Part 14

The man in a grenadier's cap, with a pot of porter in his left hand, might perform the part of Sir Tunbelly Clumsy.[173] A neighbouring gentleman, in a cut wig, is scarcely able to support his firelock. The fellow firing off his musket exclaims, "Who's afraid?" The next may be a very great man, though nature has treated his exterior, as she did that of our third Richard, rather unkindly, by placing an envious mountain on his back. The hero in a bag-wig, resting upon his arms, is made from a splinter of the monument; "his dimensions to any thick sight are invisible." Far different is the strong-built man of war at his left hand: by his _back front_ he seems to have grown out at the sides; what nature denied in height, she has abundantly made up in breadth. His long sword is so placed as to give the idea of a bluebottle impaled on a pin. A plank, supported by a tub and stool, having given way, two of the fair sex fall to the ground. 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 infinitely the most noisy of any who grace this solemnity.

Near the left corner, a blind man, conscious that he has but a poor chance in a crowd, endeavours to preserve his hat and wig from the depredating multitude. The Bunhill Fields trooper, who leans against a post, with one of his bandeliers in his left hand, has made a little mistake. A young man in the booth above, not having the fear of dignity before his eyes, is eagerly kissing a girl: the lady, irritated at this indecorum, seems likely to leave marks of her talons upon his forehead. At the opposite corner, a vendor of the Grub Street classics proclaims "a full, true, and particular account of the ghost of Thomas Idle, which appeared to the Lord Mayor."

Numberless spectators, upon every house, and at every window, dart their desiring eyes on the procession. Of the figures on a tapestry, hanging from a balcony[174] at the King's Head, I cannot discover the meaning. Two flags beneath are blazoned with the arms of the Stationers' Company; and that in a stand which exhibits the ardent salutation before mentioned, belongs to the pinners and needlers. The _cornucopiæ_ on the outside of the frame are symbolical of that abundance which fills the hands of the diligent.

Many of the characters in this and the foregoing print bear a strong resemblance to some which Mr. Hogarth etched about twenty years before for Butler's _Hudibras_.

The following year was published a pamphlet, entitled, "_The Effects of Industry and Idleness_, illustrated in the life, adventures, and various fortunes of two fellow-'prentices of the city of London: showing the different paths, as well as rewards, of virtue and vice," etc. Printed for C. Corbet, at Addison's Head, Fleet Street.

In the chamber of London where the apprentices are bound, these twelve prints very properly ornament the room.

The late Mr. James Love, comedian (otherwise Dance), dramatized this eventful history, and Mr. King performed the good apprentice.

ROAST BEEF AT THE GATE OF CALAIS.

"O the roast beef of Old England," etc.

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 everything he saw out of Old England. For a meagre powdered figure, hung with tatters, _à-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 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 burdens 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 show the moment of arrest, the hand of a serjeant is upon his shoulder.

Mr. Hogarth's friend Forest soon afterwards wrote the following cantata, which contains so whimsical a description of the principal figures, that I make no apology for inserting it:--

THE ROAST BEEF AT THE GATE OF CALAIS.

RECITATIVE.

'Twas at the gate of Calais, Hogarth tells, Where sad despair and famine always dwells; A meagre Frenchman, Madame Grandsire's cook, As home he steer'd, his carcase that way took, Bending beneath the weight of fam'd sirloin, On whom he often wished in vain to dine; Good Father Dominick by chance came by, With rosy gills, round paunch, and greedy eye; And when he first beheld the greasy load, His benediction on it he bestow'd; And while the solid fat his fingers press'd, He lick'd his chops, and thus the knight address'd:

AIR.

O rare roast beef, lov'd by all mankind, Was I but doom'd to have thee, Well dress'd, and garnish'd to my mind, And swimming in thy gravy; Not all thy country's force combined, Should from my fury save thee!

Renown'd sirloin! ofttimes decreed The theme of English ballad, E'en kings on thee have deign'd to feed, Unknown to Frenchman's palate; Then how much must thy taste exceed Soup-meagre, frogs, and salad!

RECITATIVE.

A half-starv'd soldier, shirtless, pale, and lean, Who such a sight before had never seen, Like Garrick's frighted Hamlet gaping stood, And gaz'd with wonder at the British food; His morning mess forsook the friendly bowl, And in small streams along the pavement stole; He heav'd a sigh, which gave his heart relief, And thus in plaintive tones declar'd his grief:

AIR.

Ah, _sacre Dieu_! vat do I see yonder, Dat look so tempting red and vite? Begar, it is the roast beef from Londre! O grant to me one letel bite.

But to my guts if you give no heeding, And cruel fate this boon denies, In kind compassion to my pleading, Return, and let me feast mine eyes.

RECITATIVE.

His fellow guard, of right Hibernian clay, Whose brazen front his country did betray, From Tyburn's fatal tree had hither fled, By honest means to get his daily bread: Soon as the well-known prospect he espy'd, In blubb'ring accents dolefully he cried:

AIR.

Sweet beef that now causes my stomach to rise, Sweet beef that now causes my stomach to rise, So taking thy sight is, My joy, that so light is, To view thee, by pailfuls runs out of my eyes.

While here I remain my life's not worth a farthing, While here I remain my life's not worth a farthing, Ah! hard-hearted _Lewy_, Why did I come to ye? The gallows, more kind, would have saved me from starving.

RECITATIVE.

Upon the ground hard by poor Sawney sate, Who fed his nose and scratched his ruddy pate; But when old England's bulwark he descried, His dear lov'd mull, alas! was thrown aside. With lift'd hands he blest his native place, Then scrubb'd himself, and thus bewailed his case:

AIR.

How hard, O Sawney, is thy lot, Who was so blithe of late, To see such meat as can't be got, When hunger is so great.

O the beef, the bonny bonny beef, When roasted nice and brown, I wish I had a slice of thee, How sweet it would gang down!

Ah, Charley! had'st thou not been seen, This ne'er had hapt to me; I would the de'il had pick'd mine e'en Ere I had gang'd with thee. O the beef, etc.

RECITATIVE.

But see my muse to England takes her flight, Where health and plenty cheerfully unite; Where smiling Freedom guards great George's throne (And chains, and racks, and tortures are not known), Whose fame superior bards have often wrote, An ancient fable give me leave to quote:

AIR.

As once on a time a young frog pert and vain, Beheld a large ox grazing over the plain, He boasted his size he could quickly attain. O the roast beef of Old England, And O the Old English roast beef!

Then eagerly stretching his weak little frame, Mamma, who stood by like a knowing old dame, Cried, 'Son, to attempt it you're greatly to blame.' O the roast beef, etc.

But deaf to advice, he for glory did thirst, An effort he ventur'd more strong than the first, 'Till swelling and straining too hard, made him burst. O the roast beef, etc.

Then, Britons, be valiant, the moral is clear, The ox is Old England, the frog is Monsieur, Whose puffs and bravadoes we never need fear. O the roast beef, etc.

For while by our commerce and arts we are able To see the sirloin smoking hot on our table, The French may e'en croak, like the frog in the fable. O the roast beef, etc.

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, on which is written "Grand Monarch. P." 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.

Part of the print was engraved by C. Mosley, but the heads are evidently by Hogarth.[175]

A copy has been repeatedly engraven as an head-piece to the cantata before mentioned: the profile of the artist was traced for a watch-paper; and a wooden representation of the starved soldier has frequently decorated advertisements for recruits, where it is opposed to the figure of a well-fed gourmand, characteristically christened a valiant British soldier.

The original picture is in the possession of Lord Charlemont.

Soon after this painting was finished, a nail was by some accident run through the cross at the top of the gate. Hogarth strove in vain to repair the blemish with paint of the same colour; he therefore introduced a half-starved crow looking down on the beef, and thus completely covered the defect.

THE COUNTRY INN YARD, OR THE STAGE-COACH.

"The poet's adage, 'All the world's a stage,' Has stood the test of each revolving age; Another simile perhaps will bear, 'Tis a _Stage-coach_, where all must pay the fare; Where each his entrance and his exit makes, And o'er life's rugged road his journey takes. Some unprotected must their tour perform, 'And bide the pelting of the pitiless storm:' While others, free from elemental jars, By fortune favour'd, and propitious stars, Secure from storms, enjoy their little hour, Despise the whirlwind, and defy the shower. Such is our life,--in sunshine or in shade, From evil shelter'd, or by woe assay'd: Whether we sit, like Niobe, all tears, Or calmly sink into the vale of years: With houseless, naked Edgar, sleep on straw, Or keep, like Cæsar, subject worlds in awe,-- To the same port our devious journeys tend, Where airy hopes and sickening sorrows end; Sunk every eye, and languid every breast, Each wearied pilgrim sighs, and sinks to rest."--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 background. 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 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 background 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.[176]

Under the sign of an angel, who seems dancing a minuet on a cloud, is inscribed, "The Old Angle In Toms Bates from London."

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, etc., it has not been positively ascertained, though it is probably Chelmsford.

END OF VOL. I.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Two of the prints must be excepted: "Time smoking a Picture," and "The Bathos," are addressed to the connoisseurs.

[2] Mr. Walker, who has so eminently distinguished himself by his lectures on natural philosophy, has described the effect resulting from one of this rude bard's productions:--

"_To Mr. Nichols._

"I must leave you to the annals of fame for the rest of the anecdotes of this great genius, and shall endeavour to show you that his family possessed similar talents; but they were destined, like the wild rose,

'To waste their sweetness in the desert air.'

"Happy should I be to rescue from oblivion the name of auld Hogarth, whose songs and quibbles have so often delighted my childhood! These simple strains of this mountain Theocritus were fabricated while he held the plough, or was leading his fuel from the hills. He was as critical an observer of nature as his nephew, for the narrow field he had to view her in: not an incident or an absurdity in the neighbourhood escaped him. If any one was hardy enough to break through any decorum of old and established repute; if any one attempted to overreach his neighbour, or cast a leering eye at his wife, he was sure to hear himself sung over the whole parish, nay, to the very boundaries of the Westmoreland dialect! so that his songs were said to have a greater effect on the manners of his neighbourhood, than even the sermons of the parson himself. But his poetical talents were not confined to the incidents of his village; I myself have had the honour to bear a part in one of his plays (I say _one_, for there are several of them extant in _MS._ in the mountains of Westmoreland to this hour). The play was called _The Destruction of Troy_; it was written in metre, much in the manner of _Lopez de Vega_, or the ancient French drama. The unities were not too strictly observed, for the siege of ten years was all represented: every hero was in the piece, so that the _dramatis personæ_ consisted of every lad of genius in the whole parish. The wooden horse;--Hector dragged by the heels;--the fury of Diomede;--the flight of Æneas;--and the burning of the city, were all represented. I remember not what fairies had to do in all this; but as I happened to be about three feet high at the time of this still talked of exhibition, I personated one of these tiny beings. The stage was a fabrication of boards, placed about six feet high, on strong posts; the green-room was partitioned off with the same materials; its ceiling was the azure canopy of heaven; and the boxes, pit, and galleries, were laid into one by the great Author of nature, for they were the green slope of a fine hill. Despise not, reader, this humble state of the provincial drama: let me tell you, there were more spectators, for three days together, than your three theatres in London would hold; and let me add, still more to your confusion, that you never saw an audience half so well pleased.

"The exhibition was begun with a grand procession from the village, to a great stone (dropped by the Devil, about a quarter of a mile off, when he tried in vain to erect a bridge across Windermere; so the people, unlike the rest of the world, have remained a good sort of people ever since),--I say, the procession was begun by the minstrels of five parishes, and followed by a yeoman on bull-back. You stare--stop then, till I inform you that this adept had so far civilised his bull, that he would suffer the yeoman to mount his back, and even to play upon the fiddle there. The managers besought him to join the procession; but the bull not being accustomed to much company, and particularly to so much applause,--whether he was intoxicated with praise, thought himself affronted and made game of, or whether a favourite cow came across his imagination, certain it was that he broke out of the procession, erected his tail, and, like another _Europa_, carried off the affrighted yeoman and his fiddle over hedge and ditch, till he arrived at his own field. This accident rather inflamed than depressed the good humour arising from the procession; and the clown, or Jack Pudding of the piece, availed himself so well of the incident, that the lungs and ribs of the spectators were in manifest danger. This character was the most important personage in the whole play; for his office was to turn the most serious parts of the drama into burlesque and ridicule; he was a compound of Harlequin and the Merry-Andrew, or rather the arch-fool of the ancient kings. His dress was a white jacket covered with bulls, bears, birds, fish, etc., cut in various-coloured cloth; his trousers were decorated in like manner, and hung round with small bells; and his cap was that of folly, decorated with bells, and an otter's brush impending. The lath sword must be of great antiquity in this island, for it hath been the appendage of a Jack Pudding in the mountains of Westmoreland time out of mind.

"The play was opened by this character, with a song, which answered the double purpose of a play-bill and a prologue, for his duty gave the audience a foretaste of the rueful incidents they were about to behold; and it called out the actors one by one to make the spectators acquainted with their names and characters, walking round and round, till the whole _dramatis personæ_ made one great circle on the stage. The audience being thus become acquainted with the actors, the play opened with Paris running away with Helen, and Menelaus scampering after them. Then followed the death of Patroclus, the rage of Achilles, the persuasions of Ulysses, etc. etc., and the whole was interlarded with apt songs, both serious and comic, all the production of auld Hogarth. The bard, however, at this time had been dead some years, and I believe this _fête_ was a jubilee to his memory: but let it not detract from the memory of Mr. Garrick to say, that his at Stratford was but a copy of one forty years ago on the banks of Windermere. Was it any improvement, think you, to introduce several bulls into the procession instead of one?--But I love not comparisons, and so conclude.--Yours, etc.,

"ADAM WALKER."

[3] It was written for the information of Marshal Belisle, then a prisoner in Windsor Castle.