so much to the gratification of Lady but the pictures themselves will by no Thornhill, that she advised her daughter means suit the advanced taste of our to place it one morning in Thornhill's own day. Hogarth himself writes of them dining room. Mrs. Hogarth did so, the very complacently, but no man is a ruse succeeded. "Very well! very well, judge of his own works. Milton preindeed," cried Sir James, "the man who ferred "Paradise Regained" to the can do these, does not need a portion greater and earlier poem, and the fact with a daughter." There, was perhaps, of Hogarth frequently recurring to the a touch of avarice in this speech, but classical style, leaves us but little space they were soon afterwards completely to doubt but that he, in his own opinion, reconciled, and Sir James soon after- fancied that he could equal the old wards became generous to his son-in- masters; for it must be recollected that law and daughter. his genius was of a most self-confident nature. But his keen sense of character and the very power which made him what he was prevented this. "He was ambitious," writes Horace Walpole, "of distinguishing himself as a painter of History, but the burlesque turn of his mind mixed itself with the most serious subjects. In his 'Danaë,' the old nurse tries a coin of the golden shower with her teeth; in the Pool of Bethesda' the servant of a rich ulcerated lady beats back a poor man who has sought the same celestial remedy."

The "Harlot's Progress" was commenced in 1731, and appeared in a series of six plates in 1734. The public received it with general approbation, and the money which it produced relieved Hogarth from any fear of troubling his father-in-law. No one can look upon the plates without being struck with their boldness, force, and originality. They are full of truth, and are very far indeed from being overloaded or caricatures. Yet in them many living characters are severely satirised. Colonel Chartres, of whom Pope had written that a good man might wonder that

"Some old temple nodding to its fall did not

"

"For Chartres' head reserve the hanging wall."

Parson Ford, Kate Hackabout, and Mother Needham have therein their portraits preserved. The success of this series of plates was so great, that the proceeds lifted the painter from the slough of mean condition in which he was, till then, plunged. He took a house for a summer residence in Lambeth Walk, and the vine which he is said to have planted is still shown there. About this time, he had the temerity to attempt subjects which were far, very far out of his style: on the great staircase of Bartholomew's Hospital, he painted two Scripture stories, the "Pool of Bethesda," and the "Good Samaritan," with figures seven feet high. "These," he writes in some MS. notes left by him, "I presented to the charity, and thought they might serve as a specimen to show, that were there any inclination in England for encouraging historical pictures, such a first essay might prove the painting of them more easily attainable than is generally imagined." An inscription which adjoins these pictures tells us they were painted and presented by the artist in 1736;

The first of these incidents is a step beyond truth, and although very ludicrous is without thought. Surely when we believe the shower to be divine, we would not test the gold; the second contains a severe satire upon humanity, a satire no less true, than it is severe. Hogarth had by the "Harlot's Progress" won the good will of those whose opinion was worth winning. Somerville dedicated a work upon rural sports to him, and Fielding continually reverts to him in terms of the highest praise, both in his paper of the "Covent Gar den Journal" which he then edited, and in the admirable novel of "Tom Jones."

In 1734, he lost his father-in-law, Sir James Thornhill, to whom he had been ever kind and attentive, and whom he appears really to have looked to with admiration. Hogarth wrote the obituary of Sir James in the "Gentleman's Magazine." In the following year he lost his mother, who lived near Cecil Court in the Strand. Mrs. Hogarth had lived to see her son famous, he had always been to her tender and respectful, and had aided her in every way he could, this aid was now to be extended to his sisters who were both unmarried, and who were left with little to support them, but luckily in trade in a readymade clothes-shop in Little Britain.

The "Harlot's Progress" had been so successful, that the next work of the

seized by the bailiffs, and owes his temporary liberty to the goodness of the very woman whom he had betrayed and cast off, and at last comes the fruit of all this riotous living, this "blazing out of life," as Johnson in his "Life of Rochester," has forcibly called it. The prodigal has no father or home to return to. His friends, all save one, have left him, and he dies mad in Bedlam, a victim to his own vice, extravagance and folly.

painter appears to have been intended as a pendant to it. The second production by far surpassed the first. It was the "Rake's Progress," a work so notorious and admired, that grave divines preached upon its lessons from the pulpit; whilst at the same time the stage, for once, in those days, coming to the aid of morality, produced the story of dissipation and guilt, and its concomitant and wholesome moral, with all the power of scenic effect, and living tableaux to startle the eyes and wring The fame of the painter now attracted the hearts of many of the audience, certain pirates of prints, which kind of who were engaged in that same wild property was in those days unprotected race, which ends in the prison or the by copyright. The whole of the eight grave. Fan-mounts, printed in red ink prints of the "Rake's Progress" were were also sold, bearing small copies pirated by Boitard, and printed on one of the subjects, three on one side and large sheet, and issued a whole fortthree on the other, so that the grave night before the originals appeared. and satiric touches of the painter, per- To do this, Boitard must have had some meated the whole mass of society, from understanding with the printer who the duchess who read its lesson upon took proofs of Hogarth's engravings, her gilt and feathered fan, to the fre- and must have obtained surreptitiously quenter of the sixpenny gallery, who the very proofs, which were worked off wept perhaps at its pathos, in Drury the artist's plates. The whole affair reLane Theatre. Hogarth had indeed veals to us a system of rascality which read a great moral lesson; he was in certainly does not place the honesty of this no caricaturist; there is no false the "good old times" in a very favoursympathy, no overloading in the pic-able light. The eight plates of the tures which he has given us. In the " Rake's Progress" were not, on the first series, a young and innocent woman coming to town, is beguiled by one of the basest of her own sex, and led through six scenes of false and fleeting splendour and guilt, to punishment and misery, finally to end her life amidst beings as depraved and as wretched as herself. In the second series of engravings, the heir of a sordid old miser steps suddenly from a state of abject dependence upon another's will, to abundant wealth. At the moment in which fortune lavishes her favours upon him, he proves his baseness by deserting a poor creature whom he had seduced, and who before his accession to wealth, he had promised to make his wife. In the next scene we find him already on the high road to ruin, sharpers, gamblers, and bullies surround the young man and hurry him to dissipation. The foreign master of dancing, and foreign singer share with English parasites his stupid admiration, and the bully and fighting man show that others are ready to defend his cowardice whilst they share his gold. But these scenes are soon followed by retribution: whilst going in a gay dress to court, the Rake is

whole, so favourably received as their predecessors had been, and this, coupled with the pirating, stirred on Hogarth very naturally, to endeavour to turn the whole of the profits to himself. To do this he applied to parliament, and obtained an act, "for recognising a legal copyright in designs and engravings, and for restraining copies of such works from being made without the consent of the owners." This was in 1735. To commemorate this act, the artist drew and etched an allegorical plate, wherein a royal crown sheds rays upon bishops' mitres and lords' coronets, upon the mace, the speaker's hat, and the great seal; by which loyal symbols he typified the united wisdom of "lords and commons assembled," and the gracious sovereign, under whom they guided the nation. Underneath the subject are words no less loyal than the plate itself, whereby Hogarth, not faintly but strongly, lauds the Imperial Parlia ment for the measure which they had taken to secure him his rights.

In the next year, that is in 1736, the industrious artist again amused the town with a plate which, though full of most cutting and truthful satire, yet

Modern artists have realized, over and over again, more money for a single picture, than Hogarth obtained for the whole. His wit and humour, which were ever ready to flow, had induced him to issue, in addition to the conditions, a strange ticket to this sale, which was no less than "the Battle of the Pictures," an idea probably caught from Swift's "Battle of the Books," which Sir William Temple's essay had given rise to. The card is a satire on the passion for old masters, which was then prevalent. Hundreds of copies of the Bull and Europa, of Apollo and Marsyas, and of St. Andrew on the Cross, are ranked in order; and from these hostile ranks certain pictures advance and charge literally through pictures of Hogarth, which are placed in a row on the ground. All this, although some critics profess to be puzzled at it, seems to us to be merely typical of the injury which a passion for second-rate copies of the old masters was doing the native artist.

Verges race, is capitally placed before On the 25th of January, 1743, he us. The plates will well repay an atten- offered for sale the six paintings of the tive scrutiny. The first pair of pictures" Harlot's Progress," the eight paintings were sold to the Duke of Ancaster for of the "Rake's Progress," and five other seventy-five guineas, and Sir William pictures, the "Strolling Players," and the Heathcote bought the remaining pair "Four Times of the Day." The painter, for forty-six. who seldom did anything like other TheStrolling Players," a very cele- men, thought it incumbent upon him to brated engraving, representing a com- issue a kind of catalogue or bill, conpany of actors in a barn, dressing for taining strange conditions of sale, and the representation of a comedy, formed the public paid little attention to the the next publication; and the contrast sale at all. The paintings of the two between the dramatis persona, who" Progresses" sold at fourteen guineas, are all of the first order of heathen and twenty-two guineas each picture; deities, the Dii majorum gentium, and the Rake's fetching the largest price. their representatives in the barn, is both ludicrous and satirical. Juno is sitting on an old wheelbarrow, which will serve, no doubt, as a triumphal car. Night, dressed in a spangled robe, is mending her stocking; and the Tragic Muse is cutting a cat's tail to draw a little real blood, no doubt for theatrical purposes. On a Grecian altar from which one of the attendants of Pluto has just lifted a pot of beer, is a loaf of bread, and a tobacco-pipe with smoke issuing from it. Apollo and Cupid are endeavouring to reach down a pair of stockings, which are hung upon a cloud to dry, but Cupid's wings are of no avail, and his godship is obliged to have recourse to a ladder; but the most startling is the cup-bearer of Olympus, Ganymede, who is about to cure a raging tooth" by a glass of gin. An excellent critic has well remarked, "that there is positively no end to the drollery. Into the darkest nook the artist has put meaning, and there is instruction or sarcasm in all that he has introduced!"* This wonderful picture was sold to Francis Beckford, Esq. for £27 6s. Od. The gentleman thought the price too much, and the artist returned him the money, and resold the painting to one who had more judgment or more generosity, for the same sum. It must be a source of wonder that with the name and fame which his prints brought him, that Hogarth got paid so little, so very little, for his paintings, but we must recollect that it was the fashion then, and even now until very lately, to declare that he was "no painter;" and the artist supported himself by the sale of his prints. He was soon to find at how little his pictures, now so valuable, were reckoned.

*The British Painters, by Allan Cunningham.

Chagrined at the result of his sale, Hogarth returned to his studio to work, and in April, 1743, advertised the series which, perhaps, reflects most honour upon him, and which from being the property of the nation, makes his name the most known. This was the celebrated "Marriage à la mode," which was published by subscription, the plates being engraved by first-rate Parisian artists, with the exception of the heads, which, in order that they might bear the very touch of the painter, were engraved by himself.

The

Of this work it is difficult to speak in sufficient terms of admiration. grouping, the drawing, and the acces sories, are alike excellent, and the tale which they tell is essentially dramatic. A pompous peer, who, by extrava

into the National Gallery by the bequest of Mr. Angerstein.

The pride of Hogarth was deeply wounded, nor can we wonder at it, at this neglect. He knew how the foreign singer and dancer were patronised, whilst he was neglected; and he revenged himself by a little bit of legiti mate caricature upon these puppets of fashion. Two little figures, dancing and twirling about, exhibit the gracefulness and decency of the favourite amusements of the aristocracy.

gance and pride in building and adorn- in the year 1797 for £1381. They came ing his estate, has impoverished himself, finds it necessary to recruit the income which will devolve upon his son, the viscount Squanderfelt, by marrying him to the daughter of a rich and sordid goldsmith. The bride and father are equally despised by the proud and careless young nobleman, and misery is the result. The bridegroom runs a career of vice and extravagance, and neglects his wife for the company of gamblers and courtezans. The lady, stung by this neglect, listens to the promptings of a designing lawyer, who after leading her to those empty and vicious frivolities of the higher classes, which were then so much frequented, the faro-table and the masquerade, completes his villany by seduction. In the very midst of their guilt, the enraged husband bursts in upon them, and after a few passes, receives a mortal thrust from the sword of his wife's seducer. Nothing can be more striking or vivid than this scene; the kneeling and horror-stricken wife, the dying man whose knees are giving way with the weakness of death, the open window through which the murderer is escaping, and the terrified valet approaching with the Watch, all tell a tale of guilt and horror which must affect the most hardened. The concluding scene is soon told, the wife dies at the house of her sordid father, who is removing her wedding-ring. She has perished by her own hand, as the empty vial testifies, and at her feet lies the last dying speech | and confession of her seducer and her husband's murderer. These prints at once became popular. A drama was founded upon them, and Dr. Shebbeare interwove the scenes in a novel called the" Marriage Act;" every author since that time has, almost without exception, praised and admired them.

Soon after the publication of the prints, Hogarth advertised the original pictures for sale, with a bill almost as quaint as the first. But the sale was to be another failure. Mr. Lane, who purchased them, was the only one present on the day, and these six noble pictures, in frames worth four guineas each, only realised, exclusive of the frames, nineteen pounds six shillings. They are now the property of the nation, and the nation is justly proud of them. Colonel Cawthorne, who inherited them from Mr. Lane, sold them

Another work, which was intended to teach the young, and which has been much admired by the staid citizens of London, next appeared by our artist. This was Industry and Idleness," wherein two apprentices to the same master embrace different courses, and exemplify in their different endings the wisdom and the folly of the choice. The one who is industrious marries his master's daughter, and becomes Lord Mayor. The other, to use Hogarth's own words, "by giving way to idleness naturally falls into poverty, and ends fatally." The moral lesson was welcomed by the citizens of London, who hung them in the halls of their companies, for a special warning to those who were bound 'prentice. But it seems to us that the moral is imperfect: the race is not always to the strong; not every honest or industrious apprentice can hope to be so rewarded, or even after much hard work realize a competence. In this world the best are often severely tried, and in confining his rewards and punishments to mere mundane means the moralist has failed.

That old Jacobite, Simon Frazer Lord Lovat, who lived in the rudest state of regal barbarity in the Highlands, was rather foolishly betrayed into open rebellion, and expiated his treason upon Tower Hill. Hogarth met him on his way, at St. Albans, and took his likeness. A printseller offered the artist, so popular was the rebel chief, the weight of the plate in gold. The impressions could not be taken off fast enough, although the rolling press worked at them, without intermission. The plate produced, it is said, about twelve pounds a day for several weeks.

The war, which had been of some duration betwixt England and France, was concluded by a treaty at Aix-laChapelle, and Hogarth was amongst