[1] The Dedication, of which I have prefixed a fac-simile, was written for that work.

[2] I am authorized to say that during her life Mrs. Hogarth never parted with any of his papers, except a loose leaf or some such trifle, which in one or two instances she gave to such as wished to possess a little specimen of Hogarth's handwriting.

[3] The printed sheets were occasionally corrected by his friend Townley, etc. The Editor will have great pleasure in showing the MSS. to any gentleman who will do him the honour of inspecting them.

[4] Rouquet's book was written in French, and describes the "Harlot's" and "Rake's Progress," "Marriage à la Mode," and "March to Finchley."

[5] When I wrote the two former volumes of Hogarth Illustrated, I had not seen the MSS. which I now lay before the reader, nor did I know that there were any such papers. His own declaration corroborates the following conjecture relative to his early bias to the arts:—"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."—Hogarth Illustrated, vol. i. p. 27.

[6] The dictionary here alluded to, Mrs. Lewis of Chiswick presented to the Editor of this volume. It is a thick quarto, containing an early edition of Littleton's Dictionary, and also Robertson's Phrases, with numerous corrections to each, and about 400 pages of manuscript close written. On the marginal leaf is inscripted in Hogarth's handwriting, "The manuscript part of this dictionary was the work of Mr. Richard Hogarth." Another volume of this work is in the possession of J. Bindley, Esq., of the Stamp Office.

[7] Hogarth's father came to the metropolis in company with Dr. Gibson, the late Bishop of London's brother, and was employed as corrector of the press, which in those days was not considered as a mean employment.

[8] By Sir James Thornhill, afterwards his father-in-law.

[9] Though averse, as he himself expresses it, to coldly copying on the spot any objects that struck him, it was usual with him when he saw a singular character, either in the street or elsewhere, to pencil the leading features and prominent markings upon his nail, and when he came home, to copy the sketch on paper, and afterwards introduce it in a print. Several of these sketches I have seen, and in them may be traced the first thoughts for many of the characters which he afterwards introduced in his works.

[10] As this was the doctrine I preached as well as practised, an arch brother of the pencil once gave it this turn, that the only way to draw well, was not to draw at all; and, on the same principle, he supposed that if I wrote an essay on the art of swimming, I should prohibit my pupil from going into the water until he had learnt.

[11] If Hogarth calls himself idle, who shall dare to denominate himself industrious?

[12] Hudibras was published in 1726, so that his father probably died about the year 1721, leaving two daughters, Mary and Anne, besides his son William, who, on the leaf of an old memorandum book in my possession, after mentioning the time of his own birth and baptism, thus continues:

"Mary Hogarth was born November 10th, 1699.
  Ann Hogarth, two years after in the same month.
  Taken from the Register at Great St. Bartholomew's."

[13] The leader of the figures hurrying to a masquerade, crowned with a cap and bells, and a garter round his right leg, has been supposed to be intended for George II., who was very partial to these nocturnal amusements, and is said to have bestowed a thousand pounds towards their support. The purse with the label £1000, which the satyr holds immediately before him, gives some probability to the supposition. The kneeling figure on the show-cloth, pouring gold at the feet of Cuzzoni, the Italian singer (with the label, "Pray accept £8000"), has been said to be designed for Lord Peterborough.

[14] As this print, to heighten the burlesque, was almost invariably impressed on blue paper, I have stamped the annexed copy on the same colour.

[15] It has been truly observed that comedy exhibits the character of a species,—farce of an individual. Of the class in which Hogarth has a right to be placed, there can be little doubt: he wrote comedies with a pencil.

[16] For these pictures he was elected a governor of the hospital. On the top of the staircase, beneath the cornice, is the following inscription: "The historical paintings of this staircase were painted and given by Mr. William Hogarth, and the ornamental paintings at his expense, A.D. 1736."

[17] The Reformed religion is, in almost all its branches, rather a drawback than an assistance to art. Thus are its effects described by Mr. Barry: "Where religion is affirmative and extended, it gives a loose and enthusiasm to the fancy, which throws a spirit into the air and manners, and stamps a diversity, life, quickness, sensibility, and expressive significance over everything they do. In another place it is more negative and contracted: being formed in direct opposition to the first, its measures were regulated accordingly; much pains were taken to root out and to remove everything that might give wing to imagination, and so to regulate the outward man by a torpid inanimate composure, gravity, and indifference, that it may attend to nothing but mere acts of necessity, everything else being reputed idle and vain. They have had as few words as buttons, the tongue spoke almost without moving the lips, and the circumstances of a murder were related with as little emotion as an ordinary mercantile transaction."—Barry on the Arts, p. 214.

[18] Hogarth may possibly allude to Ranelagh Barret, who, I learn from Mr. Walpole, was thus employed; and, being countenanced by Sir Robert Walpole, copied several of his collection, and others for the Duke of Devonshire and Dr. Mead. He was indefatigable,—executed a vast number of works,—succeeded greatly in copying Rubens, and died in 1768. His pictures were sold by auction in the December of that year.

[19] In part of this violent philippic Hogarth may possibly glance at the late President of the Royal Academy, whom, it has been said, but I think unjustly, he envied. In Sir Joshua's very early pictures there is not much to envy; they gave little promise of the taste and talents which blaze in his later works.

[20] Vanloo came to England with his son in the year 1737.—Walpole's Anecdotes.

[21] I am not sufficiently versed in the palette biography of the day to know who are the painters that these stars, etc. etc. etc. allude to. Abbé le Blanc, in his letter to the Abbé du Bos on the state of painting and sculpture in England, notices the whole body in the following very flattering terms: "The portrait painters are at this day more numerous and worse in London than ever they have been. Since Mr. Vanloo came hither, they strive in vain to run him down; for nobody is painted but by him. I have been to see the most noted of them; at some distance one might easily mistake a dozen of their portraits for twelve copies of the same original. Some have the head turned to the left, others to the right; and this is the most sensible difference to be observed between them. Moreover, excepting the face, you find in all the same neck, the same arms, the same flesh, the same attitude; and to say all, you observe no more life than design in those pretended portraits. Properly speaking, they are not painters; they know how to lay colours on the canvas, but they know not how to animate it. Nature exists in vain for them; they see her not, or if they see her, they have not the art of expressing her."

[22] Sir Francis Bacon somewhere remarks, that in the flight of Fame she will make but slow progress without some feathers of ostentation.

[23] The rival portraits here alluded to are: George the Second, patron of the foundation, by Shackleton; Lord Dartmouth, one of the vice-presidents, by Mr. Reynolds (afterwards Sir Joshua); Taylor White, treasurer of the Hospital, in crayons, by Coates; Mr. Milner and Mr. Jackson, by Hudson; Dr. Mead, by Ramsay; Mr. Emmerson, by Highmore; and Francis Fauquier, Esq., by Wilson.

To say that it is superior to these is but slight praise; independent of this relative superiority, it will not be easy to point out a better painted portrait. The head, which is marked with uncommon benevolence, was in 1739 engraved in mezzotinto by M'Ardell.

[24] Thus does Hogarth pun upon the name of Mr. Ramsay, who he seems to think peered too closely into his prints, though he acknowledges that, in a book entitled The Investigator, Ramsay has treated him with more candour than any of his other opponents.

[25] Upon the death of Coram this pension was continued to poor old Leveridge, for whose volume of songs Hogarth had, in 1727, engraved a title-page and frontispiece, and who at the age of ninety had scarcely any other prospect than that of a parish subsistence.

[26] How very inferior was this to the portrait of Coram! But the genuine benevolence and simplicity which beams in the countenance of the friend and protector of helpless infancy is not calculated to strike the million so forcibly as the dramatic perturbation of a guilty tyrant. In this, as in some other cases, the purchaser seems to have paid for the player rather than the picture. It was painted for the late Mr. Duncombe, of Duncombe Park, Yorkshire.

[27] By both the artists and connoisseurs of his own day he was accused of having stolen the ideas contained in his "Essay" from Lomazzo. Several prints which were published in support of this opinion will be noticed.

[28] The fable here alluded to is entitled, A Painter who pleased everybody and nobody:

But see the consequence:

Finding the result of truth so unpropitious to his fame and fortune, he changed his practice:

This succeeded to a tittle:

[29] The "Distressed Poet," "Enraged Musician," and a companion print on painting which, though advertised, was never published, are the three here alluded to.

[30] In his description of the Legion Club, after portraying many of the characters with most pointed severity, Swift thus exclaims:

[31] The designer of a print which was published in 1753, and intended to burlesque some of the figures in the Analysis of Beauty, seems to have believed that Hogarth intended to have published his objections to the establishment of the academy. The print is entitled "Pugg's Graces," and the artist is represented with the legs of a satyr, and painting "Moses before Pharaoh's Daughter." One of his hoofs rests on three books, the lowest of which is labelled Analysis of Beauty. A little lower in the print is an open volume, on one page of which is written, Reasons against a Public Academy, 1753; and on the other, No Salary.

[32] Louis XIV. founded an academy for the French at Rome; but Poussin and Le Sueur, painters who have done the most credit to France, were prior to the establishment.

[33] The late Sir Robert Strange seems to have entertained an opinion somewhat similar:—"Academies, under proper regulations, are no doubt the best nurseries of the fine arts. But when the establishment of the Royal Academy at London is impartially examined, it will not, I am afraid, reflect that credit we wish upon the annals of its royal founder."—Strange's Inquiry, p. 61.

[34] "Of the estimation in which they were held, and the taste with which they were contemplated by the Romans, we may form some judgment by a general assuring a soldier, to whom he gave in charge a statue which was the work of Praxiteles, that if he broke it, he should get another as good made in its place."

[35] Transmigrations of heathen deities into apostles, etc., have been too frequent to need particular enumeration.

[36] Sir Godfrey Kneller knew this, and made the most of his labours. He used to say, in his own vindication, that historical painting only revived the memory of the dead, who could give no testimony of their gratitude; but when he painted the living, he gained what enabled him to live from their bounty.

[37] The president Montesquieu, the Abbés Winckelmann, Du Bos, and Le Blanc, have gravely asserted, that from the coldness of our climate, and other causes equally curious, we can never succeed in anything that requires genius.

[38] "Their mode of judging subjects them to continual imposition; for what is called manner is easily copied by the lowest performer: he only fails in beauty, delicacy, and spirit!"

[39] One specimen of Mr. Kent's talents in painting is in page 39. Mr. Walpole's description of some of his other pictures, and the history of his patronage, amply illustrate Hogarth's opinion of the artist's abilities in that branch.

[40] How far the present situation of the Royal Academy and the arts has fulfilled or contradicted this opinion, I will not presume to determine.

[41] Mr. Strange, in his Inquiry into the Rise and Establishment of the Royal Academy of Arts of London, places the causes of this disagreement in a point of view somewhat different from Mr. Hogarth's narrative; but in their account of the consequences the narrators precisely agree:—

"A society, composed of a number of the most respectable persons in this country, commonly known by the name of the 'Dilettanti,' made the first step towards an establishment of this nature. That society having accumulated a considerable fund, and being really promoters of the fine arts, generously offered to appropriate it to support a public academy.

"General Gray, a gentleman distinguished by his public spirit and fine taste, was deputed by that society to treat with the artists. I was present at their meeting. On the part of our intended benefactors, I observed that generosity and benevolence which are peculiar to true greatness; but on the part of the majority of the leading artists, I was sorry to remark motives, apparently limited to their own views and ambition to govern, diametrically opposite to the liberality with which we were treated. After various conferences, the 'Dilettanti' finding that they were to be allowed no share in the government of the academy, or in the appropriating their own fund, the negotiation ended."—Strange's Inquiry, p. 62.

[42] This society was first projected by Mr. William Shipley, who was very active in his endeavours to establish it. Their original proposal was, to "give premiums for the revival and advancement of those arts and sciences which are at a low ebb amongst us; as poetry, painting, tapestry, architecture, etc." The plan, in the latter end of the year 1753, was laid before Dr. Hales and Mr. Baker, by whom it was introduced to Lord Romney and Lord Folkestone, who warmly patronized the institution.

In March 1754, they met at Rathmell's Coffeehouse, Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. Their first premium for the best drawing by boys and girls under fourteen years of age was £15; but as the subscribers were then too few in number to raise the proposed sum, the two above-named noblemen made good a considerable deficiency. They next met at the Circulating Library, in Crane Court, Fleet Street, and on the 10th of January 1755 at Peele's Coffeehouse, where the first premium of £5 for the best drawing by boys under the age of fourteen was adjudged to Mr. Richard Cosway.

[43] "Swift's Laputa tailor made all his clothes by mathematical rules, and there was no objection to them,—except that they never fitted those for whom they were made."

[44] Little did Hogarth imagine that a man lived in his own time, who, by a great commercial enterprise, should awaken the spirit of the nation to historical and poetical paintings from the drama of Shakspeare. This drama has been a school for the representation of all the passions, and opened to the artist a new mine of rich materials for displaying the mirror of life in the colours of nature. The Shakspeare Gallery has been followed by undertakings of a similar description, and, all united, have afforded a patronage to the arts which had been vainly sought for among the nobility, and given to such painters as had the power, a fair opportunity of confuting the visionary assertion, that it was not possible for an Englishman to paint a good historical picture.

[45] How far Hogarth's prediction has been fulfilled, by the repentance of some painters who may have been thus dragged into the temple of taste, those painters only can determine.

[46] The hope of the arts is in the patronage of the sovereign.

[47] A great personage once remarked that sculpture was too cold and chilling for this climate.

[48] What shall we say of these, if fame is denied to the living?

[49] On Mr. Lane's death they became the property of his nephew, Colonel Cawthorn; and on the 5th of February 1797, were sold by auction at Christie's room, and purchased by Mr. Angerstein for one thousand guineas.

It has frequently been the fate of painters, as well as poets, to have their works disregarded until the authors were out of the hearing of praise or censure. Young, in his Love of Fame, speaking of the value which a writer's death gave to his productions, neatly enough concludes with an allusion to Tonson the bookseller:

[50] Such is the date both in his MS. and the preface to the Analysis, though under the print he has engraven, "Se ipse pinxit et sculpsit, 1749." It is probable that in the first instance he meant to speak of the painting it was taken from, which is now in the possession of Mr. Angerstein.

[51] To this he evidently alludes in giving the well-known story of Columbus breaking the egg as a subscription-receipt to his Analysis of Beauty.

[52] Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose lectures are, generally speaking, the best rules conveyed in the best language, in his discourse, read December 11th, 1769, acknowledges "that old pictures celebrated for their colouring are often so changed by dirt and varnish, that we ought not to wonder if they do not appear equal to their reputation in the eyes of unexperienced painters or young students." But he asserts "that an artist whose judgment is matured by long observation considers rather what the picture once was than what it is at present. He has acquired a power by habit of seeing the brilliancy of tints through the cloud by which it is obscured."

Don Quixote, through the cloud of dirt and deformity which obscured a vulgar country wench, discovered the brilliant beauties of that peerless princess, the Lady Dulcinea del Toboso! Such is the power of enchantment.

[53] I do not know what Hogarth here alludes to; perhaps to some figure that he had threatened to paint as an exemplification of his system.

[54] In this notice of the writers by whom he was attacked, he particularly alludes to the North Briton, No. 17. As to the crooked compliments paid him by his brethren in art, they were numerous indeed.

Among his papers I found a tolerably spirited drawing in pen and ink, entitled "A Christmas Gambol from Leicester Square to Westminster Hall," representing the artist with ass's ears, stripped, and tied to a cart's tail, and an old fellow with a long wig and cat-o'-nine-tails in his hand, lashing his naked back, and exclaiming, "You'll write books, will ye!" A barber's block, fixed on a straight pole, is stuck at the head of the cart, and labelled, "Perpendicular and beautiful blockhead." The horse is led by a vulgar drayman, whose locks being so dishevelled as to form a kind of glory, are inscribed, "Lines of beauty." Over the head of the painter is this motto: "'Twere better a millstone had been tied about thy neck, and (THOU) cast into the sea."

The following specimen of polite satire and curious orthography crowns the whole:—

"N.B.—Speedily will be published, an apology, in quarto, called Beauty's Defiance to Charicature; with a very extraordinary frontispiece, a just portraiture (printed on fool's-cap paper), and descriptive of the punishment that ought to be inflicted on him that dare give false and unnatural descriptions of beauty, or charicature great personages; it being an illegal as well as a mean practice; at the same time flying in the face of all regular bred gentlemen painters, sculptures, architects—in fine—arts and sciences."

Numerous prints were published in ridicule of his system and himself.

In a set of engravings, entitled "The New Dunciad, done with a view of fixing the fluctuating ideas of taste, dedicated to his friend Beauty's Analyzer," I find several prints with mottoes, which, in most vile and vulgar phrase, ridiculed both author and book. Some of them are not destitute of humour; but all would ere now have been consigned to oblivion, had not they been occasionally collected as relatives to Hogarth. One of them is entitled "Pugg's Graces, etched from his ORIGINAL daubing."

In this the artist is represented at his easel, with Lomazzo in his pocket, and with a satyr's feet (one of which rests on some copies of his Analysis), and painting the picture of "Pharaoh's Daughter." He is accompanied by a fat and a lean connoisseur; the former shows evident marks of admiration, but the latter holds the Analysis in his left hand, and appears rather puzzled. A figure in the background, who, to show that he is a judge, is arrayed in a gown, a band, and ample periwig, shows evident marks of disgust. Three naked and most filthy female figures, one of them fat as was Bright of Malden, and another tall and thin as a splinter of the Monument, are intended to represent "Pugg's graceless Graces." One of these beauties rests her foot on a box inscribed, "For the March presented to the Foundling Hospital, with a gilded frame for the admiration of the public." The other is seated on a chest of drawers, on which are written under the word FOLLY, "Bid for by Pugg's friends, £50, £100, £120." This most pointed piece of wit evidently alludes to the auction of "Marriage à la Mode," which has been already noticed. On the upper part of the print is a head, entitled "A modern cherubin," with a bag-wig on, and a stick bent into a waving line in his mouth, a satyr holding a medallion, on which is a head with a cap and bells, and many other curious allusions to the serpentine line. On the floor are a pair of stays, a pair of boots, a pair of candlesticks, etc. etc., allusive to the prints to the Analysis. Beneath is a grotesque figure of a devil, with a little incubus, masks, etc., holding in his hand a piece of paper, which seems a leaf of the book, and is inscribed, "To be continued."

A. C. Invt. et Sculp.—Published according to Act of Parliament, 1753-4.

On the back of this delicate satire is printed the following address:—

In a well-etched print which, on a monumental stone placed in the corner, the engraver has chosen to denominate "A self-conceited arrogant dauber, grovelling in vain to undermine the ever-sacred temple of the best painters, sculptors, architects, etc., in imitation of the impious Herostratus, who with sacrilegious flame destroyed the temple of Diana to perpetuate his name to posterity."

We have here a very rich and well-imagined column, the base ornamented with historical bas-relief; and between a serpent, which is spirally twisted round a circular pillar, are portraits of painters, sculptors, etc. At the bottom of this, on his knees, and still with satyr's legs and feet, and a pen stuck in his hat, the artist has represented Hogarth; who, attended by a well-dressed connoisseur in the character of his torch-bearer, accompanied by his favourite dog, and armed with his palette knife, is grubbing up whatever he can find under it. No. 3, the inscription informs us, is "A satyr ready to lash the scribbler away;" and by the same authority we learn that No. 4 are "Geese," which being placed close to this emulator of the fame of Erostratus, "greedily swallows whatever he can rake up with his palette knife," etc. etc. etc. The print is enriched with cypress trees, capitals, well-formed vases, and superb edifices; the whole (for it is a night scene) is lighted up by the temple of Diana in flames. Beneath it is the waving line in a small triangle, and the following verses:—

One nauseous delineation is entitled, "The Artist in his own Taste;" and another, "The Author run mad." In one he is represented as "A mountebank, demonstrating to his admiring audience that crookedness is most beautiful;" and in another of a larger size, entitled "The Burlesquer Burlesqued," depicted with satyr's legs, painting what the designer calls "A history piece, suitable to the painter's capacity, from a Dutch manuscript." This history piece is a copy of the Dutch delineation of Abraham sacrificing Isaac, by pointing a blunderbuss at his head, with an angel hovering over the figures, etc. The lives of Rembrandt, Rubens, Vandyke, and other eminent painters, are ingeniously imagined to be torn in pieces to make a window-blind for the author of the Analysis of Beauty; which book, with allusions to it, are displayed in different parts of the print, and in a storied border at the bottom it appears to be selling for waste paper.

Of this engraving, the satire of which is principally levelled at the burlesque "Paul before Felix," there are two editions; the first, for the more extensive circulation of Hogarth's fame, and the benefit of such foreigners as do not understand English, has an explanation in French.

[55] The Doctor's orthography is adhered to.

[56] Mr. Emlyn, of Windsor, who in 1782 published A Proposition for a New Order in Architecture, thus divides them: "The Doric was composed on the system of manly figure and strength, of robust and Herculean proportions; the Ionic, on the model of the easy, delicate, and simple graces of female beauty, to which the Corinthian on a similar design adapted a system of more artificial and complicated elegance."

[57] Among Hogarth's papers I found the following notice, in which he evidently glances at Athenian Stuart:—

"Now in hand, and will be published in about two months' time, a short addenda or supplement to the Analysis of Beauty, wherein, by the doctrine of varying lines, it will plainly be shown that a man who had never seen or heard of Roman architecture might, by adhering to these lines, produce new and original forms.

"The number of pompous and expensive books of architecture which have been lately published, consist of little more than examples of the variations that were made among the ancients; and nice and useless disputes about which were the most elegant, without assigning any other reason for their choice than the authority of the columns they have measured, which gives them no other merit than that of mere pattern drawers."

[58] This quotation is from p. 130, and refers to two heads in the second plate, Nos. 108 and 9, one of which has a slight tendency to a smile, and the other has a broad grin. The head here copied, in point of character, comes between them.

[59] This is copied from the MS. of the Analysis, where he had made the drawings of the "Round and Square Heads," which he evidently intended to have introduced in his plate.

[60] "Cleop. Bear'st thou her face in mind?
Is't long or round?

"Mess. Round even to faultiness.

"Cleop. For the most part, they are foolish that are so."

[61] This truth is amply verified in the epistle above quoted:

In what light can we consider the character painted by the bard when we compare it with the pictures painted by the artist? It has been truly said, that "the poet has enshrined the feeble talents of the painter in the lucid amber of his glowing lines."

The conclusion of his epitaph on Sir Godfrey Kneller affords another notable example:—

[62] Were the head of the "Satyr of the Wood" (No. 3) close shaved, and dignified with a clerical periwig, it would bear a strong resemblance to Sir Joshua Reynolds' portrait of the author of Tristram Shandy.

[63] Which he is said to have caricatured in this plate.

[64]

"Sing—we will drink nothing but Lipari wine."—Rehearsal.

[65] The last paragraph in his preface, p. 10, begins as follows:—

"That perspective is an essential requisite to a good painter, is attested by all our most eminent artists, and confirmed by almost every author who has wrote upon painting. Nay, the very term 'painting' implies perspective; for to draw a good picture is to draw the representation of nature as it appears to the eye; and to draw the perspective representation of any object, is to draw the representation of that object as it appears to the eye. Therefore the terms 'painting' and 'perspective' seem to be synonymous, though I know there is a critical difference between the words. I would not be understood to mean that a person is always to follow the rigid rules of perspective, for there are some cases in which it may be necessary to deviate from them; but then he must do it with modesty, and for some good reason, as we have shown in the course of this work. Nor would I be thought to desire the artist to make use of scale or compasses upon all occasions, and to draw out every line and point to a mathematical exactness, as the design of this work is quite the reverse: it is to teach the general rules of perspective, and to enforce the practice of it by easy and almost self-evident principles; to assist the judgment and to direct the hand, and not to perplex either by unnecessary lines or dry theorems."

The publication of this drew forth Mr. Highmore, who, in the preface of a pamphlet with the following title, now become very scarce, gave his decided opposition to the system:—

"A Critical Examination of those two Paintings on the ceiling of Whitehall, in which Architecture is introduced, so far as relates to the Perspective, together with the discussion of a question which has been the subject of debate among painters. Written many years since, but now first published, by J. Highmore. Printed for Nourse, 1754."

The question Mr. Highmore professes to discuss is by himself stated as follows, viz.:—

"Whether a range of columns, standing on a line parallel to the picture, ought to be painted according to the strict rules of perspective; that is, whether those columns, in proportion as they recede from the centre of the picture, should be drawn broader than that directly opposite to the eye, as the rules require; or whether (because they really in nature appear less, in proportion as they are more distant) they ought not to be made less, or at most, equal to each other in the picture?...

"Mr. Kirby says, p. 70 of his first part: 'Since the fallacies of vision are so many and great, etc., it seems reasonable not to comply with the strict rules of mathematical perspective, in some particular cases (as in this before us), but to draw the representations of objects as they appear to the eye,' etc. But I would ask, How? By guess, or by some rule? And if by any, by what rule are they to be drawn contrary to, or different from, the strict mathematical perspective rules?"

In reply to these and many other strictures contained in the preface, Hogarth wrote some remarks to Mr. Kirby, in which he asks, "Whether an oval or egg can be the true representation of a sphere or ball? or whether buildings should be drawn by any such rule as would make them appear tumbling down, and be allowed to be truly represented, because the designer of them is able to show how a spectator may, in half an hour's time, be placed at such a point as would make them all appear upright? as by a like trick or contrivance the oval may be foreshortened so as to appear a circle."

He further asks, "Would a carpenter allow fourteen inches to be the true representation of a foot-rule, since in no situation whatever can the eye possibly see it so?"

Again: "Did ever any history-painter widen or distort his figures as they are removed from the centre of his picture? Or would he draw a file of musqueteers in that manner, when the last man in the rank would be broader than high? Why would he then serve a poor column or pedestal thus, when, poor dumb things, they cannot help themselves? And are all objects exempt from the rules of perspective except buildings? Did Highmore ever so much as dream of an intervening plane when he had been drawing a family piece with four or five people in a row, so as to distort the bodies and forms of those who had the misfortune to be placed nearest to the side of the frame? And what satisfaction would it be to his customers to tell them they were only disposed by the true rules of perspective, and might be seen in their proper shape again if they would give themselves the trouble of looking through a pin hole at a certain distance, which, by learning perspective, they might be able to find in half an hour's time; or, to save themselves that trouble, they might get a painter to lug them about till their eye was brought to the proper point. He then observes, that he would not have the intervening plane wholly rejected, but that it should be laid aside when it begins to do mischief, or is of no use; for it is no doubt as necessary to painters of architecture as scaffolding is to builders; but, like the latter, is always to be taken away when the work comes to be finished; and every defect that either may have occasioned must be corrected by the eye, which is capable to judge of the most complicated objects, perspectively true, where the dry mathematics of the art are left far behind as incapable of lending the least assistance.

"These things our mathematicians are strangers to,—therefore, in my opinion, have rated them too high. Dr. Swift thought mere Philos a ridiculous sort of people, as appears by a song of his on two very remarkable ones—Whiston and Ditton. I forget it particularly, but it was about the longitude being mist on by Whiston, and not better hit on by Ditton: sing Whiston, etc. etc. Ditton has wrote a good book on speculative perspective."

Hogarth then alludes to Highmore's critique on Rubens' ceiling at Whitehall, and asks, "What is it but what almost every child knows, even without the knowledge of perspective? viz. that parallel lines always meet in a point, and that he has with penetration discovered. Oh, wonderful discovery! that Rubens, unskilfully, has kept them parallel in his column, to embellish which he has tacked two fibs: one, that the error was owing to the drawing them as they would appear to the eye; the other, that the historical figures are truly in perspective; whereas King James, the principal, has a head widened or distorted, though it goes off from the eye almost as much as he would have the side columns, which are the subjects of controversy."