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.R.S., relates the following incident, 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 bolt absurdly, one way or another. Handel is a giant in music; Greene only a light Florimel kind of composer." "Ay," said Hogarth's informant, "but at the same time Mr. Freke declared you were as good a portrait-painter as Vandyck." "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 Redcliffe, 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 hard 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. POETICAL TRIBUTES TO HOGARTH. While Hogarth was engaged as a portrait-painter, he was not without public and poetic recognition. A certain Mr. Robinson, of Kendal, published in 1738 a series of lines in his praise appended with other poems to his play "The Intriguing Milliners." They begin as follows: "Ingenious Hogarth all the Town 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 " Hobbinol, or Rural Games," to Hogarth, as “the greatest master in the burlesque way." Yet Fielding, 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 affections of men on canvas. It hath been thought a vast commendation of a painter to say his figures seem to breathe; but surely it is a much greater and nobler applause that they appear to think." Vinney Bourne, the classical usher of Westminster school, and the elegant Latin poet, addressed some gratulatory lines "Ad Gulielmum Hogarth.' * Hogarth painted a portrait of a celebrated Westminster, Bishop Hooper, whose future success Dr. Busby foretold to "this boy-the HOGARTH PAINTED BY HIMSELF. Hogarth's portraits of himself are very clever, and excellently 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, observation, 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 firstnamed of these two portraits, there is drawn a waving line with the words "Line of Beauty and Grace,"—the hieroglyphic 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, daubing 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 Hogarth'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,—a -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. hangs in the Hall of the School. The picture 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. 6 "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 3007. 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, inscribed Colour to blacken fair characters;' he is treading on the cap of liberty with his cloven foot, and an inscription says '3001. per annum for distorting features.' "Several other prints, equally bitter against him, besides a number of caricatures against the Government, under the fictitious 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, 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 entertainer, a burlesque on that scene in Julius Caesar 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. No sooner had Hogarth begun to reap fame and profit by engraving his works than needy artists and worthless printsellers 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 1735, 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. |