Chapter 8

The cow and dog appear as much inconvenienced by heat as any of the party: the former is whisking off the flies; and the latter creeps unwillingly along, and casts a longing look at the crystal river, in which he sees his own shadow. A remarkably hot summer is intimated by the luxuriant state of a vine, creeping over an alehouse window. On the side of the New River, where the scene is laid, lies one of the wooden pipes employed in the water-works. Opposite Sadler's Wells there still remains the sign of Sir Hugh Middleton's head, which is here represented; but how changed the scene from what is here represented!

NIGHT.

Now burst the blazing bonfires on the sight, Through the wide air their corruscations play; The windows beam with artificial light, And all the region emulates the day.

The moping mason, from yon tavern led, In mystic words doth to the moon complain That unsound port distracts his aching head, And o'er the waiter waves his clouded cane.

Mr. Walpole very truly observes, that this print is inferior to the three others; there is, however, broad humour in some of the figures.

The wounded free-mason, who, in zeal of brotherly love, has drank his bumpers to the craft till he is unable to find his way home, is under the guidance of a waiter. This has been generally considered as intended for Sir Thomas de Veil, and, from an authenticated portrait which I have seen, I am, says Mr. Ireland, inclined to think it is, notwithstanding Sir John Hawkins asserts, that "he could discover no resemblance." When the knight saw him in his magisterial capacity, he was probably sober and sedate; here he is represented a little disguised. The British Xantippe showering her favours from the window upon his head, may have its source in that respect which the inmates of such houses as the Rummer Tavern had for a justice of peace. On the resignation of Mr. Horace Walpole, in February, 1738, De Veil was appointed inspector-general of the imports and exports, and was so severe against the retailers of spirituous liquors, that one Allen headed a gang of rioters for the purpose of pulling down his house, and bringing to a summary punishment two informers who were there concealed. Allen was tried for this offence, and acquitted, upon the jury's verdict declaring him lunatic.

The waiter who supports his worship, seems, from the patch upon his forehead, to have been in a recent affray; but what use he can have for a lantern, it is not easy to divine, unless he is conducting his charge to some place where there is neither moonlight nor illumination.

The Salisbury flying coach oversetting and broken, by passing through the bonfire, is said to be an intended burlesque upon a right honourable peer, who was accustomed to drive his own carriage over hedges, ditches, and rivers; and has been sometimes known to drive three or four of his maid servants into a deep water, and there leave them in the coach to shift for themselves.

The butcher, and little fellow, who are assisting the terrified passengers, are possibly free and accepted masons. One of them seems to have a mop in his hand;--the pail is out of sight.

To crown the joys of the populace, a man with a pipe in his mouth is filling a capacious hogshead with British Burgundy.

The joint operation of shaving and bleeding, performed by a drunken 'prentice on a greasy oilman, does not seen a very natural exhibition on a rejoicing night.

The poor wretches under the barber's bench display a prospect of penury and wretchedness, which it is to be hoped is not so common now, as it was then.

In the distance is a cart laden with furniture, which some unfortunate tenant is removing out of the reach of his landlord's execution.

There is humour in the barber's sign and inscription; "Shaving, bleeding, and teeth drawn with a touch. ECCE SIGNUM!"

By the oaken boughs on the sign, and the oak leaves in the free-masons' hats, it seems that this rejoicing night is the twenty-ninth of May, the anniversary of our second Charles's restoration; that happy day when, according to our old ballad, "The king enjoyed his own again." This might be one reason for the artist choosing a scene contiguous to the beautiful equestrian statue of Charles the First.

In the distance we see a house on fire; an accident very likely to happen on such a night as this.

On this spot once stood the cross erected by Edward the First, as a memorial of affection for his beloved queen Eleanor, whose remains were here rested on their way to the place of sepulture. It was formed from a design by Cavalini, and destroyed by the religious fury of the Reformers. In its place, in the year 1678, was erected the animated equestrian statue which now remains. It was cast in brass, in the year 1633, by Le Soeur; I think by order of that munificent encourager of the arts, Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel. The parliament ordered it to be sold, and broken to pieces; but John River, the brazier who purchased it, having more taste than his employers, seeing, with the prophetic eye of good sense, that the powers which were would not remain rulers very long, dug a hole in his garden in Holborn, and buried it unmutilated. To prove his obedience to their order, he produced to his masters several pieces of brass, which he told them were parts of the statue. M. de Archenholtz adds further, that the brazier, with the true spirit of trade, cast a great number of handles for knives and forks, and offered them for sale, as composed of the brass which had formed the statue. They were eagerly sought for, and purchased,--by the loyalists from affection to their murdered monarch,--by the other party, as trophies of triumph.

The original pictures of Morning and Noon were sold to the Duke of Ancaster for fifty-seven guineas; Evening and Night to Sir William Heathcote, for sixty-four guineas.

SIGISMONDA

Let the picture rust, Perhaps Time's price-enhancing dust,-- As statues moulder into earth, When I'm no more, may mark its worth; And future connoisseurs may rise, Honest as ours, and full as wise, To puff the piece, and painter too, And make me then what Guido's now.

HOGARTH'S EPISTLE.

A competition with either Guido, or Furino, would to any modern painter be an enterprise of danger: to Hogarth it was more peculiarly so, from the public justly conceiving that the representation of elevated distress was not his _forte_, and his being surrounded by an host of foes, who either dreaded satire, or envied genius. The connoisseurs, considering the challenge as too insolent to be forgiven, before his picture appeared, determined to decry it. The painters rejoiced in his attempting what was likely to end in disgrace; and to satisfy those who had formed their ideas of Sigismonda upon the inspired page of Dryden, was no easy task.

The bard has consecrated the character, and his heroine glitters with a brightness that cannot be transferred to the canvass. Mr. Walpole's description, though equally radiant, is too various, for the utmost powers of the pencil.

Hogarth's Sigismonda, as this gentleman poetically expresses it, "has none of the sober grief, no dignity of suppressed anguish, no involuntary tear, no settled meditation on the fate she meant to meet, no amorous warmth turned holy by despair; in short, all is wanting that should have been there, all is there that such a story would have banished from a mind capable of conceiving such complicated woe; woe so sternly felt, and yet so tenderly." This glowing picture presents to the mind a being whose contending passions may be felt, but were not delineated even by Corregio. Had his tints been aided by the grace and greatness of Raphael, they must have failed.

The author of the Mysterious Mother sought for sublimity, where the artist strictly copied nature, which was invariably his archetype, but which the painter, who soars into fancy's fairy regions, must in a degree desert. Considered with this reference, though the picture has faults, Mr. Walpole's satire is surely too severe. It is built upon a comparison with works painted in a language of which Hogarth knew not the idiom,--trying him before a tribunal, whose authority he did not acknowledge, and from the picture having been in many respects altered after the critic saw it, some of the remarks become unfair. To the frequency of these alterations we may attribute many of the errors: the man who has not confidence in his own knowledge of the leading principles on which his work ought to be built, will not render it perfect by following the advice of his friends. Though Messrs. Wilkes and Churchill dragged his heroine to the altar of politics, and mangled her with a barbarity that can hardly be paralleled, except in the history of her husband,--the artist retained his partiality; which seems to have increased in exact proportion to their abuse. The picture being thus contemplated through the medium of party prejudice, we cannot wonder that all its imperfections were exaggerated. The painted harlot of Babylon had not more opprobrious epithets from the first race of reformers than the painted Sigismonda of Hogarth from the last race of patriots.

When a favourite child is chastised by his preceptor, a partial mother redoubles her caresses. Hogarth, estimating this picture by the labour he had bestowed upon it, was certain that the public were prejudiced, and requested, if his wife survived him, she would not sell it for less than five hundred pounds. Mrs. Hogarth acted in conformity to his wishes, but after her death the painting was purchased by Messrs. Boydell, and exhibited in the Shakspeare Gallery. The colouring, though not brilliant, is harmonious and natural: the attitude, drawing, etc. may be generally conceived by the print. I am much inclined to think, that if some of those who have been most severe in their censures, had consulted their own feelings, instead of depending upon connoisseurs, poor Sigismonda would have been in higher estimation. It has been said that the first sketch was made from Mrs. Hogarth, at the time she was weeping over the corse of her mother.

Hogarth once intended to have appealed from the critics' fiat to the world's opinion, and employed Mr. Basire to make an engraving, which was begun, but set aside for some other work, and never completed.

MARTIN FOLKES, ESQ.

Martin Folkes was a mathematician and antiquary of much celebrity in the philosophical annals of this country. He was at the early age of twenty-four admitted a member of the Royal Society, where he was greatly distinguished. Two years afterwards he was chosen one of the council, and was named by Sir Isaac Newton himself as vice president: he was afterwards elected president, and held this high office till a short time before his death, when he resigned it on account of ill-health. In the Philosophical Transactions are numerous memoirs of this learned man: his knowledge in coins, ancient and modern, was very extensive: and the last work he produced was concerning the English Silver Coin from the Conquest to his own time. He was president of the Society of Antiquaries at the time of his death, which happened on the 28th of June, 1754, at the age of sixty-four. A few days before his death he was struck with a fit of the palsy, and never spoke after this attack.

THE COCKPIT.

The scene is probably laid at Newmarket, and in this motley group of peers,--pick-pockets,--butchers,--jockies,--rat-catchers,--gentlemen, --gamblers of every denomination, Lord Albemarle Bertie, being the principal figure, is entitled to precedence. In the March to Finchley, we see him an attendant at a boxing match; and here he is president of a most respectable society assembled at a cockpit. What rendered his lordship's passion for amusements of this nature very singular, was his being totally blind. In this place he is beset by seven steady friends, five of whom at the same instant offer to bet with him on the event of the battle. One of them, a lineal descendant of Filch, taking advantage of his blindness and negligence, endeavours to convey a bank note, deposited in our dignified gambler's hat, to his own pocket. Of this ungentlemanlike attempt his lordship is apprised by a ragged post-boy, and an honest butcher: but he is so much engaged in the pronunciation of those important words, Done! Done! Done! Done! and the arrangement of his bets, that he cannot attend to their hints; and it seems more than probable that the stock will be transferred, and the note negociated in a few seconds.

A very curious group surround the old nobleman, who is adorned with a riband, a star, and a pair of spectacles. The whole weight of an overgrown carpenter being laid upon his shoulder, forces our illustrious personage upon a man beneath; who being thus driven downward, falls upon a fourth, and the fourth, by the accumulated pressure of this ponderous trio, composed of the upper and lower house, loses his balance, and tumbling against the edge of the partition, his head is broke, and his wig, shook from the seat of reason, falls into the cockpit.

A man adjoining enters into the spirit of the battle,--his whole soul is engaged. From his distorted countenance, and clasped hands, we see that he feels every stroke given to his favourite bird in his heart's core,--ay, in his heart of hearts! A person at the old peer's left hand is likely to be a loser. Ill-humour, vexation, and disappointment are painted in his countenance. The chimney-sweeper above, is the very quintessence of affectation. He has all the airs and graces of a boarding-school miss. The sanctified quaker adjoining, and the fellow beneath, who, by the way, is a very similar figure to Captain Stab, in the Rake's Progress, are finely contrasted.

A French marquis on the other side, astonished at this being called amusement, is exclaiming Sauvages! Sauvages! Sauvages!--Engrossed by the scene, and opening his snuff-box rather carelessly, its contents fall into the eyes of a man below, who, sneezing and swearing alternately, imprecates bitter curses on this devil's dust, that extorts from his inflamed eyes, "A sea of melting pearls, which some call tears."

Adjoining is an old cripple, with a trumpet at his ear, and in this trumpet a person in a bag-wig roars in a manner that cannot much gratify the auricular nerves of his companions; but as for the object to whom the voice is directed, he seems totally insensible to sounds, and if judgment can be formed from appearances, might very composedly stand close to the clock of St. Paul's Cathedral, when it was striking twelve.

The figure with a cock peeping out of a bag, is said to be intended for Jackson, a jockey; the gravity of this experienced veteran, and the cool sedateness of a man registering the wagers, are well opposed by the grinning woman behind, and the heated impetuosity of a fellow, stripped to his shirt, throwing his coin upon the cockpit, and offering to back Ginger against Pye for a guinea.

On the lower side, where there is only one tier of figures, a sort of an apothecary, and a jockey, are stretching out their arms, and striking together the handles of their whips, in token of a bet. An hiccuping votary of Bacchus, displaying a half-emptied purse, is not likely to possess it long, for an adroit professor of legerdemain has taken aim with a hooked stick, and by one slight jerk, will convey it to his own pocket. The profession of a gentleman in a round wig is determined by a gibbet chalked upon his coat. An enraged barber, who lifts up his stick in the corner, has probably been refused payment of a wager, by the man at whom he is striking.

A cloud-capt philosopher at the top of the print, coolly smoking his pipe, unmoved by this crash of matter, and wreck of property, must not be overlooked: neither should his dog be neglected; for the dog, gravely resting his fore paws upon the partition, and contemplating the company, seems more interested in the event of the battle than his master.

Like the tremendous Gog, and terrific Magog, of Guildhall, stand the two cock-feeders; a foot of each of these consequential purveyors is seen at the two extremities of the pit.

As to the birds, whose attractive powers have drawn this admiring throng together, they deserved earlier notice:

Each hero burns to conquer or to die, What mighty hearts in little bosoms lie!

Having disposed of the substances, let us now attend to the shadow on the cockpit, and this it seems is the reflection of a man drawn up to the ceiling in a basket, and there suspended, as a punishment for having betted more money than he can pay. Though suspended, he is not reclaimed; though exposed, not abashed; for in this degrading situation he offers to stake his watch against money, in another wager on his favourite champion.

The decorations of this curious theatre are, a portrait of Nan Rawlins, and the King's arms.

In the margin at the bottom of the print is an oval, with a fighting cock, inscribed ROYAL SPORT.

Of the characteristic distinctions in this heterogeneous assembly, it is not easy to speak with sufficient praise. The chimney-sweeper's absurd affectation sets the similar airs of the Frenchman in a most ridiculous point of view. The old fellow with a trumpet at his ear, has a degree of deafness that I never before saw delineated; he might have lived in the same apartment with Xantippe, or slept comfortably in Alexander the copper-smith's first floor. As to the nobleman in the centre, in the language of the turf, he is a mere pigeon; and the peer, with a star and garter, in the language of Cambridge, we must class as--a mere quiz. The man sneezing,--you absolutely hear; and the fellow stealing a bank note,--has all the outward and visible marks of a perfect and accomplished pick-pocket; Mercury himself could not do that business in a more masterly style.

Tyers tells us that "Pope, while living with his father at Chiswick, before he went to Binfield, took great delight in cock-fighting, and laid out all his school-boy money, and little perhaps it was, in buying fighting cocks." Lord Orrery observes, "If we may judge of Mr. Pope from his works, his chief aim was to be esteemed a man of virtue." When actions can be clearly ascertained, it is not necessary to seek the mind's construction in the writings: and we must regret being compelled to believe that some of Mr. Pope's actions, at the same time that they prove him to be querulous and petulant, lead us to suspect that he was also envious, malignant, and cruel. How far this will tend to confirm the assertion, that when a boy, he was an amateur of this royal sport, I do, says Mr. Ireland, not pretend to decide: but were a child, in whom I had any interest, cursed with such a propensity, my first object would be to correct it: if that were impracticable, and he retained a fondness for the cockpit, and the still more detestable amusement of Shrove Tuesday, I should hardly dare to flatter myself that he could become a merciful man.--The subject has carried me farther than I intended: I will, however, take the freedom of proposing one query to the consideration of the clergy,--Might it not have a tendency to check that barbarous spirit, which has more frequently its source in an early acquired habit, arising from the prevalence of example, than in natural depravity, if every divine in Great Britain were to preach at least one sermon every twelve months, on our universal insensibility to the sufferings of the brute creation?

Wilt thou draw near the nature of the Gods, Draw near them then in being merciful; Sweet mercy is nobility's true badge.

CAPTAIN THOMAS CORAM.

Captain Coram was born in the year 1668, bred to the sea, and passed the first part of his life as master of a vessel trading to the colonies. While he resided in the vicinity of Rotherhithe, his avocations obliging him to go early into the city and return late, he frequently saw deserted infants exposed to the inclemencies of the seasons, and through the indigence or cruelty of their parents left to casual relief, or untimely death. This naturally excited his compassion, and led him to project the establishment of an hospital for the reception of exposed and deserted young children; in which humane design he laboured more than seventeen years, and at last, by his unwearied application, obtained the royal charter, bearing date the 17th of October, 1739, for its incorporation.

He was highly instrumental in promoting another good design, viz. the procuring a bounty upon naval stores imported from the colonies to Georgia and Nova Scotia. But the charitable plan which he lived to make some progress in, though not to complete, was a scheme for uniting the Indians in North America more closely with the British Government, by an establishment for the education of Indian girls. Indeed he spent a great part of his life in serving the public, and with so total a disregard to his private interest, that in his old age he was himself supported by a pension of somewhat more than a hundred pounds a year, raised for him at the solicitation of Sir Sampson Gideon and Dr. Brocklesby, by the voluntary subscriptions of public-spirited persons, at the head of whom was the Prince of Wales. On application being made to this venerable and good old man, to know whether a subscription being opened for his benefit would not offend him, he gave this noble answer: "I have not wasted the little wealth of which I was formerly possessed in self-indulgence or vain expenses, and am not ashamed to confess, that in this my old age I am poor."

This singularly humane, persevering, and memorable man died at his lodgings near Leicester-square, March 29, 1751, and was interred, pursuant to his own desire, in the vault under the chapel of the Foundling Hospital, where an historic epitaph records his virtues, as Hogarth's portrait has preserved his honest countenance.

"The portrait which I painted with most pleasure," says Hogarth, "and in which I particularly wished to excel, was that of Captain Coram for the Foundling Hospital; and if I am so wretched an artist as my enemies assert, it is somewhat strange that this, which was one of the first I painted the size of life, should stand the test of twenty years' competition, and be generally thought the best portrait in the place, notwithstanding the first painters in the kingdom exerted all their talents to vie with it.

"For the portrait of Mr. Garrick in Richard III. I was paid two hundred pounds, (which was more than any English artist ever received for a single portrait,) and that too by the sanction of several painters who had been previously consulted about the price, which was not given without mature consideration.

"Notwithstanding all this, the current remark was, that portraits were not my province; and I was tempted to abandon the only lucrative branch of my art, for the practice brought the whole nest of phyzmongers on my back, where they buzzed like so many hornets. All these people have their friends, whom they incessantly teach to call my women harlots, my Essay on Beauty borrowed, and my composition and engraving contemptible.