Ulrich Middeldorf ANECDOTE LIVES OF WILLIAM HOGARTH, SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH, HENRY FUSELI, SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE, AND J. M. W .TURNER.. By JOHN TIMES, F.S.A. AUTHOR OF “ CURIOSITIES OF LONDON,” “THINGS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN,” ETC. Hog-irtli's House at Chiswick. — P. 74. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. 1S72. PEE PACE. The successful sale of a large edition of tile First Series of the Anecdote Biography attests the public approbation of the general design of the Work;—to narrate, by way of Anecdote, the Lives of some of the most distinguished Persons of the last and present centuries. It need scarcely be repeated that a leading feature of the plan is to present the reader with these Anecdotic Illustra¬ tions in the order of-time, and not en melee, the scheme, if so it can he called, of the majority of anecdote-hooks. By such sequence, the points of character in the lives of the indi¬ viduals are most attractively illustrated; whilst the higher aim of Biography,—to discriminate as well as amuse,—is invariably kept in view throughout the chain of incidents. The former Series comprises the Anecdote Biography of Lokd Chatham and Edmund Burke. The volume now sub¬ mitted to the reader is devoted to the Lives of the Six greatest Painters op the English School, ranging almost throughout its entire history; and the personal characteristics as well as the works of these great Artists will be found to yield a feast of rich variety of circumstance and interest.* First, we have Hogarth, “ whose patrons were the mil¬ lion,” and the moral of whose pictures is pointed by an unerring hand. In manners he was as opposite to the bland¬ ness of Sir Joshua Reynolds as the east side is to the west ot Leicester-square. Of Reynolds, how many delightful traits are written in letters of gold!—how the bachelor Painter loved children, and how he preferred their artless graces to the accomplishments of the high-born beauties and noble * The work contains upwards of 500 Anecdotes, several of them derived from original communications, and sources but little resorted to VI PEEFACE. forms that made up his gay bevy of sitters!—and how the first President gathered round his hospitable hoard troops of friends, the wealth of whose genius yielded the highest intel¬ lectual feast he could enjoy ! To Reynolds succeeds Gainsborough, whose academy was the woods and fields of Suffolk, and its rustic population; and who retained his lovely power of painting natural beauty amid the artificial gaiety of Bath, and the still more artificial life of the metropolis in Pall Mall. To Gainsborough suc¬ ceeds Puseli, the classic illustrator of Shakspeare and Milton, and whose pleasantry and piquant humour gave many a charm to this artist’s social circle. To Puseli succeeds the courtly Sir Thomas Lawrence, the painter of many imperial and royal crowned heads, and the flower of our aristocracy. To his rare artistic skill he united gentleness and amiability of character; and, like the bachelor Reynolds, the unmarried Lawrence delighted in painting lovely children. To this accomplished President succeeds the uncourtly J. M. W. Turner,— the finest painter of the finest scenes in the world, by land and sea. Though rough in his nature, and penurious in his rule of life, he hoarded for excellent purpose, and bequeathed to his country the priceless treasures of his long and brilliant artistic career. With such wealth of materials, the Editor has neither felt inclination nor opportunity for verbose narrative ; and his labour lay in the opposite direction—that of selection and condensation. Throughout the work will be found an abun¬ dant store of Characteristics and Personal Traits of the Painters, Stories of their Works, and Opinions of Art-critics; so as to assist the reader in forming an estimate of the Progress of the Art during the last century and a half; and it is hoped, through these manifold uses and attractions, to bespeak for the present volume as favourable a reception aa that bestowed upon its predecessor. ( London, Oct . 1, 1860. CONTENTS WILLIAM HOGARTH. BIETH-PLACE_ AND PARENTAGE OP HOGARTH HOGARTH’S EARLY EDUCATION.—HE BECOMES A SILVER- PLATE ENGRAVER “LITTLE HOGARTH” HOGARTH’S ENGRAVED SILVER-PLATE UNIQUE PRINT PROM AN ENGRAVING BY HOGARTH JOE miller’s BENEPIT TICKET PRINT OP “ THE RAPE OP THE LOOK ” HOGARTH PUBLISHES HIS PIRST PLATE HOGARTH’S SHOP-CARD . HOGARTH COMMENCES SATIRE . HOGARTH SATIRISES THE STAGE “PRINTS EOR hudibras” HOGARTH AND THE UPHOLSTERER . hogarth’s marriage hogarth’s house in Leicester-square hogarth’s first painting HOGARTH, KENT THE ARCHITECT, AND THE POET POPE HOGARTH’S SOUTHWARK PAIR . JOURNEY INTO KENT PORTRAITS OP SARAH MALCOLM, MISS BLANDY, AND CANNING. DEATH OP SIR JAMES THORNHILL . MIDNIGHT MODERN CONVERSATION . ORATOR HENLEY .... A COFFEE-ROOM SCENE “THE harlot’s PROGRESS” THE RAKE’S PROGRESS . HOGARTH PAINTS THE STAIRCASE OP ST. BARTHOLOMEW’S HOGARTH AN ANATOMICAL DRAUGHTSMAN “ THE STROLLING ACTRESSES ”, THE BEGGARS’ OPERA .... “ THE FOUR TIMES OP THE DAY” . HOGARTH EMBELLISHES VAUXHALL GARDENS ROSAMOND’S POND . . v „ ELIZABETH HOSPITAL. PJOE 1 3 4 5 5 6 7 8 9 9 10 11 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 22 23 24 25 25 28 30 31 31 32 33 35 37 TUI CONTENTS, THE ENRAGED MUSICIAN.—THE DISTRESSED POET . THE MARRIAGE A LA MODE PICTURES ..... SALE OE THE MARRIAGE A LA MODE PICTURES “MARRIAGE X LA MODE,” AND “THE CLANDESTINE MARRIAGE” A HAPPY MARRIAGE. HOGARTH’S BENEFACTIONS TO THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL “ THE MARCH TO FINCHLEY ”. PORTRAIT OF LORD LOYAT HOGARTH FIRST SEES DR. JOHNSON ...... “ INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS ”. THE GATE OF CALAIS, AND THE ROAST BEEF OF OLD ENGLAND PAUL BEFORE FELIX ........ “THE ANALYSIS OF beauty”. HOGARTH'S “ LADY’S LAST STAKE ” . hogarth’s opinion of his art ...... THE ELECTION PICTURES. “ SIGISMUNDA ”. HOGARTH AND HORACE WALPOLE. HOGARTH AND WILKES ........ PORTRAIT OF FIELDING ........ “ CREDULITY, SUPERSTITION, AND FANATICISM ”... PORTRAIT OF WILKES. HOGARTH’S QUARREL WITH WILKES AND CHURCHILL “ FINIS; OR THE TAIL-PIECE ”. DEATH OF HOGARTH . . ,. TOMB OF HOGARTH. HOGARTH’S HOUSE, AT CHISWICK. MRS. HOGARTH. HOGARTH’S MAUL-STICK .... ... COLLECTIONS OF HOGARTH’S WORKS ..... PAGE . 38 . 39 . 42 . 43 . 44 . 44 . 48 . 50 . 51 . 52 . 54 . 56 . 57 . 58 . 59 . 59 . 61 . 63 . 64 . 65 . 66 . 66 . 67 . 70 . 71 . 73 . 74 . 76 . 77 . 77 CHARACTERISTICS, RETROSPECTIVE OPINIONS, AND PERSONAL TRAITS. HOGARTH’S early portraits . . 78 HOGARTH'S CONCEIT .... . 81 POETICAL TRIBUTES TO HOGARTH . . 82 HOGARTH PAINTED BY HIMSELF . . 83 CARICATURES ON HOGARTH . 83 HOGARTH AND BISHOP HOADLEY • . 84 COPYRIGHT IN PRINTS .... . 85 HOGARTH’S PALETTE . • . 86 HOGARTH’S “ORATORIO” • . 87 THE MISER AND SIR ISAAC SHEARD • • • . 87 WALL-PAINTINGS IN FENCHURCH STREET . • • . 87 HOGARTH PAINTS “GOLDSMITH’S HOSJESS ” • • • ■ . 89 CONTENTS, IX PAGE GENIUS OF HOGARTH .89 HISTORICAL VALUE OF HOGARTH’S WORKS ..... 91 hogarth’s prints .93 SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, P.R.A. BIRTH-PLACE OF SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. BAPTISM OF REYNOLDS. REYNOLDS’S SCHOOL. REYNOLDS PAINTS HIS FIRST PORTRAIT. REYNOLDS IS ARTICLED TO HUDSON THE PAINTER Reynolds’s description of pope .... REYNOLDS VISITS ITALY. REYNOLDS SETTLES IN LONDON. REYNOLDS REMOVES TO LEICESTER-SQUARE . PORTRAITS OF KITTY FISHER. PORTRAIT OF STERNE. PORTRAITS OF GARRICK. COPIES AND ORIGINALS. CHARACTER IN PORTRAITS. REYNOLDS AND ROMNEY. FRIENDSHIP OF REYNOLDS AND DR. JOHNSON PAINTING ON SUNDAYS. Reynolds’s club. ORIGIN OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY. THE FIRST ROYAL ACADEMY DINNER .... THE ROYAL ACADEMY AT SOMERSET HOUSE . SIR JOSHUA ELECTED MAYOR OF PLYMPTON . “ THE STRAWBERRY GIRL ”. COUNT UGOLINO. REYNOLDS REBUKED BY GOLDSMITH .... GOLDSMITH’S EPITAPH ON REYNOLDS .... REYNOLDS AND BARRY. MR. HONE, R.A. SATIRIZES SIR JOSHUA .... DESIGNS FOR THE OXFORD WINDOW .... REYNOLDS’S PORTRAIT OF SHERIDAN .... lord Holland’s portrait. GEORGE HI. AND SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS PORTRAITS OF GIBBON AND GOLDSMITH PORTRAIT OF ADMIRAL KEPPEL. THE LADIES WALDEGRAVE. “ MUSCIPULA ”. ‘‘ THE TRAGIC MUSE ”.. . reynolds’s carriage. HORACE WALPOLE AND SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS *' THE INFANT HERCULES ”. 95 97 97 99 100 101 102 104 104 105 106 106 107 107 107 108 110 110 111 112 112 113 114 115 116 116 117 117 118 118 119 119 120 120 120 121 121 122 123 124 X CONTENTS. P/ GE REYNOLDS’S DISCOURSES, AND MALONE . ..126 PORTRAIT OF LOED HEATHFIELD . . . • • • .127 BOBIN GOODFELLOW, OE PUCK ...••• 128 SIE JOSHUA RETIRES FROM THE ROYAL ACADEMY . . . i29 eeynolds’s kindness. .330 SIR JOSHUA AND HIS PET BIRD.130 “RALPH’S EXHIBITION.’’.131 Reynolds’s declining sight ...•••• 131 DEATH OF SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS ....... 132 FUNERAL OF SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS . . • • ■ .134 sir Joshua’s will.135 Reynolds’s throne-chair.136 sir Joshua’s palette.137 sales of reynolds’s portraits ....... 137 sales of reynolds’s pictures.138 CHARACTERISTICS, RETROSPECTIVE OPINIONS, AND PERSONAL TRAITS. reynolds’s first lesson in ART.140 Hudson, sir Joshua’s master.140 reynolds’s early portraits ....... 142 PORTRAIT of LORD BUTE . . . . . • • .143 Reynolds's prices and sitters . . . . . • .143 sir Joshua’s snuff.144 HOGARTH AND REYNOLDS.145 reynolds’s models.146 REYNOLDS’S LIBERALITY TO OZIAS HUMPHREY .... 146 reynolds’s dinners.147 sir Joshua’s deafness . ..148 REYNOLDS’S PARSIMONY.. . . . 149 REYNOLDS’S EXPERIMENTAL COLOURS.149 REMBRANDT AND REYNOLDS . . . . . . . .150 PAINTING FOR POSTERITY ... .... 151 SIR JOSHUA’S LAST SURVIVING SITTER ...... 151 reynolds’s landscapes.152 REYNOLDS’S VILLA AT RICHMOND.152 PRINTS FROM REYNOLDS’S PICTURES.153 Lawrence’s tribute to Reynolds.153 THOMAS GAINSBOEOUGH, E.A. BIRTHPLACE AND PARENTAGE OF GAINSBOROUGH GAINSBOROUGH COMES TO LONDON Gainsborough’s marriage .... 156 157 158 CONTENTS, XI DETECTIVE PORTRAITS. GAINSBOROUGH AND GARRICK .... GAINSBOROUGH A MUSICIAN .... “the painter’s eye”. GAINSBOROUGH AND HIS FRIEND THICKNESSE GAINSBOROUGH AND HOUBRAKEN’S HEADS ADVANTAGE OF A HANDSOME SITTER GAINSBOROUGH AND THE CARRIER. GAINSBOROUGH’S MODELLING . ... RETURN OF GAINSBOROUGH TO LONDON.—SCHOMBERG MALL ...... PAINTINGS BY GAINSBOROUGH IN SCHOMBERG HOUSE GAINSBOROUGH AND REYNOLDS .... “THE BLUE BOY”. SEVERE CRITICISM. “GIRL AND PIGS”. MRS SIDDONS’ NOSE .... OUSE PALL GAINSBOROUGH’S WOODMAN, SHEPHERD BOY, COTTAGE DOOR, AND COTTAGE GIRL Gainsborough’s sensitiveness . GAINSBOROUGH’S GENEROSITY DEATH OF GAINSBOROUGH V UR 153 159 159 160 160 161 162 162 163 163 164 165 166 166 167 167 167 168 169 169 CHARACTERISTICS, RETROSPECTIVE OPINIONS, AND PERSONAL TRAITS. CHARACTER OF GAINSBOROUGH, BY REYNOLDS . . . .172 PORTRAITS BY GAINSBOROUGH.173 DRAWINGS AND SKETCHES.175 Gainsborough’s sea-pieces.. . 176 GAINSBOROUGH’S LANDSCAPES ..176 GAINSBOROUGH AND LEE.177 HENRY FUSELI, R.A. BIRTH AND PARENTAGE OF FUSELI.179 FUSELI AN ENTOMOLOGIST.180 FUSELI COMES TO ENGLAND . . . . . . . .181 FUSELI STUDIES ART.—HIS FIRST PICTURE.181 VOLTAIRE CARICATURED.182 FUSELI AND DR. ARMSTRONG.182 FUSELI IN ROME. 183 FUSELI SETTLES IN LONDON.184 FUSELI AND COWPER’s “HOMER”.184 RICHARDSON’S NOVELS.1£5 xii CONTENTS. M. DAVID AND FUSELI. FUSELI AND WEST. fuselTs attachments ... FUSELI AND MES. .. ILL-ASSOETED COMPANY. FUSELI AND DE. JOHNSON ..••••• “ THE NIGHTMAEE ”..•••••• “ THE SIIAKSPEARE GALLEEY “ THE MILTON GALLEEY ”. ME. COUTTS’S LIBEEALITY TO FUSELI. FUSELI AND THE BBITISH INSTITUTION . . CANOVA AND FUSELI . . . • fuseli’s eesentment of a slight. LONDON SMOKE. fuseli’s .. FUSELI AS “ KEEPER ”. FUSELI’S DAY. PAINTING “ THE DEVIL ”. HAKLOW’S CONCEIT EXPOSED. HAELOW’S PICTURE OF “ THE TRIAL OF QUEEN KATHERINE ” FUSELI AND LORD ELDON ....... FUSELI’S LAST PICTURE. DEATH OF FUSELI ........ FUNERAL OF FUSELI. CHARACTERISTICS, RETROSPECTIVE OPINIONS, PERSONAL TRAITS. FUSELI AND THE ELGIN MARBLES ...... FUSELI.—SKETCHED BY HAYDON. FUSELI AND PICTURE-HANGING. FUSELI’S SENSIBILITY. fuseli’s religious feelings. FUSELI AND YOUNG LAWRENCE. FUSELIS WIT AND HUMOUR. CHARACTER OF FUSELI AS AN ARTIST. POETICAL TRIBUTES ........ LESLIE’S ACCOUNT OF FUSELl’S PICTURES .... THE HERONS IN RAPHAEL’S CARTOON. CHARACTER OF FUSELI BY LAVATER. MICHAEL ANGELO.—BY FUSELI. RAPHAEL.—BY FUSELI fuseli’s ERUDITION ........ SALVATOR ROSA.—BY FUSELI. FUSELI AND BRITISH ARTISTS . . . ALDERMAN BOYDELL ■••*•••• PAGE . 185 . 185 . 186 . 186 . 188 . 189 . 189 . 190 . 191 . 194 . 195 . 196 . 196 . 196 . 197 . 197 . 198 . 198 . 199 . 199 . 200 . 201 . 201 . 202 AND . 203 . 204 . 206 . 206 . 208 . 209 . 209 . 212 . 214 . 214 . 216 . 216 . 217 . 218 . 219 . 219 . 220 . 221 CONTENTS. Xlll PRESENTATION OE A CUP TO EUSELI FUSELI AND LAWRENCE “ SOMETHING NEW ”... CONSTABLE AND FUSELI WORKS OF FUSELI PAGK 222 224 225 226 226 PRIZE ION TO REYNOL R.A. SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE, P.R.A. BIRTH AND PARENTAGE OF LAWRENCE . Lawrence’s first portrait. YOUNG LAWRENCE SENt TO SCHOOL Lawrence’s early drawings Lawrence’s recitations YOUNG LAWRENCE IN BATH . LAWRENCE AND THE STAGE . LAWRENCE RECEIVES THE SOCIETY OF ARTS Lawrence's earliest oil-paintings . LAWRENCE SETTLES IN LONDON.—INTRODUCT HISTORICAL PIECE FROM HOMER . Lawrence’s early portraits LAWRENCE ELECTED A.R.A. . DEATH OF SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS “ SERJEANT-PAINTER TO THE KING” LAWRENCE IN OLD BOND STREET.—ELECTED FAILURE OF A PORTRAIT THE TWO SATANS. death of Lawrence’s parents . PORTRAITS OF JOHN KEMBLE VERSES BY LAWRENCE .... LAWRENCE SUPPOSED IN LOVE PORTRAIT OF CURRAN .... BUST OF MR. W. LOCK .... LAWRENCE AND THE PRINCESS OF WALES LAWRENCE AND HARLOW PORTRAIT OF THE PERSIAN AMBASSADOR NAPOLEON THE FIRST .... REMOVAL TO RUSSELL-SQUARE PORTRAITS OF THE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA, THE K BLUCHER, AND PLATOFF LAWRENCE AND CANOVA LAWRENCE AND MRS. WOLFE THE ELGIN MARBLES .... LAWRENCE AT CLAREMONT . PORTRAITS OF THE ALLIED SOVEREIGNS ON TURNER, BY LAWRENCE . DS NG OF PR USSIA, 228 228 229 229 230 232 232 233 234 234 236 236 236 237 237 237 233 239 241 242 242 244 245 245 246 247 249 250 250 251 251 252 252 253 255 257 ._ CONTENTS. LAWRENCE PAINTING IN ROME. SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE ELECTED PRESIDENT OE THE ROYAL ACADEMY RECOVERY OE A MICHAEL ANGELO Lawrence’s justice to Reynolds LORD BYRON AND LAWRENCE SIR WALTER SCOTT AND SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE SKETCH-BOOK OE LEONARDO DA YINCI . HONOURS TO SIR T. LAWRENCE PRESENTS TO LAWRENCE CAST OE THE EMPEROR NAPOLEON’S HEAD LAWRENCE AND THE FREEDOM OE BRISTOL LAWRENCE’S LAST YEAR MISS EANNY KEMBLE Lawrence’s declining health . DEATH OE SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE FUNERAL OE SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE WILL OE SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE . Lawrence’s house PAGE 258 259 260 260 261 261 262 262 263 264 264 264 266 267 270 272 274 275 CHARACTERISTICS, RETROSPECTIVE OPINIONS, AND PERSONAL TRAITS. LAWRENCE AND REYNOLDS COMPARED Howard’s character oe Lawrence LAWRENCE AND ETTY . cause oe Lawrence’s embarrassment PORTRAITS OE SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE THE PAINTER’S DAY AND PRACTICE PAINTING EYES .... Lawrence’s portraits. CORONATION PORTRAITS. THE LAWRENCE DRAWINGS . Lawrence’s engraved portraits KINDNESS AND GENEROSITY TO ARTISTS Lawrence’s sensitiveness . ON THE GENIUS OE ELAXMAN, BY LAWRENCE PORTRAITS OE THE DUKE OE WELLINGTON, BY LAWRENCE WORKS OE SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE IN LONDON, ETC. CELEBRATED PORTRAITS .... DEATH OE MR. LOCK, AND MR. HOPPNER, R.A. CONSTABLE AND SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE “MR. CALMADY’S CHILDREN” PORTRAIT OE THE HON. C. W. LAMBTON PORTRAIT OE THE HON. MRS. HOPE COWPER AND LAWRENCE .... LAWRENCE'S PORTRAIT OP WIEBEREORCE 276 . 277 . 278 . 279 . 281 . 282 . 283 . 284 . 285 . 285 . 286 . 288 . 290 . 291 . 293 . 297 . 298 . 300 . 302 . 303 . 305 . 306 . 307 . 308 CONTENTS. XV J. M. W. TURNER, R.A. BIRTH-PLACE OF TURNER . . TURNER ADMITTED A STUDENT OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY turner’s first patrons. turner’s early style. TURNER ELECTED R.A. TURNER VISITS THE CONTINENT. “ THE GODDESS OF DISCORD IN THE GARDEN OF THE HESPERIDES” THE LIBER STUDIORUM. “ ULYSSES DERIDING POLYPHEMUS”. TURNER AN AFFECTIONATE SON. THE OLD TEMERAIRE TOWED INTO HER LAST BERTH “THE SLAVE-SHIP”. FAILURE OF TURNER’S VERY RECENT WORKS . DECLINE OF TURNER’S HEALTH ....... DEATH OF TURNER. FUNERAL OF TURNER . . .. . WILL OF MR. TURNER.* , PAGE 309 311 312 314 315 315 316 317 318 318 319 319 321 322 322 323 324 CHARACTERISTICS, RETROSPECTIVE OPINIONS, AND PERSONAL TRAITS. turner’s pre-eminence predicted turner’s three periods WHO WERE turner’s PATRONS? . turner’s industry turner’s landscape art STUDYING NATURE TURNER’S “COLOUR”—A HINT FROM ADDISON PORTRAITS OF TURNER . TURNER ON VARNISHING DAYS TURNER’S SEA-PIECES TURNER’S VERSES . “ TALKING DOWN ” TURNER AND WILKIE . TURNER AND CHANTREY “THE SCOTTISH TURNER” ARTISTIC PREDICTION TURNER’S EARLY VIEWS OF LAMBETH PALAC CHANGES OF RESIDENCE SECRET OF HIS ADDRESS TURNER AND THE CRITIC QUID PRO QUO PICTURES FROM THOMSON AND MILTON TURNER’S ACCURACY 326 327 3?0 330 331 331 332 333 334 336 337 341 341 342 342 342 343 343 344 344 344 345 345 XVI CONTENTS. TURNER S ORIGINALITY. TURNER’S COMPOSITION. UNDERSTANDING TURNER .... MR. BUSKIN’S CRITICISM ON TURNER’S WORKS THE TRUTH OP TURNER .... CLAUDE AND TURNER COMPARED . TURNER’S YORKSHIRE DRAWINGS . turner’s TREES. THE FIRST OP TURNER’S PICTURES SENT TO AMERICA NUMBER OF PICTURES BY TURNER, AND PRICES TURNER’S BARGAINING. TURNER’S BOOK-PLATES. HIS PRESENT RANK AS A LANDSCAPE-PAINTER ACCURACY IN SHIPPING .... TURNER AND LORD DE TABLEY PICTURES BY TURNER IN THE ART-TREASURES EXHIBITION AT CHESTER, 1857 APPRECIATION OP STOTHARD PAINTINGS OP FIRES TURNER’S RECREATIONS . PROFESSOR OP PERSPECTIVE TURNER’S BRILLIANCY . VIEWS IN ENGLAND AND WALES . TURNER BIDDING FOR HIS OWN PICTURES “van tromp’s barge”. TURNER AND HIS EULOGISTS . TURNER’S WATER-COLOUR DRAWINGS.—SECRET OP HIS SUCCESS MAN- PAGB 346 346 347 347 348 350 352 352 353 354 355 356 356 357 360 360 362 362 363 363 364 364 365 367 367 368 APPENDIX. HOGARTH'S SOUTHWARK FAIR.370 HOGARTH PAINTING “ CHILDREN ”.370 sir Joshua’s father. 370 REYNOLDS’S STUDIES IN ITALY.371 SIR JOSHUA ’S HOUSE IN LEICESTER-SQUARE .... 375 THE PLYMPTON CORPORATION AND REYNOLDS’S PORTRAIT . . 375 REYNOLDS AND ERSKINE. — JAMES BOSWELL.376 Reynolds’s portrait op mrs. hartley . . . ... 376 sir Joshua’s prices. 377 sir Joshua’s fishmonger. 373 reynolds’s portrait op miss bowls .378 EXHIBITION OP THE WORKS OF SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS . . . 379 TURNER’S BOYHOOD.380 ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY - 4 - WILLIAM HOGARTH. BIRTH-PLACE AND PARENTAGE OF HOGARTH. William Hogarth, “ the Painting Moralist/’ whose prints we read like books, was, in his own words, “born in the City of London, on the 10th day of November, 1697, and bap¬ tized the 28th of the same month.” He was descended from the Westmoreland family of Hogard, Hogart, or Hogarth, of Kirk by Thore. Nichols states that he wrote himself Hogart or Hogard; but his father wrote his name Hogarth; and Allan Cunningham considers the concluding th, in London pronunciation, to have been hardened into t, as common in northern names with similar terminations. Thus, in conver¬ sation, he was called Hogart,* which these lines from Swift's “ Legion Club ” prove : “ How I want thee, humorous Hogart; Thou, I hear, a pleasant rogue art! Were but you and I acquainted, Every monster should be painted ; You should try your graving tools On this odious group of fools; Draw the beasts as I describe them From their features while I gibe them. Draw them like, for I assure-a You’ll need no caricatur-a; Draw them so that we may trace All the soul in every face.” * The tradition on the Borders is, however, that the Hogarths were a Scotch family. They were always a numerous and influential race. Burke, in his Encyclopcedia of Heraldry, spells the name Howgart, or Howgarth. About a century ago, the name was very common on the Scotch side of the Border; but it is now very rare. The name seems to be pronounced Hog-arth. 2 ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. The painter’s father was Eichard Hogarth, the youngest of three brothers, the eldest of whom succeeded his father on a small freehold, in the Yale of Bampton. Eichard was educated at Archbishop Grindal’s Free School of St. Bees, in Cumberland, and subsequently settled as a schoolmaster in that county. Thence he removed to London, and there ob¬ tained employment as a corrector of the press, or, in other words, reader at a printing-office. He married a woman, whose name or kindred is not recorded; and he next kept a school in Ship-court, on the west side of the Old Bailey, three doors from Ludgate-hill, and in the parish of St. Martin’s, Ludgate. Here, it is believed, William Hogarth was horn; and on the leaf of an old memorandum-hook he records the time of his own birth and baptism; as quoted in the preceding page, and, as follows, of his two sisters : “ Mary Hogarth was born November 10, 1699. Anne Hogarth, two years after in the same month. Taken from the Register of Great St. Bartholomew’s.” It is curious to find that although Hogarth has left so many minute pictures of London localities of his own time, the place of his birth is disputed: if it be Ship-court, it may be interesting to add, that nearly a century after, at the corner of the court, Ho. 67, three doors from Ludgate-hill, William Hone kept shop, and there published the early caricatures of George Cruikshank.* Hogarth’s father died about 1721. He appears, (from among his great son’s papers, found after the painter’s death,) to have been a man of scholastic attainments. To an early edition of Littleton’s Latin Dictionary and Eobertson’s Phrases he added about four hundred closely-written pages; and on one of the leaves was inscribed, in Hogarth’s (the son’s) handwriting, “ The nondescript part of this dictionary was the work of Mr. Eichard Hogarth.” He made some attempts to get his labours printed, but in vain. He then published, in 1712, “Grammar Disputations,” a sort of cate¬ chism for teaching children Latin. The present representative of the family is, or lately was, living at Clifton, near Penrith .—(Notes and Queries, 1856.) * The occupant of the house at the corner of Ship-court, has placed over his shop-front a notice of "William Hogarth having been born in the court; but it is not stated on what authority this assertion is made. ■WILLIAM HOGARTH. 3 HOGARTH’S EARLY EDUCATION.—HE BECOMES A SILVER-PLATE ENGRAVER. It is a remarkable proof of tlie boy’s shrewdness, that at an early age, he profited by observing what was passing immediately around hi m . In his Anecdotes of himself, he says : “ My father’s pen, like that of many other authors, did not enable h im to do more than put me in a way of shifting for myself. As I had naturally a good eye, and a fondness for drawing, shows of all sorts gave me uncommon pleasure when an infant; and mimicry, common to all children, was remarkable in me. An early access to a neighbouring painter, drew my attention from play; and I was, at every possible opportunity, employed in making drawings. I picked up an acquaintance of the same turn, and soon learnt to draw the alphabet with great correctness. My exercises, when at school, were more remarkable for the ornaments which adorned them than for the exercise itself. In the former, I soon found that blockheads, with better memories, would soon surpass me : but for the latter I was particularly distinguished. “ Besides the natural turn I had for drawing, rather than learning languages, I had before my eyes the precarious situa¬ tion of men of classical education. I saw the difficulties under which my father laboured,—the many inconveniences he endured, from his dependence being chiefly on his pen; and the cruel treatment he met with from booksellers and printers, particularly in the affair of a Latin Dictionary, the compiling of which had been a work of some years. It was, therefore, conformable to my own wishes that I was taken from school, and served a long apprenticeship to a silver-plate engraver.” Walpole describes him as “ bound to a mean engraver of arms on plate.” Hogarth probably chose this occupation, as it required some skill in drawing, which he had much cultivated. His master was Mr. Ellis Gamble, an eminent silversmith, in Cranbourne-street, Leicester Fields. In this business it was not unusual to bind apprentices to the single branch of engraving arms and ciphers on metal; and in that particular branch young Hogarth Avas placed. Of his age at this time there is no special record; but Nichols states the circumstance to have been verified by a snnliar account from one of the head assay-masters at Goldsmiths’ Hall, who was apprentice to a silversmith in the same street with Hogarth, 4 ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. and intimate with him during the greatest part of Ms life.* Gamble’s shop bore the sign of the Golden Angel; and a shop-bill engraved by his eminent apprentice is much prized by every collector of Hogarth’s works. Nichols relates that during Hogarth’s apprenticeship, in a Sunday excursion to Highgate, he sketched with a pencil two persons in a tavern affray, one of whom had struck the other on the head with a quart-pot; when the blood running down the man’s face, the agony of the wound distorted it into a hideous grin, which Hogarth drew with ludicrous effect, although the portraits of both antagonists were exact likenesses, and the surrounding figures were caricatured with equal fidelity. On a later occasion he strolled, with Hayman the painter, into a cellar, where two women were quarrelling in their cups. One of them filled her mouth with brandy, and spirted it dexterously in the eyes of her antagonist. “ See ! see ! ” said Hogarth, taking out his tablets and sketching her,— “look at the brimstone’s mouth.” This virago figures in Modern Mid¬ night Conversation. “LITTLE HOGARTH.” Nichols records that, about this time, Hogarth was very poor. “ Being one- day distressed to raise so trifling a sum as twenty shillings, in order to he revenged of his landlady, who strove to compel him to payment, he drew her as ugly as pos¬ sible, and in that single portrait gave marks of the dawn of superior genius.” Nichols, however, doubts this story, since it was never related by Hogarth, who was always fond of con¬ trasting the necessities of his youth with the affluence of his maturer age. He has been heard to say of himself: “I re¬ member the time when I have gone moping into the city with scarce a shilling in my pocket; hut as soon as I had received ten guineas there for a plate, I have returned home, put on my sword, and sallied out again, with all the confidence of a man who had ten thousand pounds in his pocket.” “ Let me add,” says Nichols, “ that my first authority may he to the full as good as my second.” J. T. Smith relates, in Nollekens and his Times , that his father once asked Barry, the painter, if he had ever seen Hogarth. “ Yes, once,” he replied. “ I was walking with Joe Nollekens through Cranbourne-alley, when he exclaimed, * Biographical Anecdotes of William Hogarth. Second Edition. Printed by and for J. Nichols, 1782. WILLIAM HOGABTH. 5 ‘ There, there’s Hogarth.’ £ What! ’ said I, ‘ that little man in the sky-blue coat 1 ’ Off I ran, and though I lost sight of him only for a moment or two, when I turned the corner into Castle-street, he was patting one of two quarrelling hoys on the back, and looking stedfastly at the expression in the coward’s face, he cried, ‘ D—n him! if I would take it of him ; at him again ! ’ ” HOGARTH’S ENGRAVED SILVER-PLATE. Panton Betew, the silversmith, and dealer in works of art, in Old Compton-street, Soho, was intimate with Hogarth, and frequently purchased pieces of plate with armorial bearings engraved upon them by Hogarth, which he cleared out for the next possessor, but, unfortunately, without rubbing off a single impression. This was not the case with Morison, a silversmith of Cheapside : he took twenty-five impressions off a large silver dish, engraved by Hogarth, which impressions he not only numbered, as they were taken off, but attested each with his own signature. “ Should,” says J. T. Smith, in re¬ lating the above, “ this page meet the eye of any branches of the good old-fashioned families, which have carefully preserved the plate of Oliver their uncle, or Deborah their aunt, I sin¬ cerely implore them, should the armorial bearings be the pro¬ ductions of the early part of the last century, to cause a few impressions to be taken from them; for I am inclined to believe it very possible that some curious specimens of Hogarth’s drawing genius may yet in that way be rescued from future furnaces.” Some beautiful specimens of Hogarth’s metal engraving and chasing are in existence. At Strawberry Hill, before the Sale in 1842, was a magnificent silver-gilt Plateau, with medallions of George I., the Eoyal Arms, figures of" Britannia and Justice, and a view of the City of juondon, and allegorical devices, exquisitely engraved by Hogarth. (See Catalogue, eleventh day’s sale, lot 120.) UNIQUE PRINT FROM AN ENGRAVING BY HOGARTH. In a pleasant little book, entitled A Pinch of Snuff, pub¬ lished in 1840, it is related that “ Some time since a gentle¬ man sent his snuff-box to a working jeweller for repair, the embossed frame which surrounded the lid having become loose; the box was of silver, plain shaped, but ornamented on the top with a group of figures, somewhat after the manner of Watteau, engraved upon the plate. Upon removing the ANECDOTE BIOGEAPHY. 6 border, it was found necessary to take the upper part of the box entirely to pieces ; and while minutely inspecting the landscape and figures, the jeweller perceived, at the edge of the plate, which had been concealed by its frame, the name of William Hogarth.” Upon the suggestion of a collector of works of art, some twenty impressions were taken on India paper, and the plate restored to its original destination \ but so soldered and riveted to the exterior embossing as to prevent the possibility of its ever again being submitted to the print¬ ing-press. The twenty copies were then sold, for five pounds, to Mr. W-, a great Hogarthian collector, who selected the best impression, and threw the remaining nineteen into the fire, exclaiming, “ Now, I have in my possession a unique work of my idol’s. No man can boast that he has a copy of this fete champetre but myself, and I would not part with it for fifty pounds.” His feelings, however, were less enviable than those of the person who had enabled him to possess this treasure ] for he handed over the five pounds to the working- silversmith, whose gratitude was equal to his surprise at such a God-send. JOE MILLER’S BENEFIT TICKET. Joe Miller, of Jest-book fame, was also a comedian of some repute, who played upon the boards of Drury-lane Theatre, from 1715 to 1738. In the former year, Joe took his first sole benefit, when he selected Congreve’s play of the Old Bachelor , in which Miller performed Sir Joseph Whittol, his best hit that season. Now, “ a sole benefit ” led the way either to the Fleet or Fortune. These were the stakes Joe had to play for on the 25th of April, 1717 ; but the odds were dead in his favour. The very cards he had provided to play the game were charmed—genius had traced every line of them : the designer was no less a person than William Hogarth. “ The scene is in the third act of the Old Bachelor , where Noll, the companion and bully of Sir Joseph, gets a severe kicking from Sharper. “The original of the print,” say Nichols and Steevens, “ is extremely scarce; and there is no doubt of its being from a design by Hogarth, probably executed by the same hand who etched ‘Modern Military Punishments,’ though it is in somewhat of a better style.” An impression has been sold for eight guineas, &c. Samuel Ireland has engraved Miller’s Ticket in his Graphic Illustrations, but, upon the authority of Richardson, the print- WILLIAM HOGARTH. 7 seller, in the Strand, he condemns this Ticket as one of the ferneries by Rowell, “ who, being a needy man, probably held it as a matter of little importance, provided, it procured him the means of supplying the wants of craving; hunger, penury, and sorrow.” Yet, we agree with Mr W. H. Wills, the author of the ingenious Biography, prefixed to the Family Joe Miller 1848, that Nichols’s and Steevens’s opinion as to the genuineness of this print is admissible, notwithstanding Ireland’s denunciation of it. At this date, Hogarth was not out of his apprenticeship, hut he was an early boon companion of Joe Mill er, at the Bull’s Head, m Clare Market, and the Shepherd and his Flock” Club. Mr. Wills asks : Were this a spurious pasteboard, why did Jane Ireland re-engrave 1 , and why is her etching kept in the British Museum print-room, side by side with the original ?” Lastly, it was precisely this kind of jobs—shop-cards, bill-heads, &c.—that Hogarth lived by as soon as he had served out his apprenticeship Never¬ theless, Nichols, in his Anecdotes, latest edition, 1833, in a Catalogue of the Tickets said to have been engraved by Hogarth, commences with Spiller the player s, a proof of which, before the writing, was sold, m 1844, tor U. IDs. . for the original print, in the Royal Collection, Ireland was offered 20 1. “ This,” says Nichols, “ is immeasurably superior to all the other Tickets both in design and execution. It makes one suspect all the rest to he not by Hogarth. . In Nichols’s Anecdotes, edit. 1783, the earliest print named is of the date 1720, three years subsequent to that ot iVliiier s Ticket. PRINT OF “THE RAPE OF THE LOCK.” One of Hogarth’s earliest works, executed about 1717, (in his apprenticeship,) was a small oval illustration of Pope s Rape of the Lock. It is thus described by Ireland : Though slight, and not intended to be impressed on paper, the air of the figures is easy, and the faces, especially of If *^ Ja^LTe been heroine of the story, extremely characteristic. It is said to have been engraven on the lid of a snuff-box, “ probably for Lord Petre who is here represented as holding the lock of hair m his hand. Sir Plume- the round-faced and insignificant Sir Plume, Of amber snuff-box justly vain, (> And the nice conduct of a clouded cane, — for Sir George Brown; he was angry that the Poet should make him talk nothing 0 but nonsense; and, in truth, (as Warburton adds,) ont could not well blame him. 8 ANECDOTE BIOGKAPHY. As this little story was intended to he viewed on gold, the figures in the copy are not reversed, but left as they were originally engraven on the box • from which, it is believed, there are only three impressions extant; one of which was sold by Greenwood, at Mr. Gulston’s sale, February 7, 1786, for thirty-three pounds ! HOGARTH PUBLISHES HIS FIRST PLATE. In 1718, (according to Ireland,) Hogarth ceased to he an apprentice, being twenty-one years old ; and according to Walpole, he entered into the Academy in St. Martin’s-lane, (Sir James Thornhill’s,) and studied drawing from the life, in which he never attained to great excellence. It was the character, the passions, the soul, that his genius was given him to copy. In colouring he proved no great-a master : his force lay in expression, not in tints and chiaro scuro. “ The instant I became master of my own time (Hogarth tells us,) I determined to qualify myself for engraving on copper.” In this he readily got employment by engraving arms, crests, ciphers, shop-bills, &c. He thus describes the hardships he had to endure in busi¬ ness : “ The tribe of booksellers remained as my father had left them, when he died, (about 1721,) which was of an illness occasioned partly by the treatment he met with from this set of people, and partly by disappointment from great men’s promises; so that I doubly felt this usage, which put me upon publishing on my own account. But here, again, I had to encounter a monopoly of printsellers, equally mean and obstructive to the ingenious ; for the first plate I published, called the Taste of the Town , in which the reigning follies were lashed, had no sooner begun to take a run, than I found copies of it in the print-shops, vending at half-price, while the original prints were returned to me again ; and I was thus obliged to sell the plate for whatever these pirates pleased to give me, as there was no place of sale but at their shops. “ Owing to this and other circumstances, by engraving, until I was near thirty, I could do little more than maintain myself; but even then I was a punctual paymaster.” Hogarth now engraved much for the booksellers : among his illustrations are thirteen folio prints for Mortraye’s Travels, 1723 ; seven smaller prints for the Golden Ass of Apuleius, 1724 ; fifteen head-pieces for Beaver’s Military Punishments of the Ancients ; and five frontispieces for the translation of WILLIAM HOGARTH. 9 Cassandra, five vols. 1725. He likewise designed and engraved two cuts for Perseus and Andromeda, 1730 ; and two for Milton (date uncertain). Walpole says : “No symptoms of genius dawned in those early plates ; ” and there is, certainly, but little of that spirit which distinguished Hogarth’s after works. HOGARTH’S SHOP-CARD. This design consists of ornamental framework, in the centre of which is inscribed, “ W. Hogarth, Engraver; ” beneath which, in a lozenge, surrounded with foliage and scroll-work, is the date, “ April y e 29, 1720.” In the upper centre of the frame are two flying children, with a festoon of fruit and flowers on each side, and a head and console at each angle of the frame ; which, at the base, is flanked with a female figure looking up to one of the children—Design or Invention, the companion figure, on the opposite side being that of an old man writing—or History : of this card there is a modern copy. An impression of the original shop-card, (of the date, 1720, when Hogarth is supposed to have begun business,) has been sold for 251. ! HOGARTH COMMENCES SATIRE. Before his apprenticeship expired, Hogarth had gone far beyond drawing and engraving shields, crests, supporters, coronets, and cyphers ; for his sketch of the Highgate brawl, though rough, was a satiric sitting in a new and happy style of art. “ I soon found,” he observes, “ this (engraving) busi¬ ness in every respect too limited.” Sir James Thornhill had already acquired Court favour, if not wealth, by painting our palaces and public buildings, and his fame had a powerful effect upon the fortunes of young Hogarth in more phases than one. He says: “The paintings in St. Paul’s and Greenwich Hospital, which were at that time going on, ran in my head, and I determined that silver-plate engraving should be followed no longer than necessity obliged me to it. Engraving on copper was at twenty years of age my utmost ambition.” He tells us, also, that he saw little probability of acquiring the full command of the graver, sufficiently to distinguish himself in that walk; “nor was I,” he adds, “at twenty years of age, (in 1717,) much disposed to enter upon as barren and unprofitable a study as that of merely making ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. 10 fine lines. I thought it still more unlikely, that by pursuing the common method, and copying old drawings, I could ever attain the power of making new designs, which was my first and greatest ambition. I therefore, endeavoured to habituate myself to the exercise of a sort of technical memory j and by repeating in my own mind, the parts of which objects were composed, I could by degrees combine and put them down with my pencil.” 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 into a print. Several of these sketches have been preserved, and in them may be traced the first thoughts of many of the characters which Hogarth afterwards introduced into his works. “ My pleasures and my studies,” says Hogarth, “ thus going hand in hand, the most striking objects that presented them¬ selves, either comic or tragic, made the strongest impression on my mind \ but had I not sedulously practised what I had thus acquired, I should very soon have lost the power of performing it.” HOGARTH SATIRISES THE STAGE. It was the degeneracy of the Stage in 1723 which thus early exercised the satirical talents of Hogarth, then a young man. Immediately after the appearance of the pantomime of Dr. Faustus at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, he published his plate of Masquerades and Operas, with the gate of Burlington House in the background, as a lampoon upon the bad taste of the age in every branch of art. On one side Satan is represented as dragging a multitude of people through a gateway to the masquerade and opera, while Heidegger is looking down upon them from a window with an air of satisfaction. A large signboard above has a representation of Cuzzoni on the stage, to whom the Earl of Peterborough is offering 8,000Z. On the opposite side of the picture a crowd rushes into a theatre to witness the pantomime; and over this gateway appears the sign of Dr. Faustus with a dragon and a windmill. In front oi the picture a barrow-woman is wheeling away as “waste paper for shops,” the dramatic works of Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Dryden, Congreve, and Otway. WILLIAM HOGARTH. 11 In 1725, Hogarth published another caricature—“ A just View of the British Stage,” more especially levelled at the pantomimes at Drury-lane and Lincoln s Inn I ields, and suggesting a plan for combining in one piece, Dr. Faustus and Jack Sheppard with Scaramouch, Jack Hall’s escape from Newgate, &c. "Wilkes is dangling the effigy of Punch in exultation, exclaiming, “Poor Eich, I pity thee.” Cibber holding up Harlequin Jack Sheppard invokes the Muses, and Booth is “letting down Hall.” The Ghost of Ben Jonson rises from a trapdoor, and shows his contempt for the new¬ fangled contrivances of the stage in a manner that cannot he misunderstood. In 1727, Hogarth published a large Masquerade Ticket, bitterly satirical upon the immoral tendency of masquerades, as well as their manager, Heidegger. Hogarth had previously immortalized the face of this person, when enraged at a masquerade by a person wearing a masque as ugly as himself —indeed, a cast from his own face— With a hundred deep wrinkles impress’d on thy front, Like a map with a great many rivers upon’t. “PRINTS FOR HUDIBRAS.” In 1726, when Hogarth readily got employment as an engraver of “ frontispieces to books, he invented and en¬ graved the set of Twelve large Prints for Hudihras, of which Walpole, in his usual strain of depreciation, says : “This was the first of his (Hogarth’s) works that marked him as a man above the common \ yet in what made him then noticed, it surprises me to find so little humour in an undertaking so congenial to his talents.” But Hogarth lamented to his friends that he had parted with these plates without having had an opportunity to improve them. They were purchased by Mr. Philip Overton* at the Golden Buck, near St. Dun- stan’s Church, in Pleet-street; thence passed to his successor, Mr. Sayer; and next to Laurie and Whittle. Hogarth’s success in these prints lies rather in his departure from the poet, when, by skilful additions, he awakens a similar train of thought and humour, and thus increases the graphic glow of his author. The work was published hy subscription, * Brother to Henry Overton, the well-known publisher of ordinary prints, who lived over against St. Sepulchre s Church, and sold many of Hogarth’s early pieces coarsely copied, as was subsequently done by Dicey in Bow- churchyard. 12 ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. Allan Ramsay, who was a bookseller as well as a poet, sub¬ scribed for thirty copies; and the plates were dedicated by the artist “to William Ward, of Great Houghton, North¬ amptonshire, and Mary Ramsay of Edinburgh.” A friendly intercourse sprung up between Ramsay and Hogarth : they possessed a kindred humour, and a few lines were addressed to the painter, by the poet, whose son, Ramsay, the portrait- painter, joined in the feud of his fraternity against Hogarth. To these twelve designs were added five, and the seventeen were engraved by Hogarth of smaller size, with Butler’s head, copied from White’s mezzotinto of Jean Baptist Monnoyer. In 1744, twelve of these designs were engraved for Dr. Zachary Grey’s edition of Hudibras, but not until some of their glaring indecencies had been removed by “ the ingenious Mr. Wood, painter, of Bloomsbury-square,” as acknowledged by Dr. Grey, in his Preface. They are en¬ graved by J. Mynde; but are poor and spiritless, with the exception of Butler’s head, by Vertue.* Subsequently, many of these Plates were copied, with violent alterations by Ross, for Dr. Nash’s edition of Hudibras, 1795. Altogether, Hogarth cannot be considered to have done much in illustra¬ tion of the graphic form and humour of Butler’s poems, which were “too elusive and quicksilvery” for the engraver’s hand to catch. Voltaire said that Hudibras unites the wit of Don Quixote with that of the Satyre Menippee—a com¬ bination beyond the reach of our painting satirist’s art. With respect to the Paintings said to have been the work of Hogarth, the evidence is doubtful. At the sale of John Ireland’s collection in 1810, “Twelve pictures of Hudibras” were bought for 52 guineas by Mr. Twining ; and these pic¬ tures Ireland states in his Will, to be as certainly painted by Hogarth as the Marriage a la Mode pictures were. Baker, in his History of Northamptonshire, states there to have been in the mansion of W. Sandbridge, Esq. at East Haddon, twelve humorous sketches, said to be by Hogarth, illustrative of Hudibras. Mr. W. Davies, (Cadell and Davies), the publishers in the * Lowndes, in his Bibliographical Manual, says of these plates: “ Copies m fine condition are in considerable request. The cuts are beautifully expressed, and Hogarth is much indebted to the designer of them; but who he was does not appear.” This is a strange mistake since each of the plates is inscribed, “ W. Hogarth invV’ The error is corrected, as above, by. a warm admirer of Hogarth, in a communication to Notes and Queries, First Series, No. 52. WILLIAM HOGARTH. 13 Strand, had, in 1816, twelve small scenes in Hudibras, by Lepipre, a man under whom Hogarth is said to have studied ; and the subjects so familiar to all as executed by Hogarth from Hudibras, are so similar to these twelve pictures, that Mr. Davies considered undoubtedly Hogarth had copied them. This opinion invalidates his claim to originality, which his admirers need not be very anxious, in this case, to proye. The late John Britton possessed a series of twelve designs on panel, illustrative of Hudibras , which he bought at South¬ gate’s, in Fleet-street, as painted by Hogarth ; but Sir Thomas Lawrence pronounced them to he by Yandergucht. Failing to establish the authenticity of these paintings, however, Mr. Britton, in his Autobiography, Part 2, describes them as in drawing, colouring, and expression, to “surpass the well- known illustrations by Hogarth.” Of one of Vandergucht’s paintings, as a specimen, Mr. Britton caused a small litho¬ graph to be executed in 1842. HOGARTH AND THE UPHOLSTERER. For some time after Hogarth began to paint, he was little known except as an engraver—a mere etcher of copper—a remarkable instance of which occurred in the year 1727. It appears that one Morris, an upholsterer, engaged Hogarth to make a design for tapestry—the subject, the Element of the Earth. The task was performed, when Morris, having dis¬ covered that he had commissioned an engraver instead of a painter, refused to pay for the work, and was sued for the price —20/. for workmanship, and 10/. for materials. At the trial before the Lord Chief Justice Eyre, Morris stated that he was informed by Hogarth that he was skilled in painting, and could execute the design of the Element of the Earth in a workmanlike manner. On hearing, however, afterwards that he was an engraver and not a painter, Morris became uneasy, and sent a servant to tell Mr. Hogarth, who replied that it was certainly a hold undertaking for him, hut if Mr. Morris did not like it when it was finished, he should not be asked to pay for it. The work was completed and sent home, when Morris’s tapestry-workers, mostly foreigners, and some of the finest hands in Europe, condemned the design, and insisted that it was impossible to execute tapestry from it. Accordingly, the verdict was given in Morris’s favour, and Hogarth lost ais labour and had to pay the entire expense of the trial. 14 ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. HOGARTH’S MARRIAGE. We have seen how Hogarth’s attention was first drawn to painting by Thornhill’s works at Greenwich Hospital and St. Paul’s Cathedral; and how the young painter frequented the great man’s academy in Peter’s-court. To what their previous intimacy amounted is not known; hut, in 1729, Hogarth, then in his thirty-second year, married Jane, the only daughter of Sir James Thornhill, aged twenty. The match was without the consent of the parents, and we can imagine the couple stealing away across the fields to the little church of Paddington, then a village of some 300 houses, with its green and rural churchyard. The marriage register contains the following entry: “William Hogarth, Esq., and Jane Thornhill, of St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, married March 23d, 1729.” Hogarth is called an eminent designer and engraver; and his father-in-law, serjeant painter and history painter to the King. Thornhill had now acquired wealth and honours, had been knighted, and sat in parliament for his native town, Weymouth. He was much offended at his daughter’s unequal match," and kept his heart and his purse-strings close. He could not foresee his unwelcome son-in-law’s future eminence: indeed, he was as yet acknowledged by few even as a painter. Sir James’ wrath lasted for two years; hut the entreaties of his wife, the suhmissiveness of his daughter, and above all, the rising reputation of Hogarth, prevailed, and Thornhill forgave the young painter. During the interval, Hogarth designed and etched the first portion of “ The Harlot’s Progress,” so much to the gratifica¬ tion of Lady Thornhill, that she advised her daughter to place it in her father’s way. “Accordingly, one morning, Mrs. Hogarth conveyed it secretly into his dining-room. When he rose, he inquired whence it came, and by whom it was brought 1 When he was told, he cried out, ‘ Very well, very well! The man who can make works like this can maintain a wife without a portion.’ He designed this remark as an excuse for keeping his purse-strings close; hut soon after became both reconciled and generous to the young people.” Hogarth now set to work in the hope of being able to main¬ tain his wife in such fashion as became her. He laid aside his satiric designs, and commenced portrait-painter; and Walpole tells us that the young artist’s facility in catching a likeness, and his method of painting conversation pieces, WILLIAM HOGAETH. 15 drew Mm a prodigious business for some time. Hogarth’s own account of this start in life is as follows : “I married, (he says,) and commenced painter of small conversation-pieces, from twelve to fifteen inches high. This, having novelty, succeeded for a few years. But though it gave somewhat more scope for the fancy, it was still hut a less kind of drudgery; and as I could not bring myself to act like some of my brethren, and make it a sort of manufactory to be carried on by the help of backgrounds and drapery painters, it was not sufficiently profitable to pay the expenses my family required. I therefore turned my thoughts to a still more novel mode, to painting and engraving modern moral subjects, a field not broken up in any country or any age.” About this time Hogarth painted a very spirited represen¬ tation of “Folly:” the subject was composed of twelve figures : six males, and a like number of females; the land¬ scape gorgeous, HOGARTH’S HOUSE IN LEIOESTER-SQUARE. It may be interesting to take a glance at the Leicester Fields of Hogarth’s time. Mr. J. T. Smith had, in the year 1825, a conversation with a gentleman named Packer, then in his eighty-seventh year, and who remembered Leicester Fields long before the accession of George III. He said, it was a dirty place, where ragged boys assembled to play at chuck. In the King’s Mews adjoining was a cistern where the horses were watered, behind which was a horse-pond, in which pickpockets, when caught, were ducked. In 1677, when Leicester House, on the north side, stood almost alone, there were rows of elm-trees in the court before it, extending nearly half the width of the present square. It was not inclosed until sixty years later ; for, in the Country Journal, or Craftsman, of April 16, 1737, we read, “Leicester Fields is going to be fitted up in a very elegant manner : a new wall and rails to be erected all round, and a basin in the middle, after the manner of Lincoln’s Inn Fields.” Some years after, the streets were so thinly built in the neighbourhood, that when the heads of the Scottish rebels of 1745 were placed on Temple Bar, a man stood in Leicester Fields with a telescope, to give persons a sight of them for a halfpenny a-piece. It appears by the rate-books of St. Martin’s parish, that Hogarth came to live there in 1733, on the east side of the square, in what is now the northern half of the Sabloniera 16 ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. Hotel. The house was distinguished in the painter’s time by the sign of “ The Golden Head,” cut by Hogarth himself from pieces of cork glued and painted together. “ I well re¬ member,” says Smith, “that it was placed over the street- door, which bore the name of Hogarth on a brass plate.” The house, with its sign, is shown in a good contemporary engrav¬ ing of the Square by Parr. It is related that Hogarth usually took his evening walk within the inclosure, in a scarlet roquelaire and cocked hat. HOGARTH’S FIRST PAINTING. The first piece in which Hogarth distinguished himself as a painter, is said by Nichols to have been a representation of Wanstead Assembly. The figures in it, we are told, were drawn from the life, and without a touch of burlesque. The faces are said to have been extremely like, and the colouring somewhat better than in some of Hogarth’s more finished pic¬ tures. There seems to he a reference to it in “A Poetical Epistle to Mr. Hogarth, an eminent History and Conversation Painter, written in June, 1730, and published by the author, Mr. Mitchell, in 1731,” &c.: in it are these lines : Savage families obey your hand; Assemblies rise at your command. Wanstead was a neighbourhood of some note in the last century, when the tenants of its numerous villas supported the public assemblies then in fashion, although but six miles from the metropolis itself. The Wanstead Assembly was painted for Lord Castlemaine, and at once brought Hogarth into notice. It was exhibited at the British Gallery in 1814, and was then the property of William Long Wellesley, Esq., of Wanstead House; and at the sale of the effects in 1822, it was bought in by the family. Among Hogarth’s early but penurious patrons was Mr. Bowles, at the Black Horse, in Cornhill; and Nichols had been told that he bought many a plate from Hogarth by the weight of the copper; but Nichols is certain that such a bar¬ gain was made in one instance, when the elder Mr. Bowles, of St. Paul’s Churchyard, (the predecessor of the Bowles and Carver of our day,) offered, over a bottle, half-a-crown a pound for a plate which Hogarth had just then completed. His next friend of this class was Mr. Philip Overton, who, however, paid the young engraver a somewhat better price, WILLIAM HOGARTH. 17 Walpole speaks of these early performances as not above the labours of the people who are generally employed by book¬ sellers; butNichols, lest the reader should apply this designation to artists employed in his time in book illustration, states that Walpole’s account of Hogarth, &c. was printed off above ten years previously, (1772,) “before the names of Cipriani, Angelica, Bartolozzi, Sherwin, and Mortimer, were found at the bottom of any plates designed for the ornament of poems or dramatic pieces.” HOGARTH, KENT THE ARCHITECT, AND THE POET POPE. William Kent, a man of moderate ability as a painter and sculptor, but of considerable influence as an architect and landscape-gardener, was the first artist who felt the touch of Hogarth’s satiric hand. Originally a coach-painter, he had the good fortune to persuade some gentlemen to raise funds to enable him to go and study in Italy, where he became acquainted with the Earl of Burlington, who brought him home as his protege. Kent painted as an altar-piece for St. Clement’s church, in the Strand, an absurd picture of St. Cecilia, which, from its being supposed to contain por¬ traits of the Pretender’s wife and children, created much ferment in the parish. This strange picture Hogarth burlesqued in a print which raised an universal laugh. Gibson, bishop of London, on his visitation to St. Clement’s, ordered the church¬ wardens to remove the original; it was then taken to the Crown and Anchor tavern, in the Strand, whence, after several years, it was removed to the vestry-room, over the old almshouses, in the churchyard; and when this building was taken down in 1803, the altar-picture was conveyed to the new vestry-hall in Pickett-street, where it remains to ..this day. The ridicule which Hogarth had thus thrown on Kent was very acceptable to Sir James Thornhill, who was jealous of the fourfold reputation of the latter, as painter, sculptor, architect, and ornamental gardener. Hogarth carried his attack on Kent still further in satirizing his friend, Pope, who in his poem of “False Taste” severely criticised the magnificent Duke of Chandos as Timon, on his display of great wealth and little taste at Canons. To Pope was added Kent’s other great patron, the Earl of Burlington, and Hogarth burlesqued the trio as follows. He represented Burlington gate in Piccadilly, with Kent on the summit flourishing , his pallet and pencils over his astonished sup- * c 18 ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. porters Michael Angelo and Raphael. On a scaffold, some¬ what lower down, stands Pope, with a tie-wig on; he is washing the front, and bespattering the Duke of Chandos, who is passing by in his coach ; while Lord Burlington serves the poet as a plasterer’s labourer. This print (entitled “The Man of Taste j” containing a View of Burlington Gate; 1731,) has conferred a celebrity upon the archway, which it might not otherwise have obtained. Pope took no notice of the attack. “ Either Hogarth s obscurity,” says Nichols, “ was his protection from the lash of Pope, or perhaps the bard was too prudent to exasperate^ a painter who had already given such proofs of his ability in satire.” This opinion is very illogical; for, proofs of ability are inconsistent with obscurity. Pope remained silent: he either feared the painter’s retaliation, or he regarded him as a vulgar caricaturist, beneath notice. Hogarth said of Kent: “ Neither England nor Italy ever produced a more contemptible dauber than the late Mr. Kent —and yet he gained the prize at Rome, in England had the first people for his patrons, and to crown the whole, was appointed painter to the King. But in this country such men meet with the greatest encouragement, and sooner work their way into noblemen’s houses and palaces.” HOGARTH’S SOUTHWARK FAIR. This great metropolitan fair, which was held on St. Margaret’s Hill, on the day after Bartholomew Pair, has now been abolished for nearly a century ; but a few of its humours have been preserved by the pencil of Hogarth. It was first painted by him in 1733 : this picture was destroyed by fire at Mr. Johnes’s seat, at Hafod, in 1807 ; but it has been more than once engraved. It represents several notabilities of the Pair as to attract people from all parts of the kingdom ; the booth-keepers used to collect money at their stalls for prisoners in the Marshalea. It is a rare scene of “ Startling players, fire-eaters, jugglers— -Katterfelto, with his hair on end, i r, 1 • f 1 I) At his own wonders wondering for his bread.” Simple-faced countrymen, nimble pickpockets, and ladies with roguish eyes, are the actors who fill this stage. One of the most successful characters is that of an Amazon in a hat and feather, the sole heroine in a gang of hedge comedians WILLIAM HOGARTH. 19 beating up for an audience. The notabilities portrayed are -—Signor Yiolante vaulting; Cadman flying down a rope— he was afterwards killed at Shrewsbury; Walker, after¬ wards the famous Macheath; Figg, the prize-fighter, on a blind horse; Miller, a native of Saxony, eight feet high; two jugglers in senatorial wigs, Fawkes and Neve ; Cibber,* with laurelled brow ; the show-cloth etched by Laguerre, &c. The wonders and drolleries of Southwark Fair are described by Pepys and Evelyn. JOURNEY INTO KENT. Among the records of the lively incidents of our painter’s career is a queer account of a holiday jaunt of five days taken by land and water, in May, 1732. The parties were Hogarth; John Thornhill ;f Scott, the landscape-painter ; Tothall, a member of the Club at the Bedford Coffee-house; and Forrest. They set out at midnight from the Bedford, each with a shirt in his pocket; and their excursion extended to Gravesend, Rochester, Sheerness, and adjacent places. They had particular duties : Hogarth and Scott made the drawings; Thornhill the map ; Tothall was treasurer and caterer ; and Forrest wrote the journal. The tourists left the Bedford with a song, and took water to Billingsgate, exchanging com¬ pliments with the bargemen as they went down the river. At Billingsgate, Hogarth made a caricature of a facetious porter called the Duke of Puddledock, who entertained the party with the humours of the place. Here they took to the boat for themselves; had straw to lie upon, and went down the river at night, by turns sleeping and singing jolly choruses. Mr. Thackeray has thus grouped the incidents of this humorous excursion: “ They arrived at Gravesend at six, when they washed their faces and hands, and had their wigs powdered. Then they sallied forth for Rochester on foot, and drank by the way three pots of ale. At one o’clock they went to dinner with excellent port, and a quantity more beer, and afterwards Hogarth and Scott played at hopscotch in the town-hall. It would appear that they slept most of them in one room, and the chronicler of the party describes them all as waking at seven o’clock, and telling each other their dreams. You have rough sketches by Hogarth of the incidents of this * Cibber acted the part of ancient Pistol, in tlie tragedy of Tamerlane the Great, in a booth in Bartholomew Fair, 1733. •f* John Thornhill was a natural son of Sir James Thornhill: he sur¬ vived Hogarth twenty-five years. n 2 20 ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. holiday excursion. The sturdy little painter is seen sprawling over a plank to a boat at Gravesend ; the whole company are represented in one design, in a fisherman’s room where they had passed the night. One gentleman in a nightcap is shaving himself; another is being shaved by the fisherman ; a third, with a handkerchief over his bald pate, is taking his breakfast ; and Hogarth is sketching the whole scene. They describe at night how they returned to their quarters, drank to their friends, as usual, emptied several cans of good flip, all singing merrily.” On the second night after their return, Forrest produced his journal, hound, gilt, and lettered, and read the same to the members of the Club then present at the Bedford. At the same time Totba.ll produced the account of the Disbursements on the journey, which amounted to 61. 6s. A copy of the journal was left in the hands of the Bev. Mr. Gostling, at Canterbury ; and he wrote an imitation of it in Hudibrastic verse, (965 lines,) of which twenty copies were printed as a literary curiosity in 1781: it is reprinted in Nichols’s third edition. In the previous year, 1781, Hogarth published a Tour of nine pages, illustrated with drawings. The frontispiece, (Mr. Somebody,) was designed by Hogarth, as emblematical of the journey, viz., that it was a short tour by land and water, backwards and forwards, without head or tail. The ninth is the tail-piece, (Mr. Nobody,) the whole being intended as a burlesque on historical writers renovating a series of insignificant events entirely uninteresting to the reader. PORTRAITS OF SARAH MALCOLM, MISS BLANDY, AND ELIZABETH CANNING. Hogarth appears to have had a strong penchant for painting the portraits of criminals, and other notorieties in infamy. Among them was Sarah Malcolm, the laundress in the Temple, who was executed opposite Mitre-court, Fleet-street, on the 17th of March, 1733, for the murder of Mrs. Elizabeth Duncan. Elizabeth Harrison, and Ann Price. Hogarth drew Malcolm’s portrait when she was in the condemned cell in Newgate, on the day before her execution ; and to Sir James Thornhill, who accompanied him, he observed : “ I see by this woman’s features that she is capable of any wickedness.’’ Upon this, Ireland remarks: “ Of his (Hogarth’s) skill in physiognomy I entertain a very high opinion; but as Sarah sat for her WILLIAM HOGARTH. 21 picture after lier condemnation, I suspect his observation to resemble those prophecies which are made after the comple¬ tion of events they professed to foretel. She has a locked-up mouth, wide nostrils, and a penetrating eye, with a general air that indicates close observation and masculine courage; but I do not discover either depravity or cruelty; though her conduct in this, as well as some other horrible transactions, evinced an uncommon portion of both, and proved her a Lady Macbeth in low life.” When Sarah sat to Hogarth, “ she had put on red to look the better.” This portrait was in the Green Closet, at Straw¬ berry Hill; a copy of it was in the possession of Alderman Boy dell: it was engraved, and from the print were four copies, besides one in wood, which was engraved for the Gentleman s Magazine. “Thus eager were the public,” says Ireland, “ to possess the portait of this most atrocious woman.” Walpole calls her “a washerwoman,” which, doubtless, arose from his mistaking the designation of laundress, a woman who has the care of chambers, for a washer of clothes. It is true that her picture was admitted into the Strawberry-hill collection; but Walpole-rightly estimated Sarah's notoriety, though he places her in great company, and writes, some fifteen years after, (1748): “ Projectors make little noise here; and even any one who only has made a noise, is forgotten as soon as out of sight! The knaves and fools of to-day are too numerous to leave room to talk of yesterday. The pains that people, who have a mind to be named, are forced to take to he very particular, would convince you how difficult it is to make a lasting impression on such a town as this. * * * * Lord Boling- broke, Sarah Malcolm, and old Marlborough, are never mentioned by their elderly folks to their grandchildren, who had never heard of them.”— Letters, vol. ii. p. 104. Another portrait of this class is that of Miss Blandy, who was executed at Oxford in 1762, for poisoning her father. The drawing, which is in every way worthy of Hogarth’s pencil, was in the collection of the Duke of Buckingham at Stowe : it is in Indian-ink wash. She is represented in her prison cell, sitting at a round table, her left hand resting on a sheet of paper, and holding a pen, as if in the act of writing, although her countenance is turned towards the spectator: Nichols asks : “Was she left-handed!” Hogarth next painted Elizabeth Canning, whose fabricated story of being seized under Bedlam wall, partly stripped, and carried to Enfield Wash, and there shut up in a room, and 22 ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. kept upon bread and water, for many months turned the heads of the town, and produced a shoal of pamphlets, prints, and caricatures. Canning confessed the imposture, and was tried, and condemned to transportation : Hogarth painted her while she was in prison, and the portrait is in the Mulgrave collection. DEATH OF SIR JAMES THORNHILL. In 1734, Hogarth lost his father-in-law, Sir Janies Thorn¬ hill, whom he designated in the obituary of the Gentleman's Magazine —“ the greatest history-painter this Kingdom ever produced: witness his elaborate works hi Greenwich Hos¬ pital, the cupola of St. Paul's, the altar-pieces of All Souls’ College in Oxford, and the church in Weymouth, where he was born. He was not only by patents appointed history- painter to their late and present majesties, but sergeant- painter, by which he was to paint all the royal palaces, coaches, barges, and the royal navy. This late patent he surrendered in favour of his only son John. He left no other issue but one daughter, now the wife of Mr. William Hogarth, admired for his curious miniature conversation pieces.” Thornhill was generous with his pencil: he painted the Court of Aldermen, at the Guildhall, London, with allegorical figures of Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude; in return for which the Corporation presented the artist with a gold cup, value 225Z. 7s. Sir James designed for the Chelsea China-factory; and Walpole had, at Strawberry Hill, a dozen plates by Thornhill, which he purchased at Mrs. Hogarth’s sale, in Leicester- square. Panton Betew, the silversmith of Hogarth’s time, and a dealer in works of art, related the following as the cause of the breaking up of the Chelsea china works, in a conversation with Hollekens :—“Ay! that was a curious failure, the cun¬ ning rogues produced very white and delicate ware, but then they had their clay from China; which when the Chinese found out, they would not let the captains have any more clay for ballast, and the consequence was, that the whole concern failed.” Hollekens once asked Panton Betew, if he knew where the Chelsea china factory stood ? To which Betew replied, “ Upon the site of Lord Darter/s house, just beyond the bridge.” Thornhill lived in a large house behind Ho. 104, St. Martin’s- lane : he painted the staircase with subjects of allegory; the WILLIAM HOGARTH. 23 pictures long remained upon tlie walls, in excellent condition, as they have never been cleaned. In this house subsequently lived the junior Van Host, the sculptor, who took the famous . mask of Garrick from his face. After Van Host, Frank Hay- man lived in this house ; and then Sir Joshua Reynolds, pre¬ vious to his knighthood, and before he went to live in the house now Ho. 5, on the north side of Great Hewport-street, whence he removed to Leicester-fields. Upon the site of the present Friends’, or Quakers’ meeting¬ house, in St. Peter’s-court, stood the first studio of Roubilliac, the sculptor; there, amongst other works, he executed his famous statue of Handel, for Vauxhall Gardens. The studio was, upon Roubilliac leaving it, fitted up as a subscription drawing academy, Mr. Michael Moser being appointed keeper. Hogarth was much against this establishment, though he pre¬ sented to it several casts, and other articles, which had been the property of his father-in-law, Sir James Thornhill. He declared that it was the surest way to bring artists to beggary, by rendering their education as easy as one guinea and a half and two guineas, per quarter. MIDNIGHT MODERN CONVERSATION. In this famous piece, painted by Hogarth in 1735, most of the figures are portraits. It is a picture of thorough jollity. Around a table are some dozen persons, talking, swearing, singing, falling, sleeping, smoking, swilling, and huzzaing “ like mad.” The president of the orgy is a priest, whom, Sir Hawkins says, is Orator Henley; hut Mrs. Piozzi asserts he is no other person than Parson Ford, a near relative of Dr. Johnson, and a very profligate fellow. Although his com¬ panions are falling about him, he sits, pipe in hand, using a corkscrew as a tobacco-stopper.* The figure leaning over the Parson is John Harrison, a tobacconist from Bell-yard; the lawyer, Kettleby, a vociferous barrister; the man in the * This association of the priest and the corkscrew is traced to the following anecdote related by Lord Sandwich. 4 I was in company where there were ten persons, and I made a wager privately and won it, that among them was not one prayer-book. I then offered to lay another wager, that among the ten persons there were half-a-score of corkscrews—it was accepted; the better received his instructions, pre¬ tended to break his corkscrew, and requested any gentleman to lend him one, when each priest pulled a corkscrew from his pocket. A dispute was got up as to some point in the Liturgywhen a prayer- book was asked for, and not one of the priests had one.” 24 ANECDOTE BIOGBAPHY. nightcap, old Chandler, a bookbinder from Shire-lane. The jolly party have emptied twenty-three flasks, and the twenty- fourth is being decanted. Even the timepiece is infected ■with the fume of the liquor, for the hour and minute hands do not agree. This picture was presented by Hogarth to Mr. Eich, of Covent-garden theatre ; his widow left it to her nephew, General Wilford, who gave it to the grand-daughter of Rich, who bequeathed it to William Wightman, Esq., of Hampstead. In the Egremont collection at Petworth, is a copy of this picture ; another (says Ireland) was found in an inn in Glou¬ cestershire, and passed into the hands of J. Calverley, Esq., of Leeds; a sketch was sold at John Ireland’s sale, in 1810, for 61.; and in 1817, this picture, or another sketch, was in the hands of Mr. Gwennap, and thence passed into Lord iSTorthwick’s collection at Cheltenham, dispersed in 1859. The print was very popular : in the British Museum is an impression of the plate in its first state, printed with red ink ; it was copied by Kirkhall and Ripenhausen. There is a very large copy, 2 ft. 11 in. wide by 22J inches high, published by John Bowles, at the Black Horse, Cornhill: on each side of the title are numerous verses. The bon-vivant Duke of Norfolk possessed a copy, which, in 1816, was sold to Molteno, of Pall Mall. The clever heads in the Midnight Conversation , were en¬ graved in two small plates by Ripenhausen, and published, with a French description, in 1786 ; and a French copy was en¬ graved by Creite. Indeed, the fame of print and picture seems to have been co-extensive with the love of drink. It is considered in France and Germany the best of all Hogarth’s single works. It will be seen by reference to a future page, that one of the wall-paintings discovered in the Elephant, in Fenchurch- street, in 1826, is said to have been Hogarth’s first idea of the above picture, but differs from the print. ORATOR HENLEY. We are easily led, (says Mr. Wright,) to doubt the morality of a schemer like Henley, and the reports of his contem¬ poraries seem to rank it rather low. Hogarth introduced him in his Midnight Conversation; and in another picture, per¬ forming the rites of baptism, but evidently more attentive to the beauty of the mother than to the operation he is per- WILLIAM HOGAETH. 25 forming on the child. Another rough sketch by Hogarth represents in burlesque the interior of the Oratory in Clare Market during service. The Orator's fame, however, was so great, that several engravings were made of him, holding forth from his pulpit, enriched with velvet and gold .—(England under the House of Hanover, vol. i. p. 107.) A COFFEE-EOOM SCENE. A good and characteristic conversation piece hy Hogarth, was sold by auction in June, 1856. It was from Mr. Barwell Coles’s collection, and is a true piece, with four life-size figures, over a bowl of bunch. The scene is evidently in Old Slaughter’s Coffee-house, St. Martin’s-lane; the persons repre¬ sented are Dr. Mounsey, Slaughter himself, and it is said, Hogarth. The heads are well painted, and the whole picture is full of character. “THE HARLOT’S PROGRESS.'’ Hogarth commenced painting this series of six pictures in 1731, and published the plates engraved from them in 1734. They were the first great work in which his genius became conspicuously known. “ This,” says Cunningham, “ is no burlesque production nor jesting matter—it exhibits, in the midst of humour and satire, a moral pathos which saddens the heart.” The boldness and originality of the conception of the satiric story, and the literal force with which the fashion¬ able follies and corruptions of the age are shown up in these pictures, extended as their effect was by engraving, admi¬ nistered many a severe reproof to the actors in those scenes of profligacy with which the London life of the period abounded. Hitherto, painters had invested their moralities with the grace of classic fable and what may be termed the varnish of allegory. Hogarth disdained such affectations, and in their place gave us portraits of the vicious and the vile in the several stages of their infamy. The chief agents are portraits of notorieties of the day. The debauchee, in the first scene of the series, is Colonel Charteris, whom Pope had already “ damned to everlasting fame,” and who is here, to use Cun¬ ningham’s words, “ pilloried to everlasting infamy.” Kate Hackahout, the frail heroine, was committed to Bridewell in 1730 : her brother was hung at Tyburn. The procuress, Mother Needham, be-patched and sanctified looking, was sent 26 ANECDOTE BIOGEAPHY. out of the world in undergoing the sentence of being pilloried in Park-lane, when she was so roughly handled by the mob that she survived hut a few days. Then, with what characteristic accuracy are the accessories of the pictures chosen: in the second plate, the sign, Pontac’s head, alludes to the purveyor who kept the celebrated eating- house in Abchurch-lane; the hat-box in the third plate, is James Dalton’s, a notorious street-robber; the pictures are Dr. Sacheverel and Captain Macheath—the Beggar's Opera being just then in full run; and in the sixth plate the parson is chaplain of the Pleet Prison, scandalous for its marriages; and the principal female, Elizabeth Adams, was executed for robbery in 1737. Of a higher class is the Justice in the third plate, this being Sir John Gonson, who was indefatigable in hunting up thieves and profligates, and is here entering the house of the Harlot. Gonson was distinguished for the extravagance of his addresses to Grand Juries; they were composed, it is said, by Orator Henley, of the Gilt-Tub, and Sir John’s voice did not escape the satire of Pope : “ Talkers I’ve heard; Motteaux I knew; Henley himself I’ve heard, and Budgell too, The doctor’s wormwood style, the hash of tongues A pedant makes, the storm of Gonson’s lungs.” The accuracy of the likeness of Sir John Gonson had much to do with the sudden popularity of the Harlot!s Progress. Nichols relates that at a Board of Treasury, which was held a day or two after the appearance of the third scene, a copy was shown by one of the Lords, as containing, among other excel¬ lencies, a striking likeness of Sir John Gonson. It gave universal satisfaction : from the Treasury each lord repaired to the print-shop for a copy of it; and Hogarth rose com¬ pletely into fame. This anecdote was related by Christopher Tilson, one of the chief clerks in the Treasury, and at that period under-secretary of state. The fourth Plate admirably represents a scene in Bridewell: men and women are beating hemp under the eye of a savage taskmaster, and a lad too idle to work is seen standing on tiptoe, to reach the stocks, in which his hands are fixed, while over his head is written, “Better to work than stand thus!” In the fifth Plate, the fat and lean physicians, who are squabbling beside the expiring sinner, are also portraits : the WILLIAM HOGARTH. 27 meagre practitioner is Dr. Misaubin, the Flemish Quack; * his fat adversary is an English 'worthy of the same stamp— either Dr. Eock or Dr. Ward : an old nostrum of the latter is in. sale to this day. The apartment is the large room in the house of the famous Dr. Misaubin,t now Flo. 96, St. Martin’s-lane; and in the picture are portraits of the Doctor and his Irish wife. This plate of Hogarth’s, which has never heen understood by collectors of that artist’s works, has heen explained thus: The Eake, who has accompanied the girl to whom Dr. Misaubin had given his vicious pills, is threatening to cane him. The Doctor’s wife, who has been cleaning a lancet after a recent operation, eyes the Eake with a full determination to enforce her vengeance, should he offer to put his threat into execution. The coffin in the last Plate, is inscribed September 2, 1731. The boy in a corner winding up his top with so much unpre¬ tending insensibility in the plate of the Harlot’s Funeral (the only thing in that assembly that is not a hypocrite,) quiets and soothes the mind that has been disturbed at the sight of so much depraved man and woman kind. (C. Lamb.) The six pictures were sold at Hogarth’s auction, in 1715, for 14 guineas each, to Alderman Beckford, who removed them to his seat at Fonthill; and when the mansion was * Dr. Misaubin, (whose father was a celebrated preacher at the Spital- fields French church,) brought a noted pill into England, by which he realized a large fortune. His son was murdered when returning from Marylebone gardens : the Doctor bequeathed his wealth to his grandson, who dissipated it, and died in St. Martin’s workhouse : he supported himself entirely by drinking gin, and died at last for want of it. Mr. Standley is in possession of an original drawing by Hogarth, con¬ taining portraits of Dr. Misaubin and Dr. Ward, which he has had engraved; the plate being destroyed after twelve impressions had been taken.— J. T. Smith, 1828. + Dr. Misaubin’s house in St. Martin’s-lane was afterwards a colour- shop, and the front retained to the last grooves for the shutters to slide in; the street-door frame was of the style of Queen Anne, with a spread eagle, foliage, and flowers curiously and deeply carved in wood over the entrance. Mr. Powel, the colourman, who long inhabited this house, used to say that his mother, for many years, made a pipe of wine from the grapes which grew in the garden, which at that time was nearly 100 feet in length, before the smoke of so many surrounding buildings checked the growth of the vines. The house has a large and curiously painted staircase, of figures viewing a procession, which was executed for Dr. Misaubin, about 1732, by a French painter named Clermont, who boldly charged one thousand guineas for his labour; but the charge being contested, he was obliged to take five hundred guineas. 28 ANECDOTE BIOGEAPHY. burnt in 1755, five of the pictures were consumed; the sixth was saved, and is at Charlemont House, Dublin. Nichols, in 1833, stated: “Mr.Hall, the police magistrate, of Bow-street, has what he considers to be the first four ol the original sketches of the Harlot’s Progress: they are in a very rough, obscure, and dirty condition.” For the prints of the Harlot?s Progress above 1,200 names were entered in Hogarth's subscription-book. It was made into a pantomime by Theophilus Cibber ; and again repre¬ sented on the stage, under the title of The Jew decoyed, or a, Harlot’s Progress, in a ballad opera. Fan-mounts were like¬ wise engraved, containing miniature representations of all the six plates; and it Was customary in Hogarth's family, to give these fans to the maid-servants. The Empress of Russia, who highly prized Hogarth’s works, had a tea service of cups and saucers with the Harlot?s Progress painted on them in China, about the year 1793. THE RAKE’S PROGRESS. This admirable series of eight scenes, painted in 1735, each complete in itself, and all telling a domestic story, fol¬ lowed the Harlot?s Progress. Walpole says: “The Bake’s Progress , though perhaps superior to the Harlot’s Progress, had not so much success as the other—from want of novelty; nor is the print of the Arrest equal to the others.” The in¬ feriority of the latter plate was felt by Hogarth himself; he tried to improve it, but without success. Nevertheless, the success of the Bake’s Progress must have been great, for it was satisfactory to the artist himself. Their humour, satire, and moral pathos were instantly appreciated. Even Walpole now acknowledged Hogarth’s triumph. “The curtain,” he says, “was now drawn aside, and his genius stood displayed in its full lustre. From time to time he con¬ tinued these works, which should be immortal if the nature of his work would allow it. Even the receipts for his sub¬ scriptions had wit in them. Many of his plates he engraved himself, and often expunged faces etched by his assistants when they had not done justice to his ideas.” In the Bake’s Progress, a young man succeeds unexpectedly to the hoards of a sordid miser—from poverty to worldly fortune. “ He deserts the woman whom he had wooed, and vowed to marry—starts on a wild career of extravagance, dissipation, and folly—is beset and swindled by speculators WILLIAM HOGARTH. 29 of all kinds, from poets to punks, including rooks, and bucks, and bullies—parades through various haunts of sin and of splendour, till with a fortune dissipated, a constitution ruined, his fame blighted, and his mind touched, he is left raving mad in Bedlam.” Many of the actors in these scenes are believed to be portraits. The hero is probably only the impersonation of the vices satirized. Around the head of the antiquated beldam whom Bakewell marries, to support his extravagance, is a halo, which is a shaft at that spiritual school of painting, on which Hogarth looked coldly. The two sedate personages at the gaming-table, are one Manners (of the Rutland family,) to whom the Duke of Devonshire lost the great estate of Leicester Abbey; and a highwayman who sits warming his feet at the fire, waiting quietly till the winner departs, that he may, with a craped face and a cocked pistol, follow and seize the whole. “ Old Manners,” says Ireland, “ was the omy person of his time who amassed a considerable fortune by the profession of a gamester.” Hogarth has shown him as miser and gamester, discounting a nobleman’s note-of-hand. The second scene is Rakewell’s morning levee; with the French fencing-master, Dubois, who died in a quarrel with an Irishman of his own name and profession; next is Figg, the prize-fighter, who beat half-a-dozen Hibernians—hence the label—“A Figg for the Irish;” the teacher of music resembles Handel; the French-horn player, Bridgman; the pictures are Fighting Cocks, and the Judgment of Paris. In the third plate, the fellow with a pewter-dish, Leathercoat, was many years porter at the Rose Tavern: the decapitated Caesars are very comical. In the sixth plate, the fire alludes to an acci¬ dent which happened April 23, 1733, when White’s Chocolate- house, and two adjoining houses in St. James’s-street, were consumed; Sir Andrew Fountaine’s fine collection of paintings was destroyed; His Majesty and the Prince of Wales were present above an hour, and encouraged the firemen and others to work at the engines, by distributing money amongst them. The eighth scene is very full: the tailor is Lord L——r, who had a passion for that business ; * the maniac chained to the floor is a copy of one of Cibber’s figures over the gate of Bedlam; the Rake himself is the companion figure; the man sitting by the figure inscribed “ Charming Betty Care¬ less,” is William Ellis, the maniac who lost his reason through * Just as an “exquisite” Earl of our time had; and whose taste not only gave the name to a fashion, but actually cut out his own clothes. ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. 30 love for liis Betty : an etching of this plate has been sold for IK. Os. 6d Mr. Knowles, of 34, Bridge-street, Blackfriars, possesses a beautiful and most valuable drawing in Indian ink of the above Bedlam scene; it was evidently drawn by Hogarth for the purpose of transferring to the copper, but the drawing is most exquisitely finished. ( Nichols , 1833.) The woman, discarded in the first print, receives Bakewell in the fourth, is present at his marriage, follows him into the gaol and watches over him in Bedlam. The original sketch in oil, of the 6th plate, was, in 1782, at Mrs. Hogarth’s, in Leicester Fields; the principal character is here sitting, and not thrown upon his knees in execration, which is a very effective incident of the picture. The eight paintings were sold in Hogarth’s sale, in 1745, for twenty-two guineas each, the purchaser being Alderman Beckford, at whose sale they were purchased by Col. Ful¬ lerton for 650 guineas. In 1802, they were bought by Sir John Soane for 5981. ; and they are now in the Picture-room of the Soanean Museum, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Hogarth painted the Rake's Progress in a temporary summer residence at Isleworth. The crowd of visitors to his studio was immense. He often asked them if they knew for whom one or other of the figures in the pictures was designed, and when they guessed wrong, he set them right. It was generally believed that the heads were chiefly portraits of low charac¬ ters on town. HOGARTH PAINTS THE STAIRCASE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW’S HOSPITAL. Before Hogarth had done anything of much consequence in his walk “ between the sublime and grotesque,” he writes: “ I entertained some hopes of succeeding in what the puffers in hooks call the great style of History Painting; so that without having had a stroke of this grand business before, I quitted small portraits and familiar conversations, and with a smile at my own temerity, commenced history painter, and on the great staircase of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, painted two Scripture stories, the Pool of Bethesda, and the Good Samaritan, with figures seven feet high.” These paintings Hogarth presented to the Charity, in acknowledgment of which he was elected a Life Governor of the Hospital. The inscription records: “ The historical Paintings of this stair¬ case were painted and given by Mr. William Hogarth, and WILLIAM HOGAETH. 31 the ornamental painting at his expense, a.d. 1736.” Hogarth soon left this new path, in which Walpole deals harshly with his failure : “the genius that had entered so feelingly into the calamities and crimes of familiar life, deserted him in a walk that called for dignity and grace. The burlesque turn of his mind mixed itself with the most serious subjects. . In the Pool of Bethesda, a servant of a rich ulcerated lady beats hack a poor man that sought the same celestial remedy.” This, though justly thought,. Walpole condemns as too ludi¬ crous ; hut it is rather satirical. The conception of both these works is their chief merit. Hogarth paid his friend Lambert for painting the landscape of the Good Samaritan, and afterwards cleaned the whole at his own expense. Two fine drawings for the Bethesda painting exist. One is in black- and white chalk, drawn from the life, of the principal female figure in the Pool; upon which S. Ireland notes : “ this figure was drawn at St. Martin’s-lane, and is said to have represented Nell Robinson, a celebrated cour¬ tezan it was given in 1794 by Mr. Cotton to Ireland, and is now in the Royal collection. The second drawing is in chalk, very fine, probably the study for the beggar in the Pool; it passed into Mr. John Sheepshanks’s collection. HOGAETH AH ANATOMICAL DEAUGHTSMAN. It is not generally known that in early life Hogarth at¬ tempted to paint morbid anatomy : it was at the suggestion of Dr. Caesar Hawkins who directed his attention to it as a field of labour not occupied; HogarJh at that time being a beginner the Doctor patronized him ; and two pictures painted by Hogarth for him (of diseased viscera) were bequeathed with other pictures by the widow of the doctor, to the Royal College of Surgeons, where they are still preserved. “THE STEOLLING ACTRESSES.” This picture is one of the most imaginative and amusing of Hogarth’s works. It is a huge barn fitted up as a theatre, with a company of performers preparing for the “ Devil to Pay in Heaven,” a sort of burlesque of a religious mystery. The principal dramatis personge, Jupiter, Juno, Diana, Apollo, Plora, Night, Syren, Aurora, and Cupid, are accompanied by a ghost, two eagles, two dragons, two kittens, and an aged ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. 32 monkey. Juno is rehearsing her part on an old wheelbarrow which'serves occasionally for a triumphal car; Night, in a starry robe, is mending her stocking; the Star of Evening is a scoured tin tart-mould. A veteran, one-eyed damsel repre¬ sents the Tragic Muse, and is cutting a cat’s tail for blood to heighten the mimic scene. Two little devils with budding horns, are struggling for a pot of ale. In the centre of the design Diana is stripped to her chemise, and having just caught the inspiration of her part, is rehearsing, heedless of dressing; she is young, blooming, and beautiful. Elora is making her toilet before a broken looking-glass; she smooths her hair with a piece of tallow candle, and holds the dredger ready. Apollo and Cupid are trying to bring down a pair of stockings, hung out on a cloud to dry ; but the wings of the God of Love fail, and he is compelled to mount by a ladder. Aurora sits on the ground; the Syren is offering Ganymede a glass of gin; and the woman who personates the Bird of Jove, is feeding her child; a royal crown holds the pap- saucepan, and the child screams at the enormous beak of the eagle. In a corner a monkey in a long cloak, a bag wig, and solitaire, is moistening the plumed helmet of Alexander the Great. Two kittens are playing with a lyre and an imperial orb ; and two judges’ wigs and an empty noose are in sug¬ gestive juxta-position. A mitre is filled with tragedies and farces; a hen and chickens are roosting upon a set of un¬ employed waves ; and here are the materials for dramatic thunder. The humour, sarcasms, and absurdities in the pic¬ ture are endless—even the darkest nook has a meaning; and the oddity of the properties is well indicated by Juno having for her share “ thunderbolt, trunk, wheelbarrow, salt- box, rouge, and rolling-pin.” It is, indeed, a thoroughly behind the scenes picture. It was sold by Francis Beckford, Esq., for 27 1. 6s., which price he thought too much, and returned it to the painter, who then sold it to Mr. Wood, of Littleton, for the same price; and it remains in his posses¬ sion. A print in the first state, extra fine, has been sold for 61. 10s. THE BEGGARS’ OPERA. The talents of Hogarth did not allow him to let pass the Newgate pastoral of the Beggars’ Opera, the greatest theatric cal success of his time. Of this subject, Hogarth painted, at least, two copies. The "WILLIAM HOGARTH. 33 original sketch, in oil, represents Lucy and Polly interced¬ ing with their fathers to save Capt. Macheath: Walker as Macheath ; Miss Fenton (afterwards Duchess of Bolton) as Polly ; Hippisley as Peachem ; Hall as Lockit: on one side, in a box, are Sir Thomas Ilobinson, very tall and lean, and Sir Eobert Fagg, the famous horse-racer. This sketch was given by Hogarth to Horace Walpole, and remained in the Strawberry-hill collection, until the sale in 1842, when it was sold for 55 guineas. Walpole had another picture by Hogarth, of Macheath going to execution. Of this subject, Hogarth painted at least two copies for Eich, of Covent Garden Theatre. It was engraved by Blake, in 1790, with a key-plate of the personages. Hogarth caricatured the Beggar s’ Opera in a print repre¬ senting the actors with the heads of animals, and Apollo and the Muses fast asleep under the stage. In another caricature, Parnassus was turned into a bear-garden; Pegasus was drawing a dust-cart, and the Muses were employed in sifting cinders : Parnassus now like a bear-garden appears, And Apollo there plays on his crowd to the bears : Poor Pegasus draws an old dust-cart along, And the Muses sift cinders, and hum an oM song. With a fa, la, &c. “THE FOUR TIMES OF THE DAY.” In these four prints, Hogarth, says Ireland, “ treads poetic ground.” It would have been more sensible to say, they present so many scenes of the London street life of the period; just as George Cruikshank and John Leech, in our day, illus¬ trate the humour of their period. Of Morning the scene is Covent-garden of about a century and a quarter ago. The sun is newly risen, and there is snow on the house-tops; a prim old maiden lady is walking to church, with a half-starved and shivering footboy bearing her prayer-book. She is extraordinarily sour; for she sees, as if she saw them not, two fuddled beaux from Tom King’s coffee-house caressing two frail women. A young fruit-girl is warming her hands at the embers of a night-fire on the pavement; while her companion, a beggar-woman, in vain solicits charity from the sour old maiden on her way to church : this is the portrait of a lady, who, it is said, was so incensed at the satire, that she struck Hogarth out of her D ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. 34 will; she was at first pleased with the strong likeness, till some good-natured friend explained it in a way injurious to the fortune of the artist. At the door of Tom King’s coffee¬ house* there is a drunken row, in which swords and cudgels are the weapons. There is snow on the ground, and icicles hang from the eaves; but, to suit the season, there is a liquor-shop open; and Dr. 'Rock is commending to a mar¬ velling audience the miracles wrought by his medicine, which his sign-post shows, he dispenses by letters patent. Noon is laid, according to Ireland, at the door of a French chapel in Hog-lane, (afterwards Castle-street,) Seven Dials, a part of the town then peopled by French refugees, or their descendants. The congregation are coming out of the chapel; foremost are an affected Frenchwoman, her foppish husband, and a spoiled child; two withered beldames saluting is very ludicrous. St. Giles’s clock-dial points to half-past eleven; hut at this early hour there was as much good eating as now at six' in the evening; and twenty pewter measures on the wall attest the rate of drinking. A servant-girl, bringing a pie from a baker’s, is stopped to be kissed by a blackamoor; but the best portion of the picture is a poor boy who in resting a baked pudding on the head of a post, has broken the dish, and let out the contents ; he gapes with misery, his eyes run over with tears, and he scratches his head most ludicrously; while a half-famished child is devouring some of the smoking pieces of pudding. Evening is on the banks of -''he Hew Kiver, near Sadler’s Wells, and includes the sign of Sir Hugh Myddleton’s Head. A husband and wife are walking out to take the air; he is in suspicious position with the head and horns of a neighbouring cow; she is fatigued, portly and proud, and spiteful: there are other pedestrians. A proof of this plate, before the artist’s name, or any inscription, and prior to the introduc¬ tion of the girl, (only three known,) was sold in 1825 for 501. Night, the fourth scene, is laid near Charing-cross, on Res¬ toration Day, (May 29,) when the streets were dressed with * Tom King’s Coffee-house was a common shed immediately beneath the portico of St. Paul’s church, Co vent Garden ; and was “ well-known to ah gentlemen to whom beds are unknown.” Fielding says : “ What rake is ignorant of King’s Coffee-house ?” Tom’s widow, Mrs. Moll King, continued landlady, and was often fined for keeping a disorderly house. At length she retired from business—and the pillory—to Hampstead, where she lived on her ill-earned gains, paid for a pew in church, was charitable at appointed seasons, and died in peace in 1747. WILLIAM HOGARTH. 35 oak-boughs, especially the signs, and the hats of mirthful spirits. A Freemason, staggering from the tavern, assisted by a waiter, has been set down for Sir Thomas de Yeel, a magistrate ; a Xantippe showers upon him from her chamber window, an inodorous favour. There is a bonfire, through which the Salisbury Flying Coach, in attempting to pass, is overset and broken—said by Ireland to be a burlesque upon a right honourable peer, who was accustomed to drive three or form of his maid-servants into a deep water, and there leave them in the coach to shift for themselves. A finished sketch, said to be Hogarth’s first thought for Morning, was sold in Yates’s sale in 1827, to Mr. Tayleure for 217 The picture was purchased by Sir William Heathcote for 20 guineas; and Night for 277 6s. Noon was sold for 387 17s., and Evening for 397 18s., to the Duke of Ancaster, and are now possessed by Lord Gwydir: the four were ex¬ hibited at the British Gallery in 1814. HOGAETH EMBELLISHES VAUXHALL GARDENS. In 1728, Spring Garden, as Vauxhall was then called, was leased to Jonathan Tyers, to whose taste and spirit this old London resort owed much of its celebrity subsequent to the time of Addison and Sir Boger de Coverley. Tyers reopened the Gardens in 1732, with a grand Ridotto al Fresco; he next set up an organ in the orchestra, and in the grounds, in 1738, Boubilliac’s statue of Handel, which is now in the committee-room of the Sacred Harmonic Society, at Exeter Hah. Hogarth was now rich enough to take summer lodgings at Lambeth-terrace; the house in which he resided is still shown, and a vine pointed out which the painter planted. While living there, he became acquainted with Tyers, of Vauxhall Gardens; and for the season of 1739, Hogarth designed the silver ticket of admission : the obverse bore the number, name of the holder, and date; and the reverse a figure of Euterpe. Hogarth next suggested to Tyers the embellishment of the Gardens with paintings; the principal objects in them having previously consisted of whimsical proofs of skill in mechanics, and model pictures, and arbours covered and paved with tiles. For the pavilions which Tyers had built, Hogarth drew the four parts of the Day, which Hayman copied; Hogarth also painted for the vestibule d 2 36 ANECDOTE BIOGEAPHY. portraits of Henry the Eighth and Anne Boleyn. The print hears the lines by Allan Bamsay, “ Here struts old pious Harry,” &c. A proof has been sold for 13/. 2s. (hi. The portraits were said to be Frederick Prince of Wales and Lady Yane. For this assistance, which seems to have been gratuitous, Tyers presented Hogarth with a Gold Ticket, or perpetual admission : it bears on its obverse “ Hogarth,” and beneath it, “ In per- petuam beneficii memoriam ; ” on the reverse are two figures, surrounded with the motto, “ Virtus voluptas felices una.” This Ticket, (for the admission of six persons, or “one coach,”) was last used for admission in 1836 : it is now in the posses¬ sion .of Mr. Frederick Gye, who purchased it for 20/. After Hogarth’s decease, the Ticket, or Medallion, remained in the hands of his widow, who bequeathed it to Mrs. Mary Lewis, who left it to Mr. B. F. Hart, chief clerk of the Duchy of Corn¬ wall Office, and second Clerk of the Kitchen to George III. It next became the property of Captain Tuck, of Lambeth. The design has been engraved; and the original copper-plate, with 30 impressions, was bought by Evans, at Wilkinson’s sale, hi 1826, for 13s. only. Such is the generally received version of Hogarth’s intro¬ duction to Tyers; but Mr. J. Phillips, the nephew-in-law of Mr. Hart, tells the anecdote as related to him by Mrs. Lewis, as follows : On passing the tavern one morning, which was then kept by Jonathan Tyers, and open, together with the Gardens, as a place of recreation daily, Hogarth saw Tyers, and observing that he looked particularly melancholy, said : “ How now, master Tyers, why so sad this morning ? ” “ Sad times, master Hogarth, and my reflexions were on a subject not likely to brighten a man’s countenance,” said Tyers ; “ I was thinking, do you know, which would be likely to prove the easiest death—hanging or drowning.” “ Oh,” replied Ho¬ garth, “ is it come to that 1 ” “ Yery nearly, I assure you,” said Tyers. “ Then,” replied Hogarth, “ the remedy you think of applying is not likely to mend the matter—don’t hang or drown to-day. I have a thought that may save the necessity of either, and will communicate it to you to-morrow morning: call at my house in Leicester-fields.” The interview took place, and the result was the embellishment of the Gardens by Hogarth, who associated himself with Hayman in the work. WILLIAM HOGARTH. 37 These paintings were chiefly in. the sweeps of pavilions, or supper-boxes, in the Gardens ; they had little of Hogarth’s genius ; and they were rarely seen by the company, for want of sufficient light. Many of the pictures perished ; hut such as remained were disposed of at the sale of the moveable property in the Gardens, in October, 1841. Twenty-four pictures by Hogarth and Hayman produced but small sums : they had mostly been upon the premises since 1742; the canvass was nailed to boards, and much obscured by dirt. By Hogarth : Drunken Man, 41. 4s .; a Woman pulling out an Old Man’s grey hairs, 31. 3s.; Jobson and Hell in the Devil to Pay, 41. 4s. ; the Happy Family, 31. 15s. ; Children at Play, 41. 11s. 6 d. By Hayman : Children Bird’s-nesting, 51. 1 Os. ; Minstrels, 31 .; the Enraged Husband, 41. 4s. ; the Bridal Day, 61. 6s. ; Blindman’s Buff, 31. 8s. ; Prince Henry and Falstaff, 71 .; Scene from the Rake’s Progress, 91. 15s.; Merry-making, 11. 12s. ; the Jealous Husband, 41 .; Card-party, 61 .; Children’s Party, 41. 15s. ; Battledore and Shuttlecock, 11. 10s.; the Doctor, 41. 14s. 6d .; Cherry-bob, 2 1. 15s.; the Storming of Seringapatam, 81. 10s; Neptune and Britannia, 84 10s. ; Four busts of Simpson, the celebrated Master of the Ceremonies, were sold for 10s.; and a bust of his royal shipmate, William IY., 19s.* ROSAMOND’S POND. This noted London haunt was a sheet of water in the south-west corner of St. James’s Park,t “ long consecrated to disastrous love and elegiac poetry.” The earliest notice to he found of it is in an Exchequer payment in 1612: the pond was filled up in 1770. We find it mentioned as a notorious place of intrigue in the love comedies of Otway, Congreve, Farquhar, Southerne, Colley Cibber, and by Addison and Pope : This the Beau-monde shall from the Mall survey ****** This the fleet lover shall for Yenus take, And send up vows from Rosamanda’s Lake. Rape of the Lock. It was painted by Hogarth, about the year 1740, and the picture is now in Mr. Willett’s collection. It was engraved for this gentleman about five-and-twenty years since, when only * See a minute description of Vaushall Gardens in Curiosities of London, pp. 745—748. The property remained in Tyers’s family until 1828. The site is now built upon : a School of Art was founded upon a portion of the ground in June, 1860; the Prince of Wales laying the first stone of the edifice, and this being His Royal Highness’s first act of the kind. . t Another pond in the Green Park, nearly opposite Coventry House, bore the name of Rosamond down to 1840, when it was filled up. 38 ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. one hundred impressions were taken, but not one of them was published. Hogarth also painted a smaller view of Rosa¬ mond's Pond, of a cabinet size, likewise in the collection of Mr. Willett, with the receipt for 11. 7 s. (the sum charged by the painter), in the handwriting of Mrs. Hogarth. These views are in part followed by George Cruikshank, in one of his Illustrations to Ainsworth’s tale of the Miser’s Daughter , in Ho. 1. of Ainsworth’s Magazine, 1842. • THE ENRAGED MUSICIAN—THE DISTRESSED POET. The design of the first scene, which it deafens one to look at, has been variously explained. The hero of the print has been set down for Cervetto; but according to others, Dr. Arne. John Ireland attributes it to John Festin, who was an eminent player of the German flute and hautboy, and was a fashionable teacher of music. Mr. Dallaway says, Signor Castracci was intended. Ireland relates that to each of his pupils, Festin dedicated an hour a-day. “At nine o’clock, one morning, (said he,) I waited upon my Lord Spencer, but his Lordship being out of town, from him I went to Mr. V-n, now Lord Y-n ; it was so early that he was not arisen. I went into his chamber, and opening a window, sat down on the window-seat. Before the rails was a fellow playing upon the hautboy. A man with a barrowful of onions offered the piper an onion if he would play him a tune; that ended, he offered a second for a second tune; the same for a third, and was going on; but this was too much—I could not bear it—it angered my very soul. ‘ Zounds,’ said I, ‘ stop here ! This fellow is ridiculing my profession—he is playing on the hautboy for onions ! ’ ” Upon this story Hogarth has wrought out his design, in the year 1741 : the original sketch was in chiaroscuro, and was sold at S. Ireland’s sale in 1801, for four guineas : thence it passed into the collection of Mr. Hall Chambers, of Southampton. Among the performers of the discord in the street, are a dustman, shouting “ Dust, ho ! dust, ho ! ” the fishmonger crying, “ Flounders ! ” a milkmaid, “ Milk above ! Milk below I ” a female ballad-singer chanting the doleful story of “ the Lady’s Fallthe singer’s child and a neighbouring parrot screaming a chorus; a little French drummer remorselessly beating a ruba-dub-dub, singing all the time; two cats squalling in the gutter-tiles; a doghowl- WILLIAM HOGARTH. 39 Jug most dismally ; while an urchin-sweep, all black save his teeth and the whites of his eyes, from the top of a chimney¬ pot, proclaims that his job is done. Then we have a crowd of instrumentalists : a postman with his horn, a strolling hautboy player, a dustman with his hell, a paviour with his rammer, a knife-grinder grinding a butcher’s cleaver; and “ John Long, Pewterer,” (over the door,) with the clink of twenty hammers, striking metal, accompanies the medley of out-door discords. This picture was engraved with great success ; and a copy of the plate, with that of “ the Distressed Poet,”—both first states, in Baker’s sale, 1825, produced nine guineas. The original of “the Distressed Poet” has been set down as Theobald, the editor of Shakspeare’s Plays; and the inveterate assailant of Pope. The painting was given by Hogarth to Mrs. Draper the celebrated midwife, and sold at her & death for five guineas to Mr. Ward, at whose sale it was purchased by the first Lord Grosvenor for fourteen guineas ; it is now in the Grosvenor Gallery. The scene of it was the house of Mr. Huggins, in St. Martin’s-lane, although, by an error of the engraver, in reversing, the church of St. Martin appears on the right-hand instead of the left. Nichols says . “ the musician was undoubtedly Castrucci; the wretched hautboy player was at that time well known about the streets. THE MARRIAGE A LA MODE PICTURES. This series of six pictures, for invention,. composition, drawing, colouring, and character, are the most important and highly wrought of Hogarth’s satiric comedies. Mr. Thackeray ha's thus emphatically and powerfully told their impressive story of domestic misery. The care and method with which the moral grounds of these pictures are laid is as remarkable as the wit and skill of the observing and dexterous artist. He has to describe the negotiation for a marriage pending between the daughter of a rich citizen Alderman and young Lord Viscount Squanderfield, the dissipated son of a gouty old Earl. Pride and pomposity appear in every accessory surrounding the Earl. He sits in gold lace and velvet—as how should such an Earl wear anything but velvet and gold lace ? His coronet is everywhere—on his footstool on which reposes one gouty toe turned out; on the sconces and looking- glasses ; on the dogs; on his lordship’s very crutches; on his great chair of state, and the great baldaquin behind, him; under which he sits pointing majestically to his pedigree, which shows that his race is sprung from the loins of William the Conqueror, and confronting the old Alderman from the City, who has mounted his sword for the occa- 40 ANECDOTE BIOGEAPHY. sion, and wears his Alderman’s chain, and has brought a bag-full of money, mortgage-deeds, and thousand pound notes, for the arrangement of the transaction pending between them. Whilst the steward (a methodist, therefore a hypocrite and cheat, for Hogarth scorned a papist and a dissenter,) is negotiating between the old couple, their children sit together, united but apart. My lord is admiring his coun¬ tenance in the glass, while his bride is twiddling her marriage-ring on her pocket-handkerchief; and listening with rueful countenance to Counsellor Silvertongue, who has been drawing the settlements. The girl is pretty, but the painter, with a curious watchfulness, has taken care to give her a likeness to her father, as in the young Viscount’s face you see a resemblance to the Earl, his noble sire. The sense of the coronet pervades the picture, as it is supposed to do the mind of its wearer. The pictures round the room are sly hints indicating the situation of the parties about to marry. A martyr is led to the fire; Andromeda is offered to sacrifice; Judith is going to slay Holofernes. Here is the ancestor of the house, (in the picture it is the Earl himself as a young man,) with a comet over his head, indicating that the career of the family is to be brilliant and brief. In the second picture, the old Lord must be dead, for Madam has now the Countess’s coronet over her bed and the toilet-glass, and sits listening to that dangerous Counsellor Silvertongue, whose portrait now actually hangs up in her room; whilst the Counsellor takes his ease on the sofa by her side, evidently the familiar of the house, and the con¬ fidant of the mistress. My lord takes his pleasure elsewhere than at home, whither he returns jaded and tipsy from the Rose, to find his wife yawning in her drawing-room, her whist-party over, and the day¬ light streaming in; or'he amuses himself with the very worst company abroad, whilst his wife sits at home. listening to foreign singers, or wastes her money at auctions, or worse still, seeks amusements at mas¬ querades. The dismal end is known. My lord draws upon the Coun¬ sellor, who kills him, and is apprehended while endeavouring to escape. My lady goes back per force to the Alderman in the City, and faints upon reading Counsellor Silvertongue’s dying speech at Tyburn, where the Counsellor has been executed for sending his lordship out of the world. The six pictures are—1. The Marriage Contract. 2. Shortly after Marriage. 3. The Visit to the Quack Doctor. 4. The Countess’s Dressing-room. 5. The Duel and the Death of the Earl. 6. The Death of the Countess.* These pictures were exhibited gratis to the public by Hogarth, in Cock’s auction-rooms, now Robins’s, in the Piazza, Covent Garden. * In this Plate occurs a curious instance of Hogarth’s attention to most minute traits of character: where, as a further instance of the avarice and miserable penury of the Alderman, who is stripping his dying daughter of her trinkets, a close observer will perceive, that the servant- lad is clothed in one of his master’s old coats, which has been shortened, and that the cloth cut off is turned, and made into new cuffs; this is more plainly seen in the picture, by the contrast of the colour of them with the faded hue of the coat. WILLIAM HOGARTH. 41 In 1841, Messrs. Smith, the eminent print-sellers, of Lisle- street, had the good fortune to discover in the country a dupli¬ cate set of the Marriage a la Mode pictures, which appear to have escaped the researches of all the writers on Hogarth’s works. They are evidently the finished sketches from which he afterwards painted the pictures in the National Gallery, which are more highly wrought. The backgrounds of these pictures are very much subdued, which gives a greater im¬ portance to the figures. They are now in the collection of the late H. E. Willett, Esq., of Merly House, Dorsetshire. They are painted in an exceedingly free and sketchy manner; and are considered to have been most probably painted at the same tune as the four pictures of The Election, now in the Soanean Museum, the execution of which they very much re¬ semble. There is a considerable number of variations between these and the National Gallery pictures ; and such differences throw much light upon the painter’s technical execution, which is somewhat disputed. “Although in some respects (says a critic) rather sketchily handled, they are not painted feebly; and if they cannot be called highly finished, these productions are worthy to rank as cabinet pictures.” Dr. Waagen says of these masterly works :—“ These six pictures'are in my opinion the most ingenious and most suc¬ cessful of his series. These pictures are well known by the engravings, and the witty descriptions of Lichtenberg. The old and new history of the lofty but hollow genealogical tree, with the dirty but well filled money-bag, with its consequences, is here represented with a most extraordinary profusion of invention, observation, humour, and dramatic power. But what surprised me is the eminent merit of these works as paintings, since Hogarth’s own countryman, Horace Walpole, said he had but little merit as a painter. All the most delicate heads of his humour are here marked with con¬ summate skill and freedom, and every other part executed with the same decision, and for the most part with ease. Though the colouring on the whole, and the pictures, as they are almost wholly painted in dead colours, with hardly any glazing, have more the look of distemper than of oil- paintings, the colouring of the flesh is often powerful; and the others, very broken, are disposed with so much refined Deling for harmonious effect, that in colouring they stand in a far higher rank than numerous productions of the most modern English School, with all glaring, inharmonious colours. 42 ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. Only the fifth picture, the Death of the Husband, has lost its chiaro-obscuro by turning dark. Dor these six pictures Hogarth received only the miserable pittance of 1107” SALE OF THE MARRIAGE A LA MODE PICTURES. In 1750, Hogarth advertised for sale these six noble pictures by a strange plan, the result of which is thus related by Mr. Lane, who unexpectedly became the public purchaser of them. The sale was to take place by a kind of auction, where each bidder was to write on a ticket the sum he was-' disposed to give, with his name subscribed to it. These papers were to be received by Hogarth for the space of one month, on the last day of which, at twelve o’clock, the highest bidder was to be the purchaser. The public, however, disliked the plan, and kept aloof: indeed, there seemed a combination against Hogarth. Mr. Lane relates that on June 6, 1750, which was to decide the fate of this capital work, when he arrived at the Golden Head, in Leicester-square, instead of finding the study full of noble and great personages—as at the sale of the Harlot's Progress ,—he only found Hogarth, and his friend, Dr. Parsons, Secretary to the Eoyal Society. Hogarth had put on his best wig, strutted away one hour, fumed away two more, and in revenge muttered : “ Ho picture-dealer shall be allowed to bid.” Mr. Lane had bid 1107 ; no one had arrived ; and ten minutes before twelve, Mr. Lane told Hogarth he would make the pounds guineas. The clock struck, and Hogarth wished Lane joy of his purchase. Dr. Parsons was very much disturbed, and attributed the failure of the sale to the early hour, when Lame offered the painter till three o’clock, to find a better bidder. This was accepted, when Parsons proposed to make it public, which Lane forbade. “At one o’clock,” Hogarth said : “ I shall trespass no longer on your generosity; you are the proprietor, and if you are pleased with the purchase, I am abundantly so with the pur¬ chaser.” Thus were sold these admirable pictures, in frames worth four guineas each; yet no one felt them to be worth more than 907. 6s. In less than half a century, (in 1797, \ Colonel Cawthome, who inherited the pictures from Lane, sold them to Mr. Angerstein for 1,3817 Five years previously, on Jan. 25, 1745, Hogarth haJ offered for sale the six paintings of the Harlot's Progress, the WILLIAM HOGARTH. 43 eight paintings of the Rake’s Progress, the Four Times of the Day, and the Strolling Actresses, on condition that on the day of the sale, every bidder, previously entered, should be the purchaser, if none other appeared within five minutes, and each bidding to he in gold. But, from some cause, the scheme failed ; and the painter obtained only 427 1. 7s. for his nineteen pictures ! “ More,” says Cunningham, “ has been since given, over and over again, for a single painting, than Hogarth obtained for all his paintings put together ! ” The strangeness of the plan had much to do with the failure of the sale; and, as if to make assurance doubly sure of this result, the painter's card of admission to his sale was a piece of satire and spleen, entitled “The Battle of the Pictures.” “MARRIAGE A LA MODE,” AND “THE CLANDESTINE MARRIAGE.” The publication of the prints of Marriage k la Mode sug¬ gested the novel of the Marriage Act, a novel by D. Shehheare; and of the Clandestine Marriage, the joint production of Garrick and the elder Coleman. In the Prologue to this excellent comedy, Garrick thus expressed his regard for his friend : Poets and painters, who from nature draw Their best and richest stores, have made this law : That each should neighbourly assist his brother, And steal with decency from one another. To night your matchless Hogarth gives the thought, Which from his canvas to the stage is brought. And who so fit to warm the poet’s mind, As he who pictured morals and mankind ? But not the same their characters and scenes; Both labour for one end, by different means : Each, as it suits him, takes a separate road, Their own great' object, Marriage d. la Mode 1 Where titles deign with cits to have and hold, And change rich blood for more substantial gold ! And honour’d trade from interest turns aside To hazard happiness for titled pride. The painter dead, yet still he charms the eye; While England lives his fame can never die : But he, “ who struts his hour upon the stage,” Can scarce extend his fame for half an age ; Nor pen nor pencil can the actor save, The art, and artist, share one common grave.* * This idea, (says Nichols), originally occurred in Colley Cibber’s Apology. From thence it was transplanted by Lloyd into his celebrated 44 ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. A HAPPY MARRIAGE. Soon after the appearance of the Marriage h la Mode, Hogarth projected, by way of counterpart, a Happy Marriage, in six plates ; hut he does not seem to have designed more than the first scene. The time supposed was immediately after the return from church. The scene lay in the hall of an old country mansion : on one side were seated the married couple, and behind them a group of their'young friends of both sexes were breaking bride-cake over the heads of the happy pair. In front the father of the bride was drinking with a seeming roar of exultation, to the future happiness of her and her husband. By the father’s side was a table covered with refreshments; under the screen of the hall were rustic musicians in grotesque attitudes, together with servants, tenants, &c. Through the arch by which the room was entered, the eye was led along a passage into a kitchen : before the dripping-pan stood a well-fed parson, in his gown and cassock, with his watch in hand, giving directions to a cook, arranged in white, and basting a haunch of vension. This luxurious episode was the most laboured portion of the design : the bride was unsuccessful. Nichols says : “ The painter found himself out of his element in the parlour, and therefore, hastened in quest of ease and amusement to the kitchen fire. Yet, Hogarth had succeeded so well in the refined beauty of the bride, at least, in his own opinion, that he carried the canvas in triumph to Garrick, who condemned it as showing the painter’s ignorance of the graceful, and so the scheme of the series of pictures was given up ) the single sketch, in part completed, was given to Mrs. Garrick.” HOGARTH’S BENEFACTIONS TO THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL. That Tenterden Steeple was the cause of Goodwin Sands does not appear a whit more strange than that in the Bound- ling Hospital originated the Royal Academy of Arts. Yet such was the case. The Hospital was established by Royal Charter, granted in 1739, to Thomas Coram, (master of a trading vessel,) “for the reception, maintenance, and edu- poem entitled the Actor. Lying thus in the way of Garrick, he took it up for the prologue—already quoted. Lastly, Mr. Sheridan, in his beau¬ tiful Monody, condescended to borrow it, only because it spared him the labour of unlocking the richer storehouse of his own imagination. WILLIAM HOGAETH. 45 cation, of exposed and deserted young children.” The Gover¬ nors first opened a house in Hatton Garden, in 1740-1 : here the establishment remained until 1754, when it was removed to the present Hospital, built by Jacobson, in Guilford-street facing Lamb's Conduit-street. The expenses of the insti¬ tution were then more than five times the amount of the income. The Governors next applied to Parliament, who voted them 10,000^. One of the earliest “ Governors and Guardians ” who assisted Coram in his good work, was * Hogarth, who joined with other eminent artists of the day in ornamenting several of the apartments of the new Hospital, which must otherwise, for want of funds, have remained without decoration. Hogarth, by the charter for incorpor¬ ating the Hospital, appears as one of its constituent members : nor did he hold this appointment to be merely nominal, for we find him subscribing his money, and attending the Courts or General Meetings at the Hospital. The charter authorised the Governors to appoint persons to ask for alms on behalf of the Charity, and to receive subscriptions : and the first artistical work of Hogarth in aid of this object was to pre¬ pare a “ head piece ” to a Power of Attorney drawn up for the purpose. The principal figure in the design is that of Captain Coram with the charter under his arm. Before him a Beadle carries an infant, whose mother having dropped a dagger, with which she might have been momentarily tempted to destroy her child, kneels at the feet of Coram, who looks benevolently upon her, as if to assure her that her offspring will be nursed and protected. On the dexter side of the print is a new¬ born infant, left close to a stream of water, which runs under the arch of a bridge. Near a gate, on a gentle eminence, a woman leaves another child; and in the distance is a village with a church. In the opposite corner are three boys coming out of a door with the King’s arms over it, carrying emblems of their future employment; one poises a plum¬ met, a second holds a trowel, and a third bears a card for combing wool. The next group wearing sailors’ jackets and trousers, is headed by a lad elevating a mathematical instrument; in the next group is a lad bearing a rake, in the uniform of the school. And in the foreground are three little girls, carrying a spinning-wheel, a sampler, and broom, indicative of female industry. In the distance is the sea, with ships in the offing, &c. Such was Hogarth’s first composition, the copper-plate of which is in possession of the Hospital. In May, 1740, a few weeks after the first opening of the Charity, Hogarth presented the Governors with a full-length portrait which he had painted of Coram. This fine portrait was beautifully 46 ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. engraved by M‘Ardell: “ a brilliant proof of this head, (says J. T. Smith,) in its finest possible condition, in my humble opinion surpasses anything in mezzotinto now extant.” Sir Joshua Reynolds said that MiArdell’s prints would immor¬ talize him, and that they would perpetuate his (Sir Joshua’s) pictures when their colours should be faded and forgotten. Hogarth says of this work: “ The portrait which I painted with most pleasure, and in which I particularly wished to excel, was that of Captain Coram for the Foundling Hospital; and,” (he adds in allusion to his detractors as a portrait- painter,) “ if I am so wretched an artist as my enemies assert, it is somewhat strange that this, which was one of the first I painted the size of life, should stand the test of twenty years’ competition, and be generally thought the best portrait in the place, notwithstanding the first painters in the kingdom exerted all their talents to vie with it.” * In 1741, when the Governors opened their house in Hatton Garden, near the Charity School, Hogarth painted an emblematic shield, which was put up over the doorway : this sign has not been preserved, but it is thought to have been of similar character, if not actually the same, as the Arms of the Hospital presented to the Governors, by the Authorities of the Heralds’ College, in 1747, and stated to have been designed by Hogarth : it is technically described as follows : “Party per fesse, Azure and Vert,” a young child lying naked, and exposed, extending its right hand proper. In chief a Crescent Argent between two Mullets of six points Or ; and for a Crest on a Wreath of the Colours, a Lamb Argent, holding in its mouth a Sprig of Thyme proper, supported on the dexter side by a terminal figure of a Woman full of Nipples proper, with a Mantle Vert, the term Argent being the emblem of Liberty, represented by Britannia holding in her right hand upon a staff proper, a Cap Argent, and habited in a Vert Azure, girt with belt Or, the under garment Gules.” Motto, “ Help.” The idea of embellishing the walls of the new Hospital originated with Hogarth, associated with Ryebrack the sculp¬ tor, Zincke the enameller, and Jacobson the architect, as a Committee, to meet annually on the 5th of November. Among the painters who presented pictures were Hayman, Wills, * 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 Cotes; Mr. Milner and Mr. Jacobson, by Hudson; Dr. Mead, by Ramsay; Mr. Emmerson, by Highmore; and Francis Fanquier, by Wilson. M ■CP* v. WILLIAM HOGARTH. 47 Highmore, Hudson, Ramsay, Lambert, Wilson, Pyne, &c. The Committee meetings grew into an annual dinner at the Hospital, at which the leading artists and patrons of the arts were usually present. Meanwhile the donations in paintings provided an attractive exhibition : a visit to the Foundling became a fashionable morning lounge in the reign of George II .; and the pictures to this day represent the state of British art previously to the epoch when George III. first counten¬ anced the historical talent of West ; and the eclat thus ex¬ cited in favour of the Arts suggested the annual exhibition of the united Artists, which was the precursor of the Royal Academy. Hogarth was not only the principal contributor, but the leader of his brother artists in all that related to the em¬ bellishment of the Hospital. On May 1st, 1750, the subscrip¬ tion for his picture of The March to Finchley being closed, and 1,843 chances subscribed for, Hogarth gave the remaining 167 chances to the Hospital, and the fortunate number for the picture being among these tickets, the prize picture was delivered to the Governors, and to this day hangs in the Committee-room. It is related in the Gentleman’s Magazine , that “ a Lady was the possessor of the fortunate number, and intended to present it to the Foundling Hospital; but that some person having suggested that a door would be opened to scandal, were any of her sex to make such a present, it was given to Hogarth, on the condition that it should be presented in his own name.” Hogarth next presented his picture of Moses before Pha¬ raoh’s Daughter, which he painted for the Hospital, acfcord- ing to a conjoint agreement between Hayman, Highmore, Wills, and himself, that they should each fill up one of the compartments of the court-room with pictures uniform in size, and of appropriate subjects from Scripture. The Hospital thus received from Hogarth a picture in each of the styles of painting which he had attempted. It is singular that Hogarth, who, throughout his life, had uniformly opposed the establishment of a Public Academy of Arts, should, by encouraging and concentrating at the Found¬ ling Hospital an exhibition of the works of British artists, have himself promoted the consummation of the object which he had all along deprecated. Charles Lamb has remarked that Hogarth seemed to take particular delight in children; and that this characteristic was ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. 48 not the mere ideality of a painter, but emanated from his generous heart, is proved by the following circumstance. It was the practice of the Hospital to nurse the infant children of the establishment in the country 3 and in or about 1760, the Governors, at the request of Hogarth, sent several of the poor infants to Chiswick, where the painter resided, he engaging, along with Mrs. Hogarth, to see them properly taken care ol 3 and the annexed is a copy of his bill for the maintenance and clothing of two of these children, who were returned to the Hospital by Mrs. Hogarth, at her husband’s death in 1764: FOUNDLING HOSPITAL. Paid by Mr. Wm. Hogarth for the nursing of Susan Wyndham and Mary Woolaston from the 30th October, 1760, to the 1st of October, 1762, twelve pounds—and for their shoes and stockings six shillings and sixpence. Total 12 1. 6s. 6d. Rec a the contents pr Wm Hogarth. Hogarth was associated with John Wilkes in the same work of benevolence at the Foundling Hospital, and frequently met him at the same board as Governors 3 but after the quarrel between them, they ceased to attend in their places, “ as if each was afraid of meeting the other, even within the walls of Charity herself.” “THE MARCH TO FINCHLEY.” This celebrated picture hangs in the Committee-room of the Foundling Hospital. In the eomposition, Hogarth sup¬ poses the approach of Prince Charles, in the fatal ’Forty- five, to summon the heroes of London to the field 3 and the character of the contest is expressed in the central group of the composition, where a handsome young grenadier stands, in ludicrous indecision, between his Catholic and Protestant doxies. , The scene is laid at Tottenham Court turnpike 3 the .King s Head, Adam and Eve, and turnpike-house, in full view 3 beyond which are discovered parties of the Guaids, with baggage, &c., marching towards Highgate—and a beautiful prospect of the country 3 the sky finely painted. The picture, considered together, affords a view of a military march 3 but the rear, in its confusion, is the humorous foreground. Very minute account? A of this painting were written by Mr. Justice Welsh, the intimate friend and companion of Hogarth 3 and by Mr. Bonnell Thornton, the well-known Essayist. These WILLIAM HOGAETH. 49 are much too long for quotation; but we may notice that a baggage-waggon, with its load of women, babies, knapsacks, and camp-kettles—accompanied by disorderly soldiers, their wives, children, and sweethearts—occupy the middle way. The episodal groupes are very effective. Among the charac¬ ters is the gentleman encouraging the boxers : this is Lord Albemarle Bertie. A little looker-on, with clenched fists, is Jockey James, a frequent attendant on boxing-matches. The pieman, grenadier, chimney-sweep, and fifer, are said to be portraits : the latter was noticed by the Duke of Cumberland, and was promoted to a pair of colours. The painting was disposed of by a lottery, as alreadv described. It was engraved in 1750 by Luke Sullivan: a finished print, in 1825, was sold for 36£. 15s. ^ This print of English soldiery is oddly dedicated to the Iving of Prussia. Before publication it was inscribed to George II., and the print was taken to St. James’s Palace, for royal approbation. But the King expected a much more heroic scene, and could not appreciate the painter’s humour. His first question addressed to the lord in waiting was— “Pray, who is this Hogarth?” “A painter, your majesty.” I hate bainting and boetry ! Keither the one nor the other ever did any good! Does the fellow mean to laugh at my Guards ? ” “ The picture, an’ please your' majesty, must un¬ doubtedly be considered as a burlesque ! ” “ What! a bainter burlesque a soldier? He deserves to be picketed for his insolence ! Take his trumpery out of my sight.” The print was returned to the artist, who, mortified at such a reception of what he justly considered his principal work, immediately altered the inscription, inserting, instead of the King of England, the King of Prussia, an encourager of the arts and sciences ! It was then objected that an English print should be in¬ scribed to a foreign potentate, when Hogarth replied, “ We’ll soon remedy that,” and directed the printer to take off a few impressions, covering the dedication with fan-paper. John Ireland received three of these impressions without the dedi¬ cation, from Mrs. Lewis, who, at the time of their being taken, and until Mrs. Hogarth’s death, lived with her in Leicester- square. A description of the original picture was published soon after it was granted : it opened with this sly shaft at the old masters :— E ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. “ _^ g you desire my sentiments on Mr. Hogarth’s Picture, I shall begin with pointing out what is most defective. Its first and greatest Fault then is its being too new, and having too great a resemblance to the Objects it represents; if this appears a Paradox, you ought to take particular care of confessing it. This Picture has got too much of that Lustre of that despicable Freshness which we discover m Nature and which is never seen in the Cabinets of the Curious. Time has not yet obscured it with that venerable Smoak, that sacred cloud, which wil one day conceal it from the profane eyes of the Vulgar, that its beauties mav only be seen by those who are initiated into the Mysteries of Art. These are its most remarkable faults, and I am now going to give you an idea of the subject, &c. * * * Mr. Hogarth, who lets no oppor¬ tunity escape him of observing the Pictorial Scenes which numerous Assemblies frequently furnish, has not failed to represent them on the Spot where he has drawn the scene of his Picture. The Painter is re¬ markable for a particular sagacity in seizing a thousand little circum¬ stances which escape the observation of the greatest part of the Spectators, and it is a Collection of a Number of these Circumstances which has com posed, enriched, and diversified his work. The scene is placed, &c. A visit to the Foundling Hospital will enable the reader to compare the picture as it now is, with this criticism upon its merits when it was fresh from the master s easel. Time has dealt gently with this fine work, for Hogarth painted with a safer medium than that used by his immediate successors^, but he still is quietly engaged in the process of “ smoking, which the critic has anticipated, and the painter himself, m one of his well-known subjects, symbolised. PORTRAIT OF LORD LOVAT. This Eebel Lord of 1745 was painted by Hogarth, who also engraved some small prints of Lovat’s trial. He was a man of parts, but of infamous character. He had the lolly, at the age of eighty, to enter into the Rebellion,_ upon a promise from the Pretender, that he would make him Duke of Fraser. He was taken in Scotland, and brought to London to be tried. Hogarth met Lovat at St. Alban’s, where he rested two or three days : here Hogarth certainly drew his portrait. “ I took this likeness,” said he, “ when Simon Fraser was relating on his fingers the numbers of the rebel forces— such a chieftain had so many men, &c. He received me with much cordiality—embraced me when I entered, and kissed me though he was under the hands of the barber. lhe muscles of his neck appeared of unusual strength more so than I had ever seen.” , In 1827, Mr. Horatio Rodd had on sale a portrait ol Lord Lovat, 30 in. by 25, which was brought from Hr. Webster, WILLIAM HOGARTH. 51 a physician, of St. Alban’s, who attended Lovat while he rested there. Mr. Eodd states, in his Catalogue : “ The short stay of Lord Lovat at St. Alban’s, allowed the artist but scanty opportunity of providing the materials for a complete picture ; hence some carpenter was employed on the instant to glue together some deal-hoard, and plane one side, which is evi¬ dent from the hack being in the usual rough state in which the plank leaves the saw-pit. The painting, from the thin¬ ness of the priming ground, bears evident proof of the haste with which the portrait was accomplished. In the upper corner are satirical heraldic insignia, allusive to the artist’s idea of his future destiny.” This picture is engraved in Hone’s Table Book, vol. i. p. 238. It should here be stated that Nichols says : “ Hogarth met Lord Lovat at Barnet not St. Alban’s. Hogarth etched Lovat’s portrait in aquafortis. When the plate was finished, a print-seller offered its weight in gold for it. The second impressions are marked, Brice One Shilling. The impressions could not he taken off fast enough to meet the demand, though the rolling-press was at work all night for a week together: it produced at the rate of about twelve pounds per day for several weeks. HOGARTH FIRST SEES DR. JOHNSON. Johnson was a frequent visitor at the house of Eichardson, the novelist, in Salisbury-court,* Fleet-street, whither, one day, came Hogarth, soon after the execution of Dr. Cameron, for having taken arms for the house of Stuart, in 1745-6; and being a warm partisan of George the Second, he observed to Eichardson, that certainly there must have been some very unfavourable circumstances lately discovered in this particular case, which had induced the King to approve of an execution for rebellion so long after the time when it was committed, as this had the appearance of putting a man to death in cold blood, and was very unlike his Majesty’s usual clemency. While he was talking, he perceived a person standing at a window in the room, shaking his head, and rolling himself * In Salisbury-court (now square,) Richardson wrote his Pamela, and printed his own novels; his printing-office being at the top of the court, now No. 76, Fleet-street. Goldsmith was once Richardson’s “reader.” Richardson was visited here by Hogarth, Dr. Johnson, Dr. Young • Seeker, Archbishop of Canterbury; and Mrs. Barbauld, when a play¬ ful child. Owiosities of London, p. 306. ' E 2 52 ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. about in a very ridiculous manner. He concluded tbat be was an idiot, whom his relations had put under the care of Mr. Eichardson, as a very good man. To his great surprise, however, this figure stalked forward, to where he and Mr. Eichardson were sitting, and all at once took up the argu¬ ment, bursting out into an invective against George the Second, as one who, upon all occasions, was unrelenting and barbarous : mentioning many instances ; particularly that when an officer of high rank had been acquitted by a court-martial, George the Second had with his own hand struck his name off the list. In short, he displayed such a power of eloquence, that Ho¬ garth looked at him with astonishment, and actually imagined that this idiot had been at the moment inspired. Neither Hogarth nor Johnson were made known to each other at this interview. “ INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS.” In 1747, Hogarth gave to the world his twelve Plates alternating the results of Industry and Idleness, exemplified in the lives of two City Apprentices. He had been an ap¬ prentice himself, and knew from experience how hard it is to climb the ladder of life. Hogarth's own account of these prints is as follows :— Industry and Idleness, exemplified in the conduct of two fellow- prentices ; where the one boy taking good courses, and pursuing those points for which he was put apprentice, becomes a valuable man and ornament to his country; whilst the other, giving way to idleness, naturally falls into poverty, and most commonly ends fatally, as is expressed in the last print. As these prints were intended more for use than ornament, they were done in a way that might bring them within the purchase of those whom they might most concern; and lest any part should be mistaken, a description of each print is engraved thereon ***** These twelve prints were calculated for the instruction of young people, and everything addressed to them is fully described in words as well as figures ; yet to foreigners a translation of the mottoes, the intention of the story, and some little description of each print may be necessary. To this may be added a slight account of our customs, as boys being usually bound for seven years, &c. Suppose the whole story was made into a kind of tale, describing in episode the nature of a night-cellar, a marrow-bone concert, a Lord Mayor’s show, &c. These prints I have found sell much more rapidly at Christmas than at any other season.* The hint for this series of prints, (says Nichols,) was evi¬ dently taken from the old comedy of Eastward Hoe, by Jonson, * In 1851, the Christmas pantomime at Drury-lane Theatre was Harlequin Hogarth ; or the Two London ’Prentices. WILLIAM HOGARTH. 53 Chapman, and Marston, reprinted in Dodsley’s collection of Old Plays. Walpole considers that these plates have more merit in their intention than their execution j hut he allows that the scenes of Bedlam and the gaming-house are inimitable re¬ presentations of our serious follies, or unavoidable woes; the concern shown by the Lord Mayor, when the companion of his childhood is brought before him as a criminal, is a touching picture, and big with humane admonition and reflection. Hogarth’s clever suggestion that the story of the two Apprentices should he wrought into a tale, does not appear to have been worked out; hut in the following year appeared an explanation of the Moral of these Prints, sold for one shilling, at Addison’s Head, in Fleet-street, and described in the title- page as “ a more proper present to he given to the Chamber of London, at the binding and enrolling an apprentice, than any other hook whatever.” There are several portraits in these Plates. In Plate 1 is a figure of Philip in the Tub, a well-known beggar and cripple, who was a constant epithalamist at weddings in London. In Plate 8, the scene is Fish¬ mongers’ Hall, and the clergyman over his soup is Mr. Platell, curate of Barnet. In Plate 11 is Tiddy Doll, the well-known vendor of ginger¬ bread. All the passages of Scripture applicable to the different scenes were selected for Hogarth by his friend, the Rev. Arnold King. 9. A scene in the Blood Bowl-house, in Chick-lane, West Smithfield, a notorious haunt of thieves and prostitutes : it was subsequently “ the Red Lion tavern,” and looked over the open Fleet-ditch : it remained true to Hogarth’s picture until 1844, when it was demolished, in forming the new Victoria-street. Nichols, however, tells us that “ Blood Bowl- house, where seldom passed a month without the commission of a murder,” was in Blood Bowl-alley, down by the fishmonger’s, near Water-lane, Fleet-street. 5. Cuckolds’ Point, on the Rotherhithe bank of the Thames. That s what you’ll come to, my friend,” says a waterman to the Idle Apprentice, pointing at the same time to a pirate hanging in chains near Execution- dock. The reply of the Idle Apprentice is—he holds two of his fingers to his forehead by way of horns —“ Cuckolds’ Point, you . 12. The City Procession on Lord Mayor’s Day entering Cheapside— the seats erected on the occasion and the canopied balcony at Saddleis Hall, hung with tapestry, containing Frederick Prince of Wales, and his Princess, as spectators of the same. The state coach is the prede¬ cessor of the present civic coach. In ihe Collection at Strawberry Hill were the studies with the pen, and worked with India-ink, for these Prints, which in many instances differ from them. Some very appropriate use has been made of the Industry 54 ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. and Idleness plates. Thus, in the Chamberlain’s Office, at the Guildhall of London, in the very room where City ap¬ prentices sign their indentures, suggestively hangs a set of fine impressions of Hogarth’s speaking plates. Their good seed has been extended to schools. Mr. John Adams, the schoolmaster, of Edmonton, had a set of these prints framed and hung up in the school-room; and once a month, after reading a lecture upon their examples of vice and virtue, Adams rewarded those boys who had conducted themselves well, and caned those who had behaved ill. THE GATE OF CALAIS, AND THE ROAST BEEF OF OLD ENGLAND. _ Soon after the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, Hogarth paid a visit to France: his impressions on landing he tells in his own natural way. “The first time an Englishman goes from Dover to Calais, he must be struck with the different face of things at so little a distance. A farcical pomp of war, pom¬ pous parade of religion, and much bustle with very little business. To sum up all, poverty, slavery, and innate inso¬ lence, covered with an affectation of politeness, give you even here a true picture of the manners of the whole nation; nor are the priests less opposite to those of Dover, than the two shores. The friars are dirty, sleek, and solemn; the soldiery are lean, ragged, and tawdry; and as to the fish-women, then- faces are absolute leather. “ As I was sauntering about, and observing them near the gate, which it seems was built by the English, when the place was in our possession, I remarked some appearance of the arms of England on the front. By this and idle curiosity, I was prompted to make a sketch of it, which being observed, I was taken into custody; but not attempting to conceal any of my sketches or memorandums, which were found to be merely those of a painter for his private use, without any relation to fortifica¬ tion, it was not thought necessary to send me back to ParisJ I was only closely confined to my own lodgings till the wind changed for England.” Walpole thus chronicles this incident in a letter to Sir Horace Mann, dated Dec. 15,1748 : “ Hogarth has run a great risk since the Peace; he went to France, and was so impru¬ dent as to he taking a sketch of the drawbridge at Calais. He was seized and carried to the governor, where he was forced to prove his vocation by producing several caricatures of the French, particularly a scene of the shore, with an im- * It has been said that Hogarth never went further into France than Calais; this proves he had reached Paris.—/. Ireland. WILLIAM HOGARTH. 55 rtiense piece of beef landing for the Lion d’Argent, the English inn at Calais, and several hungry friars following it. They were much diverted with his drawings, and dismissed him.” This is not quite correct; for, when the wind suited, he was put on hoard in a manner calculated to embitter his feelings. Two guards accompanied him, and after having insolently twirled him round and round like a top, on the deck, told him he might proceed on his voyage without further molesta¬ tion. He arrived at Dover deeply incensed; he then pro¬ ceeded to the house of his friend, Mr. Gostling, at Canterbury, where he slept that night. From the evidence of Hayman, thp painter, and Cheere, the sculptor, who accompanied Hogarth to France, his conduct, while there, was very indiscreet. He was dissatisfied with all he saw; was clamorously rude in the streets. A tattered bag, or a pair of silk stockings with holes in them, drew from him a torrent of imprudent observation: he was advised to be more cautious, but he laughed at such admonition, and treated the offerer of it as unworthy of residence in a free country. Hogarth had no sooner reached home than he set about avenging the affront which had been offered to him,—by a design which he called “ The Roast Beef of Old England.’ Walpole observes that in this piece, though it has great merit, “the caricatura is carried to excess ;” it is certainly not one of his happiest productions. The gate of Calais is the background. A lean French cook appears staggering under the weight of a vast piece of roast beef, while two soldiers bear off a great kettle of soup maigre, the painter in these two dishes characterising the two countries. A well-fed monk looks longingly at the beef; and a melancholy and miserable Highlander browsing on a bit of bread and an onion is intended for one of the many that fled from England after the Rebellion of 1745. Hogarth is seated, sketching the scene, and a Frenchman arrests him by laying his hand on his shoulder; the likeness is good, and was afterwards copied for watch-papers. Pine, the engraver, sat for the fat friar, and received from that circumstance the name of “ Friar Pine,” which he retained till his death.* He desired to sit, “ cer¬ tainly not with a view to being turned into derision;” and being much laughed at and annoyed, he strove to prevail on * John Pine, who published in 1739 “The Tapestry Hangings of the House of Lords,” which, nearly a century after, were destroyed by fire. 56 ANECDOTE BIOGEAPHY. Hogarth to give his ghostly father another face, but in vain. Soon after the picture was finished, it fell down by accident, and a nail ran through the cross on the top of the gate. Hogarth could not mend it with the same colour; and to conceal the blemish, he introduced a starved crow looking down on the roast beef. The original picture was exhibited at Spring Gardens in 1761 ; and at the British Gallery in 1814 : it is now in the possession of the Earl of Charlemont. It was engraved by C. Morley, in 1749. A copy of the print was likewise en¬ graved at the top of a cantata entitled The Roast Beef of Old England, opening with this Recitative : ’Twas at the gates of Calais, Hogarth tells, Where sad Despair and Famine always dwells, A meagre Frenchman, Madam Grandsire’s cook, As home he steer’d his carcase, that way took, Bending beneath the weight of fam’d Sir Loin, On whom he often wish’d in vain to dine. Good Father Dominick by chance came by, With rosy gills, round paunch, and greedy eye; Who, when he first beheld the greasy load, His benediction on it he bestow’d; And while the solid fat his finger press’d, He licked his chaps, and thus the Knight address’d, &c. The figure of the half-starved Erench sentinel, (says Nichols,) has since been copied at the top of more than one of the printed advertisements for recruits, where it is opposed to the representation of a well-fed British soldier. Thus, the genius of Hogarth still militates in the cause of his country. At Mr. Woodburn’s, in St. Martin’s-lane, was exhibited, about 1817, a valuable picture, said to have been painted by Hogarth, whilst he was in France. The subject is the gate of Amiens, with a Mountebank exposing to the people assembled the figure of Christ. Among the spectators is a soldier of the Swiss Guard, who is resting his hand on the shoulder of a simple-looking countryman ; and other figures. The whole is painted with spirit and humour; but Nichols thinks it is not by Hogarth, but a Erench painter, Cappel. The picture was sold at Mr. Yates’s sale, in 1817, for 3 01. 9s.: it has been engraved, and there is a proof in Mr. Sheepshanks’s collection. PAUL BEFORE FELIX. On the northern wall of the New Hall of Lincoln’s Inn, above the paneling of the dais, hangs the picture of Paul WILLIAM HOGAKTH. 57 before Felix, painted for the Society in 1750, and removed from the Old Hall, where it occupied a similar position. The origin of the Painting is as follows. By the Will of Lord Wyndham, Lord High Chancellor of Ireland, the snm of 20CB. was bequeathed to the Society of Lincoln’s Inn, to be expended in adorning the Chapel, or Hall, as the Benchers should think fit. At the recommendation of Lord Mansfield, Hogarth was engaged to paint the picture, which was at first designed for the Chapel. Its position was properly changed to the Hall. The text of the picture is—“ As he reasoned of righteous¬ ness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled.” Mrs. Jameson has well-described this work as curiously cha¬ racteristic, not of the scene or of the chief personage, but of the painter. St. Paul, loaded with chains, and his accuser Tertullus, stand in front; and Felix, with his wife Drusilla, is seated on a raised tribunal in the background ; near Felix is the high-priest, Ananias. The composition is good, the heads are full of vivid expression—wrath, terror, doubt, attention; but the conception of character most ignoble and common-place. Mr. Peter Dupont, a merchant, had, in 1782, a drawing of this Picture, which he purchased for twenty guineas. It was engraved by Hogarth; and secondly, by Luke Sullivan. In the previous year, Hogarth had engraved a burlesque upon this serious scene : it is grotesque and full of broad humour; but in most offensive taste. “ THE ANALYSIS OF BEAUTY.” When Hogarth painted his own Portrait, in 1749, he etched upon the palette a winding-line, with this inscription —“ Line of Beauty and Grace.” This remained unexplained until 1753, when Hogarth published his short quarto tract, The Analysis of Beauty , written with a view of fixing the fluc¬ tuating Ideas of Taste, showing by various examples, that a curve is the line of beauty, and that round swelling figures are most pleasing to the eye. The author received in this work much assistance from his friends. Dr. Hoadly carried on the work to about a third part, and then declined it on account of ill health. Hogarth’s neighbour, Mr. Ralph, the architectural critic, then wrote about a sheet, but failing to agree with the author, proceeded no further. Dr. Morell then finished the work ; the Rev. Mr. Towneley correcting the Preface. The family of Hogarth rejoiced when the last sheet 58 ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. of the Analysis was printed off, for they had been sorely troubled by the frequent disputes in its progress. "Walpole observes : “ This book had many sensible hints and observa¬ tions,” but it did not convince every reader. As Hogarth treated his contemporaries with scorn, “Many wretched burlesque prints came out to ridicule his system. There was a bitter answer to it in one of the two Prints that he gave to illustrate his hypothesis. In the Ball, (Wanstead Assembly,) had he confined himself to such outlines as com¬ pose awkwardness and deformity, he would have proved half his asser¬ tion ; but he has added two samples of grace in a young lord and lady, who are strikingly stiff and affected. They are a Bath beau and a country beauty.” Bishop Warburton congratulated Hogarth on giving, in this work, his “ original masterly thoughts ” on the great principles of his profession; and in showing up “the worthless crew professing verth. and connoisseurship; to whom all that grovel in the splendid poverty of wealth and taste are the miserable bubbles.” Benjamin West, the cautious President of the Royal Academy, told John Thomas Smith, when a lad : the Analysis “ is a work of the highest value to every one studying the Art; Hogarth was a strutting, consequential little man, and made himself many enemies by that book; but now that most of them are dead, it is examined by disinterested readers, unbiassed by personal animosities, and will be more and more read and studied, and understood.” Hogarth’s conclusion in this work is, however, unsound; though his arguments are amusing and ingenious. HOGARTH’S “LADY’S LAST STAKE.” This painting represents a young woman of distinction in the peril of deep play with a gay and youthful man of fashion and intrigue ; the lady has been unsuccessful, and lost (like Francis I.) all except honour, which the moral artist insinuates, is in danger. Of the origin of the picture, Mrs. Piozzi relates, that when she was a girl of sixteen, about the year 1756, she was an inmate of the house of her uncle, Cotton; that Hogarth paid a visit there, and in the course of the evening, turned to her, then Miss Salusbury, and said, “ he hoped she would never waste her hours nor hazard her repose in the pursuit of gaming he then made a sketch of her, and informed her she should hear more from him on that point at a future time. Soon after the painter produced and showed her “ The Lady’s Last Stake“in which,” said he, “Miss Salusbury, the lady is a likeness of yourself, because I wanted a pretty subject, and wished to give a lesson of wisdom to one who is, I trust, capable of understanding its force.” The portrait was con¬ sidered a good likeness ; but when Mrs. Piozzi related the above anecdote, the picture had been sixty years painted ; so that age, worldly cares, and much intellectual exertion, had committed their usual ravages on what had assuredly been a WILLIAM HOGARTH. 59 very fine countenance, indicating, as all who knew her must recollect, a lofty, liberal mind, and brilliant genius. This celebrated picture hangs in a bed-chamber of Charle- mont House, Dublin. Hogarth promised Lord Cbarlemont to write a description of bis plates, which he said, the public had ignorantly misunderstood; and it was his intention to have given a breakfast-lecture upon them at Cbarlemont House. Lord Charlemont, who possessed a fine collection of Hogarth's prints, remarkably good impressions, selected by the painter himself, consented to “ The Lady’s Last Stake” being engraved, for which purpose the painter had the picture a year, and even went so far as almost to finish the plate, which, as he told Lord Charlemont, he broke into pieces, upon finding, that after many trials, he could not bring the woman’s head to answer his idea, or to resemble the picture. In July, 1787, Mrs. Hogarth requested of Lord Charle¬ mont, that if he should permit any one to engrave the pic¬ ture, “he would give the preference to a young gentleman who lodged in her house, as by such preference she should be greatly benefited.” To this his Lordship consented. HOGARTH’S OPINION OF HIS ART. Bishop Sandford relates that Hogarth was one day drawing in a room, where many of his friends were assembled, and among them was the Bishop’s mother. She was then a very young woman. As she stood by Hogarth, she expressed a wish to learn to draw caricature. “Alas ! young lady,” said Hogarth, “ it is not a faculty to be envied. Take my advice and never draw caricature : by the long practice of it I have lost the enjoyment of beauty. I never see a face, but dis¬ torted ; I never have the satisfaction to behold the human face divine.” We may suppose that such language from Hogarth would come with great effect: his manner was very earnest, and the confession is well deserving of remembrance. THE ELECTION PICTURES. These celebrated pictures, painted between 1755 and 1758, are among Hogarth’s best productions, and present an admir¬ able display of the great Painter’s keen satire, and his talents 60 ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. for delineating character : they are painted with great breadth and agreeable freshness of tone.* The Election of a Member of Parliament, “ madman’s holi¬ day” in England, is here depicted in four scenes : the Enter¬ tainment, the Canvassing for Voters, the Polling, and the Chairing. The first scene is laid at an inn, where the Court candidate, Mr. Thomas Potter, is seated at a dinner of electors—barbers, cobblers, and coun¬ sellors, rustic wits and politicians and partisans. The parson holding his perriwig is Dr. Cosserat. The woman playing on the violin is Fiddling Nan, of Oxford; the bludgeon man, having gin poured on his head, is an Oxford bruiser, Teague Carter. The person making a representation of a fan round his head is Sir John Parnell, nephew of the poet: this por¬ trait was introduced at his own request: “ my face (he said) is well known in Ireland, and will help the sale of the engraving.” The Canvas¬ sing is in the street of the borough, where the candidates and their par¬ tisans are busy at corruption; there is a fierce attack on the Crown public-house; and Punch has declared himself a candidate for fun and frolic. Among the insignia is the British Lion—so popular in the present day—swallowing the Lily of France, which the imperial swallow has gulped long ago. The Polling , the third scene, shows how the lame and the blind, the dying and even the dead, were carried to the hust¬ ings in the olden elections. Among the portraits is that of Dr. Sheb- beare, who had been pilloried by Lord Mansfield for a libel on the King. A sick voter, borne in a blanket, is a satire on Dr. Barrowby bringing a dying patient in his chariot, to the Westminster hustings, to vote for Sir George Yandeput; the poor fellow voted, and expired. The noble¬ man with the riband is “ the old Duke of Newcastle.” In this plate, a goose flying over his head is said to be designed for a parody on Le Brun’s engraving of the battle of the Granicus, in which an eagle is represented hovering over the head of Alexander the Great. The con¬ cluding scene is the Chairing of the Member, Bubb Dodington, afterwards Lord Melcombe; the fray of the losing side has already begun; the member’s wig rises from his head with fear; one of the living props of the chair has been struck down by a thrasher’s flail; and the accessories of confusion thicken. The' carriage of Britannia is overturning, while the coachman and footman are cheating at cards on the box; regardless of a last dying speech, with a ready gibbet and empty noose—held up for sale. * Walpole calls Zoffani “ the Dutch Hogarth,” and Bunbury “ the second Hogarth.” With less justice the term “Hogarthian” has been applied to some of Haydon’s pictures; and the editor of his Auto¬ biography, Mr. Tom Taylor, maintains that the wonderstruck farmer in Haydon’s Punch is equal to anything by Hogarth. In composition, arrangement of the figures, the telling of the story, and minuteness!, accuracy, and character of detail, Haydon’s design will not bear com¬ parison with the masterly productions of Hogarth; since whose time it has become too much the practice to designate as “ Hogarthian ” many unworthy pictures. WILLIAM HOGARTH. 61 In 1759, appeared “A Practical Description” of these pictures, in four Cantos, written under Mr. Hogarth’s sanc¬ tion and inspiration.” The public were so impatient for this set of prints, that Hogarth had several disagreements with his tardy coadjutors in producing them. Garrick gave Hogarth for these four paintings some 2007 : they remained in the possession of his widow, after whose death, in 1823, they were purchased at the Garrick sale for 17327 10s. When the hammer fell, Mr. Christie said: “ I am the returning officer on this occasion, and declare Sir John Soane duly elected to become the possessor of these pictures.” They are now in the Soanean Museum. The above are not the only scenes from an Election which Hogarth painted; for in 1747, he designed and engraved a Stage-coach, with an Election Procession in the inn-yard : the principal figure being a man whipping an infant child, in allusion to the Hon. John Child Tylney, a candidate in an Essex county election:' the infant carries a horn-hook and rattle, and the whipper exclaims, “What, you little Child, must you he a member V’ These Election humours, as well as the Stage-coach, belong to an almost bygone age. The engraving of these pictures was very successful. In the first, the Entertainment, Hogarth experimentally finished the engraving without taking a proof to ascertain how he was succeeding : he had nearly spoiled the plate, and despairingly exclaimed, “ I am ruined.” He soon, however, repaired the damage, and with such good fortune that the print in question is one of the clearest and cleverest of all his productions. At Baker’s sale, in 1825, the Entertainment print, before any inscription, sold for 317 10s. “SICISMUNDA.” When, in 1758, Sir Thomas Sebright purchased for 4007 a Sigismunda imputed to Correggio,—loud was the ire of Hogarth at this reverence for the great Italian master. Walpole maintains that Hogarth had seen few good Italian pictures, and hence he persuaded himself that the praises bestowed on these glorious works were nothing but the effects of ignorance. He talked this language till he believed it; and he went so far as to aver that age did not mellow the colours and improve pictures, hut only made them grow black and worse. He went further, and resolved to rival the 62 ANECDOTE BTOGEAPHY. ancients, and chose for the test the celebrated Sigismunda, said to he painted by Correggio, probably by Furini,* but no matter by whom. It is impossible to see the picture or read Dryden’s inimitable tale, and not feel that the same soul animated both. After many essays, Hogarth produced his Sigismunda, but with “ none of the sober grief, no dignity of suppressed anguish, no involuntary tear, no settled medita¬ tion on the fate she meant to meet, no amorous warmth termed holy by despair : in short, all is wanting that should have been there, all is there that such a story should have banished from a mind capable of conceiving real complicated woe ; woe so sternly felt, and yet so tenderly.” Walpole's criticism is very severe : he describes Hogarth’s Sigismunda as no more like Sigismunda than he to Hercules : he com¬ pares her to a maudlin fallen virago, her eyes red with rage and usquebaugh, and her fingers bloodied with just having torn out her lover’s heart. The latter is untrue. It was said that the picture resembled Mrs. Hogarth, who was a very hand¬ some woman; . to which circumstance Wilkes maliciously alludes in his vile attack on her husband. “If (says Wilkes,) the Sigismunda had a resemblance of anything ever seen on earth, or had the least pretence to either meaning or expres¬ sion, it was what he had seen, or perhaps made, in real life— his own wife in an agony of passion; hut of what passion no connoisseur could guess.” Both Wilkes and Walpole knew that Mrs. Hogarth had sat for Sigismunda; and after her husband’s death, Horace strove to heal the poor widow’s heart by sending her a copy of his Anecdotes, but she took no notice of the present. The Sigismunda, we learn from Hogarth’s own memoran¬ dum-book, was painted by him for Sir Bichard Grosvenor, who was as dissatisfied with it as Walpole himself. Hogarth had agreed that Sir Bichard might refuse the picture if he should not be thoroughly satisfied with it; and the painter asked 40(B. for his work; to which Sir Bichard Grosvenor replied : “ I understand that you have a commission from Mr. Hoare for a picture. If he should have taken a fancy to the Sigismunda, I have no sort of objection to your letting him have it; for I really think the performance so striking and inimitable, that the constantly having it before one’s eyes * The Sigismunda, now at the Duke of Newcastle’s, at Clumber (really by Furini,) was Sir Luke Schaub’s; Lady Sehaub is immortalised in the long story of Gray.— Cunningham; note to Walpole. WILLIAM HOGARTH. 63 would be too often occasioning melancholy ideas to arise in one’s mind, which a curtain’s being drawn before it would not diminish the least.” This refusal, and the ridicule of the artists of the day, deeply affected Hogarth. He sought relief in writing a versi¬ fied epistle to a friend on this picture, and consoles himself as follows : “ When other connoisseurs may arise, Honest as ours, and full as wise, To pay my works their due arrears, When I’ve been dead a hundred years.” Hogarth, who now felt age and infirmities coming upon him, enjoined his wife not to sell Sigismunda for less than 5007 This injunction was obeyed; and the picture was not sold till after the death of Mrs. Hogarth, when it was bought by Alderman Boydell for 50 guineas. It formed one of the prizes in the Shakspeare Gallery; was sold in 1807 by Christie, for 400 guineas. It was engraved in 1792. The subject was parodied in a vulgar print entitled “A harlot blubbering over a bullock’s heart; by William Hogart.” Sigismunda was announced for engraving by Hogarth, but the print was never published, and the subscriptions were returned : in the account-book of the painter, a strong line is passed through the subscribers’ names, and opposite each is written “Returned,” except one name, which has “Refused.” Hogarth’s several subscription-books for his prints contain the autographs of many distinguished persons. HOGARTH AND HORACE WALPOLE. Walpole writes to George Montagu, Esq., May 5, 1761 : “ The true frantic CEstus resides at present with Mr. Ho¬ garth; I went t’other morning to see a portrait he is painting of Mr. Eox. Hogarth told me he had promised, if Mr. Eox would sit as he liked, to make as good a picture as Vandyke or Rubens could. I was silent. ‘ Why now,’ said he, ‘ you think this very vain, but why should not one speak the truth 1 ’ This truth was uttered in the face of his own Sigis¬ munda .She has her father’s picture in a bracelet on her arm, and her fingers are bloody with the heart, as if she had just bought a sheep’s pluck in St. James’s-market. As I was going, Hogarth put on a very grave face, and said, ‘ Mr. Walpole, I want to speak to you.’ I sat down, and said I 64 ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. was ready to receive his commands. For shortness, I will make this wonderful dialogue by initial letters. H. I am told you are going to entertain the town with something in our way. W. Very soon, Mr. Hogarth. jET. I wish you would let me have it to correct; I should be very sorry to have you expose yourself to censure ; we painters must know more of these things than other peeple. W. Do you think nobody understands painting but painters ? H. Oh ! so far from it, there’s Reynolds, who certainly has genius; why, but t’other day he offered a hundred pounds for a picture that I would not hang in my cellar; indeed, to say truth, I have generally found that persons who had studied painting least were the best judges of it; but what I particularly wished to say to you was about Sir James Thornhill (you know he married Sir James’s daughter); I would not have you say anything against him; there was a book published some time ago, abusing him, and it gave great offence. He was the first that attempted history in England, and I assure you, some Germans have said that he was a very great painter. W. My work will go no lower than the year one thousand seven hundred, and I really have not considered whether Sir J. Thornhill will come within my plan or not; if he does, I fear you and I shall not agree upon his merits. H. I wish you would let me correct it; besides, I am writing some¬ thing of the kind myself; I should be sorry we should clash. W. I believe it is not much known what my work is, very few persons have seen it. H. Why, it is a critical history of painting, is not it ? W. No, it is an antiquarian history of it in England; I bought Mr. Vertue’s MSS., and, I believe, the work will not give much offence; besides, if it does, I cannot help it; when I publish anything I give it to the world to think of it as they please. H. Oh! if it is an antiquarian work, we shall not clash; mine is a critical work; I don’t know whether I shall ever publish it. It is rather an apology for painters. I think it is owing to the good sense of the English that they have not painted better. IP. My dear Mr. Hogarth, I must take my leave of you, you now grow too wild. And I left him. If I had stayed, there remained nothing but for him to bite •me. I give you my honour this conversation is literal, and, perhaps, as long as you have known Englishmen and painters, you never met with anything so distracted. I had consecrated a line to his genius (I mean, for wit) in my Preface; I shall not erase it; but I hope nobody will ask me if he is not mad. Adieu ! HOGARTH AND WILKES. It appears that in this intimacy the demagogue took or affected to take great pains to dissuade the painter from poli¬ tical satire. Wilkes, in 1755, was the especial friend of Hogarth—actively kind towards him, admired and praised his genius, and even when they quarrelled (in 1762) their WILLIAM HOGARTH. 65 quarrel was political, not personal; and, as Wilkes said, “ for several years they had lived on terms of friendship and inti¬ macy.” Hogarth, in 1762, as he admitted, to “stop a gap in his income,” determined to turn his pencil to political uses ; and the King’s serjeant-painter resolved to attack those who were considered hostile to the King—Chatham aud Temple. Wilkes, in a private and friendly letter, pointed out the folly of giving up “to party what was meant for mankind”—of dipping his pencil “ in the dirt of faction ”—warned him of the certain consequences, and told him that “ he never would take notice of reflections on himself; hut when his friends were attacked, he found himself wounded in the most sensible part, and would, as well as he could, revenge their cause.” Hogarth persevered, published his caricature, and Wilkes his comment and criticism. Even, after this, Hogarth acknow¬ ledged that Wilkes had been his “ friend and flatterer,” was a good-tempered fellow, but now “ Pitt-bitten—Pitt-mad.”— Notes and Queries, 2d S. No. 81. PORTRAIT OF FIELDING. Pielding, the novelist, went to the grave without ever having sat for his portrait; but Hogarth painted him from recollection. Arthur Murphy relates that after Hogarth had tried to bring out a likeness of Fielding “from images existing in his own fancy,” and had failed, a lady, with a pair of scissors, cut a profile, which gave the distances and proportions of his face sufficiently to restore Hogarth’s lost ideas of Fielding : “ he caught at this outline with pleasure, and worked, with all the attachment of friendship, till he had finished the portrait,” which is prefixed to the great novelist’s works. ISTichols, nevertheless, was assured that Hogarth began and finished the head in the presence of his wife and another lady, and that he had no assistance but from his own tena¬ cious memory. To this sketch the engraver did such justice, that Hogarth declared he did not know his own drawing from a proof of the plate before the ornaments were added. The story is likewise told as follows. Hogarth and Garrick, sitting together after dinner, Hogarth was lamenting there was no portrait of Fielding, when Garrick said, “ I think I can make his face.”—“Pray try, my dear Davy,” said the other. Garrick then made the attempt, and so well F 66 ANECDOTE BIOGKAPHY. did lie succeed, that Hogarth immediately caught the like¬ ness, and exclaimed with exultation, “How I have him. Keep still, my dear Davy.” To work he went with pen and ink, and the likeness was finished by their mutual recollections. This sketch has been engraved from the original drawing, and is preserved in the illustrated copy of Lysons’s Environs, vol. ii. pi 644, in the King’s Library, British Museum. “ CREDULITY, SUPERSTITION, AND FANATICISM.” In this remarkable work —the Medley, designed and en¬ graved by Hogarth, and published in 1762, his object is to literally represent the strange effects resulting- from low con¬ ceptions of sacred things; and of the idolatrous tendency of pictures in churches, and prints in religious hooks. He has pictured a fierce preacher and a startled congregation : in his right hand he shakes a god, reserving in the other a devil: one hearer has sprung to his feet; a second has his hair stand¬ ing on end; a third has fallen into a swoon; a fourth hugs an image; a fifth is fainting with extacy; and a sixth, a woman overcome by the tempter, is dropping the image of her patron saint from her bosom. A Turk, smoking, looks in at the window, and seems chuckling at superstition which surpasses his own. Among the follies satirized are Mrs. Veale’s ghost, Julius Caesar’s apparition, and the shade of Sir George Yilliers; Whitefield’s Journal placed upon King James’s Demonology; Mrs. Tofts and her Kabbits; the Cock- lane Ghost and the Tedworth Drummer. Every inscription is the work of a writing-engraver. Hogarth published a similar print —Enthusiasm Delineated, which Walpole con¬ sidered “for useful and deep satire, was the most sublime of all Hogarth’s works but Ireland thinks these words more applicable to the Medley. PORTRAIT OF WILKES. In 1763, Hogarth drew from the life, and “etched in aqua¬ fortis” the notorious John Wilkes, and the print was pub¬ lished as “a direct contrast to the print of Simon LordLovat.” The original drawing of Wilkes was thrown by Hogarth into the fire, but was snatched out of it by a lady, and passed into the hands of S. Ireland. Wilkes good-humouredly said of this portrait, that he was every day growing more like it. WILLIAM HOGARTH. 67 vV r riting to his friend Churchill, he says : “ I take it for granted you have seen Hogarth’s print against me. Was ever anything so contemptible? I think he is fairly felo de se — I think not to let him off in that manner, although I might safely leave him to your notes.* He has broken into my pale of private life, and set that example of illiherality which I wished—of that kind of attack which is ungenerous in the first instance, hut justice in the return.” Nichols was told by a copper-plate printer that nearly 4000 copies of this cari¬ cature were worked off on its first publication. HOGARTH’S QUARREL WITH WILKES AND CHURCHILL. Hogarth was smarting under the attacks upon his Sigis- munda, which were but a revival of the spleen that appeared at the time of the Analysis, when he got into a violent quarrel with Wilkes and Churchill, which embittered the few remain¬ ing days of the great artist’s life. In his anger, Hogarth repaired to Westminster Hall, when Wilkes was the second time brought thither from the Tower; and in Wilkes’s own words, “ Skulking behind in the Court of Common Pleas,” Hogarth was seen in the corner of. the Court, pencil and sketch-book in hand, fixing that famous caricature, from which, as long as caricature shall last, Wilkes will squint upon all posterity. Nor was it his first pictorial offence: the caricaturing had begun some little time before, greatly to the grief both of Wilkes and Churchill; for Hogarth was on friendly terms with both; and, indeed, had within the past two years drank “divine milk-punch” with them and Sir Prancis Hash wood, in the neighbourhood of Medmenham Abbey. Disregarding their earnest remonstrance, he assailed Pitt and Temple at the close of the preceding year in his first print of the Times, f The North Briton retaliated in an attack on “ The King’s Sergeant-Painter, William Hogarth.” It was sharp and malicious ; and Wilkes, hearing that Hogarth con¬ templated a rejoinder, requested him not to meddle with moral subjects—and as the same request suited Churchill, it was made in both their names. Precious advice to Hogarth ! * Referring to the edition of his works which Churchill, in his Will, desired that Wilkes should publish, with remarks and explanations. + The Times, Plate 2, was engraved soon after Plate 1, but withheld from the public till after Mrs. Hogarth’s death, when the Plate was pub¬ lished by Messrs. Boydell, in 1790. F 2 68 ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. A coarse woodcut portrait of Hogarth headed this paper, the motto of which was— Its proper power to hurt each creature feels, Bulls aim their horns, and asses lift their heels. The caricature—the bodily and mental image of John Wilkes—appeared; he is seated in the civic chair—this patron saint of purity and liberty—a mark for perpetual laughter and loathing. It stung Churchill—Wilkes’s toad- eater—past the power of silence. As a rejoinder, in July, 1763, Churchill put the North Briton into verse in the Epistle to William Hogarth. It struck Hogarth where he was weakest, in that subjection to vanity which his friends confessed in him. But it spread his genius. Ami d its savage ferocity against the man, it was re¬ markable for a noble tribute to the artist. It predicted the duration of his works to the most distant age; and the great painter’s power to curse and bless it rated as that of “ a little god below.” But it was of terrible severity : the passage be¬ ginning “ Hogarth, I take thee, candour, at thy word,” is literally appalling. All who knew the contending parties stood aghast. “Pray let me know,” wrote Garrick, then visiting at Chatsworth, to Colman, “how the town speaks of our friend Churchill’s Epistle. It is the most bloody per¬ formance that has been published in my time. I am very desirious to know the opinion of people, for I am really much, very much hurt at it. His description of his age and infirmities is surely too shocking and barbarous. Is Hogarth really ill, or does he meditate revenge 1 Every article of news about these matters will be most agreeable to me. Pray write me a heap of stuff, for I cannot be easy till I know all about Churchill and Hogarth.” And, of course, the lively actor sends his “loves” both to Churchill and Hogarth. “ Send me Churchill’s poem on Hogarth,” writes old money- loving Lord Bath, from Spa; “ but if it be long, it will cost a large sum in postage.” With his rejoinder, such as it was, Hogarth lost little time. “Having an old plate by me,” he says, “with some parts readily sunk as a background, I began to consider how I could turn so much work laid aside to some account—and so patched up a print of Master Churchill in the character of a bear;” and he issued for a shilling, before the month was out, “ The Bruiser, C. Churchill, (once the Rev.) in the character WILLIAM HOGARTH. 69 of a Russian Hercules, regaling himself after haying killed the monster Caricatnra, that so sorely galled his virtuous friend, the heaven-horn Wilkes.” It was a hear, in torn clerical hands, and with paws in ruffles ; a pot of porter that has just visited his jaws hugged on his right, and a knotted club of Lies and North Britons clutched on his left; to which, in a later edition of the same print, was added a scaffolding caricature of Pitt, Temple, and Wilkes. In a second edition, Hogarth added on a label a group re¬ presenting himself as a hear-master, forcing the hear, Churchill, and the monkey, Wilkes, to dance under the infliction of a severe castigation : the monkey holds a North Bt iton in his hand. Churchill, meanwhile, wrote to Wilkes, and told him that Hogarth, having violated the sanctities of private life in this caricature, he meant to pay it hack with an Elegy, sup¬ posing him dead ; hut that a lady at his elbow was dissuading him with the flattery that Hogarth was already killed. In his poem of Independence, published in the last week of September, 1764, Churchill contemptuously considers the painter already in his grave: these are his words of savage exultation : “ Hogarth would draw him, envy must allow, E’en to the life, were Hogarth living now.” This Walpole and others also affirmed; and Colman boldly avouched in print that the Epistle had snapped the last cord of poor Hogarth’s heart-strings. Churchill had such faith in the terrors of his own verse, that his vanity was pleased when he heard the death of Hogarth was imputed to his satire. But Churchill himself died within nine days of the painter ! Thus the assailed and the assailant passed away; and thus “was prevented the reconciliation which would surely, sooner or later, have vindicated their common genius, the hearty English feeling which they shared, and their common cordial hatred of the falsehood and pretences of the world.” {Edin¬ burgh Review, Ho. 163.) . . ., Stacie, the landlord of the Bedford, in Covent Garden, told J. T. Smith that Churchill’s quarrel with Hogarth began at a shilling rubber club, held in the parlour of the Bedford;' * Woodward the comedian, who mostly resided at the Bedford Arms, was intimate with Stacie, and gave him his portrait -vvith a mask in his hand, one of the early pictures of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Stacie related to Smith that he was allowed to play an excellent game at whist. Une 70 ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. when Hogarth used very insulting language towards Churchill, who resented it in the Epistle. On the whole, this quarrel showed more venom than wit. “Never,” says Walpole, “did two angry men of their abilities throw mud with less dexterity.” Wilkes bore Hogarth’s caricature bravely. He said truly, in allusion to his own portrait, that he did not make himself’ and cared little about the beauty of the case that contained his soul. He wrote to Earl Temple : “ Mr. Hogarth is said to be dying of a broken heart. It grieves me much. He says that he believes I wrote that paper (the North Eriton ), but he forgives me, for he must own I am a thorough good- humoured fellow, only Pitt-bitten .” “FINIS; OR THE TAIL-PIECE.” This strange print, engraved in 1764, the year in which Hogarth died, is stated by Nichols and others to have originated as follows ; though the title of the print may, pro¬ bably, have suggested the story. “My next undertaking,” said Hogarth, one evening, at his own table, “ shall be the end of all things. “ If that is the case,” said one of the artist’s friends, “your business will soon be finished, for there will be an end of the painter.” “ There will so,” replied Hogarth, sighing heavily, “and the sooner my work is done the better.” Accordingly, he began the next day, and worked at the picture without intermission until he had finished it: the story runs —that he never again took up his palette. The design of the Tail-piece is to group such objects as denote the end OJ e > and to ridicule the gross absurdities to be seen in some of the serious works of the old masters. Hogarth named it the Bathos, or manner of sinking m sublime paintings,and inscribed the Plate to the dealers in dark pictures. On the left is a ruined tower, with a decayed dial-plate; at its base is a tombstone sculptured with a skull; and leaning upon part of the shaft of a column is Time breathing out “Finis;” his scythe and are . broken > i n one hand he holds a parchment scroll bearing his Will, m which he bequeathes all to Chaos; the Fates, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos executors. Beneath the Will lies a shoemaker’s last en¬ twined with a cobbler’s end. To the left are an empty ragged purse a commission of bankruptcy against poor Dame Nature, and a play-book morning about two o clock, one of his waiters awoke him, to tell him that a nobleman had knocked him up, and had desired him to call his master to play a rubber with him for one hundred guineas. Stacie got with! ^h lmnSelf ’ Won the mone yj and was in bed and asleep, all WILLIAM HOGARTH. 71 opened at the last page. In the foreground are a broken bow, a broken crown, and a worn out scrubbing-brush. On the right hand, opposite the tower, are a withered tree, an unroofed cottage, and a falling inn-sign of the World’s End, on the globe bursting into flames. At the foot of the sign-post is the artist’s own print of the Times, set on fire by an inch of candle. Near this are a cracked bell, a broken bottle, a worn-out broom, the stock of a musket, a rope’s-end, a whip without its lash, a mutilated Ionic capital, and a painter’s broken palette. In the distance are a man gibbeted in chains, and a ship foundering at sea; and in the firmament the moon is darkened by the death of- Phcebus, who, with his lifeless coursers, lies extended on a cloud, his chariot wheels broken, and his light put out. “ So far, so good,” exclaimed Hogarth; “ nothing remains but this,” taking his pencil in a sort of prophetic fury, and dashing off the painter’s broken palette. “ Finis,” cried he ; “ the deed is done —all is over! ” On this print, the following epigram, ascribed, to Church- hill, appeared in the Muse’s Mirror : All must old Hogarth’s gratitude declare Since he has named old Chaos for his heir : And while his works hang round the Anarch’s throne, The connoisseur will take them for his own. DEATH OF HOGARTH. The last years of the painter’s life appear to have been partly employed in retouching his plates, with the assistance of several engravers, whom he took with him to his house at Chiswick, which had hitherto long been his residence during the summer. “The change of scene,” says Cunningham, “ the free fresh air, and exercise on horseback, had for awhile a favourable influence on Hogarth s health \ but he com¬ plained that he was no longer able to think with the readi¬ ness, and work with the elasticity of spirit, of his earlier years.” Nevertheless, the powers of his humour did not for¬ sake him. In one of his memorandmn-books, he remarks : “ I can safely assert that I have invariably endeavoured to make those about me tolerably happy; and my greatest enemy cannot say I ever did an intentional injury, though, without ostentation, I could produce many instances of men that have been essentially benefited by me. What may follow, God knows.” This was written well-nigh the close of his life, and seems entitled to the respect of a rigid self- examination. In the venomous attack which helped to bring his days to an end, Wilkes appears to have had the principal 72 ANECDOTE BIOGKAPHY. share in embittering the parting cnp. Of him Hogarth wrote: “ One, till now rather my friend and flatterer, attacked me in so infamous and malign a style, that he himself, when pushed even by his best friends, was driven to so poor an excuse as to say he was drunk when he wrote it. Being at that time very weak, and in a kind of slow fever, it could not but seize on a feeling mind.” Nevertheless, Churchill’s virulence must not be forgotten in the base account. Such was the state of the painter’s health when, on October 25, 1764, he left Chiswick for his house in Leicester Fields : he was very weak, yet exceedingly cheerful: he was in that distressing state which is so frequent at the close of the life of a man of genius : nature was silently giving way ; “ his understanding continued clear, he had full possession of his mental faculties, but wanted the vigour to exert them.” Next day, he replied to an agreeable letter which he had received from Dr. Franklin: it was but roughly written. Finding himself exhausted, he retired to bed : he had lain but a short time, when he was seized with a vomiting, and, starting up, rang the bell with such violence that he broke it in pieces. Mary Lewis,* his affectionate relative, who lived in the house, came and supported him in her arms, till, after two hours’ suffering, he expired, from a suffusion of blood among the arteries of the heart. This is Allan Cunningham’s account of Hogarth’s last moments : it differs from that by Faulkner, who says that Hogarth, on retiring to bed on the night of the day on which he came from Chiswick, “was suddenly taken ill, and expired in the space of two hours.” t Walpole, in a letter to Lord Hertford, thus records the painter’s end : “ Hogarth is dead, and Mrs. Spence, who lived with the Duchess of Newcastle.”—This is characteristic of the cynic of Strawberry Hill. * Mary Lewis, who died in the year 1808, and is buried in Hogarth’s vault at Chiswick, was the daughter of David Lewis, harper to George II. Her brother, John Lewis, married into the Clithero family, at Brentford, and is introduced, playing the flute, in one of the Marriage h la Mode pictures. Mary Lewis was the niece of Mrs. Hogarth, passed all her life in Hogarth’s family, and acted as his confidential shopwoman in the pub¬ lication and sale of the Prints. Hogarth painted her portrait, and signed his name on the back of the canvas. Mary Lewis died a spinster; as did also Hogarth’s sister, Anne. + History of Chiswick, p. 448. WILLIAM HOGARTH. 73 TOMB OF HOGARTH. Hogarth was buried in an unostentatious manner in the south side of the churchyard at Chiswick; and some time after, a costly sculptured tomb was erected over the spot, and the expense defrayed by a subscription among his friends, at the instance of Garrick. The design consists of an altar- tomb, upon which is an attic, surmounted by a votive urn. On the north side of the tomb, in bas-relief, are a laurel wreath, rest-stick, a palette, pencils, a book inscribed Analysis of Beauty; a mask, a portfolio decorated with oak-leaves and acorns : beneath are inscribed the following lines by Garrick : “Farewell, great painter of mankind ! Who reach’d the noblest point of art; Whose pictured morals charm the mind, And, through the eye, correct the heart. If genius fire thee, reader, stay; If nature touch thee, drop a tear; If neither move thee, turn away ! For Hogarth’s honour’d dust lies here.” These lines have been condemned as conventional: another, and a higher hand, that of Dr. Johnson, supplied the follow¬ ing epitaph, more to the purpose, but still unequal: “ The hand of him here torpid lies That drew the essential forms of grace; Here closed in death the attentive eye That saw the manners in the face.” On the east side of the tomb is inscribed : “ Here lieth the body of William Hogarth, esq., who died October 26th, 1764, aged 67 years. Mrs. Jane Hogarth, wife of William Hogarth, esq. Obiit 13th November, 1789, iEtat 80 years.” On the south side are the names and deaths of Hogarth’s sister, Anne, aged 70; Mary Lewis, spinster, aged 88; and on the west side, Mrs. Hogarth's mother, Dame Judith Thorn¬ hill, aged 84 years. “ Time will obliterate these inscriptions, and even the pyramid must crumble into dust, but Hogarth’s fame is en¬ graven on tablets which shall have longer duration than monumental marble.” Arms: —On tbe tomb—az. a sun in splendour for Hogarth, impaling arg. a chevron gules between, three blackbirds for Thornhill; there is also the coat for Thornhill, imp. per fesse az. and erm. a pale counter¬ charged, three lions arg. 74 ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. Faulkner stated in 1845 : “The tomb is still kept np by voluntary subscriptions of some of the worthy inhabitants of this parish, who take an interest in preserving this funereal memorial of the ‘ great painter of mankind. However,. in 1851, the tomb was “gradually assuming a position which the first high wind may determine, and the monument he lost to us for ever.” A mason confirmed this statement; the mis¬ chief having arisen from the sinking of the earth, incidental to churchyards. This was told to Mr. John Phillips, a de¬ scendant of the Hogarth family, who, in 1832, paid a mason 1H. 14s. for extensive repairs done to the tomb. Through his uncle, Mr. Hart, many family portraits and other matters came into his (Phillips’s) possession. The tomb was not, how¬ ever, fully repaired until 1856, and then at the sole expense of Mr. Hogarth, of Aberdeen. The restoration was made in exact accordance with the original design. To secure the monu¬ ment it was necessary to open the grave, when the plates were found on the other coffins, but not on Hogarth s coffin, which was much smaller than the rest. The painter s plate is thought to have been removed upon a former opening of the grave, about the year 1836. The few persons who witnessed the opening of the grave in 1856 saw the large coffin of Lady Thornhill; the still larger coffin of Hogarth’s widow; and the “ little ” coffin of the great painter of mankind. One who was present assured the writer that he also saw “ the torpid hand” of the painter of Marriage cc la Mode, and the Harlot’s Progress. While the above, repairs were in progress, a great part of the garden-wall in the rear of Hogarth’s house was blown down by the violence of the wind.— (H. T. Riley j Notes and Queries, ut ante.) HOGARTH’S HOUSE, AT CHISWICK. The great Painter long possessed a house at Chiswick,^ where he occasionally resided during the last twenty years of his life. It stood in the lane leading from Chiswick to the Horticultural Society’s Gardens : on the piers of the prin¬ cipal entrance was inscribed in capitals, “ Hogarth’s House. ’ Faulkner has roughly engraved the garden-front of the house, which has a projecting or bay window in the centre of the first-floor : he has also represented Hogarth’s “ workshop,” at the western end of the premises. Mr. H. Piley, who visited WILLIAM HOGAKTH. 75 tlie P lac ® lia 18 H could not find in the house itself any memorials of the great artist; but another Correspondent of “ and Q u * nes ’ who spent a day or two in the house, in 16^0 remembers a wainscoted room on the ground-floor, and taint traces of pen or pencil sketches on some of the panels About twenty years later, Allan Cunningham described the buddings m the neighbourhood to have “choked up the garden, and destroyed the secluded beauty of Hogarth’s cottage. The garden, well stored with walnut, mulberry and apple trees, contained a small study, with a headstone placed over a favourite bulfinch, on which the artist had etched a birds head and written an epitaph. The cottage contained many snug rooms, and was but yesterday the residence of a Dante”* aining ^ ^ 6n ^ US —^ r ' trans lator of Mr. Rileyf writes : “on the lawn, in front of the house, there was (and is still, I think,) a very ancient mulberry-treee, which m Hogarth’s time was struck by lightning, it is said : and the iron braces or girdles, by which it is held together, were made by his direction. In one corner of the garden lere were two neat little tombs, with slabs inserted in the wall, m memory of two favourite dogs. On one of these was inscribed : “Alas! poor Dick!” with the date 1764 On the other slab was inscribed : “Life to the last enjoyed, lere lies Pompey, 1 1 90”—an evident adaptation of Churchill’s epitaph at Dover. Mrs. Hogarth died in 1789; but the remembrance of the feud between Hogarth and Churchill seems by this not to have died away with the survivor of the Household ! Over the stable, a very limited abode for some two or three horses, a room was pointed out, which I was infornied, had for many years been the artist’s studio. From the com¬ paratively large dimensions of the window, (which, as seen from the outside, appears to have replaced a smaller one,) I have little doubt that such is the fact. As the stairs are narrow, his paintings, I presume, would be put down through this window, for transmission, in his carriage, to town.” Mr. afterwards Sir Richard Phillips, who was educated at Chiswick, well remembered the widow of Hogarth : and some fifty years after, Sir Richard wrote of his school-days, whilst listening to the bells of Chiswick Church : * Lives of British Artists, vol. i. p. 175. t Notes and Queries, 2d S. No. 47. 1856. ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. 76 My scattered and once-loved schoolmates, their characters, and their various fortunes, passed in rapid review before me;—my schoolmaster, his wife, and all the gentry, and heads of families, whose orderly attend¬ ance at Divine service on Sundays, while those well-remembered bells were i( chiming for church ,” (but now departed and mouldering in the adjoining graves,) were rapidly presented to my recollection. With what pomp and form they used to enter and depart from their house of God ! I saw with the mind's eye, the Widow Hogarth, and her maiden relative, Richardson, walking up the aisle, draped in their silken sacks, their raised head-dresses, their black calashes, their lace ruffles, and their high-crook d canes, preceded by their aged servant, Samuel; who, after he had wheeled his mistress to church in her Bath-chair, carried the prayer-books up the aisle, and opened and shut the pew. There, too, was the portly Dr. Griffiths, of the Monthly Review, with his literary wife, in her neat and elevated wire-winged cap. And ofttimes the vivacious and angelic Duchess of Devonshire, whose bloom had not then suffered from the canker-worm of pecuniary distress, created by the luxury of charity ! Nor could I forget the humble distinction of the aged sexton, Mortefee, whose skill in psalmody enabled him to lead that wretched group of singers whom Hogarth so happily portrayed. * * * Yes,, simple and happy villagers, I remember scores of you ! ”—A Morning's Walk from London to Kew, p. 214. MRS. HOGARTH. Hogarth, after a long and active life, left a very inconsider¬ able sum to his widow, with whom, as Jane Thornhill, he must have received a large portion. By her husband’s Will, Mrs. Hogarth received the sole property of his numerous plates, and the copyright was secured to her for twenty years, by Act of Parliament. There were seventy-two plates, the sale of the impressions from which produced a respectable annual income. But she out¬ lived the period of her right; and before this, through the fluctuation of public taste, the sale of the prints had so diminished as to reduce Mrs. Hogarth to the border of want. The King interposed with the Royal Academy, and obtained for her an annuity of 40 1., which she lived but two years to enjoy : Walpole says that, after her death, Mr. Steevens was allowed to ransack her house in Leicester Fields for obsolete and unfinished plates, to he completed and published. Hogarth’s sister Anne followed him to the grave in 1771 ; and his wife, who loved him living, and honoured him dead, was laid beside him in 1789. At length, the stock at the Golden Head was sold; and in the “ Catalogue of the Pictures and Prints, the property of the late Mrs. Hogarth, deceased, sold by Mr. Greenwood, the WILLIAM HOGARTH. 77 Golden Head, Leicester-square, Saturday, April 24, 1790,” were the following Pictures by Hogarth : LOT. 41. Two Portraits of Ann and Mary Hogarth. 42. A daughter of Mr. Rich, the comedian, finely coloured. 43. The original portrait of Sir James Thornhill. ,, 44. The heads of six servants of the Hogarth family. 45. His own portrait—a head. 46. A ditto—a whole length painting. 47. A ditto, Kit-Kat, with the favourite dog, exceedingly fine. 48. Two portraits of Lady Thornhill and Mrs. Hogarth. 49. The first sketch of the Rake’s Progress. 50. A ditto of the altar of Bristol Church. ^ 51. The Shrimp Girl—a sketch. 52. Sigismunda. 53. An historical sketch, by Sir James Thornhill. 54. Two sketches of Lady Pembroke and Mr. John Thornhill. 55. Three old Pictures. 56. The bust of Sir Isaac Newton, terra cotta. 57. Ditto of Mr. Hogarth, by Roubilliac. 58. Ditto of the favourite Dog, and cast of Mr. Hogarth’s hand. HOGARTH’S MAUL-STICK. The maul-stick of the great painter, some years after his death, fell into the hands of Sir George Beaumont, who determined to keep it till a painter should appear who was worthy to receive it. Sir George kept the maul-stick until he saw the Village Politicians of Wilkie, and then presented it to that great artist. COLLECTIONS OF HOGARTH’S WORKS. A Rev. Mr. Gilpin, writing near the time of Hogarth, represents him as ignorant of composition! This shows how little the painter was then understood. There have been occasional exhibitions of collections of his works : Cook, the engraver, re-engraved Hogarth’s pictures, and exhibited the prints in the Haymarket early in the present century; but Mr. Leslie doubts whether Hogarth’s entire excellence was fully felt by the public until his works were collected in 1814, and exhibited at the Gallery of the British Institution. 78 ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. CHARACTERISTICS, RETROSPECTIVE OPINIONS, AND PERSONAL TRAITS. HOGARTH’S EARLY PORTRAITS. The success of our painter in the Wanstead Assembly led him to commence painting portraits; “ the most ill-suited employment,” says Walpole, “imaginable to a man whose turn certainly was not flattery, nor his talent adapted to look on vanity without a sneer. Yet his facility in catching a , likeness, and the method he chose of painting families and conversation in small, then a novelty, drew him prodigious business for some time. It did not last, either from his applying to the real bent of his disposition, or from his cus¬ tomers apprehending that a satirist was too formidable a con¬ fessor for the devotees of self-love.” Nichols adds, “ There are still many family pictures by Mr. Hogarth existing, in the style of serious conversation-pieces. He was not, however, lucky in all his resemblances, and has sometimes failed where a crowd of other artists have succeeded. Nichols instances the whole length of Garrick sitting at a table, with his wife behind him taking the pen out of his hand; in which he has missed the character of Garrick’s countenance while undis¬ turbed by passion; but was more lucky in seizing his features when aggravated by terror, as in the tent-scene of King Richard III. It appears that Garrick was dissatisfied. with the former portrait, or that some dispute arose between bim and the painter, who then struck his pencil across the face, and damaged it. The picture was unpaid for at the time of Hogarth’s death; when his widow sent it home to Garrick, without any demand.” Among the painter’s early portraits was a whole-length of Mr. Western, painted for Mr. Cole’s gallery at Milton, near Cambridge. Mr. Western is seated in his fellow-commoner’s habit, and square cap with gold tassel, in his chamber at Clare Hall, with a cat sitting near him, as Nichols says, “ agreeable to his humour, to show the situation,” by his fire¬ side. Mr. Cole relates that when he sat to Hogarth for this portrait, the custom of giving vails to servants was not discon- WILLIAM HOGARTH. 79 tinned. On his taking leave of the painter, and his servant opening the door, Mr. Cole offered him a gratuity, which the man politely refused, adding, it would he as much as the loss of his place, were he to accept the money, and his master know it.* It was Hogarth’s custom to sketch on the spot any remark¬ able face, of which he wished to preserve the remembrance; and a friend informed Nichols, that being with Hogarth at the Bedford coffee-house, he observed him drawing with a pencil on his nail, which proved to be a sketch of the features of a person at a small distance, in the coffee-room. At another time, he drew his friend Ben Bead, sound asleep— with pen and ink, without sitting down—a curious and clever likeness, and still existing. His sitters already included different ranks. One day, a nobleman, by no means remarkable for his personal beauty, and deformed in figure, sat to Hogarth, and the portrait proved a correct likeness, without the least attention to compli¬ ment or flattery. His lordship was disgusted at’this counter¬ part of himself; and the painter frequently applied for pay¬ ment, hut without success. He then wrote to the peer as follows: “ Mr. Hogarth’s dutiful respects to Lord -; finding that he does not mean to have the picture which was drawn tor him, is informed again of Mr. Il.’s necessity for the money ; if, therefore, his lordship does not send for it in three days, it will he disposed of, with the addition of a tail, and some other little appendages, to Mr. Hare, the famous wild- beast man; Mr. H. having given that gentleman a condi¬ tional promise of it for an exhibition-picture, on his lordship’s refusal. This intimation had the desired effect: the picture was sent home, and committed to the flames. It was likewise Hogarth’s practice to introduce striking resemblances of well-known characters of his time. Thus, almost all of the personages who attend the levee, in the series of the Rake's Progress, are undoubted portraits ; and certain notabilities figure in the Southwark Fair and Modern Mid¬ night Conversation, and the Rake’s Progress. At length, an opportunity occurred for bringing out Ho¬ garth’s force in portrait-painting with still greater effect. In 1729, Bambridge, warden of the Fleet Prison, and Huggins, Nor is it likely such a thing would happen again—Sir Joshua Reynolds gave his servant 61. annually of wages, and offered him 100Z. a year for the door! — Cunningham. ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. 80 Ms predecessoi, were accused before tbe House of Cominons of breaches of trust, extortions, and cruelties, and sent to Newgate. “The scene,” says Walpole, “is a Committee of the Commons , on the table are the instruments of torture. A prisoner in rags, half-starved, appears before them; the poor man has a good countenance that adds to the interest. On the other hand is the inhuman jailer. It is the very figure which Salvator Eosa would have drawn for Iago in the moment of detection. Villany, fear, and conscience, are mixed in yellow and livid upon his countenance, his lips are contracted by tremor, his face advances as eager to lie, his legs step back as thinking to make his escape, one hand is thrust forward into his bosom, the fingers of tne other are catching uncertainly at his button-hole. If this was a portrait, it was the most striking that ever was drawn if it was not, it is still finer.” Cunningham adds : “ The face was that of Bambridge—the rest was the imagination of the artist. The Committee, according to Nichols, are all portraits. The pic¬ ture was painted in 1729, for Sir Archibald Grant, of Mony- musk, Bart. It became the property of the son of Huggins, after whose death it passed into the collection of the Earl of Carlisle. The frame is surmounted with a bust of Sir Erancis Page, one of the judges, with a halter round his neck, em¬ blematic of his character for severity.* A sketch in oil of Bambridge was given by Hogarth to Walpole, and added to the Strawberry-hill collection. Hogarth painted as a companion picture to the above a scene from the Beggars’ Opera , with a bust of Gay on its frame, which picture also became the property of Mr. Huggins. Strangely enough, Thornhill and Hogarth afterwards jointly painted for Huggins’s son an allegorical ceiling, at his house, Headley Park, Hants. * Savage, in a “ Character ” of great power, has gibbeted Sir Francis Page to public detestation. Nor was Savage less severe m his prose. On the trial of this unfortunate poet, for the murder of James Sinclair in 1727 Judge Page, who was then on the bench, treated him with his usual insolence and severity; and when he had summed up the evidence, en¬ deavoured to exasperate the jury, as Savage used to relate, with this eloquent harangue : “ Gentlemen of the jury, you are to consider that Mr. Savage is a very great man, a much greater man than you or 1, Gentlemen of the Jury; that he wears very fine clothes much finer clothes than you or I, Gentlemen of the Jury ; that he has abundance of money in liis pocket, much, more money than you or I, Gentlemen oi the WILLIAM HOGARTH. 81 HOGARTH’S CONCEIT. Garrick himself was not more ductile to flattery than the painting moralist of Leicester Fields. An eminent surgeon of his time, Mr. Belchior, F.B.S., relates the following inci¬ dent, which serves to show how much more easy it is to detect ill-placed or hyperbolical adulation respecting others than when applied to ourselves. Hogarth, being at dinner with Cheselden, the great surgeon, and some other company, was told that Mr. John Freke, surgeon, of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, a few evenings before, at Dick’s Coffee-house,* had asserted that Dr. Maurice Greene was as eminent in musical composition as Handel. “ That fellow Freke,” said Hogarth, “ is always shooting his holt absurdly, one way or another. Handel is a giant in music ; Greene only a light Florimel kind of composer.” “Ay,” said Hogarth’s informant, “hut at the same time Mr. Freke declared you were as good a portrait-painter as Yandyck.” “ There he was right,” replied Hogarth, “and so, by G—, I am, give me my time, and let me choose my subject.” Often he would thump the table and snap his fingers, and say, “ Historical painters be hanged; here’s the man that will paint against any of them for a hundred pounds. Correggio’s Sigismunda! Look at Bill Hogarth’s Sigismunda; look at my altar-piece at St. Mary Bedcliffe, Bristol; look at my Paul before Felix, and see whether I’m not as good as the best of them.” Jury ; but, Gentlemen of the Jury, is it not a very bard case, Gentlemen of the Jury, that Mr. Savage should therefore kill you or me, Gentlemen of the Jury ?” Pope also, Horace, B. II. Sect. I, has the following line : “ Hard words or hanging, if your judge be Page.” And Fielding, in Tom Jones, makes Partridge say, after premising that Judge Page was a very brave man, and a man of great wit: “ It is indeed charming sport to hear trials on life and death.” * Dick’s Coffee-house, now a tavern, 8, Fleet-street, near Temple-bar, has been in existence 180 years. Here Isaac Bickerstaff, the Tatler, led the deputation of “Twaddlers” from Shire-lane, across Fleet-street. When Cowper lived in the Temple, he used to breakfast at Dick’s, or Richard’s, as it was then called ; and it was a great resort of the Templars in the good old theatrical times, when the love of the drama manifested itself in strong partisanship. G 82 ANECDOTE BIOGEAPHY. EOETICAL TRIBUTES TO HOGARTH. While Hogarth was engaged as a portrait-painter, he was not without public and poetic recognition. A certain Mr. Bobinson, of Kendal, published in 1738 a series of lines in his praise appended with other poems to his play “ The In¬ triguing Milliners.” They begin as follows : “ Ingenious Hogarth all the Town Britain’s Apelles justly own, To see his portraits all repair, For they excel the fairest fair; Whate’er is beauteous there you meet, No flaw to pall, there all’s oompleat; He plays the God with all he draws ! Each picture meets with just applause, His curious strokes with Nature strive, They soften into flesh, they live : So artfully they cheat the eye, You speak and wait for a reply.” Such rhymes, though not poetry, are proofs of the artist’s popularity, and in the course of the lines we read— “ For Hogarth, wheresoe’er he call, Is well received and thank’d by all.” We have already quoted, at page 1, Swift’s distinguishing Hogarth in his “ Description of the Legion Club.” Somerville, the poet of the Chase , dedicated his mock heroic of “Hobhinol, or Eural Games,” to Hogarth, as.“the greatest master in the burlesque way.” Yet Yielding, in his Preface to Joseph Andrews, says : “ he who should call the ingenious Hogarth a burlesque painter would, in my opinion, do him very little honour; for sure it is much easier, much less the subject of admiration, to paint a man with a nose, or any other feature, of a preposterous size, or to expose him in some absurd or monstrous attitude, than to express the affec¬ tions of men on canvas. It hath been thought a vast com¬ mendation of a painter to say his figures seem to breathe; hut surely it is a much greater and nobler applause that they appear to think.” Yinney Bourne, the classical usher of Westminster school, and the elegant Latin poet, addressed some graiulatory lines “ Ad Gulielmum Hogarth.” * * Hogarth painted a portrait of a celebrated Westminster, Bishop Hooper, whose future success Dr. Busby foretold to “ this boy—the WILLIAM HOGARTH. 83 HOGARTH PAINTED BY HIMSELF. Hogarth’s portraits of himself are very clever, and excel¬ lently like. In one, (says Cunningham,) he is accompanied by a bull-dog of the true English breed; and in another he is seated in his study, with his pencil ready and his eye fixed and intent on a figure which he is sketching on the canvas. He has a short, good-humoured face, full of health, observa¬ tion, and sagacity. He treated his own physiognomy as he treated his friends’,—seized the character strongly, and left grace and elegance to those who were unable to cope with mind and spirit. On the palette, which belongs to the first- named of these two portraits, there is drawn a waving line with the words “Line of Beauty and Grace,”—the hiero¬ glyphic of which no one could at first divine the meaning. Hogarth thus describes his own original style, upon which his fame rests : “ The reasons which induced me to adopt this mode of designing were, that I thought both writers and painters had, in the historical style, totally overlooked that intermediate species of subjects which may be placed between the sublime and grotesque.” CARICATURES ON HOGARTH. Mr. Thomas Wright, F.S. A., in his ingenious work, England under the House of Hanover, thus clearly sketches the flood of caricature drawn upon Hogarth by his quarrel with Wilkes and Churchill. “ They hold him up now as the pensioned dauber of the unpopular Lord Bute, and the calumniator of the friends of liberty. In one, entitled ‘ the Beautifyer, a touch upon the Times,’ Hogarth is represented upon a huge platform, daub¬ ing an immense boot, (the constant emblem of the obnoxious minister,) while, in his awkwardness, he bespatters Pitt and Temple, who happen to be below. This is a parody on Ho¬ garth’s own satire on Pope. Beneath the scaffold is a tub full of Auditors, Monitors, &c., labelled The Charm : Beautifying Wash. A print, entitled ‘ The Bruiser Triumphant,’ represents Hogarth as an ass, painting the Bruiser, while Wilkes comes behind, and places horns on his head,—an allusion to some least favoured in features of any in the school.” Hogarth was not the portrait-painter most likely to improve these features. The picture hangs in the Hall of the School. G 2 84 ANECDOTE BIOGKAPHY. scandalous intimations in the North Briton. Churchill, in the garb of a parson, is writing Hogarth’s life. A number of other attributes and allusions fill the picture. “ A caricature entitled ‘ Tit for Tat,’ represents Hogarth painting Wilkes, with the unfortunate picture of Sigismunda in the distance. Another ‘ Tit for Tat, Invt. et del. by G. O’Garth, according to act or order is not material,’ represents the painter partly clad in Scotch garb, with the line of beauty on his palette, glorifying a boot surmounted by a thistle. The painter is saying to himself ‘Anything for money : I’ll gild this Scotch sign, and make it look glorious; and I’ll daub the other sign, and efface its beauty, and make it as black as a Jack Boot.’ On another easel is a portrait of Wilkes, ‘Defaced by order of O’Garth,’ and in the foreground ‘ a smutch-pot to sully the best and most exalted characters.’ In another print, ‘ Pug, the snarling cur,’ is being severely chastised by Wilkes and Churchill. In another he is baited by the bear and a dog; and in the background is a large panel, with the inscription, ‘ Panel-painting.’ In one print, Hogarth is represented going for his pension of 300£ a year, and carrying as his vouchers the prints of ‘ The Times ’ and Wilkes. ‘I can paint an angel black, and the devil white, just as it suits me.’ ‘An Answer to the print of John Wilkes, Esq.’ represents Hogarth with his colour-pot, in¬ scribed ‘ Colour to blacken fair characters ; ’ he is treading on the cap of liberty with his cloven foot, and an inscription says ‘ 300Z. per annum for distorting features.’ “ Several other prints, equally bitter against him, besides a number of caricatures against the Government, under the fic¬ titious names of O’Garth, Hoggart, Hog-ass, &c., must have assisted in irritating the persecuted painter. “ Hogarth left an engraving of ‘ The Times,’ plate II., in which Wilkes was represented in the pillory, by the side of ‘Miss Fanny;’ but it was not given to the world till many years after his death.” HOGARTH AND BISHOP HOADLEY. Upon pulling down the palace of the Bishop of Winchester, at Chelsea, at the upper end of Cheyne Walk, (near the present Pier Hotel,) a singular discovery was made. In a small room of the north front, were found, on the plaster of the walls, nine life-size figures, three men and six women, WILLIAM HOGAETH. 85 drawn in outline, with, black chalk, in a bold and spirited style. Of these figures correct copies have been published. They display much of the manner of Hogarth, who often visited Bishop Hoadley at this palace ; and it is supposed that these figures apply to some incident in the Bishop's family, or to some scene in a play. His lordship’s partiality for the drama is well known; and his son, Dr. Hoadley, the physician, who resided at Chelsea, just beyond Cremorne House, wrote the admirable comedy of the Suspicious Husband. Hogarth was admitted to the Doctor’s private theatricals. Upon one occasion he performed with Garrick, and his enter¬ tainer, a burlesque on that scene in Julius Ccesar where the ghost appears to Brutus. Hogarth personated the spectre ; and to heighten the absurdity of the scene his speech of two lines was written upon an illuminated paper lantern, that he might read them when he came upon the stage. This piece of humour has been perverted by some of the narrators of anecdotes of Hogarth into a proof of Hogarth’s unretentive memory ! Hogarth painted for this performance a scene of a suttling booth, with the Duke of Cumberland’s head as a sign : he likewise embellished the play-bill with characteristic designs. It has been said that Bishop Hoadley wrote some of the verses appended to Hogarth’s prints; but the evidence is doubtful. COPYRIGHT IN PRINTS. Ho sooner had Hogarth begun to reap fame and profit by engraving his works than needy artists and worthless print- sellers began to prey upon him. Indeed, before the prints of the Rake’s Progress were published, they were pirated by Boitard, and that with skill. Hogarth complained of such dishonesty; and to protect painters generally in future, and to make their works property, like other productions of human art, he obtained from Parliament, in 17 35, an Act for recognising a legal copyright in designs and engravings, and restraining copies of such works from being made without the consent of the owners. Unfortunately, the Act was loosely and vaguely drawn; so that when resorted to in the case of Jeffreys, the printseller, it was the opinion of Lord Hardwicke, before whom the action was tried, that no person claiming an assignment from the original inventor of the paintings or designs copied could receive any benefit from it. 86 ANECDOTE BIOGEAPHY. Nevertheless, Hogarth, in commemoration of the passing of this Bill for the encouragement of designing and engraving, executed a small print with emblematic devices, and a laudatory inscription. On the top of the plate Hogarth etched a royal crown, shedding rays on mitres and coronets, on the Great Seal, the Speaker’s hat, and other symbols of the “ Collective Wisdom.” This plate he afterwards made to serve for a receipt for subscriptions to Hogarth’s Election Entertainment, and a few other prints. J. T. Smith states, as a curious fact, that of the print of the Cockpit, by Hogarth, as well as those of the gates of Calais, and Southwark Fair, he had never seen, read, or heard of an etching, nor of any impression whatever with a variation from the state in which they were published. “ This,” continues Smith, “ is the more extraordinary, as they are all highly-finished plates, and the artist must have required many proofs of them in their progress before he could have been satisfied with their effect; particularly in that of Southwark Fair, which, in my opinion, is not only the deepest studied as to composition and light and shade, but the most elaborately finished, and perhaps the most innocently enter- taming of all his works. For great as Hogarth was m his display oi every variety of character, I should never think of exhibiting a poittolio of his prints to the youthful inquirer; nor can I agree that the man who was so accustomed to visit, so fond of delineating, and who gave up so much of his time to the vices of the most abandoned classes, was in truth ‘ a moral teacher of mankind.’ My father knew Hogarth well, and I have often heard him declare, that he (Hogarth) revelled m the company of the drunken and profligate;—Churchill, Wilkes, Hayman, &c. were among his constant companions. Dr. John Hoaclley, * though m my opinion it reflected no credit on him, delighted in his company; but he did not approve of all the prints produced by him, particularly that o± the first state of ‘Enthusiasm Displayed,’ which, had Mr. Garrick or Dr. Johnson ever seen, they could never for a moment have entertained their high esteem of so irreligious a character.” At Strawberry Hill, before the sale in 1842, were 365 prints and drawings, engraved by and after Hogarth, all first impressions, and some original drawings; and stated by Walpole, in his Anecdotes of Painting, to he the most complete and perfect collection of Hogarth’s Prints. HOGARTH’S PALETTE. The palette used by Hogarth is still preserved in the Royal Academy; it is of very peculiar form, shaped something like an heraldic escutcheon, with a long handle, and a ring at the end for the thumb to pass through. * Who was Dr. John Hoadley ? Does Mr. Smith refer to Dr. Benjamin Hoadley, Bishop of Winchester ? WILLIAM HOGARTH. 87 HOGARTH’S “ ORATORIO.” In 1835, the Rev. Bishop Luscombe,* showed to a corres¬ pondent of Notes and Queries, at Paris, the original picture of “ the Oratorio,” a subject well known from Hogarth’s etching. Mr. Luscombe had bought it at a broker’s shop in the Rue St. Denis : on examination, he found the frame to he English, but as he only gave thirty francs for the picture, he purchased it without supposing it to be more than a copy. Sir William Knighton, on seeing it, told Mr. Luscombe that Hogarth’s original had belonged to the Dukes of Richmond, and had been in their residence at Paris until the first Revolution, since which time it had not been heard off ; and Sir William had no doubt that Mr. Luscombe had been so fortunate as to obtain it. THE MISER AND SIR ISAAC SHEARD. At Rusper, in Sussex, lived Sir Isaac Sheard, so proverbial for his penurious habits, that Hogarth introduced him into a picture which he painted, as a miser trying a mastiff for rob¬ bing his kitchen. This circumstance coming to the ears of Sheard’s son, a high-spirited young man, he called at the painter’s to see the picture, and being informed by the servant that the figure was considered to be like Sir Isaac Sheard, he cut the painting to pieces with his sword. WALL-PAINTINGS IN FENCHURCH STREET. In the year 1826, was taken down the old Elephant public- house, in Fenchurch-street, whereat Hogarth is said to have lodged for some time, when young. The house had been built before the great Fire of London, and narrowly escaped its ravages. Previous to the demolition of the premises, there were removed from the wall of the tap-room, three pictures which Hogarth is said to have painted while a lodger there: one represented a group of the Hudson’s Bay Company s porters going to dinner, they at that time frequenting the house; the background was Fenchurch-street, as it appeared nearly a century and a half ago, with the old Magpie and * The Rev. Bishop Luscombe was, for many years, chaplain to the British Embassy at Paris. His Christian name was Bishop, which often led to the error of episcopal rank being attributed to him, in his being referred to as Bishop Luscombe. 88 ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. Punch-bowl public-house in the distance. The second paint¬ ing was set down as Hogarth’s first idea for his Modern Midnight Conversation, differing from the print in an inci¬ dent too broad in its humour for the graver : there were one or two figures less in the print, but Orator Henley and the other principal characters occupy the same situation in both performances. The third picture was Harlequin and Pierrot seeming to be laughing at one of the figures in the second picture. There was also on a wall of the first-floor of the Elephant a picture of Harlow Bush Fair, covered over with paint. _ . The circumstances under which these pictures were painted were in 1829, thus related by the landlady of the public- house, in whose family the business had been for more than a century, and for whom the house was rebuilt in 1826. It appears that it had been customary for the parochial autho¬ rities to hold certain entertainments at the Elephant, (she stated,) the celebration of which, however, was, from some cause, removed to Henry the Eighth s Head, opposite. This transfer being mentioned to Hogarth, on his return home one night, when the feast was being held at the opposite house, the painter was much irritated, more especially as he had not been invited, as formerly. He, therefore, went over to the Henry's Head, where some altercation took place between the authorities and the painter, who left, threatening to stick them all up on the walls of the tap-room of the Elephant. This he proposed to the landlord : the picture of jollity and feasting was painted, with the clock at past four in the morning, and it was so profitable an attraction that the landlord of the Elephant wiped out a debt of Hogarth s, as a remuneration, so that, although the house lost the parish dinner party, it gained by persons coming to see the authorities stuck up on the walls. Subsequently, was painted as a companion picture,. the Hud¬ son’s Bay Company’s porters ; and the two other pictures are said to have been produced under similar circumstances. Before the house was taken down, the pictures were removed from the walls at no small risk and trouble by Mr. Lyon, of Walworth, and Mr. H. E. Hall, of Leicestershire; and they were subsequently sold at the gallery of Mr. Penny, in Pall Mall. , , ^ The Elephant public-house has been engraved; and at the foot of the print, the information as to Hogarth having executed these paintings is rested upon the evidence of “ Mrs. WILLIAM HOGARTH. 89 Hibbert, who has kept the house between thirty and forty years, and received her information relating to Mr. Hogarth from persons at that time well acquainted with him.” Although the evidence is thus circumstantial, Hogarth’s biographers do not record his abode in Fenchurch-street; and the particulars of the interval between his apprentice¬ ship and his marriage are few and far between. HOGARTH PAINTS “ GOLDSMITH’S HOSTESS.” The only memorial said to be left of Goldsmith’s friendly intercourse with Hogarth, is a portrait in oil, known by the name of “Goldsmith’s Hostess,” and exhibited in London some years since, as the work of Hogarth’s pencil. Still, the evidence is but putative. Mr. Forster says : “it involves no great stretch of fancy to suppose it painted in the Islington lodgings, at some crisis of domestic pressure: Newbery’s accounts reveal to us how often it was needful to mitigate Mrs. Flemming’s impatience, to moderate her wrath, and, when money was not immediately at hand, to minister to her vanities. It is but to imagine a visit from Hogarth at such a time. Though the copyrights of his prints were a source of certain and not inconsiderable income, his money at command was scanty; and it would better suit his generous good humour, as well as better serve his friend, to bring his easel in his coach some day, and enthrone Mrs. Flemming by the side of it. So the portrait was painted; and much laughter there was in its progress, I do not doubt, at the very different sort of sitters and subjects, whose coronet-coaches were crowd¬ ing the west side of Leicester-equare.” GENIUS OF HOGARTH. J. T. Smith has ably vindicated the genius of Hogarth, in a sort of appendix to his Nollekens and his Times. “ I be¬ lieve,” (says Smith,) “ that in no instance has the name of a painter been so freely used as that of Hogarth. His reputa¬ tion has become public property, and is considered fair game; since, a picture exhibiting a large white wig, a three-cornered Macheath hat, an old apothecary’s capeless coat with im¬ mense basket buttons on the sleeves and flap-pockets, rolled- up stockings and square-toed buckle shoes,—has been, without hesitation, ascribed to Hogarth’s pencil, which, if examined, would very soon be proved the contrary. Mercier, Van ANECDOTE BIOGKAPHY. 90 Hawkin, Highmore, Pugh, or that drunken pothouse painter Hamskirk, (originally a singer at Sadler’s Wells,) are artists now rarely mentioned ; though several of their performances have been elevated by second-rate picture-dealers and brokers in old panels, as the works of Hogarth ; and even a head from a picture from Posalba has been engraved and published as the genuine production of Hogarth. ■ “ For myself, I am decidedly of opinion, that several of the copies of Prize-fighting and Playhouse benefit-tickets, pub¬ lished in Samuel Ireland’s Graphic Illustrations of Hogarth, are from plates neither designed nor etched by him. They are destitute of wit or talent, both of which Hogarth possessed, in a supereminent degree, even in his youthful days, when he engraved ornaments and coats-of-arms for his master Gamble, and for his wit, where can we find any prints to equal most of the plates for the small set of Hudibras, which were some of his earliest productions 1 They are full of character, well drawn, spiritedly etched, and most of them possess admirable effect; and I must say, as a supporter of the honour of Hogarth as an artist, that until Mr. Samuel Ireland raked up many of the wretched things which he caused to he copied for a publi¬ cation unquestionably with a view to raise money,—no collectors admitted the originals into their portfolios as the works of Hogarth. “ I am credibly informed that there is even at this moment (1828) an artist who finds it rather a successful occupation to make spirited drawings from Hogarth’s prints, which he most ingeniously deviates from by the omission of some figure or other object, or insertion of an additional one, in order to give his drawing the appearance of a first thought, upon which Hogarth is supposed to have made some alteration in his plate as an improvement. These drawings are discoloured, put into old black frames, and then, after passing through several hands, are finally sold, accompanied by a very long story, to those over-cunning collectors, destitute of sufficient knowledge to enable them to detect the forgery. “ Having ventured in a former page to mention my own opinion as to Hogarth’s want of morality, I must not, even for a moment, allow the reader to suppose that I am in any degree wanting in my respect for his powerful talents as an artist. His easy and perfectly natural mode of grouping, his sweetness and harmony of colouring, his excellent pencilling and general brilliancy of effect, must be perceived and felt by WILLIAM HOGAKTH. 91 every one possessing a single spark of taste, when viewing that inestimable series of pictures entitled the Marriage d la Mode , in our National Gallery. “ The prints by this artist, in freedom of etching and vigour of tooling, display his powers to the highest advantage. The plates of Southwark Fair and the Cockpit are unrivalled in this or any other country. The former displays most conspi¬ cuously the four classes of composition in art; namely, the diverging, the S-like or line of beauty, (see pp. 57-58 ante,) the festoon, and the triangle or pyramidal.” Mr. Leslie considered there to he many hints of French fashions in Hogarth’s works. He says : “ The. bridegroom in the first picture of Marriage <% la Mode is evidently dressed on the model of a Paris beau ; the boy heating a drum in the Enraged Musician has been metamorphosed, as far as dress could do it, into a little Frenchman; the two gallants in the boxes in the Laughing Audience are as French as possible, while the pit is filled with plain Fnglish folk, who are not too fine to take an interest in the performance; and in Taste in High Life, the antiquated beau, dressed in the extreme of the Parisian fashion, has succeeded in making himself look very like a monkey.” Fuseli made a false estimate of Hogarth’s genius when, in his Lecture, he said : “ The characteristic discrimination and humourous exuberance which we admire in Hogarth, but which, like the fleeting passion of a day, every hour contri¬ butes something to obliterate, will soon be unintelligible by time, or degenerate into caricature : the chronicle of scandal, and the history-book of the vulgar.” When Eeynolds was blamed for his slight .mention ot Hogarth in his Letters and Discourses, a distinguished member of the Eoyal Academy remarked publicly—that Sir Joshua might as well be censured for not naming Fielding and Eichardson, as Hogarth was no 'painter ! Charles Lamb’s Essay on Hogarth (says Leslie) is the . best written ; though it is much to be regretted that, in praising Hogarth, he thought fit to disparage Eeynolds. HISTORICAL VALUE OF HOGARTH’S WORKS. To the student of History, these admirable works must be invaluable, as they give us the most complete and trutfllu pictures of the manners, and even the thoughts, of the past 92 ANECDOTE BIOGKAPHY. century. We look, and see pass before us the England of a hundred years ago—the peer in his drawing-room, the lady of fashion in her apartment, foreign singers surrounding her, and the chamber filled with gew-gaws in the mode of that day ; the church with its quaint florid architecture and singing congregation; the parson with his great wig, and the beadle with his cane : all these are represented before us, and we are sure of the truth of the portrait. We see how the Lord Mayor dines in State ; how the prodigal drinks and sports at the bagnio ; how the poor girl beats hemp in Bridewell; how the thief divides his booty and drinks his punch at the night- cellar, and how he finishes his career at the gibbet. We may depend upon the perfect accuracy of these strange and varied portraits of the by-gone generation : we see one of Walpole s members of Parliament chaired after his election, and the lieges celebrating the event, and drinking confusion to the Pretender; we see the grenadiers and train bands of the City marching out to meet the enemy; and have before us, with sword and firelock, and white Hanoverian horse em¬ broidered on the cap, the very figure of the men who ran away with Johnny Cope, and who conquered at Culloden. The Yorkshire waggon rolls into the inn-yard; the country parson, in his jack-boots, and his bands and short cassock, comes trotting into town, and we fancy it is Parson Adams with his sermons in his pocket. The Salisbury Ely sets forth from the old Angel—you see the passengers entering the great heavy vehicle, up the wooden steps, their hats tied down with their handkerchiefs over their faces, and under their arms, sword, hanger, and case-bottle; the landlady, apoplectic with the liquors in her own bar—is tugging at the bell; the hunchbacked postilion—he may have ridden the leaders to Humphrey Clinker,—is begging a gratuity ; the miser is grumbling at the bill; Jack of the Centurion lies on the top of the clumsy vehicle, with a soldier by his side—it may be Smollett's Jack Hatchway—it has a likeness to Lismahago. You see the suburban fair and the strolling company of actors; the pretty milkmaid singing under the window of the enraged Erench musician. You see noblemen and blacklegs bawling and betting in the Cockpit ; you see Garrick as he was arrayed in King Richard; Macheath and Polly in the dresses which they wore when they charmed our ancestors, and when noblemen in blue ribbons sat on the stage and listened to their delightful music. You see the WILLIAM HOGARTH. 93 ragged French soldiery, in their white coats and cockades, at Calais Gate.* You see the judges on the bench; the audi¬ ence laughing in the pit; the student in the Oxford theatre ; the citizen on his country walk; you see Broughton, the boxer, Sarah Malcolm the murderess, Simon Lovat the traitor; John Wilkes the demagogue, staring at you with that squint which has become historical, and that face which, ugly as it was, he said he could make as captivating to woman as the countenance of the handsomest beau in town. All these sights and people are with you. After looking in the Rake's Progress at Hogarth’s picture of St. James’s Palace-gates, you may people the street, hut little altered within these hundred years, with the gilded carriages and thronging chairmen that bore the courtiers, your ancestors, to Queen Caroline’s drawing¬ room more than a hundred years ago.— Mr. Thackeray's Lec¬ tures on the English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century. HOGARTH’S PRINTS. How much of the moral effect of Hogarth’s works is due to their being engraved, and the prints sold at prices avail¬ able by all classes, must he evident to every one who has bestowed any thought upon the subject. If we refer to the list of “ Prints published by Mr. Hogarth ; Genuine Impres¬ sions of which are to he had at Mrs. Hogarth’s House in Leicester Fields, 1781,” we shall find the prices as low as One Shilling, and rarely to exceed One Guinea. Here are a few: £ s. d. Harlot’s Progress, 6 prints.110 Rake’s Progress, 8 prints.220 Marriage h la Mode, 6 prints. 1116 Four Times of the Day, 4 prints.10 0 Before and After, 2 prints.350 Midnight Conversation.050 Enraged Musician.030 Southwark Fair.050 Garrick in King Richard III. ..076 * Mr. Leslie, when at Calais, in November, 1855, noted as an object of interest to him “the old gate, painted by Hogarth. (See pp. 54—56 of the present volume.) The draw-bridge, with its chains depending from the projecting beams, is exactly like that in the picture; but the portcullis is gone, and the gate much altered. Whatever remains there may have been of the English arms upon it in Hogarth’s time are now wholly removed.”— Autobiography, p. 232. 94 ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. Calais; or, the Roast Beef of Old England, &c. . . Paul before Felix. March to Finchley. Strolling Actresses dressing in a Barn. An Election, 4 prints . . .. Idleness and Industry, 12 prints. Lord Lovat *. Sleeping Congregation. Columbus breaking the Egg. Beer-street and Gin-lane, 2 prints. Four Stages of Cruelty, 4 prints. £ s. d. 0 5 0 0 7 6 0 10 6 0 5 0 2 2 0 0 12 0 0 10 0 10 0 10 0 10 0 6 0 Sufficient margin was left for framing, but glass was com¬ paratively dear in this respect we have the advantage. Mr. Leslie has thus admirably illustrated the above views. “Had there been no such art as engraving, there would have been no such patronage as Boydell’s, which gave birth to some of the greatest works of the British School; and to this same art of engraving it is scarcely too much to say that we owe the very existence of Hogarth. His patrons were the million. The great people were told by Walpole that he was no painter j and Walpole being one of themselves, they believed him. But for engraving, therefore, Hogarth must have con¬ fined himself to portraits, on which he might have starved, for he was never popular as a portrait-painter. But when the prints of the Harlots Progress appeared, 1,200 copies were immediately subscribed for. This was the beginning of the patronage produced for painting by engraving.”— Auto¬ biography, p. 214. * Hogarth made the drawing for his print of Lord Lovat the night before he took leave of Major Gardner, under whose escort he was travelling to tlie Tower, and to whom Lord Lovat presented the original sketch. A Correspondent of Notes and Queries , No, 288, who has seen the drawing, states that Hogarth made it August 14, 1746; the execu- tion of Lord Lovat took place in the following April. SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, P.R.A. BIRTH-PLACE OF SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. Joshua Reynolds, the founder of the British School of Painting,” was horn at Plympton, an ancient town of Devon¬ shire, in a fertile valley, about five miles from Plymouth, and contiguous to the high road leading from Exeter. Here “ the lover of the picturesque will find much to please him in the surrounding scenery ; and he whose delight it is to linger in the haunts of genius, will stop to contemplate the humble and unassuming residence of the schoolmaster, where Joshua Reynolds first saw the light ; and while standing under the arcades of the old Grammar School, will picture to himself the youthful artist, sitting apart from his schoolfellows, regardless of their sports, and seeking pleasure in his own favourite pursuit, with the Jesuit's Perspective in his hand, busily engaged in applying its rules to the delineation of the building.” * Joshua was horn on the 16th of July, 1723, and was the seventh of either ten or eleven children, five of whom, it is said, died in their infancy. His father, grandfather, and two uncles, were all in Holy Orders. His father, the Rev. Samuel Reynolds, is described in the baptismal register of Plympton, as “clerk and schoolmaster”: he was a Fellow bf Balliol College, Oxford; and there is in existence a letter from Young, the author of the Night Thoughts , addressed to Mr. Samuel Reynolds, Fellow of Balliol College. Northcote, and most of Sir Joshua’s biographers, have erroneously described the Rev. Samuel Reynolds as the Incumbent of Plympton. t He was master of the Grammar School of the town: “ although Sir Joshua Reynolds and his works. By William Cotton, M.A. Edited by John Burnet, F.R.S. 1856. f A portrait of the Rev. Samuel Reynolds, painted by Sir Joshua, which belonged to the late Dean of Cashel, is in the Cottonian Library, at Plymouth. 96 ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. (says Cotton) possessed of a high character for learning, he appears to have been ill fitted for the office of a schoolmaster, and before his death it is said that the number of his scholars was literally reduced to one.” The mother of Sir Joshua was Theophila, daughter of the Eev. Mr. Potter, near Tornngton, in the north of Devon. Samuel Reynolds had. a Parson- Adams-like absence of mind; and it is said that in perform- ing a journey on horseback, one of his boots dropped off by the way, without being missed by the wearer. Of his humour it is related that, in allusion to his wife’s name, Theophila, he made the following rhyme : When I say The Thou must make tea— When I say Offey Thou must make coffee. The house in which Reynolds was horn at Plympton was visited by Haydon and Wilkie in 1809, when they saw in the chamber * reputed as the birth-room, an early attempt at a portrait drawn with a finger dipped in ink, showing an air of Reynolds’s later works. This and other sketches, Mr. Cotton tells us, have been obliterated by the unsparing hand of some renovator. At the period of Haydon’s and Wilkie’s visit, the house was occupied by Haydon’s schoolmaster. Prom “ the Shrine of Reynolds,” as it is called, Wilkie went to the Hall of Guild, where he saw, he says, a very fine portrait of Sir Joshua himself; and portraits of two naval officers, painted before he went to Italy, which for composi¬ tion were as fine as he ever did afterwards. Prom the Hall he went to the house of an old lady, who showed him a very early picture by Reynolds, which, in spite of want of spirit, and experience of touch, had much in it which promised future excellence. At the residence of Mrs. Mayo, he like¬ wise saw the portrait of an old man, which, though a little faded, was very finely painted : such was her reverence for it, that she would not allow a servant to clean it with either brush or towel, hut caused the dust to be blown off with a pair of bellows j nevertheless, adds Wilkie, the best schem.es are sometimes frustrated: a giddy housemaid one day drove the bellows-pipe through the canvas. * Mr. Cotton has engraved this room, the window of which commands a view of the Grammar School. SIE JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 97 BAPTISM OF REYNOLDS. The father of Reynolds is said to have given him the Scripture name of Joshua, in the hope that such a singular or at least uncommon name, might at some future period of his life lead a patron with a similar prefix to give him a fortune. Malone received this story from Dr. Percy, Bishop of Dro- more; hut Northcote has completely refuted it. He says : “I know from undoubted authority, having seen it in Sir Joshua’s own handwriting, that he had an uncle, whose name was Joshua, and dwelt at Exeter, and who was his godfather, but not being present at the baptism, was represented by a Mr. Aldwin.” This statement has been fully confirmed. A strange mistake was, however, made in the baptismal entry j and the Joshua of all the rest of the world (Cunning¬ ham aptly says,) is a Joseph at Plympton. In the register is : “1723. 30th.” Joseph, son of Samuel Reynolds, clerk, baptized July the On another page is the following memorandum : “ In the entry of Baptisms for the year 1723, the person by mistake named Joseph, son of Samuel Reynolds, clerk, baptized July 30, was Joshua Reynolds, the celebrated painter, who died Feb. 23, 1792.” The above was copied by the Incumbent of Plympton, from the register, and communicated to Notes and Queries , in 1853, by a_ correspondent, who asks : “ Was Sir Joshua by mistake baptized. Joseph 1 or was the mistake made after baptism, in registering the name 1 ” REYNOLDS’S SCHOOL. The young Joshua entered early the Grammar School at Plympton. Beneath the school-room is an open arcade or cloister, forming a playground for the scholars in wet weather. This cloister was the subject of one of Reynolds’s juvenile performances with the pencil, which excited the astonish¬ ment of his father. Northcote relates: “Young Reynolds had accidentally read the Jesuits' Perspective , when he was not more than eight years old, a proof of his capacity and active curiosity. He attempted to apply the rules of that treatise in a drawing which he made of his father’s school, a building well suited to his purpose, as it stood on pillars. On showing it to his father, who was merely a man of letters, he exclaimed, ‘How this exemplifies what the author of the ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. 98 Perspective asserts in his Preface, that by observing the rules laid down in this hook, a man may do wonders; for this is wonderful.’ ” This drawing is carefully preserved by the Palmer family; and Mr. Kobert Palmer has also in his possession three nicely executed pen-and-ink sketches: one a perspective draw¬ ing on the hack of a Latin exercise, “ De labore ,” on which his father, the schoolmaster, has written, “ This is drawn by Joshua in school, out of pure idleness.” How little (says Mr. Cotton,) did he guess to what such idleness would tend ! Another of the above drawings is the interior of a hook- room, or library, apparently copied from a small engraving, with all the minuteness and delicacy of Callot, or Della Bella; the third is a drawing of a fish, also done with a pen, and inscribed, apparently by his father, “ Copied from nature.” Sir Joshua related to Malone that the Perspective happened to be in the parlour-window in the house of his father. He made himself at eight years old so completely master of this hook that he never had occasion to study any other work on the subject, and the knowledge of perspective then acquired served him ever after. Reynolds also told Malone that his first essays in drawing were copying some light drawings made by two of his sisters, who had a turn for art; he after¬ wards eagerly copied such prints as he met with among his father’s books : particularly those which were given in the translation of Plutarch’s Lives, published by Dryden. But his principal fund of initiation was Jacob Catt’s Book of Emblems, which his great grandmother, by the father’s side, a Dutchwoman, had brought with her from Holland.* The father seems to have strangely neglected the education of his son. It is true that the boy, like Hogarth before him, was inspired by Richardson’s Treatise on Painting, to make private drawings rather than public exercises in school. Horthcote, Reynolds’s pupil and biographer, reluctantly admits his master’s deficiency in classical attainments. “ The mass of general knowledge by which he was distinguished,” says Northcote, “was the result of much studious application in his riper years.” * In Devonshire Reynolds saw the pictures which first fixed his atten¬ tion; these were portraits by William Gandy, of Exeter, who thus became Reynolds’s first instructor. Gandy’s father was a pupil of Vandyke. SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 99 REYNOLDS PAINTS HIS FIRST PORTRAIT. This was painted when he could not have been more thar twelve years old. It was the portrait of the Eev. Thomas Smart, in whose family the tradition is that in 1735, young Joshua coloured the likeness in a boat-house at Cremyll beach under Mount Edgcumbe, on canvas which was part of a boat-sail, and with the common paint used by shipwrights. Mr. Smart was tutor in the family of Richard Edgcumbe, Esq., who afterwards became the first Lord Edgcumbe, the “ Dick Edgcumbe ” of Walpole’s correspondence ; and young Reynolds seems to have been passing the holidays at Mount Edgcumbe with one of his sons. The portrait is said to have been painted from a drawing “ taken in church, and on the artist’s thumb-nailHogarth was wont to sketch in a similar manner. The picture was for many years at Mount Edgcumbe, but was afterwards sent to Plympton, and hung up in one of the rooms belonging to the Corporation, of which Mr. Smart was a member. It was subsequently returned to Mount Edgcumbe, and given by the present Earl to Mr. Roger, of Wolsdon, the descendant and representative of Mr. Smart, by whom these circumstances were related to Mr. Cotton. This portrait has been accurately engraved by S. W. Reynolds. Mr. Boger has also a small portrait or panel of the daughter of Mr. Smart, which is supposed to have been painted by Reynolds. At the above time, Mr. Edgcumbe was one of the patrons of the Borough of Plympton, which accounts for the ac¬ quaintance between the boys. Young Richard Edgcumbe had also a good deal of taste for drawing, and some of his paintings are still at Mount Edgcumbe. He became one of Walpole’s constant Christmas and Easter guests at Strawberry Hill; and Reynolds, who painted the tutor on sail-cloth, in 1735, in his boyhood, likewise painted young Edgcumbe for Walpole, when he had reached the zenith of his fame, in a charming picture with Selwyn and Gilly Williams. Walpole describes this picture as by far one of the best things Reynolds had executed : it is engraved in Cunningham’s edition of Wal¬ pole’s Letters; the original picture, a little larger than cabinet size, was bought by the Right Hon. Henry Labouchere, (now Lord Taunton,) at the Strawberry Hill Sale, in 1842. There is also at Mount Edgcumbe a portrait of Richard H 2 ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. 100 Lord Edgcumbe, painted by Sir Joshua when he was an untaught boy at Plympton, and before he went to London. According to Eastlake, the earliest portrait Reynolds painted of himself was one in the possession of his niece, Miss Gwatkin, of Princess-square, Plymouth; it is a fine Yandyke- like picture, and in good preservation.— Cotton. REYNOLDS IS ARTICLED TO HUDSON THE PAINTER. Joshua’s father hesitated for some time whether to make him an apothecary or a painter. Seeing his son’s propensity for painting, by the advice of Mr. Cranch, a neighbour and friend of the family, he sent the youth to London, to be placed under Hudson, then the most celebrated portrait painter of the day. Joshua consented, from his having seen a print from one of Hudson’s paintings, which much delighted him. His father preferred for him the practice of physic ; and the painter, in after-life, observed to iN orthcote, if medi¬ cine had been his career in life, he should have felt the same determination to become the most eminent physician, as he then felt to be the first painter, of his age and country. He believed, in short, that genius is but another name for exten¬ sive capacity, and that incessant and well-directed labour is the inspiration which creates all works of taste and talent. Joshua was now drawing near to seventeen, and his father writing to Mr. Cutcliffe, attorney, of Bideford, says that— “Joshua has a very great genius for drawing, and lately on his own head, has begun even painting, so that Mr. W armel, who is both a painter and a player, having lately seen hut his first performance, said if he had his hands full of business, he would rather take Joshua for nothing than another with fifty pounds. Mr. Cranch told me, as to the latter, he could put me in a way. Mr. Hudson (who is Mr. Richardson s son-in- law) used to be down at Bideford Mr. Reynolds then asks Mr. Cutcliffe’s judgment and advice, adding that “what Joshua has principally employed himself in has been perspec¬ tive, of which, perhaps, there is not much in face-painting. His pictures strike off wonderfully, if they be looked on with a due regard to the point of sight, and the point of distance.” Joshua reached London on October 13, 1740. We learn from his father’s letter, that Hudson was to receive the sum of 120 1., as a premium with his pupil, one half to be paid by his father, and the remainder, it is presumed, young Reynolds engaged to pay when he was in a position to earn money for SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 101 himself. Of Joshua’s progress we gather from a letter of his father, dated Jan. 1, 1741 : “Just now I had a letter from Joshua, wherein he tells me, ‘ on Thursday next, Sir Eobert Walpole sits for his picture: Master says he has a great longing to draw his picture, because so many have drawn it and none like.’ Joshua writ me some time ago that many had drawn Judge Willes’s picture, hut that by his master was most approved of.” Instead of studying from the best models, Hudson caused his pupil to waste his time in making careful copies from the drawings of Guercino; these he executed with much skill, so that it was difficult to distinguish them from the originals. Of young Eeynolds’s further progress we have the following evidence from his father :— April 20, 1742. Joshua goes on very well, which I must always acquaint you with. Br. Huxham, who saw a Laocoon, a drawing of his, said that he who drew that would be the first hand in England. Mr. Tucker, a painter, in Plymouth, who saw that and three or four more, admired them ex¬ ceedingly, as I had it from Mr. Cranch; yet when he saw some later drawings of Joshua’s, in his second year (of his apprenticeship), he still saw an improvement. Although Eeynolds in his letters expressed much satisfac¬ tion at the arrangement with Hudson, in two or three years their connexion was terminated by some slight misunder¬ standing. It appears that Hudson became jealous of his superior ability, from his painting the head of a female servant in a taste so superior to the painters of the day, that his master involuntarily predicted his future success. Malone, however, states that Eeynolds remained three years at Plympton, after he had parted from Hudson. He paid a second visit to London, during which he lived in St. Martin’s- lane, nearly opposite to May’s-buildings. REYNOLDS’S DESCRIPTION OF POPE. Eeynolds once saw Pope, about the year 1740, at an auction of books or pictures. He remembers that there was a lane formed to let him pass freely through the assemblage, and he proceeded along, bowing to those who were on each side. He was, according to Joshua’s account, about four feet six inches high • very humpbacked and deformed; he wore a black coat; and, according to the fashion of the time, had on a little sword. Eeynolds adds that he had a large and very fine eye, and a long, handsome nose; his mouth had those 102 ANECDOTE BIOGKAPHY. peculiar marks which, are always found in the mouths of crooked persons; and the muscles which run across the cheek were so strongly marked as to appear like small cords. Eoubilliac, the statuary, who made a bust of Pope from life, observed that his countenance was that of a person who had been much afflicted with headache; and he should have known the fact from the contracted appearance of the skin between his eyebrows, though he had not otherwise been apprised of it. Eeynolds was a great admirer of Pope. He purchased a fan, which the poet presented to Martha Blount, and on which he had painted with his own hand, the story of Cephalus and Procris, with the motto, “ Aura, veni.” “See,” said Sir Joshua, throwing this fan to his pupils^ “see the painting of Pope: this must always be the case when the work is taken up from idleness, and is laid aside when it ceases to amuse; it is like the work of one who paints only for amusement. Those who are resolved to excel must go to their work, willing or unwilling, morning, noon, or night; they will find it to be no play, but very hard labour.” The fan was afterwards stolen out of Sir Joshua’s studio. REYNOLDS VISITS ITALY. During his residence at Plymouth Dock, Eeynolds became acquainted with the third Lord Edgcumbe, and also with Captain (afterwards Viscount) Keppel. This led to the young painter visiting Italy. He accompanied Capt. Keppel, who had been appointed to the command of a squadron in the Mediterranean. They sailed on May 11, 1749, touching at Lisbon, Cadiz, Gibraltar, and Minorca; and landed at Port Mahon, on August 23. Here Eeynolds received much kind¬ ness from the Governor, General Blakeney. He was detained here nearly two months by a severe accident: being out riding, his horse rushed with him down a precipice, his face was severely cut, and his lip so much bruised that he was compelled to have it cut away. A slight deformity marked his mouth ever after. His deafness, (says Cunningham,) was imputed by some to the same misfortune; but that affliction dated from a dangerous illness in Eome. During his deten¬ tion in Minorca, Eeynolds painted portraits of all the officers in the garrison, and as he lived, free of expense, at the Governor’s table, the painter added considerably to his SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 103 travelling fund. On Ms recovery, he proceeded to Leghorn, and thence to Rome. In this Metropolis of Art, Reynolds chiefly occupied him¬ self in studying the works of Raphael and Michael Angelo, and in acquiring that knowledge of chiaro-oscuro and effect, which he was soon to display in his own paintings. Carica¬ ture, strange to say, employed him ; for while at Rome, he painted a sort of parody on the School of Athens. The pic¬ ture, (says Cotton,) still exists : it contains about thirty like¬ nesses of English students, travellers, and connoisseurs 3 and among others, that of Mr. Henry Straffan, in Ireland, in whose family the picture still remains. Reynolds also painted two other caricatures while in Rome ; and in after life he was heard by Northcote 'to say that, although it was univer¬ sally allowed that he executed subjects of this kind with much humour and spirit, he held it absolutely necessary to abandon the practice, since it must corrupt his taste as a portrait-painter. Of his technical studies in Rome he has left a minute account, which is chiefly valuable to the student in painting. Reynolds had for his companion at Rome John Astley, who had been his fellow-pupil in the school of Hudson. Astley was then poor and proud, and strove to conceal his embarrass¬ ments. One summer day, when the sun was hot, and he and Reynolds, and a few others, were on a country excursion, there was a general call to cast off coats. Astley obeyed re¬ luctantly—and for this reason': he had made the hack of his waistcoat out of one of his own landscapes, and when he stripped, he displayed a foaming waterfall, much to his own confusion, and the mirth of his companions. Erom Rome, Reynolds went to Bologna and Genoa; hence to Parma and Elorence, and Venice, _ and then home. His stay in Venice was very short, which is the more remarkable, since the Venetian school influenced his professional character far more powerfully than all the other schools of art put to¬ gether. While at Venice, in compliment to the English residents there, the manager of the opera one night ordered the hand to play an English ballad tune, which brought tears into Reynolds’s eyes. On his way home over Mont Cenis, he met Hudson and Roubilliac hastening to Rome. At Paris he found Chambers the architect: here he painted the portrait of Mrs. Chambers, daughter of Wilton, the sculptor, who was very beautiful. 104 ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. REYNOLDS SETTLES IN LONDON. In October, 1752, Reynolds returned to England, and after visiting Devonshire for a few weeks, at the solicitation of Lord Edgcumbe, the painter established himself in London, hiring a large house, No. 5, on the north side of Newport- street, Long Acre, then inhabited partly by gentry. He had to surmount such opposition as genius is commonly doomed to meet with : the boldness and freedom of his conceptions, and the brilliancy of his colouring, were innovations upon the old style of portrait manufacture which raised a swarm of objectors. Hudson, Reynolds’s former master, vowed that he did not paint so well as when he left England; and another portrait-maker, who had studied under Kneller, said, “ Ah ! Reynolds, this will never answer. Why, you don't paint in the least like Sir Godfrey.” This and other sharp treatment, in which the names of Lely and Kneller were frequently bandied, begat in Reynolds a dislike of these two popular painters, which he retained through life. Reynolds was now abundantly employed, and soon gained celebrity. He painted the second Duke of Devonshire, and thus increased his fame. He next painted Commodore Keppel —a noble, whole-length portrait: he is represented just escaped from shipwreck, walking on the sea-beach in a storm, his hair dishevelled, and everything indicative of a high wind. The likeness is perfect-; and in this picture Reynolds was the first English painter who ventured to enliven the backgrounds of his portraits by momentary action and expression. REYNOLDS REMOVES TO LEICESTER SQUARE. Early in the year 1760, Reynolds once more removed his residence to the house No. 47, on the west side of Leicester Square.* It appears from his pocket-book + for this year, that the house was purchased on the 3d of July, for we find the following entry, “ house bought,” and on the 11th of September, “ paid the remainder of the purchase-money, 1,0007” We learn from Farington, that he gave 1,6507 for a lease of forty-seven years, and laid out 1,5007 more in the * Called Leicester Fields until the year 1714, when it began to be called Leicester Square.—A Journey through England, 1724. f Mr. Cotton’s access to Sir Joshua’s pocket-books for many years, has enabled him to give many interesting data in his work. 'SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 105 erection of a gallery and painting-room. The house was sub¬ sequently the residence of the Earl of Inchiquin, who married Miss Palmer, Sir Joshua’s favourite niece, to whom he left the bulk of his large fortune, estimated at 80,000?. He was created Marquis of Thomond, and died in 1808. After the death of his widow, the Marchioness of Thomond, in 1821, her pictures, containing a larger number of Eeynolds’s works than had been before offered, were sold at Christie’s ; and there was a second sale of drawings, sketch-books, oil sketches, and unfinished pictures, by Sir Joshua. Three previous sales of his pictures by ancient masters, his own subjects and un¬ claimed portraits, and drawings and prints—in 1794, 1796, and 1798, produced nearly 17,000?. Allan Cunningham tells us that Sir Joshua’s study was octagonal, some 20 feet long, 16 broad, and about 15 feet bigb. Tbe window was small and square, and tbe sill 9 feet from the floor. His sitter’s chair moved on castors, and stood above tbe floor a foot and a-balf. He held bis palettes by bandies, and tbe sticks of bis brushes were 18 inches long. He wrought standing, and with great celerity; be rose early, breakfasted at 9, entered bis study at 10, examined designs, or touched unfinished portraits till 11 brought a sitter, painted till 4, then dressed, and gave tbe evening to company. After the death of the Marchioness of Thomond, the house in Leicester-square was let to the Western Literary and Scientific Institution, and during their occupation some pre¬ mises in the rear of the house, in Spur-street, were taken down, and a Theatre built for the Society, from the designs of Mr. George Godwin, the architect. The house is- now let to Messrs. Puttick and Simpson, the book-auctioneers. PORTRAITS OF KITTY FISHER. The beauty of this celebrated courtezan has been preserved on canvas by Reynolds, who painted her portrait several times. Her name occurs three times in his pocket-book for 1759 ;* and on the end leaf is : “Miss Eisher’s portrait is for Sir Charles Bingham.” There is a pleasing portrait of Kitty, by Reynolds, at Pet- worth : she has her arms crossed, and is apparently rumina- * In tbe same year Reynolds painted tbe celebrated beauty. Miss Gunning, (Ducbess of Hamilton,) to look at whom the noble mob in tbe Queen’s drawing-room clambered on tables and chairs. ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. 106 ting on a letter wliicli lies before her. and on the open fold of which is written : “ My dear Kitty Usher, June 9, 1782. Another portrait of Kitty Fisher as Cleopatra dissolving the Pearl, is in the collection of the Earl of Morley, at Saltram. Some one wrote under it:— “ To her fam’d character how just thy right! Thy mind as wanton, and thy form as bright.” Kitty Fisher, we are told, spent in nine months 12,0001. : she lived in 1779, in Carrington-street, May Fair. . She appears to have been a favourite model of Sir Joshua’s. A half-length, with doves, was sold in 1845 for 190 guineas, and sent to America. A repetition of this picture is in the collection of H. A. Munro, Esq. \ and at Lansdowne House, there is a portrait supposed to be of the same person, a half- length with a bird. At the British Institution, in 1841, a portrait of Kitty Fisher was also exhibited by Lord Crewe. She was called a “huckaback” beauty through the exquisite pictures of her from the pencil of Keynolds. PORTRAIT OF STERNE. In the same year (1761,) that Keynolds exhibited the large equestrian portrait of Lord Ligonier, now in the National Gallery, he also exhibited the half-length of Sterne, seated, and leaning on his hand. This portrait was painted for the Earl of Ossory, and afterwards came into the possession of Lord Holland, on whose death, in 1840, it was purchased for 500 guineas, by the Marquis of Lansdowne. “ This,” says Mrs. Jameson, “ is the most astonishing head for truth of character I ever beheld ; I do not except Titian; the character, to be sure, is different: the subtle evanescent expression of satire round the lips, the shrewd significance in the eye, the earnest contemplative attitude,—all convey the strongest im¬ pression of the man, of his peculiar genius, and peculiar humour.” PORTRAITS OF GARRICK. Garrick related to Reynolds that he once sat to Gainsborough, whose talents he did not admire, and whom he puzzled by altering the expression of his face. Every time the artist turned his back, the actor changed his countenance, till the former in a passion dashed his pencils on the floor, and cried, “ I believe I am painting from the devil rather than a man !” SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 107 Garrick often sat to Reynolds for different portraits ; and on one of these occasions complained wofully of the un¬ ceasing sarcasms of Foote. “ Never mind him,” replied the shrewd painter, “ he only shows his sense of his own infe¬ riority : it is ever the least in talent who becomes malignant and abusive.” COPIES AND ORIGINALS. In 1763, the eminent portrait-painter, the Chevalier Yanloo, being in England, boasted to Reynolds of his accurate know¬ ledge and experience in the works of the great masters : saying, he could never be deceived or imposed upon by a copy. Reynolds then showed him the head of an old woman, which he had himself copied from a picture by Rembrandt, asking his opinion of it, and was highly amused when Yanloo pronounced it to be an undoubted original. Reynolds himself was very nearly deceived in the follow ing instance, thus related by him in a letter to Mr. C. Smith, a nephew of Mr. Caleb Whiteford: “ I saw the other day, at Mr. Bromel’s, a picture of a child with a dog, which, after pretty close examination, I thought was my own painting ; but it was a copy, it appears, made by you many years ago.” Sir Joshua said of Gainsborough, that he could copy Yan- dyke so exquisitely, that, at a little distance, he could not distinguish the copy from the original.—Abridged from Cotton's Sir Joshua Reynolds and his _ Works. ■ CHARACTER IN PORTRAITS. Of mere likeness in portraiture, says Cotton, Reynolds thought very little, and used to say that he could instruct any boy that chance might throw in his way, to paint a likeness in half-a-year; but to give an impressive and just expression and character to a picture, or to paint it like Yelasquez, was quite another thing.—“What we are all,” he said, “attempt¬ ing to do with great labour, he does at once.” REYNOLDS AND ROMNEY. It may be said of Reynolds that he could not bear a rival near his throne. He had a great antipathy to Romney, who commenced his career in London by painting heads for four guineas. In 1763, he obtained the prize of the Society of Arts for his picture of the Death of Wolfe ; but through the influence of Reynolds, the decision was reversed in favour of 108 ANECDOTE BIOGEAPHY. a picture by Mortimer. Romney received a present of twenty- five guineas. This circumstance is said to have made Romney and Reynolds ever after enemies. Romney became the acknowledged rival of the President in portraits. Nortbcote says: “Certain it is that Sir Joshua was not much employed in portraits after Romney grew in fashion.” Lord Thurlow is also reported to have said: “ Reynolds and Romney divide the town: I am of the Romney fashion.” These were factions of form and colour — the former being that of Romney.'" Reynolds grew jealous of him, and spoke of him as “the man in Cavendish-square,” where he lived in the house No. 32, afterwards Sir Martin Archer Shee’s. Northcole represents Garrick as saying of Cumberland, the dramatist, “He hates you, Sir Joshua, because you do not admire the painter whom he considers a second Correggio.” “Who is that?” said Reynolds. “Why, his Correggio,” answered Garrick, “ is Romney, the painter.” FRIENDSHIP OF REYNOLDS AND DR. JOHNSON. Few men in the world have more highly appreciated the value of friendship, especially in exerting an important influence upon his mind, than Reynolds. From the friend¬ ship of Burke and Johnson he learnt much to supply the deficiencies of his early education. Although Johnson was profoundly ignorant of art, Reynolds derived much from him: “he qualified my mind,” he says, “to think justly. The observations he made on poetry, on life, and on everything about us, I applied to our art, with what success others must judge.” This mode of adapting the knowledge possessed by others to our own requirements is one of the greatest benefits which men derive from intercourse with each other. To no one, perhaps, was Reynolds more indebted than to his countryman, the Rev. Zachariah Mudge, Yicar of St. Andrew’s, Plymouth,—a man, (says Dr. Johnson,) “equally eminent for his virtues and abilities, at once beloved as a * The secret was this. Romney had painted Lord Chancellor Thurlow, a whole-length, and a handsomer man than he had appeared in the half- length of Reynolds. Romney avoided all indication of the suppressed temper that was so apt to explode in violent paroxysms, and thus rendered his picture more acceptable to the original. But he missed what Reynolds alone could give—that extraordinary sapience which made Charles Fox say, “No man could be so wise as Lord Thurlow looked.”— Leslie’s Handbook, p. 301. SIE JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 109 companion and reverenced as a pastor.” Horthcote had also heard Sir Joshna declare that the elder Mr. Mndge was, in his opinion, the wisest man he had ever met with in his life. How Eeynolds acquired the friendship of Johnson is related by Boswell. The artist, some time in the year 1754, was visiting in Devonshire, and chanced to open the Life of Savage. He began to read, and it seized his attention so strongly, that he was not able to lay down the book till he had finished it. He was solicitous to know an author, one of whose hooks had thus enchanted him; and by accident or design he met with him as follows : When Dr. Johnson lived in Castle-street, Cavendish-square, he went frequently to visit two ladies, who lived opposite to him, Miss Cotterells, daughters of Admiral Cotterell. Reynolds used also to visit them, and thus they met.— Boswell, ed. CroTcer. Dr. Johnson’s regard for Eeynolds was thus expressed in an affectionate letter to him, after his serious illness, in 1763 : “If I should lose you, (wrote Johnson,) I should lose almost the only man I can call a friend.” Sir Joshua painted a portrait of Dr. Johnson, with his arms raised and his hands bent: this picture was, in 1770, in the possession of Miss Lucy Eoster, at Lichfield, where Johnson having seen it, wrote to Eeynolds as follows : Ashbourne, July 17, 1771. Dear Sir, When I came to Lichfield, I found that my portrait had been much visited and admired. Every man has a lurking wish to appear consider¬ able in his native place, and I was pleased with the dignity conferred, by such a testimony of your regard. Be pleased, therefore, to accept the thanks of, Sir, Your most obliged and humble Servant, Sam. Johnson. Compliments to Miss Reynolds. This picture is now the property of the Duke of Suther land, and is at Stafford House. Dr. Johnson sat to Eeynolds, also, in 1775 : the picture shows him holding a manuscript near his face, and pondering as he reads. The near-sighted “ Cham of literature” reproved the painter in these words—“ It is not friendly to hand down to posterity the imperfections of any man.” Mr. Thrale inter¬ posed and said —“ You will not be known to posterity for your ANECDOTE BIOGEAPHY. 110 defects, though Sir Joshua should do his worst.” The artist was right—he gave individuality and character to the head. Reynolds and Johnson differed in their opinions as to the effects of wine. One evening, at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, in the Strand, a favourite supper-house with Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds was maintaining the advantages of wine in assisting conversation, and referring particularly tti himself, Johnson observed, “ I have heard none of those drunken nay, drunken is a coarse word—none of those vinous flights. “ I know no man,” said Johnson, “who has passed through life with more observation than Reynolds.” And he had so exalted an opinion of Sir Joshua’s benevolence, that he once said to him, with a smile, “ Reynolds, you hate no person living, but I like a good hater.” Sir Joshua relates this interesting trait in Johnson’s nature. When the Doctor had been rough to any person in company, he took the first opportunity of reconciliation by drinking to him ; if, however, the other had not grace to accept this re¬ conciliation, then it gave him no more concern. Dr. Johnson appointed Sir Joshua one of his executors, and bequeathed him his great French Dictionary of Moreri, and his own corrected folio copy of his English Dictionary. PAINTING ON SUNDAYS. Sir Joshua used to say : “ he will never make a painter, who looks for the Sunday with pleasure as an idle day; ” and his pocket journals afford indisputable proofs that it was his habit to receive sitters on Sundays as well as on other days. This was naturally enough displeasing to Dr. Johnson, and we are told by Boswell that he (Johnson) made three requests of Sir Joshua, a short time before his death : one was to forgive him 3 01. which he had borrowed of him; another was that Sir Joshua would carefully read the Scriptures ; and lastly, that he would abstain from using his pencil on the Sabbath day; to all of these requests Sir Joshua gave a willing assent—and kept his word. REYNOLDS’S CLUB. Sir Joshua was by nature a “clubable” man. In 1763, he founded, with Johnson, “the Club,” as it was then called, at the Turk’s Head, in Gerard-street, Soho. It did not receive the name of the Literary Club till many years later ; but that Reynolds was its Romulus, and this the year of its foundation, SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 1H is unquestionable. After numerous changes of location the Club settled at the Thatched-house Tavern, in St. James’s- street, where its meetings are held to this day. Here is the portrait of Reynolds _ with spectacles on, similar to the one in the Royal Collection : this picture was presented by Sir Joshua, as the founder of the Club. Sir Joshua was also a member of the Dilettanti Society, at the Thatched-house. Tavern; and he painted for the club- room three capital pictures :— 1. A group in the manner of Paul Veronese, containing the portraits of the Duke of Leeds, Lord Dundas, Constantine Lord Mulgrave, Lord Seaforth, the Hon. C. Greville, Charles Crowle, Esq., and Sir Joseph Banks. 2. A gronp in the manner of the same master, containing portraits of Sir William Hamilton, Sir Watkin W. Wynne, Richard Thomson, Esq., Sir John Taylor, Payne Galway, Esq., John Smythe, Esq.’ and Spencer S. Stanhope, Esq. 3. Head of Sir Joshua, by himself, dressed in a loose robe, and in his own hair. The earlier portraits are by Hudson, Sir Joshua’s master. Sir Joshua acknowledged that he had Paul Veronese in view when he painted the pictures for the Dilettanti, par¬ ticularly that next the door. ORIGIN OP THE ROYAL ACADEMY. Hay don, in his Journal, July 20, 1836, records : Went to. the British Museum, and found two interesting pamphlets connected with the Royal Academy, by which it appears decidedly that the Directors who were expelled from the chartered body of artists became Academicians, and that not being able to carry their exclusive intentions in the constituent body, they resorted to the scheme of an Academy of forty, securing a majority of their own way of thinking that they might enact their exclusive laws. This is indisputable from Strong’s pamphlet, 1775, and.another in the Museum, 1771, entitled Considerations of the Behaviour of the Academicians who were ex- pelled the Chartered Body of 1760—69.’ Reynolds, promised the chartered body, of which he was member not to exhibit with the expelled directors; but finding the King pro¬ tecting them, he broke his word, did exhibit, and was expelled the incorporated body. This is not known, nor did I know it till to-day. Tickled by a knighthood, he joined the Directors, and this was the origin of the Royal Academy—founded in intrigue, based on injustice, treachery, and meanness. “ Reynolds was properly,, and very .severely, punished after, but the art has suffered ever since.” . Such is Haydon’s opinion; but Sir Martin Archer Sbee, in bis evidence before Parliament, states that the artists who ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. 112 have been represented as guilty of the “ basest intrigue ” in forming the Royal Academy, were Sir Joshua Reynolds, the greatest portrait-painter that ever lived in any country, and one of the most respectable men that ever graced the annals of society; Benjamin West, the greatest historical painter since the days of Caracci; the greatest architect of the day, Sir W. Chambers; Paul Sandby, the greatest landscape- painter in water-colours of his day ; and several others. Reynolds, who had been mainly instrumental in forming the Academy, was unanimously elected president. . It is recorded that Dr. Johnson was so much delighted with his friend's elevation, that he broke through a rule of total absti¬ nence in respect to wine, which he had maintained for several years, and drank bumpers on the occasion. To the first Exhibition Sir Joshua contributed with others two pictures : 1. The Duchess of Manchester and her Son, as Diana disarming Cupid. 2. Lady Blake as Juno receiving the Cestus from Venus. In the Exhibition Catalogue, pur¬ chased by Mr. Sheepshanks, at the Strawberry Hill Sale, Horace Walpole had remarked, that, in the former of these pictures, the attitude is bad; and in the latter, very bad. THE FIRST ROYAL ACADEMY DINNER. On the 23d of April, St. George’s Day, 1771, the first Annual Dinner of the Royal Academicians was held in the great exhibition room, in old Somerset House, the walls of which were covered with Works of Art about to be exhibited. Sir Joshua Reynolds, who was the first to suggest this elegant festival, presided in his official character. Dr. Johnson and Goldsmith, of course, were present, as Professors of the Academy; and besides the Academicians, there was a large assembly of the most distinguished men of the day as guests. THE ROYAL ACADEMY AT SOMERSET HOUSE. Upon the rebuilding of Somerset House, the Royal Acade¬ micians received apartments in the western wing, and here the first Exhibition was opened, May, 1780. Sir Joshua Reynolds painted the centre of the Library ceiling with “The Theory of Painting”—a majestic female sitting on a cloud, and holding compasses, and a label inscribed “ Theory is the knowledge of what is truly nature.” When the Academy SIE JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 113 removed to the National Gallery in 1838, Sir Joshua’s paint¬ ing, and those of the other Academicians, were removed from the ceiling of Somerset House, with great care, and transferred to that of the new council-room in Trafalgar-square : here also are one of Eeynolds’s palettes, and his diploma picture, a, whole-length portrait of George III. The Lords of the Treasury paid Reynolds thirty guineas-. for this painting, as appears by the existence of the receipt in the handwriting of Sir William Chambers, and signed, by Sir Joshua. SIR JOSHUA ELECTED MAYOR OF PLYMPTON. In 1773, Reynolds paid a visit to Plympton, and was elected Mayor of the town ; when he testified his gratification at the circumstance by presenting his portrait to the Corporation, who placed it in the Town-hall. Reynolds wears his acade¬ mical dress, as Doctor of Laws. Cotton was informed that it was slightly painted, and sent off in such a hurry, that the colours being scarcely dry, the picture received some damage from the dust and dirt, which penetrated into the case. When Sir Joshua had finished his portrait for the Town- hall, he wrote to Sir William Elford, requesting him to get it hung in a good situation, which Sir William attended to by hanging it between two old pictures ; and in his reply to Reynolds he said the bad pictures on each side acted as a foil, and set it off to great advantage. Sir Jbshua was highly diverted, as these very pictures were two early ones of his own painting. Sir William Elford’s estimate of the merits of these pic¬ tures was, however, very erroneous. The first was the portrait of Captain Ourry, painted by Sir Joshua for the Corporation of Plympton, for which he only received four guineas, including the frame ! He is attended by a black boy, thought to be extremely well painted ; and this picture and its companion, Captain Edgecumbe, which Wilkie saw, in 1809, in the mayoralty-room, adjoining the Guildhall, he declared to be for composition as fine as anything Sir Joshua ever did afterwards. Sir Joshua commemorated the fact of his having been Mayor of Plympton in a Latin inscription, which he inserted on the back of his own portrait, painted for the Grand Duke’s Gallery at Florence, in these words : x 114 ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. “ Hec non oppidi natalis, dicti Plympton, Comitatn Devon prasfectus, Justiciarius, morumque censor.” After the disfranchisement of the borough of Plympton, the above portrait of Eeynolds was sold by the Corporation. Haydon says : “ It was offered to the National Gallery, and ignorantly refused : ” it was purchased by the Earl of Egre- mont for 1501., and is now at his seat, Silverton, near Exeter. There are several copies of this picture at Plympton. Sir Joshua painted a similar portrait of himself, which he gave to his pupil North cote : it was sold in 1816, for 561. 14s. Soon after Sir Joshua’s election, it happened that he was walking with a party of friends in Hampton Court gardens, when they suddenly and unexpectedly met the King, accom¬ panied by some of the Eoyal Family; and as His Majesty saw Eeynolds, it was impossible to withdraw. The King called Sir Joshua to him, and in conversation said he was informed of the office he was soon to be invested with, that of Mayor of his native town. Sir Joshua assured His Majesty of the truth of the statement, saying that it was an honour which gave him more pleasure than any other he had ever received in his life,—but, recollecting himself, he immediately added, “ except that which your Majesty was graciously pleased to confer upon me,” alluding to his knighthood. “THE STRAWBERRY GIRL.” It was Eeynolds’s opinion that no man ever produced more than half a dozen original works in his whole life-time ; and when he painted “ The Strawberry Girl,” he said, “ This is one of my originals.” This picture was painted in 1773 for the Earl of Carysfort. It was for many years in the collection of Mr. Eogers, that nonagenarian bard, who was in full man¬ hood when Eeynolds was still in health and activity; and who lived with and outlived three generations of poets and artists. After Mr. Eogers’s death, in 1855, “The Strawberry Girl ” was sold ; and as an instance of the extraordinary rise in the value of really standard productions of the English school, this work, for which the Earl of Carysfort paid 50 guineas, was, in 1856, acquired by the Marquis of Hert¬ ford for 22057, or forty-two times the original price. “Eeynolds depicted, (says Dr. Waagen,) the youthful bloom and artless manner of children with admirable effect. This it is that makes his celebrated Strawberry Girl so attractive. SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 115 With her hands simply folded, a basket on her arm, she stands in her white frock, and looks full at the spectator with her fine large eyes. The admirable impasto, the bright golden tone, clear as Rembrandt, and the dark landscape back¬ ground, have a striking effect.” Sir Joshua looked upon this as one of his best pictures. COUNT UGOLINO. In 1773, Reynolds painted Count Ugolino aud his Chil¬ dren in the Dungeon, as described by Dante in the 33rd Canto of the Inferno, against which Walpole wrote, in his catalogue of the Exhibition, “ most admirable.” This picture, (says Cotton,) was bought by the Duke of Dorset for 400 guineas, and is now at Knowle. It is generally supposed that the head of Count Ugolino was painted from White, the paviour ; but Walpole says it was a study from an old beggar- man, who had so fine a head that Sir Joshua chose him for the father, in his picture from Dante. Miss Gwatkin and Eorthcote corroborate this origin. ETorthcote says, the head was painted previous to the year 1771, and finished on a half- length canvas, in point of expression exactly as it now stands —but without any intention on the part of Sir Joshua of making it the subject of an historical composition. Being exposed to view in the picture-gallery, with the painter’s other works, it caught the eye of Goldsmith, who immediately exclaimed that it was the precise countenance and expres¬ sion of Count Ugolino, as described by Dante.* Another portrait or study, (continues Cotton,) from the head of the same old beggar, was exhibited by Sir Joshua in the following year, as a Captain of Banditti, which Walpole remarked was painted in the style of Salvator Rosa; and that there were in the same Exhibition, several pictures by different artists, from Reynolds’s beggar-man. This picture is said to have affected Captain Cooke’s Omiah so much, that he imagined it a scene of real distress, and ran to support the expiring child. The Banished Lord, in the National Gallery, and Diony¬ sius, the Areopagite, in the possession of Mr. Bentley, were likewise painted from the same model; and it seems very probable that White the paviour, and the old beggar-man, were identical. * By others, Burke is said to have suggested the picture to Sin Joshua. i 2 tmm 116 ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. REYNOLDS REBUKED BY GOLDSMITH. When the anti-infidel, Dr. Beattie, used to harangue the “ale-house in Gerard-street,” against the Yoltaire and Hume philosophy, great was the vexation of Goldsmith at the ad¬ hesion of Reynolds to the Scotch professor. This was the only grave difference that had ever been between them; and it is honourable to the poet that it should have arisen on that incident in the painter’s life which has somewhat tarnished his fame. Reynolds accompanied Beattie to Oxford ; partook with him in an honorary degree of civil law; and on his return painted his fellow doctor in Oxonian robes, with the Essay on Truth under his arm, and at his side the angel of Truth overpowering and chasing away the demons of Infidelity, Sophistry, and Falsehood; the last represented by the plump and broad-backed figure of Hume, the first by the lean and piercing face of Yoltaire. “It is unworthy of you,” said Goldsmith to Sir Joshua, and his ‘ fine rebuke will outlast the silly picture,’ “to debase so high a genius as Yoltaire before so mean a writer as Beattie. Beattie and his book will be forgotten in ten years, while Yoltaire’s fame will last for ever. Take care it does not perpetuate this picture, to the shame of such a man as you.” Reynolds persisted, not¬ withstanding the protest; but was incapable of any poor resentment of it. He produced the same year, at Goldsmith’s suggestion, his painting of Ugolino. — Forster’s Life of Gold¬ smith, pp. 666-7. GOLDSMITH’S EPITAPH ON REYNOLDS. In these last lines, on which Goldsmith is said to have been engaged when his fatal illness seized him, was the gratitude of a life. They will help to keep Reynolds im¬ mortal : Here Reynolds is laid, and, to tell you my mind, He lias not left a wiser or better behind. His pencil was striking, resistless, and grand; His manners were gentle, complying, and bland ; Still born to improve us in every part, His pencil our faces, his manners our heart. To coxcombs averse, yet most civilly steering, When they judged without skill, he was still hard of hearing : When they talked of their Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff, He shifted his trumpet, and only took snuff. By flattery unspoiled * * * The Retaliation. 117 SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 0 It is not unpleasing to think that Goldsmith’s hand shonld have been tracing that unfinished line, when illness struck the pen from it for ever. REYNOLDS AND BARRY. Sir Joshua, supreme head as he was of the Royal Academy, was doomed to vexations; hut his sagacious spirit and tran¬ quil temper brought him off triumphant. Barry differed with Reynolds in everything but his admiration of Michael Angelo. Barry had become Professor of Painting, but having neglected to deliver the stipulated lectures, Reynolds, in per¬ formance of his duty as President, inquired if they were com¬ posed. Barry, a consequential little man, rose on tiptoe, and clenching his fist, exclaimed, “If I had only in composing my lectures to produce such poor mistaken stuff as your Dis¬ courses, I should have my work done, and ready to read.” To reply suited neither the dignity nor the caution of Reynolds, and his fiery opponent very properly received a large share of public censure for his offensive conduct. MR. HONE, R.A. SATIRIZES SIR JOSHUA. In 1775, Reynolds’s pre-eminence drew upon him the envy of Nathaniel Hone, a miniature-painter, who, about this time, commenced oil-painting on a large scale. He did not succeed, and finding that Reynolds monopolised the chief patronage, Hone sent to the Exhibition a picture which he termed The Conjuror displaying his whole art of Optical Deception, in¬ tended as a satire upon Sir Joshua’s method of composing his pictures. It was rejected with becoming scorn by the Academicians, as a malicious attack upon their President. Hone then determined to have his own Exhibition, and the Conjuror was shown in a great room nearly opposite Hew Slaughter’s Coffee-house, in St. Martin’s-lane. There was introduced some indelicacy in the centre of the picture, in allusion to a slanderous report concerning Angelica Kauffman. This intention Hone denied: he, however, made out but a discreditable case; Nolle kens refused to join him against Reynolds, adding : “you’re always running your rigs against Sir Joshua; and you may say what you please, but I have never had any opinion of you ever since you painted that picture of the Conjuror , as you called it. I don’t wonder they ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. 118 . turned it out of tire Academy. And pray, what business had you to bring Angelica into it? You know it was your in¬ tention to ridicule her, whatever you, or your printed papers, or your affidavits may say: however, you may depend upon it, she won’t forget it, if Sir Joshua does.” DESIGNS FOR THE OXFORD WINDOW. In 1779, Sir Joshua sent to the Exhibition his picture of the Nativity, designed for the window of Hew College chapel, Oxford; and emblematical figures of Faith, Hope, and Charity. The grand piece of the Nativity was immediately purchased by the Duke of Butland for 1,200 guineas, the Duke saying it was a larger price than was ever paid before for a picture painted in England. It was, unfortunately, destroyed by fire at Belvoir Castle, in 1816 : it was engraved by Earlom. Two of the emblematical figures were subsequently purchased by the Earl of Hormanton, at Lady Thomond’s sale : Charity was bought for Lord Hormanton for 1,57 51.; Justice for 1,15 51. The easel of Sir Joshua was also sold on this occasion. As a proof of the rapid increase in the value of Sir Joshua’s works, Mr. Cotton states that the seven allegorical figures, and other compartments of the Oxford window, which (it is said) had been offered to a nobleman for 300 1., were sold, after Eeynolds’s death, for upwards of 12,0007 Walpole says: “Jarvis’s Window, from Sir Joslrua’s Nativity, is glorious. The room being darkened and the sun shining through the transparencies, realised the illumination that is supposed to be diffused from the glory, and has a magic effect.” But, at Oxford, Walpole states that the effect was just the reverse of the glorious appearance it made in the dark chambers in Pall Mall. A gain he says of this window : “ the old and the new are mismatched as an orange and a lemon, and destroy each other; nor is there room enough to retire back, and see half of the new ; and Sir Joshua s washy ‘ Virtues ’ make the £ Nativity ’ a dark spot from the darkness of the Shepherds, which happened, as I knew it would, from most of Jarvis s colours not being transparent.” REYNOLDS’S PORTRAIT OF SHERIDAN. This fine portrait was engraved, in 1791, by John Hall, who was then living at Ho. 83, in Berwick-street, Sobo. Baimbach, Hall’s pupil, relates tbat Sberidan came twice or thr ice during tbe engraving; “and,” says Eaimbacb, “my 119 SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. memory dwells with pleasure to this hour on the recollection of his having said a few kindly and encouraging words to me when a hoy, drawing at the time in the study. I was, how¬ ever, most struck with what seemed to me, in such a man, an undue and unbecoming anxiety about his good looks in the portrait to be executed. The efflorescence in his face had been indicated by Sir Joshua in the picture, not, it may be presumed,