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.
[4] In Mr. Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, vol. iv. p. 161, we are told that "his apprenticeship was no sooner expired, than he entered into the academy in St. Martin's Lane, and studied drawing from the life." In this circumstance, which is in itself trifling, I think the Right Honourable author has not displayed his usual accuracy. Hogarth was emancipated from his Cranbourn Alley confinement about the year 1718, at which time, I believe, there was not an academy either in that or any other part of London. The first for the use of students in drawing was opened in 1724, by Sir James Thornhill, at his house in Covent Garden. On his death, which was in May 1734, the casts, models, benches, etc., were sent to Mr. Hogarth (who had four years before married Miss Thornhill); by him they were afterwards lent to an academy established at what had previously been Roubiliac's workshop, in St. Martin's Lane.
[5] This gentleman was also a patron to the late Mr. Major the engraver, who told me that when very young, and on the point of going to Paris for improvement in his profession, he took two plates of small landscapes, which he had just finished, to Mr. Bowles, who expressed himself much pleased with the performance of them, and generously proffered him two pieces of plain copper, of the same size and weight,—by practising on which, he might still further improve himself. When I add, that one of the engravings delivered to this patron was that very pretty little landscape inscribed Evening, it is scarcely necessary to say—the offer was rejected.
[6] On a piece of newspaper, dated 1786, and pasted in one of Dr. Lort's books, was the following remark:—
"The Hogarth mania is as strong as ever. On Thursday the 6th of April,—it should have been the first,—the Roman Military Punishments, a paltry work for which no bookseller seven years ago would have offered more than a few shillings, was sold at Greenwood's for six pounds, on account of some trifling plates in it by Hogarth."
In the sale of Doctor Lort's library at Leigh and Sotheby's, in 1790, a copy of Bever's book produced a still larger sum.
[7] In this improved era we have seen examples of striking portraits which every year assume a new title. A head of Dr. Franklin was lately transferred from the book for which it was engraven to the memoirs of a man executed for forgery, whose name it now bears; another age may see the same print honoured with the name of some eminent pugilist, who at the close of the eighteenth century wore the collar of his order! Such are the transmigrations of the arts,—or, if it better please the reader, the arts of transmigration. Among the Paternoster Row classics, there is no other distinction between a bruiser, a felon, or a philosopher, than arises from the sale of their memoirs.
[8] On the print of Hudibras and the Lawyer is William Hogart delin. et sculp'. This Mr. Nichols considers as a proof that Hogarth had not yet disused the original mode in which he spelt his name.
From his shop-bill, and every preceding print, I am inclined to think he never had more than one mode of spelling his name. The concluding h being in this instance omitted, might arise from carelessness, or a failure of the aquafortis. His father's Latin letter, dated 1697, proves that he inserted the final h, and I can discover no reason why his son should discard it.
[9] For this, and some other assistance, Mr. Tyers presented Hogarth with a gold ticket of admission for himself and friends. On the face, two figures, one nearly naked, the other armed with a helmet and shield, are represented on the point of joining hands:—motto round them, VIRTUS VOLUPTAS; and at the lower part, FELICES UNA. On the reverse, HOGARTH——IN PERPETUAM BENEFICII MEMORIAM.
This ticket is now in the possession of Mrs. Lewis, of Chiswick.
[10] It seems probable that Sir James was very soon reconciled, for we find in the Craftsman of March 10, 1732-3, that when Hogarth painted the portrait of Sarah Malcolm, Sir James Thornhill was present.
[11] The sum and purchasers of each are noticed in the account of the engravings.
[12] Among the papers of a lately deceased Virtuosi, I met with a few MS. sheets, entitled Hints for a History of the Arts in Great Britain, from the Accession of the Third George. The following extract proves that painting pictures, called after the ancient masters, was not confined to Italy: we had in England some industrious and laborious artists who, like the unfortunate Chatterton, gave the honours of their best performances to others. The narrative has no date, but some allusions to a late sovereign determine it was a short time before we discovered that there were in our own poets subjects as worthy of the pencil as any found in the idle tales of antiquity, or the still more idle legends of popery:—
"The late edict of the Emperor, for selling the pictures of which he has despoiled the convents, will be a very fortunate circumstance for many of the artists of this country, whose sole employment is painting old pictures; and this will be a glorious opportunity for introducing modern antiques into the cabinets of the curious.
"A most indefatigable dealer, apprehensive that there might be a difficulty, and enormous expense in procuring from abroad a sufficient quantity to gratify the eagerness of the English connoisseurs, has taken the more economical method of having a number painted here. The bill of one of his workmen, which came into my hands by an accident, I think worth preservation, and have taken a copy for the information of future ages. Every picture is at present most sacredly preserved from the public eye, but in the course of a few months will be smoked into antiquity, and may probably be announced in manner and form following:—
"TO THE LOVERS OF VIRTU.
"Mr. —— has the heartfelt pleasure of congratulating the amateurs of the fine arts upon such an opportunity of enriching their collections, as no period from the days of the divine Apelles to the present irradiated era ever produced; nor is it probable that there ever will be in any future age so splendid, superb, brilliant, and matchless an assemblage of unrivalled pictures as he begs leave to announce to the connoisseurs are now exhibiting at his great room in ——, being the principal part of that magnificent bouquet which have been accumulating for so many ages, been preserved with religious care, and contemplated with pious awe, while they had an holy refuge in the peaceful gloom of the convents of Germany. By the edict of the Emperor they are banished from these consecrated walls, and are now emerged from obscurity with undiminished lustre! with all their native charms, mellowed by the tender, softening pencil of time, and introduced to this emporium of taste! this favourite seat of the arts! this exhibition-room of the universe; and when seen, must produce the most pleasing and delightful sensations.
"When it is added, that they were selected by that most judicious and quick-sighted collector, Monsieur D., it will be unnecessary to say more; for his penetrating eye and unerring judgment, his boundless liberality and unremitting industry, have ensured him the protection of a generous public, ever ready to patronize exertions made solely for their gratification!
"N.B.—Descriptive catalogues, with the names of the immortal artists, may be had as above."
THE BILL.
"Monsieur Varnish to Benjamin Bister, debtor.
| £ | s. | d. | |
| To painting the Woman caught in Adultery, upon a green ground, by Hans Holbein | 3 | 3 | 0 |
| To Solomon's Wise Judgment, on pannel, by Michael Angelo Buonorati | 2 | 12 | 6 |
| To painting and canvas, for a naked Mary Magdalen, in the undoubted style of Paul Veronese | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| To brimstone, for smoking ditto | 0 | 2 | 6 |
| Paid Mrs. W—— for a live model to sit for Diana bathing, by Tintoretto | 0 | 16 | 8 |
| Paid for the hire of a layman, to copy the robes of a Cardinal, for a Vandyke | 0 | 5 | 0 |
| Portrait of a Nun doing Penance, by Albrecht Durer | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| Paid the female figure for sitting thirty minutes in a wet sheet, that I might give the dry manner of that master[13] | 0 | 10 | 6 |
| The Tribute-money Rendered, with all the exactness of Quintin Metsius, the famed blacksmith of Antwerp | 2 | 12 | 6 |
| To Ruth at the feet of Boaz, upon an oak board, by Titiano | 3 | 3 | 0 |
| St. Anthony Preaching to the Fishes, by Salvator Rosa | 3 | 10 | 0 |
| The Martyrdom of St. Winifred, with a view of Holywell bath, by old Frank | 1 | 11 | 6 |
| To a large allegorical altar-piece, consisting of men and angels, horses and river gods; 'tis thought most happily hit off for a Rubens | 5 | 5 | 0 |
| To Susannah Bathing; the two Elders in the background, by Castiglione | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| To the Devil and St. Dunstan, highly finished, by Teniers | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| To the Queen of Sheba falling down before Solomon, by Morillio | 2 | 12 | 6 |
| To a Judith in the Tent of Holofernes, by Le Brun | 1 | 16 | 0 |
| To a Sisera in the Tent of Jael, its companion, by the same | 1 | 16 | 0 |
| Paid for admission into the House of Peers, to take a sketch of a great character, for a picture of Moses breaking the Tables of the Law, in the darkest manner of Rembrandt, not yet finished | 0 | 2 | 6 |
[13] Some of the ancient masters acquired a dry manner of painting from studying after wet drapery.—Webb on Painting.
[14] The annexed letter, which was published about this time, I have been informed was written by Hogarth; add to this authority, of which I have no doubt, I think it carries internal evidence of his mind. It is printed in the London Magazine for 1737, and thus prefaced:
The following piece, published in the St. James's Evening Post of June 7th, is by the first painter in England, perhaps in the world, in his way:
"Every good-natured man and well-wisher to the Arts in England, must feel a kind of resentment at a very indecent paragraph, in the Daily Post of Thursday last, relating to the death of M. de Morine, first painter to the French king, in which very unjust as well as cruel reflections are cast on the noblest performance (in its way) that England has to boast of,—I mean the work of the late Sir James Thornhill, in Greenwich Hall. It has ever been the business of narrow, little geniuses, who by a tedious application to minute parts have (as they fancy) attained to a great insight into the correct drawing of a figure, and have acquired just knowledge enough in the art to tell accurately when a toe is too short or a finger too thick, to endeavour, by detracting from the merits of great men, to build themselves a kind of reputation. These peddling demi-critics, on the painful discovery of some little inaccuracy (which proceeds mostly from the freedom of the pencil), without any regard to the more noble parts of a performance (which they are totally ignorant of), with great satisfaction condemn the whole as a bad and incorrect piece.
'The meanest artist in the Emelian square,
Can imitate in brass the nails or hair;
Expert at trifles, and a cunning fool,
Able to express the parts, but not the whole.'
"There is another set of gentry, more noxious to the art than these, and those are your picture-jobbers from abroad, who are always ready to raise a great cry in the prints, whenever they think their craft is in danger; and indeed it is their interest to depreciate every English work as hurtful to their trade of continually importing ship-loads of Dead Christs, Holy Families, Madonnas, and other dismal dark subjects, neither entertaining nor ornamental, on which they scrawl the terrible cramp names of some Italian masters, and fix on us poor Englishmen the character of universal dupes. If a man, naturally a judge of painting, not bigoted to those empirics, should cast his eye on one of their sham virtuoso pieces, he would be very apt to say: Mr. Bubbleman, that grand Venus, as you are pleased to call it, has not beauty enough for the character of an English cook-maid. Upon which the quack answers, with a confident air: 'Sir, I find that you are no connoisseur; the picture, I assure you, is in Alesso Baldminetto's second and best manner, boldly painted, and truly sublime: the contour gracious: the air of the head in the high Greek taste; and a most divine idea it is.—Then spitting in an obscure place, and rubbing it with a dirty handkerchief, takes a skip to t'other end of the room, and screams out in raptures, 'There's an amazing touch! A man should have this picture a twelvemonth in his collection before he can discover half its beauties!' The gentleman (though naturally a judge of what is beautiful, yet ashamed to be out of the fashion, by judging for himself) with this cant is struck dumb; gives a vast sum for the picture, very modestly confesses he is indeed quite ignorant of painting, and bestows a frame worth fifty pounds on a frightful thing, which, without the hard name, is not worth so many farthings. Such impudence as is now continually practised in the picture trade must meet with its proper treatment, would gentlemen but venture to see with their own eyes. Let but the comparison of pictures with nature be their only guide, and let them judge as freely of painting as they do of poetry, they would then take it for granted, that when a piece gives pleasure to none but these connoisseurs, or their adherents, if the purchase be a thousand pounds, 'tis nine hundred and ninety-nine too dear; and were all our grand collections stripped of such sort of trumpery, then, and not till then, it would be worth an Englishman's while to try the strength of his genius to supply their place, which now it were next to madness to attempt, since there is nothing that has not travelled a thousand miles, or has not been done a hundred years, but is looked upon as mean and ungenteel furniture. What Mr. Pope in his last work says of poems, may with much more propriety be applied to pictures:
'Authors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old;
It is the rust we value, not the gold.'
"Sir James Thornhill, in a too modest compliance with the connoisseurs of his time, called in the assistance of Mr. Andre, a foreigner, famous for the fulness of his outline, to paint the Royal Family at the upper end of Greenwich Hall, to the beauties or faults of which I have nothing to say; but with regard to the ceiling, which is entirely of his own hand, I am certain all unprejudiced persons, with (or without) much insight into the mechanic parts of painting, are at the first view struck with the most agreeable harmony and play of colours that ever delighted the eye of a spectator. The composition is altogether extremely grand, the groups finely disposed, the light and shade so contrived as to throw the eye with pleasure on the principal figures, which are drawn with great fire and judgment; the colouring of the flesh delicious, the drapery great and well folded; and upon examination, the allegory is found clear, well invented, and full of learning: in short, all that is necessary to constitute a complete ceiling-piece is apparent in that magnificent work. Thus much is in justice to that great English artist.
"Britophil.
"N.B.—If the reputation of this work were destroyed, it would put a stop to the receipt of daily sums of money from spectators, which is applied to the use of sixty charity children."
[15] The book alluded to is, "A Tracte containing the Artes of curious Paintinge, Carvinge, and Buildinge, written first in Italian by Jo. Paul Lomatius, Painter of Milan, and Englished by R. H. (Richard Haydocke), Student in Physick." Published 1598.
From this visionary writer he could not borrow much, great part of his book treating of the different important consequences which had resulted from the study of the proportions of the human body. It is dedicated to the Right Worshipful Thomas Bodley, Esquire, warmly recommended by John Case, doctor of physic; and in the following quaint lines, the translator apologizeth for thus employing himself:—
"TO THE INGENIOUS READER. R. H.
"How hard a matter it is to withstand any natural instinct, and habitual inclination whatsoever, the storie of the Syracusane Archimedes (besides divers others to this purpose) may sufficiently persuade; who was so rapt with the sweetness of his mathematical conclusions, that even then when the enemie had entered the gates of the citie he was found drawing of lines upon the sand, when perchance it had bin fitter for a philosopher to have bin advising in the counsell-house.
"Not much unlike to whome I may peradventure seeme, who at this time especially, when the unappeasable enimies of health, sicknesse, and mortality have so mightily prevailed against us, am here found drawing of lines and lineaments, portraitures, and proportions, when (in regard of my place and profession) it might much better have beseemed mee to have bin found in the colledge of physicians, learning and counselling such remedies as might make for the common health; or if I must needes be doing about lines, to have commented upon this proposition, mors ultima linea rerum.
"Howbeit, as I find not him much taxed in the storie for this his diligent carelessness, because he was busied about matters which were not onlie an ornament of peace, but also of good use in warre, so my hope is (ingenious reader), that my sedulous trifling shall meete with thy friendliest interpretation; insomuch as the arte I now deale in shall be proved not onlie a grace to health, but also a contentment and recreation unto sickeness, and a kind of preservative against death and mortality; by a perpetual preserving of their shades, whose substances physicke could not prolong, no, not for a season," etc. etc.
In his treatise of colours, he makes the following addresse to his faire countrie wommen:—
"Having intreated of so many and divers thinges, I could not but say something of such matters as woemen use ordinarilly in beautifying and imbelishing their faces; a thing well worth the knowledge, insomuch as many women are so possessed with a desire of helping their complexions by some artificial meanes, that they will by no meanes be diswaded from the same." He then enumerates ceruse, plume alume, juice of lemons, oil of tartarie, camphire, and sundry other cosmetics of the day, all which he takes many pages to prove are enemies to health, and hurtful to the complexion, and thus adviseth: "Wherefore if there bee no remedie, but women will be meddling with this arte of pollishing, let them, instead of those mineral stuffes, use the remedies following.
"Of such helpes of Beauty as may safely be used without danger.
"There is nothing in the world which doth more beautifie and adorne a woman than chearfulness, contentment, and good temper. For it is not the red and white which giveth the gracious perfection of beauty, but certaine sparkling notes and touches of amiable chearfulness accompanying the same. The truth whereof may appear in a discontented woman, otherwise exceeding faire, who atte that instant will seem yll favoured and unloovely; as contrariwise, an hard-favoured and browne woman, being merry, pleasaunte, and jocund, will seem sufficient beautiful."
[16] Of this figure he thus writes in his chapter on Compositions with the Serpentine Line:—
"We have had recourse to the works of the ancients, not because the moderns have not produced some as excellent, but because the works of the former are more generally known; nor would we have it thought that either of them has ever yet come up to the utmost beauty of nature. Who but a bigot to the antiques will say, that he has not seen faces and necks, hands and arms, in living women, that even the Grecian Venus doth but coarsely imitate?"
[17] Hogarth might possibly have some oblique allusion to the manner in which Cæsar suffered in the capitol of an English theatre.—They might as well have hanged him; or, the actor deserved hanging for so personating the character,—which the reader likes best.
In an early impression of the print I have seen written (I believe by Hogarth) on the pedestal upon which this figure is placed, tu Brute. That he greatly disliked Quin, is evident from the following epigram, with the injustice or justice of which I have nothing to do, but to the painter it is attributed:—
"Your servant, Sir," says surly Quin.—
"Sir, I am yours," replies Macklin.—
"Why, you're the very Jew you play,
Your face performs the task well."—
"And you are Sir John Brute, they say,
And an accomplished Maskwell."
Says Rich, who heard the sneering elves,
And knew their horrid hearts,
"Acting too much your very selves,
You overdo your parts."
[18] In the Analysis, he asserts that a completely new and harmonious order of architecture might be produced by making choice of variety of lines, and then again, by varying their situations with each other; in a word, that the art of composing well is the art of varying well. In the frontispiece to Brook Taylor's perspective, he has given an example, by a broken sceptre, somewhat resembling the Roman fasces, and girt round with the Prince of Wales' coronet, as an astragal, through which the fasces rise, and swell into a crown adorned with embroidered stars.
[19] Mr. Shee, in his Rhymes on Art, has very happily introduced a similar character, accompanied by congenial connoisseurs:—
"No awkward heir that o'er Campania's plain,
Has scamper'd like a monkey in his chain;
No ambush'd ass, that, hid in learning's maze,
Kicks at desert, and crops wit's budding bays;
No baby grown, that still his coral keeps,
And sucks the thumb of science till he sleeps;
No mawkish son of sentiment who strains
Soft sonnet drops from barley-water brains;
No pointer of a paragraph, no peer,
That hangs a picture-pander at his ear;
No smatterer of the ciceroni crew,
No pauper of the parish of Virtú;
But starts an Aristarchus on the town,
To hunt full cry dejected merit down;
With sapient shrug assumes the critic's part,
And loud deplores the sad decline in art."
[20] "The dancing-room is also ornamented purposely with such statues and pictures as may serve to a further illustration. Henry VIII., Number 72, makes a perfect X with his legs and arms; and the position of Charles I., Number 51, is composed of less varied lines than the statue of Edward VI., Number 73, and the medal over his head is in the like kind of lines; but that over Queen Elizabeth, as well as her figure, is in the contrary; so are also the two other wooden figures at the end. Likewise the comical posture of astonishment (expressed by following the direction of one plain curve) as the dotted line in a French print of Sancho (where Don Quixote demolishes the puppet show); Number 75 is a good contrast to the effect of the serpentine lines, in the fine turn of the Samaritan woman; Number 74, taken from one of the best pictures Annibal Carrache ever painted."—Hogarth's Analysis, p. 137.
[21] A newspaper of 1781 has the following advertisement:—
"MINUET DE LA COUR, DEVONSHIRE, LE ROI, STATUTE, SURPRISE.
"A gentleman of merit, well educated and properly qualified by seven of the best masters that ever trod on English ground, teaches the above minuets to noblemen and real ladies only, for the sum of five guineas, paid down, with all the excelled graces of the head, body, arms, wrists, hands, fingers, toes, sinks, risings, bounds, rebounds, twirls, twists, fourfold mercuries, coupees, borees, flourishes, demi-corpus, curtseys à-la-mode, hat on, off, giving hands and feet, in an advanced octagon adorned style, and divided into one, two, three, or four steps exact to time or bars; introducing at the same moment the à-la-mode form, Chassa's springs, five and nine orders of the graces, and annexed with the rigadoon, Louvre, cotillion, and ancient and modern hornpipe steps and elegant country-dance positions.—The said gentleman is no common dancing-master, has some character to lose; therefore ladies of a common capacity may soon attain to dance equal to the best French or Italian dancer in this kingdom, only for five guineas, on applying to Number 79 in the Haymarket, between ten and eleven in the morning, and four and six in the afternoon, and they will be seen by the aforesaid gentleman himself."
In his Analysis, Mr. Hogarth thus writeth:—
"The minuet is allowed by dancing-masters themselves to be the perfection of all dancing. I once heard an eminent dancing-master say, that the minuet had been the study of his whole life, and that he had been indefatigable in the pursuit of its beauties, yet at last could only say with Socrates, he knew nothing; adding, that I was happy in my profession as a painter, in that some bounds might be set to the study of it."
[22] Mr. Wilkes informs us that this subject was not thought of until after the publication of Marriage à la Mode. In CHRONOLOGY, the Chamberlain is not so accurate as Doctor Trusler!
[23] Mr. Townley, under the signature of a connoisseur, wrote the following lines to Mr. Hogarth on his Analysis of Beauty:—
"How could you dare, advent'rous man,
To execute so bold a plan,
Or such unheard of truths advance?
At once so rashly to oppose
Those fierce, outrageous, hardy foes,
Fraud, Prejudice, and Ignorance!
"To their despotic, cruel sway,
Fair Science long has been a prey,
All modern art they trampled down;
The rising genius they deprest,
The British taste they turned to jest,
And damn'd at once—because our own.
"The slavish principle I caught,
The southern land of merit sought,
And learn'd to think, to see, to say
Eager I ran through every town,
Penn'd every observation down,
And gather'd judgment by the way.
"On foreign tales and terms of art,
On scraps of French, got well by heart,
And learned guides, was my reliance;
With light and shade my head I fill,
The style of schools was all my skill.
The painter's name was all my science.
"Thus deeply tutor'd, I return'd,
And o'er my tasteless country mourn'd;
I pitied first, then laugh'd and sneer'd;
Then curs'd the crude unfinish'd tints,
The statues, busto's, vases, prints,
When lo! th' Analysis appear'd.
"I smil'd and read; grew grave—read on;
Was pleas'd; the truths apparent shone;
Nor could my prejudice resist 'em.
The Line of Beauty I survey'd,
The arguments I fairly weigh'd,
And then acknowledg'd all your system.
"With reverence, and respect, like you,
The ancient works of art I view;
But, like you, see with my own eyes;
Abhor the tricks so grossly play'd,
Lament the science sunk to trade,
And dealers from my soul despise.
"Pursue, unrivall'd yet, that art,
Which bounteous nature did impart
(Ne'er to be so profuse again):
Our sons, in time to come, shall strive
Where the chief honour they shall give,
Or to your pencil or your pen."
Hogarth had previously presented this gentleman with a volume of his prints, in return for which he received the following very flattering testimony to his talents:—
"Trinity Lane, Feb. 28, 1750.
"Dear Sir,—Having been confined to my house by a violent cold, I have had many hours for contemplation, which at such a time generally turns on my friends, among whom you have been so good to let me call you one. Your late kind intention came into my mind, and gave me an uncommon degree of satisfaction; not on my own account only, but with respect to my family. Your works I shall treasure up as a family book, or rather as one of the classics, from which I shall regularly instruct my children, just in the same manner as I should out of Homer or Virgil. You will be read in your course,—and it will be no unusual thing to find me in a morning in my great chair, with my three bigger boys about me, construing the sixth chapter of the Harlot's Progress, or comparing the two characters in the first book of the 'Prentices.
"You are one of the first great men I ever was acquainted with, and the first great man I desire to be acquainted with, because you have neither insolence nor vanity. Your character has been sketched in different pieces, by different authors, and great encomiums bestowed on you here and there in English, French, Latin, and Greek: but I want to see a full portrait of you. I wish I were as intimate with you, and as well qualified for the purpose, as your friend Fielding,—I would undertake it. I have made an humble attempt here towards something, but I am afraid it has more of a death's head than the face of a man.—You won't be dispirited because my character of you is in the form of an epitaph, for you will observe at the bottom that I have given you a great length of days.
"In the corner, near Shakspeare, in Westminster Abbey, on a monument, elegant only by neatness and symmetry, the next generation may see something like the enclosed inscription, the freedom of which you will excuse, and consider it as coming from a man confined to his room, but from one who is ever, dear sir, your constant admirer, and most obliged servant,
"James Townley.
"To Mr. Hogarth in Leicester Fields.
"AD GULIELMUM HOGARTH,
DUM TU QUID PULCHRUM, QUID TURPE, VOLUMINE DICIS,
NATURÆQUE DOCES QUID SJT, ET ARTIS OPUS,
ATQUE ANIMO CAUSAS, OCULO TABULASQUE DEDISTI,
PICTORIS PRIMI NOMEN UTRINQUE PERES."
[24] The work was translated into German, under the author's inspection, by Mr. Mylins; and with two large plates and twenty-two sheets of letterpress, printed in London at five dollars.
A new and correct edition was (July 1st, 1754) proposed for publication at Berlin by Ch. Fr. Vok, with an explanation of Mr. Hogarth's satirical prints, translated from the French; the whole to subscribers for one dollar, but after six weeks to be raised to two dollars.
An Italian translation was published at Leghorn, 1761, octavo, dedicated Al illustrissime Signora Diana Molineux dama Inglese.
That Sterne had read the Analysis, appears by the following reference recommendatory, in the first volume of Tristram Shandy:—
" ... Such were the outlines of Doctor Slop's figure, which, if you have read Hogarth's Analysis of Beauty, and if you have not, I wish you would, you must know may be as certainly caricatured and conveyed to the mind by three strokes as three hundred." Hogarth's engraving of the air-balloon figure is said to be intended for Doctor Burton, the Jacobite physician of York; a microscopic miniature of the plate (so small that it requires the aid of a glass) is in the engraved frontispiece to these volumes.
[25] He bought the picture in for Lady Schaub, and she has since sold it to the present Henry Duke of Newcastle.
[26] The original letter is in the possession of the editor, and with all the circumstances relating to the transaction, copied from Hogarth's handwriting, published in the third volume of this work.
[27] The correspondence between Sir Richard Grosvenor and Mr. Hogarth relative to the picture of Sigismunda is in the 3d volume of this work.
[28] I mean to speak of alterations suggested by his friends: to the public at large, if we can confide in the following note, which I found in a volume of the late Doctor Lort's, he paid little attention:—
"Hogarth's Sigismunda.
"He placed that picture, which in spite of all the critics could say against it, had infinite merits in the view of the public, and at the same time placed a man in an adjoining room to write down all objections that each spectator made to it. Of these there were a thousand at least, but Hogarth told the writer of this[29] that he attended only to one, and that was made by a madman; and perceiving the objection was founded, he altered it. The madman, after looking stedfastly on the picture for some time, suddenly turned away, exclaiming,—Hang it, I hate these white roses. The artist then, and not till then, observed that the foldings of Sigismunda's chemise sleeves were too regular, and had more the appearance of roses than of linen. I know not in whose possession this picture now is, but I will venture to pronounce, that nowhere can distress be more forcibly exprest on canvas: it is a distress, not of the minute, but the day."