Part 2

In this I believe we agree,--_that young Hogarth had an early predilection for the arts_, and his future acquirements give us a right to suppose he must have studied the _curious sculptures_ which adorned his father's _spelling books_, though he neglected the letterpress; and when he ought to have been storing his memory with the eight parts of speech, was examining the _allegorical apple-tree_ which decorates the grammar. These _first lines_ of nature inclined his father to place him with an engraver; but workers in copper were not numerous, neither did the demand for English prints warrant a certainty of any additional number obtaining constant employment. Engraving on plate seemed likely to afford a more permanent subsistence, required some taste for drawing, and had a remote alliance with the arts. These reasons being seconded by his own inclination, our juvenile satirist was apprenticed to Mr. Ellis Gamble, who kept a silversmith's shop in Cranbourn Alley, Leicester Fields. This vendor of salvers and sauce-boats had in his own house two or three _rare artisans_, whose employment was to engrave cyphers and armorial symbols, not only on the articles their master sold, but on any that he might have to mark from _cunning workmen_, in silver or meaner metals. In this branch he covenanted to instruct William Hogarth, who about the year 1712 became a practical student in Mr. Gamble's _Attic Academy_. In this _school of science_, we may fairly conjecture his first essays were the initials on tea-spoons; he would next be taught the _art_ and _mystery_ of the double cypher, where four letters in opposite directions are so skilfully interwoven, that it requires almost an apprenticeship to learn the art of deciphering them. Having conquered his alphabet, he ascended to the representation of those heraldic monsters which first grinned upon the shields of the holy army of crusaders, and were from thence transferred to the massy tankards and ponderous two-handled cups of their stately descendants. By copying this legion of _hydras, gorgons, and chimeras dire_, he attained an early taste for the ridiculous; and in the grotesque countenance of a baboon or a bear, the cunning eye of a fox, or the fierce front of a rampant lion, traced the characteristic varieties of the human physiognomy. He soon felt that _the science which appertaineth unto the bearing of coat armour_ was not suited to his taste or talents; and tired of the amphibious many-coloured brood that people the fields of heraldry, listened to the voice of Genius, which whispered him _to read the mind's construction in the face_,--to study and delineate MAN.

As the first token of his turn for the _satirical_, it may be worth recording, that while yet an apprentice, when upon a sultry Sunday he once made an excursion to Highgate, two or three of his companions and himself sought shelter and refreshment in one of those convenient _caravanserais_ which so much abound in the vicinity of the metropolis. In the same room were a party of thirsty pedestrians, washing down the dust they had inhaled in their walk, with _London porter_. Two of the company debating upon politics, and the palm of victory being, at the moment Hogarth and his companions entered, adjudged to the taller man, he very vociferously exulted in his conquest, and added some sarcastic remarks on the diminutive appearance of his adversary. The _little_ man had _a great soul_, and having in his right hand a pewter pot, threw it with fatal force at his opponent: it struck him in the forehead,--and

"As the mountain oak Nods to the axe, till with a groaning sound It sinks, and spreads its honours on the ground,"--

he sunk to the floor, and there,--as the divine Ossian would have sublimely expressed it,--_The grey mist swam before his eyes. He lay in the hall of mirth as a mountain pine, when it tumbles across the rushy Loda.--He recovered; lifted up his bleeding head, and rolled his full-orbed eyes around. He ascended as a pillar of smoke streaked with fire, and streams of blood ran down his dark brown cheeks, like torrents from the summit of an oozy rock, etc. etc._

To descend from the _pinnacle of Parnassus_ to the _plain of common sense_,--the fellow being deeply, though not dangerously, wounded in the forehead, extreme agony excited a most hideous grin. His _woe-begone_ figure, opposed to the pert triumphant air of his tiny conqueror, and the half suppressed laugh of his surrounding friends, presented a scene too ridiculous to be resisted. The young tyro seized his pencil, drew his first group of portraits from the life, and gave, with a strong resemblance of each, such a grotesque variety of character as evades all description.

When we consider this little sketch was his _coup d'essai_, the loss of it is much to be regretted.

He probably made many others during his apprenticeship. When that expired, bidding adieu to _red lions_ and _green dragons_, he endeavoured to attain such knowledge of drawing as would enable him to delineate the human figure, and transfer his _burin_ from silver to copperplate. In this attempt he had to encounter many difficulties; engraving on copper was so different an art from engraving on silver, that it was necessary he should _un_learn much which he had already learned; and at twenty years of age, habits are too deeply rooted to be easily eradicated; so that he never attained the power of describing that clear, beautiful stroke which was then given by some foreign artists, and has since been brought, I believe, to its utmost perfection by Sir Robert Strange.

In his first efforts he had little more assistance than could be acquired by casual communications, or imitating the works of others;[4] those of Callot were probably his first models; and shop-bills and book-plates his first performances. Some of these, with impressions from tankards and tea-tables which escaped the crucible, have, by the laudable industry of collectors, been preserved to the present day. How far they add to the artist's fame, or are really of the value at which they are sometimes purchased, is a question of too high import for me to decide. By the connoisseur it is asserted, that the earliest productions of a great painter ought to be preserved, for they soar superior to the mature labours of plodding dulness, and though but seeds of that genius intended by nature to tower above its contemporaries, invariably exhibit _clear marks of mind_; as every variety in the branches of a strong-ribbed oak is, by the aid of a microscope, discoverable in the acorn.

By the opposite party it is urged, that collecting these _blotted leaves of fancy_, is burying a man of talents in the ruins of his _baby-house_; and that for the honour of his name, and _repose of his soul_, they ought to be consigned to the flames, rather than pasted in the _portfolio_.

I must candidly acknowledge, that for trifles by the hand of Hogarth or Mortimer, I have a kind of religious veneration; but, like the rebuses and riddles of Swift, they are still trifles, and except when considered as tracing the progress of the mind from infancy to manhood, are not entitled to much attention. If examined with this regard, especial care should be taken that their names are not dishonoured by the unmeaning and contemptible productions of inferior artists, some of whose prints have found a place in the catalogue of Hogarth's works. Mr. Nichols properly questions the plate of _Æneas in a Storm_: he might safely put the same query to _Riche's Triumphal Entry into Covent Garden_, and a few other plates, which some of the collectors have _very positively_ asserted to be his. The _Jack in Office_ and _Pug the Painter_, I believe, belong to other collectors. That _the design for General Wolfe's monument_ should ever be supposed the work of Hogarth, has often astonished me. I do not see the most distant resemblance of his manner, in mind, conception, design, or execution.

Many stories, similar to those which are told of the manner that other painters revenged an insult, or supplied the exigencies of the moment, are related of young Hogarth. If true, these volumes would gain little interest by their insertion, for few of them are worthy of a memorial; and if false, they ought not to be admitted.

That a young artist, just emancipated from the obscurity of a silversmith's garret, should be unknown, we naturally suppose; that talents, however exalted, should not be noticed by the public until the professor gave some proofs of superiority, may be readily credited.

That a youth of volatile dispositions, who had neither inheritance nor protection, must frequently want money, follows as certainly as night to day; and we place full confidence in the assertion, when told that he has frequently said, "I remember the time when I have gone moping into the city with scarce a shilling in my pocket; but having received ten guineas there for a plate, returned home, put on my sword and bag, and sallied out again, with all the confidence of a man who had ten thousand pounds in his pocket."

I can believe that the elder Mr. Bowles was his first patron; but when Mr. Nichols informs us, on the authority of Doctor Ducarrel, that this _patron_ offered the young engraver half-a-crown a pound for a plate just finished, rejoice that the inauspicious period when such talents had such patronage[5] is past.

Mr. Horace Walpole well observes, that the history of an artist must be sought in his works. The earliest date I have seen on any of Hogarth's engravings is his own shop-bill, bordered with two figures and two Cupids, and inscribed April 20, 1720. From this and similar mechanic blazonry, he ascended to prints for books, in the execution of which it was not necessary to have much knowledge of the arts. If they were _copperplates_, the public were satisfied; neither spirit of design, accuracy of drawing, nor delicacy of stroke were demanded. Six engravings, containing six compartments each, for King's _History of the Heathen Gods_, I should apprehend were among the earliest. I have heard them doubted, and they are not mentioned in either Mr. Walpole's or Mr. Nichols' list; but I believe them to be as certainly Hogarth's as the Rake's Progress.

In two emblematical prints on the lottery, and the South Sea Bubble, published in 1721, there is not much merit; and in the fifteen for Aubrey de la Mottraye's Travels, dated 1723, we only regret that so much time and copper should be wasted.

The _Burlington Gate_, which appeared in 1724, is in a very superior style, and in the spirit of Callot. With some very well pointed satire on the general passion for masquerades, and other ridiculous _raree-shows_, it unites a burlesque of Kent the architect, who upon the pediment of his patron's gate is exalted above Raphael and Michael Angelo. From this circumstance I think it probable that the print was engraved as a sort of admission ticket to Sir James Thornhill's academy, which was opened that year. The knight would unquestionably be gratified by this ridicule of his rival, and might in consequence admit the young artist to such a degree of intimacy as enabled him to gain the heart and hand of Miss Thornhill. The burlesque copy of Kent's altar-piece at St. Clement's Church was published in 1725; and fifteen headpieces for Bever's Military Punishments in the same year.[6]

By seventeen small plates, with a head of the author for Butler's _Hudibras_, printed in 1726, he first became known in his profession. In design, these are almost direct copies from a series inserted in a small edition of the same book, published sixteen years before. Whether this originated in a wish to save himself the trouble of making original designs, or in the twenty booksellers for whom this edition was published, is not easy to determine. These _midwives to the Muses_ might think he was upon safer ground while copying the designs of an artist sanctioned by public approbation, than in following _his own inventions_, and in this opinion our young engraver might possibly join. Taking these circumstances into the account, I do not agree with Mr. Walpole, when he observes that _we are surprised to find so little humour in an undertaking so congenial to his talents_. If these prints are considered as copies, they ought not to be produced as a criterion; if compared with those from which they are taken, it is not easy to conceive a greater superiority than he has attained over his originals. Neatness was not required; and for such subjects I prefer the spirited etchings of a Hogarth to the most delicate finishing of a Bartolozzi.

Copies of them are inserted in Grey's Hudibras, published 1744, and Townley's French translation, printed _à Londres_, 1757. In Grey's edition, the head of Butler is not copied from Hogarth, who certainly had for his pattern White's mezzotint of John Baptist Monoyer the flower painter, from Sir Godfrey Kneller: to any portrait that I have ever seen of Samuel Butler, it has not the faintest resemblance; and how the artist came to give it that name, it is difficult to guess.[7]

The large series on that subject were published the same year, and are thus entitled: _Twelve excellent and most diverting prints taken from the celebrated poem of Hudibras, written by Mr. Samuel Butler, exposing the villany and hypocrisy of the times, invented and engraved on twelve copperplates, by William Hogarth, and are humbly dedicated to William Ward, Esq. of Great Houghton, in Northamptonshire, and Mr. Allan Ramsay of Edinburgh._[8]

"What excellence can brass or marble claim! These papers better do secure thy fame: Thy verse all monuments does far surpass; No mausoleum's like thy Hudibras."

Allan Ramsay subscribed for thirty sets. The number of subscribers in all, amounts to 192.

The late Mr. Walker of Queen Anne Street had a sketch of Hudibras and Ralpho, painted by Isaac Fuller, very much in the manner of Hogarth, who I think must have seen, and, in the early part of his life, studied Fuller's pictures.

Seven of the drawings were in the possession of the late Mr. Samuel Ireland, three are in Holland, and two are said to have been in the collection of a person in one of the northern provinces about twenty years ago, but are now probably destroyed. Thus are the works of genius scattered like the _Sibyl's leaves_.

Hogarth seems to have been particularly partial to this subject; for, previous to engraving the twelve large plates, he painted it in oil. The twelve original pictures, somewhat larger than the prints, are in the possession of the editor of these volumes.

The variety with which the characteristic distinctions of the figures are marked, the firm and spirited touch with which each of the characters are pencilled, is peculiar to this artist: they come into that class of pictures, which to those who have not seen them cannot be described; to those who have, a description is unnecessary.

In a masquerade ticket, published 1727, he has a second time introduced John James Heidegger, of ill-favoured memory. Notwithstanding Lord Chesterfield's wager, that this _Surintendant des plaisirs d'Angleterre_ did not produce a man with so hideous a countenance as his own, and Pope having honoured him with a place in his Dunciad, when describing

"A monster of a fowl, Something between a _Heidegger_ and owl,"

and his ugliness being in a degree proverbial, an engraving of his face from a mask, taken after his death, and inserted in Lavater's Physiognomy, has strong marks of a benevolent character, and features by no means displeasing or disagreeable.

The print of our _decollating_ Harry and Anna Boleyne, is engraved from a painting once in Vauxhall Gardens.[9] Whatever might be the picture, the print is in every point of view contemptible. His frontispieces to Apuleius and Cassandra, Perseus and Andromeda, John Gulliver, and the Highland Fair, come in precisely the same class. Those to _Terræ Filius_, the Humours of Oxford, and Tom Thumb, have some traces of comedy.

Various temporary satires on the local follies and vices of the day, which he engraved about this time, are enumerated by Mr. Walpole and Mr. Nichols, but have not in general much merit. The compliments he paid to Sir James Thornhill, by ridiculing William Kent, have been noticed in the preceding pages; but Hogarth's partiality was not confined to the knight, he extended it to the knight's daughter, and finding _favour in her sight_,--without the formal ceremony of asking consent, or the tedious process of a settlement,--_took her to wife_. This union being neither sanctioned by her father,[10] nor accompanied with a fortune, compelled him to redouble his professional exertions.

His first large print was Southwark Fair, a natural and highly ludicrous representation of the plebeian amusements of that period; but by the Harlot's Progress, he in 1734 established his character as a painter of domestic history. When his wife's father saw the designs, their originality of idea, regularity of narration, and fidelity of scenery, convinced him that such talents would force themselves into notice, and when known, must be distinguished and patronized. Among a great number of copies which the success of these prints tempted obscure artists to make, there was one set printed on two large sheets of paper, for G. King, Brownlow Street, which, being made with the author's consent, may possibly contain some additions suggested and inserted by Hogarth's directions. In Plate I., beneath the sign of the Bell, PARSONS INTIER BUTT BEAR. In Plate II., to the picture of Jonah under a gourd, a label, _Jonah, why art thou angry?_ and under one of the portraits is written, Mr. Woolston. Below each scene, an inscription describes, in true _beaux' spelling_; the meaning of the prints, and points out two of the characters to be Colonel Charteris and Sir John Gonson. To the strong resemblance the latter of these delineations bore to the original, Mr. Hogarth is said to be indebted for much of his popularity. The magistrate being universally known, a striking portrait _in little_ would then, as now, have a more numerous band of admirers than the best conceived moral satire.

In 1735, when he published his Rake's Progress with a view of _stranding the pirates of the arts_, he solicited and obtained an Act to vest an exclusive right in designers and engravers, and restrain the multiplying copies of their works without their consent.

Like many other _Acts of Parliament_, it was inaccurately worded, and very inadequate to the evil it professed to cure; for Lord Hardwicke determined that no assignee, claiming under an assignment from the original inventor, could receive advantage from it: though after Hogarth's death, the Legislature, by Stat. 7th, Geo. III., granted to his widow a further term of twenty years in the property of her husband's works.

In 1736, at the particular desire of a nobleman, whose name deserves no commemoration, he engraved two prints, entitled _Before_ and _After_. There are few examples of this artist making designs from the thoughts of others. The Sleeping Congregation, Distressed Poet, Enraged Musician, Strolling Actresses, Modern Midnight Conversation, and many genuine comedies of a new description, where the humour of five acts is brought into one scene, were the productions of his own mind. From these and other mirrors of the times, he was considered as an original author; and being now in the plenitude of his fame,--conceiving himself established in reputation, and conscious of being first in his peculiar walk,--he, on the 25th of Jan. 1744-5, printed proposals, offering the paintings of his Harlot's and Rake's Progress, Four Times of the Day, and Strolling Actresses, to public sale, by an auction of a most singular nature.

"I. Every bidder shall have an entire leaf numbered in the book of sale, on the top of which will be entered his name and place of abode, the sum paid by him, the time when, and for which picture.

"II. That on the last day of sale, a clock (striking every five minutes) shall be placed in the room; and when it hath struck five minutes after twelve, the first picture mentioned in the sale book will be deemed as sold; the second picture, when the clock hath struck the next five minutes after twelve; and so on successively till the whole nineteen pictures are sold.

"III. That none advance less than gold at each bidding.

"IV. No person to bid on the last day, except those whose names were before entered in the book. As Mr. Hogarth's room is but small, he begs the favour that no person, except those whose names are entered in the book, will come to view his paintings on the last day of sale."

A method so novel possibly disgusted the town: they might not exactly understand this tedious formulæ of entering their names and places of abode in a book open to indiscriminate inspection; they might wish to humble an artist, who, by his proposals, seemed to consider that he did the world a favour in suffering them to bid for his works; or the _rage_ for paintings might be confined to the admirers of _old masters_. Be that as it may, for his nineteen pictures he received only four hundred and twenty-seven pounds seven shillings,--a price by no means equal to their merit.[11]

The _prints_ of the Harlot's Progress had sold much better than those of the Rake's; yet the _paintings_ of the former produced only fourteen guineas each, while those of the latter were sold for twenty-two! That admirable picture, _Morning_, twenty guineas,--_Night_, in every point inferior to almost any of his works, six-and-twenty!

As a ticket of admission to this sale, he engraved the annexed plate.

_THE BATTLE OF THE PICTURES._

"In curious paintings I'm exceeding nice, And know their several beauties by their price; Auctions and sales I constantly attend, But choose my pictures by a skilful friend. Originals and copies, much the same; The picture's value is the painter's name."