From “Lives of the Painters.”
IT was Hogarth’s custom to sketch out on the spot any remarkable face which struck him, and of which he wished to preserve an accurate remembrance. He was once observed in the Bedford coffeehouse drawing something with a pencil on the nail of his left thumb,—he held it up to a friend who accompanied him,—it was the face, and a very singular one, of a person in the same room: the likeness was excellent. He had dined with some friends at a tavern, and as he threw his cloak about him to be gone he observed his friend Ben Read sound asleep, and presenting a most ridiculous physiognomy Hogarth eyed him for a moment, and saying softly. “Heavens, what a character!” called for pen and ink, and drew his portrait without sitting down:—a curious and clever likeness, and still existing.
It was in a temporary summer residence at Isleworth that he painted the “Rake’s Progress.” The crowd of visitors to his study was immense. He often asked them if they knew for whom one or another figure in the picture was designed, and when they guessed wrong he set them right. It was generally believed that the heads were chiefly portraits of low characters well known in town. In the “Miser’s Feast” he introduced Sir Isaac Shard, a person proverbially avaricious; his son, a young man of spirit, heard of this, and calling at the painter’s requested to see the picture. The young man asked the servant whether that old figure was intended for any particular person, who answered it was thought to be very like one Sir Isaac Shard, whereupon he drew his sword and slashed the canvas. Hogarth heard the bustle, and was very angry. Young Shard said: “You have taken an unwarrantable license; I am the injured party’s son, and ready to defend my conduct at law.” He went away, and was never afterwards molested.
With a dissatisfied sitter the artist was more fortunate. A nobleman of ungainly looks and a little deformed sat for his picture; Hogarth made a faithful likeness according to the receipt of Oliver Cromwell; the peer was offended with this want of courtesy in a man by profession a flatterer, and refused to pay for the picture, or to take it home. Hogarth was nettled, and informed his lordship that unless he sent for it within three days he should dispose of it, with the addition of a tail, to Hare the wild-beast man. The picture was instantly paid for, removed, and destroyed. A similar story is related of Sir Peter Lely.
Concerning Hogarth’s vanity, Mr. Belchior, a surgeon of some note, told the following story to Nichols, whose ear was a little too open to anything that confirmed Steevens’s theory of the artist’s ignorance and want of delicacy: “Hogarth, being at dinner with Dr. Cheseldon and some other company, was informed that John Freke, surgeon of St. Bartholomew’s hospital, had asserted in Dick’s coffeehouse that Greene was as eminent in composition as Handel. ‘That fellow, Freke,’ cried 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.’ ‘Aye, but,’ said the other, ‘Freke declared you were as good a portrait painter as Vandyke.’ ‘There he was in the right,’ quoth Hogarth; ‘and so I am, give me but my time and let me choose my subject.’”
With Dr. Hoadley, who corrected the manuscript of the “Analysis of Beauty” for the press, Hogarth was on such friendly terms that he was admitted into one of the private theatrical exhibitions which the doctor loved, and was appointed to perform, along with Garrick and his entertainer, a parody on that scene in “Julius Cæsar” where the ghost appears to Brutus. Hogarth personated the spectre; but so unretentive (we are told) was his memory, that though the speech consisted of only two lines he was unable to get them by heart, and his facetious associates wrote them on an illuminated lantern that he might read them when he came upon the stage. Such is the way in which anecdotes are manufactured, and conclusions of absence or imbecility drawn. The speech of the ghost written on the paper lantern formed part of the humor of the burlesque. Men, dull in comprehending the eccentricities of genius, set down what passes their own understanding to the account of the other’s stupidity.
His thoughts were so much employed on scenes which he had just witnessed, or on works which he contemplated, that he sometimes had neither eyes nor ears for anything else; this has subjected him to the charge of utter absence of mind. “At table,” says Nichols, “he would sometimes turn his chair round as if he had finished eating, and as suddenly would re-turn it and fall to his meal again.” According to this writer—soon after our artist set up his carriage, he went to visit Beckford, who was then Lord Mayor; the day became stormy during the interview, and when Hogarth took his leave, he went out at a wrong door—forgot that he had a carriage—could not find a hackney coach, and came home wet to the skin, to the astonishment of his wife. This is a good story—and it may be true. When Fonthill, the residence of Beckford, was burnt, five out of six of the paintings of “The Harlot’s Progress” were unfortunately consumed. The whole series of the “Rake’s Progress” escaped into the safe keeping of John Soane, the architect, together with “The Four Election Pictures.” For the former he gave 570 guineas—for the latter £1,738.
Accompanying the prints of Hogarth’s favorite works, appeared explanations in verse, sometimes with the names of the authors, but oftener without, and all alike distinguished by weakness and want of that graphic accuracy which marked the engravings. London was at that time infested with swarms of wandering verse-makers, who wrote rhymes on occasions of public mourning or private distress, and who supplied printsellers with jingling commendations of the works which they published. They wrote epigrams for half a crown each—a fair price for four wretched lines. From such men Hogarth is supposed to have obtained many of the verses which are attached to his prints. But less charitable persons have ascribed them all to himself.
Heidegger, a Swiss, and the Thersites of his day, had a face beyond the reach of caricatura. His portrait by Hogarth is nature without addition or exaggeration, and it appears in all its hideousness—
| “Something between a Heidegger and owl”— |
Hogarth was fond of making experiments in his profession. He resolved to finish the engraving of the first print of the “Election,” without taking a proof, to ascertain the success of his labors. He had nearly spoiled the plate, and was so affected with the misadventure that he exclaimed, “I am ruined.” He soon, however, proceeded to repair the damage which his haste or obstinacy had caused, and with such good fortune that the print in question is one of the clearest and cleverest of all his productions.
“When Barry, the painter,” says Smith, “was asked if he had ever seen Hogarth, ‘Yes—once,’ he replied, ‘I was walking with Joe Nollekens through Cranbourne Alley, when he exclaimed, “There! there’s Hogarth.”’ ‘What,’ said I, ‘that little man in a sky-blue coat?’ 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 quarreling boys on the back, and looking steadfastly at the expression in the coward’s face, cried: ‘Damn him, if I would take it of him—at him again.’”
The character of William Hogarth as a man is to be sought for in his conduct, and in the opinions of his more dispassionate contemporaries; his character as an artist is to be gathered from numerous works, at once original and unrivaled. His fame has flown far and wide; his skill as an engraver spread his reputation as a painter; and all who love the dramatic representation of actual life—all who have hearts to be gladdened by humor—all who are pleased with judicious and well-directed satire—all who are charmed with the ludicrous looks of popular folly—and all who can be moved with the pathos of human suffering—are admirers of Hogarth. That his works are unlike those of other men is his merit, not his fault. He belonged to no school of art; he was the product of no academy; no man living or dead had any share in forming his mind, or in rendering his hand skillful. He was the spontaneous offspring of the graphic spirit of his country, as native to the art of England as independence is, and he may be fairly called, in his own walk, the firstborn of her spirit.
