Released from Bridewell, we now see this victim to her own indiscretion breathe her last sad sigh, and expire in all the extremity of penury and wretchedness. The two quacks, whose injudicious treatment has probably accelerated her death, are vociferously supporting the infallibility of their respective medicines, and each charging the other with having poisoned her.[61] While the maid-servant is entreating them to cease quarrelling, and assist her dying mistress, the nurse plunders her trunk of the few poor remains of former grandeur. Her little boy turning a scanty remnant of meat hung to roast by a string; the linen hanging to dry; the coals deposited in a corner; the candles, bellows, and gridiron hung upon nails; the furniture of the room, and indeed every accompaniment, exhibit a dreary display of poverty and wretchedness. Over the candles hangs a cake of Jew's bread, once perhaps the property of her Levitical lover, and now used as a fly-trap. The initials of her name, M. H., are smoked upon the ceiling as a kind of memento mori to the next inhabitant. On the floor lies a paper inscribed ANODYNE NECKLACE, at that time deemed a sort of CHARM against the disorders incident to children;[62] and near the fire, a tobacco-pipe and paper of pills.

A picture of general, and, at this awful moment, indecent confusion, is admirably represented. The noise of two enraged quacks disputing in bad English, the harsh vulgar scream of the maid-servant, the table falling, and the pot boiling over, must produce a combination of sounds dreadful and dissonant to the ear. In this pitiable situation, without a friend to close her dying eyes or soften her sufferings by a tributary tear,—forlorn, destitute, and deserted,—the heroine of this eventful history expires; her premature death brought on by a licentious life, seven years of which had been devoted to debauchery and dissipation, and attended by consequent infamy, misery, and disease. The whole story affords a valuable lesson to the young and inexperienced, and proves this great, this important truth, that A DEVIATION FROM VIRTUE IS A DEPARTURE FROM HAPPINESS.

The emaciated appearance of the dying figure, the boy's thoughtless inattention, and the rapacious, unfeeling eagerness of the old nurse, are naturally and forcibly delineated.

The figures are well grouped; the curtain gives depth, and forms a good background to the doctor's head; the light is judiciously distributed, and each accompaniment highly appropriate.

PLATE VI.

The ingenious writer of Tristram Shandy begins the life of his hero before he is born; the picturesque biographer of Mary Hackabout has found an opportunity to convey admonition, and enforce his moral, after her death. A wish usually prevails, even among those who are most humbled by their own indiscretion, that some respect should be paid to their remains; that their eyes should be closed by the tender hand of a surviving friend, and the tear of sympathy and regret shed upon the sod which covers their grave; that those who loved them living should attend their last sad obsequies, and a sacred character read over them the awful service which our religion ordains with the solemnity it demands. The memory of this votary of prostitution meets with no such marks of social attention or pious respect. The preparations for her funeral are as licentious as the progress of her life, and the contagion of her example seems to reach all who surround her coffin. One of them is engaged in the double trade of seduction and thievery; a second is contemplating her own face in a mirror. The female who is gazing at the corpse displays some marks of concern, and feels a momentary compunction at viewing the melancholy scene before her: but if any other part of the company are in a degree affected, it is a mere maudlin sorrow, kept up by glasses of strong liquor. The depraved priest does not seem likely to feel for the dead that hope expressed in our liturgy.[63] The appearance and employment of almost every one present at this mockery of woe, is such as must raise disgust in the breast of any female who has the least tincture of delicacy, and excite a wish that such an exhibition may not be displayed at her own funeral.

In this plate there are some local customs which mark the manners of the times when it was engraved, but are now generally disused, except in some of the provinces very distant from the capital; sprigs of rosemary were then given to each of the mourners: to appear at a funeral without one, was as great an indecorum as to be without a white handkerchief. This custom might probably originate at a time when the plague depopulated the metropolis, and rosemary was deemed an antidote against contagion. It must be acknowledged that there are also in this print some things which, though they gave the artist an opportunity of displaying his humour, are violations of propriety and custom: such is her child, but a few removes from infancy, being habited as chief mourner, to attend his parent to the grave; rings presented, and an escutcheon hung up in a garret at the funeral of a needy prostitute.[64] The whole may be intended as a burlesque upon ostentatious and expensive funerals, which were then more customary than they are now. Mr. Pope has well ridiculed the same folly:

The figures have much characteristic discrimination: the woman looking into the coffin has more beauty than we generally see in the works of this artist. The undertaker's gloating stare, his companion's leer, the internal satisfaction of the parson and his next neighbour, are contrasted by the Irish howl of the woman at the opposite side, and evince Mr. Hogarth's thorough knowledge of the operation of the passions upon the features. The composition forms a good shape, has a proper depth, and the light is well managed.

Sir James Thornhill's opinion of this series may be inferred from the following circumstance. Mr. Hogarth had without consent married his daughter: Sir James, considering him as an obscure artist, was much displeased with the connection. To give him a better opinion of his son-in-law, a common friend one morning privately conveyed the six pictures of the "Harlot's Progress" into his drawing-room. The veteran painter eagerly inquired who was the artist; and being told, cried out, "Very well! Very well indeed! The man who can paint such pictures as these, can maintain a wife without a portion." This was the remark of the moment; but he afterwards considered the union of his daughter with a man of such abilities an honour to his family, was reconciled, and generous.

When the publication was advertised, such was the expectation of the town, that above twelve hundred names were entered in the subscription book. When the prints appeared, they were beheld with astonishment. A subject so novel in the idea, so marked with genius in the execution, excited the most eager attention of the public. At a time when England was coldly inattentive to everything which related to the arts, so desirous were all ranks of people of seeing how this little domestic story was delineated, that there were eight piratical imitations,—besides two copies in a smaller size than the original, published, by permission of the author, for Thomas Bakewell. The whole series were copied on fan-mounts, representing the six plates, three on one side, and three on the other. It was transferred from the copper to the stage, in the form of a pantomime, by Theophilus Cibber; and again represented in a ballad opera, entitled, The Jew Decoyed, or the Harlot's Progress.

A Joseph Gay, and several other wretched rhymers, published what they called poetical illustrations of Mr. Hogarth's six plates: but these effusions of dulness do not deserve enumeration; nor would they deserve mention, but as collateral proofs of the great estimation in which these prints were held, when their popularity could force the sale of such miserable productions. Happily they are now consigned to those two high priests of the temple of oblivion, the trunkmaker and the pastrycook.

The six original pictures were sold on the 25th of January 1744-5, and produced eighty-eight pounds four shillings. Mr. Beckford, a late Lord Mayor of London, was, I believe, the purchaser. At a fire which burnt down his house at Fonthill, Wiltshire, in the year 1755, five of them were consumed.

When a messenger brought him intelligence of this unfortunate event, he said nothing, but took out his pocket-book, and wrote down a number of figures, which he seemed inspecting with the cool precision of a true disciple of Cocker, when a friend who was present, expressing some surprise at his being so collected after so heavy a loss, asked him what was the subject of his meditation? to which he answered, with the most philosophical indifference, "I am calculating how much it will cost me to rebuild my house."

THE RAKE'S PROGRESS.

PLATE I.

In the last series of prints Mr. Hogarth delineated, with a master's hand, the miseries attendant upon a female's deviation from virtue. In this he presents to us the picture of a young man, thoughtless, extravagant, and licentious; and, in colours equally impressive, paints the destructive consequences of his conduct. The first print most forcibly contrasts two opposite passions,—the unthinking negligence of youth, and the sordid avaricious rapacity of age. It brings into one point of view what Mr. Pope so exquisitely describes in his Epistle to Lord Bathurst:

It represents a young man taking possession of a rich miser's effects, and is crowded with the monuments of departed avarice. Everything, valuable or not valuable, has been hoarded. A chest of old plate, an old coat, a worn-out boot, and the caul of a periwig, are preserved with equal care. The thread-bare garments are hung up; the rusty spur put into a closet; and even a spectacle-frame, without glasses, is thought worthy of preservation. The contents of his armoury are curious, and valuable as the lumbering furniture of his room: they consist of two swords, which may be considered as trophies of his youthful prowess, or protectors of his cankered pelf. The crutch and walking-stick, those unequal supporters of his feeble frame, now lean unheeded against the wall. His fur cap and greatcoat seem to have been winter substitutes for fire, as the grate in which a withered Sibyl is laying wood has no marks of even a remaining cinder. The remnant of candle in a save-all, the Jack taken down as an useless piece of furniture, and, with the spit, hoisted into a high cupboard, give strong indications of the manner in which this votary of Mammon existed, for such a being could scarcely be said to live. The gaunt appearance of an half-starved cat proves not only the rigid abstinence practised by this wretched slave to his wealth, but that in his miserable mansion

The iron-bound chests, the hidden gold falling from the breaking cornice, and indeed every article that is displayed in this dreary tomb of buried wealth, give additional marks of a suspicious and sordid disposition. The picture of a miser counting his gold; the escutcheons, those gloomy ornaments of departed wretchedness, with the armorial bearings of avarice, three vices hard screwed, are adjuncts highly appropriate to the place; the motto, BEWARE, inscribed under the arms, is a well-directed caution, and ought to be seriously considered by those who feel a propensity to this meanest of passions. An old shoe, soled with the cover of a Bible, and the little memorandum, May 5th, 1721, put off my bad shilling, are strong proofs that extreme avarice destroys all reverence for religion, and eradicates every principle of honesty.

The introduction to this history is well delineated, and the principal figure marked with that easy, unmeaning vacancy of face which speaks him formed by nature for a DUPE. Ignorant of the value of money, and negligent in his nature, he leaves his bag of untold gold in the reach of an old and greedy pettifogging attorney,[66] who is making an inventory of bonds, mortgages, indentures, etc. This man, with the rapacity so natural to his profession, seizes the first opportunity of plundering his employer. Hogarth had a few years before been engaged in a lawsuit, which gave him some experience of the PRACTICE of those pests of society.

The figure of the young woman with a wedding-ring is not alluring, neither is her face attractive; but her being pregnant, and accompanied by her mother with an apron full of letters, gives her a claim to our pity, as it clearly intimates that this is meant as a visit to entreat the promised hand of her seducer; but he violates every former protestation, refuses her marriage, and attempts by a bribe to get a release from the obligation. Her mother violently reproaches him for his conduct, and invokes the curses of offended Heaven upon his falsehood.

In this print the drawing and disposition of the figures are tolerably good, the light is properly distributed, and the perspective accurately represented; but the whole wants mass. To display the hoards, it was necessary to open the boxes and doors; and though an exhibition of the heterogeneous collection heaped together by this wretched defrauder of himself most forcibly describes the disposition of the man, it hurts the repose of the picture. Breaking the background into so many parts, destroys that breadth which ought to be considered as a leading excellence.

PLATE II.

Three years have elapsed, and our giddy spendthrift, throwing of the awkwardness of a rustic, assumes the character and apes the manners of a modern fine gentleman. To qualify himself for performing the part, he is attended by a French tailor, a milliner, a Parisian dancing-master,[67] a Gallic fencing-master,[68] an English prize-fighter,[69] and a teacher of music.[70] Besides this crowd of masters of arts, he has at his levee a blower of the French horn, an improver of gardens,[71] a bravo,[72] a jockey,[73] and a poet! the latter having written a panegyric in honour of this exalted character, already anticipates approbation and reward. Surrounded by such a multitude of attentive friends and warm admirers, the dissolution of his fortune is inevitable; it must melt like snow beneath the solar beam.

How exactly does Bramston describe the character in his Man of Taste:

On the back of the musician's chair hangs a list of presents which Farinelli, an Italian singer, received the day after his performance of a favourite character at the Opera House. Among others, a gold snuff-box, chased with the story of Orpheus charming the brutes, from T. Rakewell, Esq.

Another memento of musical extravagance is the frontispiece to a poem lying on the floor, and dedicated to Esquire Rakewell, in which the ladies of Great Britain are represented as sacrificing their hearts to this idol of sound, and crying out with great earnestness, One God, one Farinelli! This intimates the violent rage of the fashionable world for that most frivolous of all amusements, the Italian Opera. The taste which our prodigal has imbibed for the turf is pointed out by the jockey presenting a silver punch-bowl, which one of his horses is supposed to have won; his passion for another royal amusement, by the portraits of two fighting-cocks, hung up as the ornaments of his saloon. A picture which he has placed between them bears a whimsical allusion; it is the "Judgment of Paris."[74] The figures in the background consist of such persons as are general attendants in the ante-chamber of a dissipated man of fashion. The whole is a high-wrought satire on those men of rank and fortune whose follies render them a prey to the artful and rapacious.

Of the expression in this print we cannot speak more highly than it deserves. Every character is marked with its proper and discriminative stamp. It has been said by a very judicious critic,[75] from whom it is not easy to differ without being wrong, that the hero of this history, in the first plate of the series, is unmeaning; and in the second, ungraceful. The fact is admitted; but, for so delineating him, the author is entitled to our praise rather than our censure. Rakewell's whole conduct proves he was a fool, and at that time he had not learned how to perform an artificial character; he therefore looks as he is, unmeaning and uninformed. But in the second plate he is ungraceful—granted. The ill-educated son of so avaricious a father could not have been introduced into very good company; and though, by the different teachers who surround him, it evidently appears that he wishes to assume the character of a gentleman, his internal feelings tell him he has not attained it. Under that consciousness, he is properly and naturally represented as ungraceful and embarrassed in his new situation.

The light, it must be acknowledged, is very ill distributed, and the figures most inartificially grouped. To infer from hence, with Mr. Gilpin, that the artist was at a loss how to group them, is not quite fair: his others compositions prove that he was not ignorant of the art, but in many of them he has been inattentive to it. In this he may have introduced in his print figures which were not inserted in the sketch, merely because they were appropriate to his story. The expression of the actors in his drama was always his leading object; composition he considered as secondary, and was little solicitous about their situation on the stage.

PLATE III.

Two of the ladies are quarrelling; and one of them delicately spouts wine in the face of her opponent, who is preparing to revenge the affront with a knife, which, in a posture of threatening defiance, she grasps in her hand. A third, enraged at being neglected, holds a lighted candle to a map of the globe, determined to set the world on fire though she perish in the conflagration! A fourth is undressing. The fellow bringing in a pewter dish,[76] as part of the apparatus of this elegant and attic entertainment, a blind harper,[77] a trumpeter, and a ragged ballad-singer roaring out an obscene song, completes this motley group.

This design may be a very exact representation of what were then the nocturnal amusements of a brothel;—so different are the manners of the year 1805 from those of 1734, that I much question whether a similar exhibition is now to be seen in any tavern of the metropolis. That we are less licentious than our predecessors, I dare not affirm; but we are certainly more delicate in the pursuit of our pleasures.

The room is furnished with a set of Roman emperors,—they are not placed in their proper order; for in the mad revelry of the evening this family of frenzy have decollated all of them except Nero; and his manners had too great a similarity to their own to admit of his suffering so degrading an insult: their reverence for virtue induced them to spare his head. In the frame of a Cæsar they have placed the portrait of Pontac, an eminent cook, whose great talents being turned to heightening sensual rather than mental enjoyments, he has a much better chance of a votive offering from this company than would either Vespasian or Trajan.

The shattered mirror, broken wine-glasses, fractured chair and cane; the mangled fowl, with a fork stuck in its breast, thrown into a corner, and indeed every accompaniment, shows that this has been a night of riot without enjoyment, mischief without wit, and waste without gratification.

With respect to the drawing of the figures in this curious female coterie, Hogarth evidently intended several of them for beauties; and of vulgar, uneducated, prostituted beauty, he had a good idea. The hero of our tale displays all that careless jollity which copious draughts of maddening wine are calculated to inspire; he laughs the world away, and bids it pass. The poor dupe without his periwig, in the background, forms a good contrast of character: he is maudlin drunk, and sadly sick. To keep up the spirit of unity throughout the society, and not leave the poor African girl entirely neglected, she is making signs to her friend the porter, who perceives, and slightly returns, her love-inspiring glance. This print is rather crowded,—the subject demanded it should be so; some of the figures thrown into shade might have helped the general effect, but would have injured the characteristic expression.

PLATE IV.

The unfortunate girl whom he basely deserted is now a milliner, and naturally enough attends in the crowd to mark the fashions of the day. Seeing his distress, with all the eager tenderness of unabated love, she flies to his relief. Possessed of a small sum of money, the hard earnings of unremitted industry, she generously offers her purse for the liberation of her worthless favourite. This releases the captive beau, and displays a strong instance of female affection, which, being once planted in the bosom, is rarely eradicated by the coldest neglect or harshest cruelty.

The high-born, haughty Welshman, with an enormous leek, and a countenance keen and lofty as his native mountains, establishes the chronology, and fixes the day to be the first of March; which, being sacred to the titular saint of Wales, was observed at court.[78]

The background exhibits a view of St James's Palace, and White's Chocolate House, then the rendezvous of the first gamesters in London. At this fountainhead of dissipation the artist has aimed a flash of lightning; and to show the contagion of example, and how much this ruinous vice prevails even in the lowest ranks of society, he has in one corner of the print represented an assembly composed of shoe-blacks, chimney-sweepers, etc.,[79] who, aping the vices of their superiors, are engaged at cards, dice, cups and balls, and pricking in the belt. To intimate how eagerly these minor gamblers enter into the spirit of what they are engaged in, one of them is naked, and having staked and lost his clothes, is now throwing for his stock in trade, a basket, brushes, and blacking. The little smutty smoking politician is reading the Farthing Post; his attention is exquisitely marked; his whole soul is engaged; and, regardless of the confusion which reigns around, he contemplates

A chimney-sweeper peeping at the postboy's cards, and informing his adversary that he has two honours, by holding up two fingers, is a fine stroke of humour; as the inscription Black's, being on a post[80] close to where this congress of the privileged orders are assembled, is an excellent antithesis when contrasted to White's, on the opposite side.

The grouping is good, the perspective agreeable, and the expression admirable. The trembling terror of the beau, agitated to the very soul, is well contrasted by the hard unfeeling insolence of two bailiffs; and that, again, opposed by the tender solicitude of the poor girl. The gunpowder mark of a star on the side of the naked shoe-black, who is putting his last stake on the hazard of a die, is another well-pointed piece of satire on the conduct of those high-born gamesters, who at the opposite house, with a dignified disregard for the future fate of themselves or their families, put their last acre on the same issue. The boy with a pipe and little pewter measure and glass by his side, shows that smoking and drinking drams was not peculiar to adults, but sometimes practised by young gentlemen before their attainment of what the law calls years of discretion.

PLATE V.

To be thus degraded by the rude enforcement of the law, and relieved from an exigence by one whom he had injured, would have wounded, humbled, I had almost said reclaimed, any man who had either feeling or elevation of mind; but, to mark the progression of vice, we here see this depraved, lost character, hypocritically violating every natural feeling of the soul to recruit his exhausted finances, and marrying an old and withered Sibyl, at the sight of whom nature must recoil.

The ceremony passes in Marybone Church, which was then considered at such a distance from London, as to become the usual resort of those who wished to be privately married.[81] That such was the view of this prostituted young man, may be fairly inferred from a glance at the object of his choice. Her charms are heightened by the affectation of an amorous leer, which she directs to her youthful husband, in grateful return for a similar compliment which she supposed paid to herself. This gives her face much meaning, but meaning of such a sort, that an observer being asked, "How dreadful must be this creature's hatred?" would naturally reply, "How hateful must be her love!"

In his demeanour we discover an attempt to appear at the altar with becoming decorum: but internal perturbation darts through assumed tranquillity; for though he is plighting his troth to the old woman, his eyes are fixed on the young girl who kneels behind her.[82]

The parson and clerk seem made for each other: a sleepy, stupid solemnity marks every muscle of the divine, and the nasal droning of the lay brother is most happily expressed. Accompanied by her child and mother, the unfortunate victim of his seduction is here again introduced, endeavouring to enter the church and forbid the banns. The opposition made by an old pew-opener, with her bunch of keys, gave the artist a good opportunity for indulging his taste in the burlesque, and he has not neglected it.

A dog[83] paying his addresses to a one-eyed quadruped of his own species, is a happy parody of the unnatural union going on in the church.

The Commandments are broken:[84] a crack runs near the tenth, which says, "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife;" a prohibition in the present case hardly necessary. The Creed is destroyed by the damps of the church; and so little attention has been paid to the poor's box, that—it is covered with a cobweb!!! These three high-wrought strokes of satirical humour were perhaps never equalled by an exertion of the pencil; excelled they cannot be.

On one of the pew-doors is the following curious specimen of churchyard poetry and mortuary orthography:—

These : pewes : vnscrud : and tane : in : svnder
In : stone : thers : grauen : what : is : vnder
To : wit : a valt : for : burial : there : is
Which : Edward : Forset : made : for : him : and : his.[85]

A glory over the bride's head is whimsical.

The bay and holly, which decorate the pews, give a date to the period, and determine this preposterous union of January with June to have taken place about the time of Christmas,

Addison would have classed her among the evergreens of the sex.

It has been observed, that "the church is too small, and that the wooden post, which seems to have no use, divides the picture very disagreeably."[86] This cannot be denied: but it appears to be meant as an accurate representation of the place, and the artist delineated what he saw.

The grouping is good, and the principal figure has the air of a gentleman. The light is well distributed, and the scene most characteristically represented.

PLATE VI.