began by informing us that he received the rudiments of his art from the great Van A--, who was a pupil of the divine Van B--, first the disciple, and afterwards the rival, of the immortal and never enough to be admired Vander C.

This _palette pedigree_ was not the boast of William Hogarth; he was the pupil,--the disciple,--the worshipper of nature!

I do not learn that his family either obtained a grant of lands from our first William, or _flourished_ before the Conquest; but from Burn's History of Westmoreland, it appears that his grandfather was an honest yeoman, the inhabitant of a small tenement in the vale of Bampton, a village fifteen miles north of Kendal, and had three sons. The eldest, in conformity to ancient custom, succeeded to the _title_, _honour_, and _estate_ of his father, became a yeoman of Bampton, and proprietor of the family freehold.

The second was not endowed with either land or beeves, but had in their stead a large portion of broad humour and wild original genius. Like his nephew, he grasped the whip of satire; and though his lash was not twisted with much skill, nor brandished with much grace, it was probably felt by those on whom his strokes were inflicted, more than would one of the most exquisite workmanship.

He was the Shakspeare of his village, and his dramas were the delight of the country; though, being written by an uneducated yeoman, it may naturally be supposed they were sufficiently coarse. Mr. Nichols, in his Anecdotes, tells us that he has seen a whole bundle of them, and _want of grammar, metre, sense, and decency is their invariable characteristic_. This may possibly be true, for in refinement Westmoreland was many, many years behind the capital; and our libraries contain _sundrie black-letter proofs_ that those _pithie_, _pleasaunte_, and _merrie comedies_, which in the same century were _enacted by the Kingis servantes_ with universal applause, had similar _wants_; notwithstanding which, these unalloyed chronicles of our ancestors' dulness are _now_ purchased at a price considerably higher than virgin gold. Let it not from hence be imagined that I mean to sanction one folly by the mention of another; but as every human production is _relative_, if auld Hogarth, under the circumstances he wrote, was the admiration of his neighbours, we may fairly infer that his talents, properly cultivated, would, in a more polished situation, have ensured him the admiration of his contemporaries.[2]

Richard was the third son, and seems to have been intended for a scholar,--the scholar of his family!--for he was educated at St. Bees, in Westmoreland, and afterward kept a school in the same county. Of learning he had a portion more than sufficient for his office, for he wrote a Latin and English dictionary, which still exists in MS., and one of his Latin letters, dated 1657, preserved in the British Museum. However well he might be qualified for a teacher, he had few pupils; and finding that his employment produced neither honour nor profit, removed to London, and in Ship Court, Old Bailey, renewed his profession.

It was fortunate for literature that Doctor Samuel Johnson was not successful in an application for the place of a provincial schoolmaster. It was fortunate for the arts that Richard Hogarth was not able to establish a village school, in which situation he would probably have qualified his son William for his successor; and those talents which were calculated to instruct, astonish, and reform a world, might have been wasted in teaching some half a hundred of the young Westmoreland gentry to scan verses by their fingers, and call English things by Latin names. The fates ordained otherwise; it was his destiny to marry and reside in London, where were born unto him one son and two daughters.

The girls had such instructions as qualified them to keep a shop; and the son, who drew his first breath in this bustling world in the year 1697, was author of the prints which, copied in little, form the basis and give the value to these volumes.

Of his education we do not know much; but as his father appears to have been a man of understanding, I suppose it was sufficient for the situation in which he was intended to be placed. That it was not more liberal, might arise from the old man finding erudition answer little purpose to himself, and knowing that in a mechanic employment it is rather a drawback than an assistance. Added to this, I believe young Hogarth had not much bias _towards what has obtained the name_ of learning. He must have been early attentive to the appearance of the passions, and feeling a strong impulse to attempt their delineation, left their names and derivations to the profound pedagogue, the accurate grammarian, or more sage and solemn lexicographer. While these labourers in the forest of science dug for the root, inquired into the circulation of the sap, and planted brambles and birch round the tree of knowledge, Hogarth had an higher aim,--an ambition to display, in the true tints of nature, the rugged character of the bark, the varied involutions of the branches, and the minute fibres of the leaves.

The first notices of his prints were written in French, by a Swiss named Rouquet, who in 1746 published "_Lettres de Monsieur * * à un de ses Amis à Paris, pour lui expliquer les Estampes de Monsieur Hogarth_."[3] This pamphlet describes the Harlot's and Rake's Progress, Marriage à la Mode, and March to Finchley. In the remarks, there is great reason to believe Rouquet was assisted by Hogarth, who long afterwards expressed an intention of having them translated and amplified. From such a junction, the reader will naturally expect this book to contain more information than he will find.

The second publication was by the Reverend Doctor Trusler, and extends farther than the preceding. It was begun immediately after the artist's death, is baptized _Hogarth Moralized_, and interspersed with seventy-eight engravings, printed on the same paper with the letterpress. It contains two hundred pages, built upon Rouquet's pamphlet, and the information he received from Mrs. Hogarth, who, conceiving her property would be essentially injured by such a publication, purchased the copyright. As the Doctor does not profess _an intimate acquaintance_ with the arts, and confines himself to _morality_!--I hope and believe my work will _not much_ clash with his.

Of the artist and his prints, we had no regular narrative until the appearance of Mr. Walpole's _Anecdotes of Painting_,--a work in which refined taste and elegant diction gave rank and importance to a class of men whose history, in the writings of preceding biographers, exhibited little more than a catalogue of names, or a dry uninteresting narrative of uninteresting events. To the pen of this highly accomplished writer, William Hogarth owes a portion of his deserved celebrity; for in near fifty pages devoted to his name, we find the history of _a great man's excellencies and errors_ written with the warmth of a friend and the fidelity of a chronologist. With the first tolerably complete catalogue of his works, there was such remarks upon their meaning and tendency, as have given the artist a new character; for though his superlative merit secured him admiration from the few who were able to judge, he was considered by the crowd as a mere _caricaturist_, whose only aim was to burlesque whatever he represented.

The Reverend Mr. Gilpin, in his valuable Essay on Prints, has made some observations on one series by Hogarth. The remarks were evidently written in haste; and though in a few instances I cannot coincide with a gentleman for whose worth and talents I have the most unfeigned respect, I am convinced that the candour of the Vicar of Boldre will forgive the freedom taken with the critic on the _Rake's Progress_.

In 1781, Mr. Nichols published his _Anecdotes_, which since that time have been considerably enlarged. This work contains much useful information relative to the artist; and much monumental miscellany from the Grub Street Journal, and other ancient sources, concerning his contemporaries, that were it not there enniched, would in all probability have sunk in dark and endless night. Where Mr. Walpole and preceding writers threw a hair-line, he cast the _antiquarian drag-net_, and brought from the great deep a miraculous draught of aquatic monsters and web-footed animals, that swam round the triumphal bark of William Hogarth. For the information which I received from his volume, he has my best thanks; where I depart from his authorities, it is on the presumption that my own are better. In many cases, it is more than possible both of us are frequently mistaken.