CHAPTER I.
HOGARTH'S OWN ACCOUNT OF HIS BIRTH AND EARLY EDUCATION. REASONS FOR HIS BEING APPRENTICED TO A SILVER-PLATE ENGRAVER; WITH WHICH EMPLOYMENT BECOMING DISGUSTED, HE COMMENCES AN ENGRAVER ON COPPER. METHOD OF STUDY. THE FATE OF THE FIRST PRINT HE PUBLISHED, ETC.
"As many sets of my works have been lately sent to foreign countries, and others sold to persons who, from their ignorance of the particular circumstances at which I aimed, have mistaken their meaning and tendency, I have been told that a short account of such parts as are obscure, or have been most liable to misconstruction, in those prints that are not noticed in Mr. Rouquet's book,[4] would be highly acceptable.
"I am further told, that the public have sometimes expressed a curiosity to know what were the motives by which the author was induced to make choice of subjects so different from those of other painters, and what were his modes of study in a walk which had not been trode by any other man. These reasons will, I hope, be deemed a sufficient apology for my attempting the following brief history; in which must necessarily be introduced my opinion of the present state of the arts, and conduct of contemporary artists, and a vindication of myself and my productions from the aspersions which they have so liberally bestowed upon each.
"With respect to my life,—to begin sufficiently early,—I was born in the city of London, on the 10th day of November 1697, and baptized the 28th of the same month. My father's pen, like that of many other authors, did not enable him 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.[5] In the former I soon found that blockheads with better memories could much 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 situation of men of classical education. I saw the difficulties under which my father laboured, and 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,[6] the compiling of which had been a work of some years. It was deposited in confidence in the hands of a certain printer; and during the time it was left, letters of approbation were received from the greatest scholars in England, Scotland, and Ireland. But these flattering testimonies from his acquaintance (who, as appears from their letters which I have still by me, were of the first class) produced no profit to the author.[7] It was therefore very conformable to my own wishes that I was taken from school and served a long apprenticeship to a silver-plate engraver.
"I soon found this business in every respect too limited. The paintings of St. Paul's Cathedral and Greenwich Hospital,[8] 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. To attain this it was necessary that I should learn to draw objects something like nature instead of the monsters of heraldry; and the common methods of study were much too tedious for one who loved his pleasure and came so late to it, for the time necessary to learn in the usual mode would leave me none to spare for the ordinary enjoyments of life. This led me to considering whether a shorter road than that usually travelled was not to be found. The early part of my life had been employed in a business rather detrimental than advantageous to those branches of the art which I wished to pursue, and have since professed. I had learned by practice to copy with tolerable exactness in the usual way, but it occurred to me that there were many disadvantages attending this method of study, as having faulty originals, etc.; and even when the pictures or prints to be imitated were by the best masters, it was little more than pouring water out of one vessel into another. Drawing in an academy, though it should be after the life, will not make the student an artist; for as the eye is often taken from the original to draw a bit at a time, it is possible he may know no more of what he has been copying when his work is finished than he did before it was begun.
"There may be, and I believe are, some who, like the engrossers of deeds, copy every line without remembering a word; and if the deed should be in law Latin or old French, probably without understanding a word of their original,—happy is it for them, for to retain would be indeed dreadful.
"A dull transcriber who, in copying Milton's Paradise Lost, hath not omitted a line, has almost as much right to be compared to Milton as an exact copier of a fine picture by Rubens hath to be compared to Rubens. In both cases the hand is employed about minute parts, but the mind scarcely ever embraces the whole. Besides this, there is an essential difference between the man who transcribes the deed and he who copies the figure; for though what is written may be line for line the same with the original, it is not probable that this will often be the case with the copied figure: frequently far from it. Yet the performer will be much more likely to retain a recollection of his own imperfect work than of the original from which he took it.
"More reasons, not necessary to enumerate, struck me as strong objections to this practice, and led me to wish that I could find the shorter path; fix forms and characters in my mind, and, instead of copying the lines, try to read the language, and, if possible, find the grammar of the art, by bringing into one focus the various observations I had made, and then trying by my power on the canvas how far my plan enabled me to combine and apply them to practice.
"For this purpose I considered what various ways, and to what different purposes, the memory might be applied, and fell upon one which I found most suitable to my situation and idle disposition.
"Laying it down first as an axiom, that he who could by any means acquire and retain in his memory perfect ideas of the subjects he meant to draw, would have as clear a knowledge of the figure as a man who can write freely hath of the twenty-four letters of the alphabet and their infinite combinations (each of these being composed of lines), and would consequently be an accurate designer.
"This I thought my only chance for eminence, as I found that the beauty and delicacy of the stroke in engraving was not to be learnt without much practice, and demanded a larger portion of patience than I felt myself disposed to exercise. Added to this, I saw little probability of acquiring the full command of the graver in a sufficient degree to distinguish myself in that walk; nor was I, at twenty years of age, much disposed to enter on so barren and unprofitable a study as that of merely making 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; 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. Thus, with all the drawbacks which resulted from the circumstances I have mentioned, I had one material advantage over my competitors, viz. the early habit I thus acquired of retaining in my mind's eye, without coldly copying it on the spot, whatever I intended to imitate.[9] Sometimes, but too seldom, I took the life for correcting the parts I had not perfectly enough remembered, and then I transferred them to my compositions.
"My pleasures and my studies thus going hand in hand, the most striking objects that presented themselves, either comic or tragic, made the strongest impression on my mind; but had not I sedulously practised what I had thus acquired, I should very soon have lost the power of performing it.
"Instead of burdening the memory with musty rules, or tiring the eyes with copying dry and damaged pictures, I have ever found studying from nature the shortest and safest way of attaining knowledge in my art.[10] By adopting this method I found a redundancy of matter continually occurring. A choice of composition was the next thing to be considered, and my constitutional idleness[11] naturally led me to the use of such materials as I had previously collected; and to this I was further induced by thinking that, if properly combined, they might be made the most useful to society, in painting, although similar subjects had often failed in writing and preaching.
"To return to my narrative: the instant I became master of my own time, I determined to qualify myself for engraving on copper. In this I readily got employment; and frontispieces to books, such as prints to Hudibras, in twelves, etc., soon brought me into the way. But the tribe of booksellers remained as my father had left them when he died about five years before this time,[12] 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 destructive 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."
The print here alluded to, I apprehend to be that now entitled the "Small Masquerade Ticket," or "Burlington Gate," published in 1724, in which the follies of the town are very severely satirized by the representation of multitudes, properly habited, crowding to the masquerade,[13] opera, pantomime of Doctor Faustus, etc., while the works of our greatest dramatic writers are trundled through the streets in a wheel-barrow, and cried as waste paper for shops.
As a further illustration of the taste of the times, the artist has given a view of Burlington Gate, with a figure, I believe, intended to represent the then fashionable artist, William Kent, on the summit, brandishing his palette and pencils, and placed in a more elevated situation than either Michael Angelo or Raphael, who, seated beneath, become the two supporters to this favourite of Lord Burlington.
To this popular artist, architect, and improver of gardens, Hogarth seems to have had an early dislike, founded in some degree on his being, as he really was, a most contemptible painter; and probably heightened by his ranking higher, with those who led the fashion of the day, than that very superior artist, Sir James Thornhill.
Hogarth the year following published his
COPY OF KENT'S ALTAR-PIECE,[14]
KENT'S ALTAR-PIECE
which, combined with the inscription engraved beneath, is a very bitter satire on the painter; though it must be acknowledged that the original, which has been for many years in the vestry-room of St. Clement Danes, amply justifies the ridicule.
This picture produced a small tract, with the following title:—
"A letter from a parishioner of St. Clement Danes, to Edmund (Gibson), Lord Bishop of London, occasioned by his Lordship's causing the picture over the altar to be taken down, with some observations on the use and abuse of church paintings in general, and of that picture in particular."
In this tract, after some compliments to the prelate, the writer works himself into a violent rage at the introduction of this piece of popish foppery, and asks some questions which in a degree elucidate part of the inscription under Hogarth's copy:—
"To what end or purpose was it put there, but to affront our most gracious sovereign, by placing at our very altar the known resemblance of a person who is the wife of his utter enemy, and pensioner to the whore of Babylon?
"When I say the known resemblance, I speak not only according to my own knowledge, but appeal to all mankind who have seen the Princess Sobieski, or any picture or resemblance of her, if the picture of that angel in the white garment and blue mantle, which is there supposed to be beating time to the music, is not directly a great likeness of that princess.
"Whether it was done by chance or on purpose, I shall not determine; but be it which it will, it has given great offence, and your Lordship has acted the part of a wise and good prelate to order its removal."
It was probably during the time of Hogarth's apprenticeship that he engraved the annexed print, entitled
THE RAPE OF THE LOCK.
THE RAPE OF THE LOCK.
I by no means think, as Mr. Nichols asserts, that this is one of the poorest of Hogarth's performances; for though slight, and not intended to be impressed on paper, the air of the figures is easy, and the faces, especially those of Sir Plume and the heroine of the story, extremely characteristic. It is said to have been engraven on the lid of a snuff-box for some gentleman characterized in Pope's admirable mock-heroic poem, probably Lord Petre, who is here represented as holding the lock of hair in his left 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, who was the only one of the party that took the thing serious. He was angry that the poet should make him talk nothing but nonsense; and, in truth (as Mr. Warburton adds), one could not well blame him.
As this little story was intended to be viewed on gold, the figures in the copy are not reversed, but left as they were originally engraven on the box; from which I believe there are only three impressions extant, one of which was sold by Greenwood at Mr. Gulston's sale, on the 7th of February 1786, for £33.
The following account of the persons for whom Hogarth painted several of his early pictures is copied from his own handwriting, and may sometimes be useful in tracing the pedigree of a portrait.
By this list, it appears that the two pictures of "Before and After" were painted for a Mr. Thomson; but as it is not probable that Hogarth delineated this subject twice, I think that these two pictures were the property of the late Lord Besborough. They were sold on his Lordship's demise, in February 1801, at Christie's rooms.
"Account taken, January 1, 1731, of all the pictures that remain unfinished.—Half payment received.
A family piece, consisting of four figures, for Mr. Rich, 1728.
An assembly of twenty-five figures, for Lord Castlemain, August 28, 1729.
Family of four figures; Mr. Wood, 1728.
A conversation of six figures; Mr. Cock, Nov. 1728.
A family of five figures; Mr. Jones, March 1730.
The Committee of the House of Commons, for Sir Archibald Grant, Nov. 5, 1729.
The Beggar's Opera; ditto.
Single figure; Mr. Kirkham, April 18, 1730.
Family of nine; Mr. Vernon, Feb. 27, 1730.
Another of two; Mr. Cooper.
Another of five; Duke of Montague.
Two little pictures; ditto.
Single figure; Sir Robert Pye, Nov. 18, 1730.
Two little pictures, called "Before and After," for Mr. Thomson, Dec. 7, 1730.
A head, for Mr. Sarmond, Jan. 12, 1730-31.
Pictures bespoke for the present year 1731."
With this his memorandum ends; and I regret that he has not recorded the prices he received for the pictures. Mr. Nichols conjectures that they were originally very low; he is most probably right with respect to those that were painted in the early part of Hogarth's life. But let it be recollected that for the portrait of Garrick in Richard III. he received two hundred pounds, which, as the artist himself remarks, was a more liberal remuneration than had been paid to any contemporary painter. When my late friend Mr. Gainsborough began to paint portraits at Bath (at a period when much higher prices were paid), his general rule was five guineas for a three-quarters portrait.
Below is inserted a copy from one of Hogarth's early engravings, the arms of the Duchess of Kendal, mistress to George I., probably done on a piece of plate at the time he was Gamble's apprentice. The original, of the same size, is in the Editor's possession. It is drawn in a correct and spirited style; and considering the age of the artist, and the purpose for which it was engraven, not demanding much attention or exertion, gave some promise of the excellence which he afterwards attained.
In this point of view, to an admirer of Hogarth it becomes in some degree interesting, which will, I hope, plead my apology for the insertion of this solitary specimen of his boyish heraldry. On no other ground should so insignificant a production as a coat of arms have found a place in this volume.
THE KENDAL ARMS.