HARLOT'S PROGRESS.
Plate II.—The commentators on Hogarth do not seem to have assigned a satisfactory reason for the particular subjects of the two paintings which ornament the Harlot's apartment in this plate, viz. "David dancing before the Ark," and "Jonah sitting under a Gourd." One supposes them merely intended to convey a ridicule on the old masters, or placed here to satirize the impropriety of adorning rooms with inappropriate subjects. Another, as stories selected at random, but having a reference to the nation of the Harlot's Jew keeper. But as Hogarth's incidents have all a meaning, a better reason must be sought for. They undoubtedly conceal a moral applicable to the two principal figures in the print. David's known breach of chastity in the affair of Uriah's wife, and "uncovering himself" when dancing before the ark, "in the eyes of the handmaids of his servants, as one of the vain fellows shamelessly uncovereth himself," which his wife charges him with on that occasion, evidently typify the backsliding Jew; while Jonah sitting under the shelter of his gourd, which sprang up in the night, and which the worm destroyed in the morning, as ingeniously points out the girl's upstart grandeur, and the frail nature of her protection, which even now a worm (her infidelity to her keeper) is rapidly undermining.
Plate V.—Dr. Misaubin, or Mizenbank as Trusler calls him (the lean doctor in this print), was a notorious foreign quack of the day, whose ignorant consequence Fielding thus laughably exposes in one of his introductory chapters in Tom Jones:—"The learned Dr. Misaubin used to say, that the proper direction to him was, 'To Dr. Misaubin, in the world,' intimating that there were few people in it to whom his great reputation was not known. And, perhaps, upon a nice examination into the matter, we shall find that this circumstance bears no inconsiderable part among the many blessings of human grandeur."
Watteau painted the portrait of this Esculapius, from which a print was engraved by Pond. The likeness strikingly resembles Hogarth's representation, and is inscribed "Prenez des pillules." The similitude of his opponent Dr. Rock, though not authenticated in the same manner, is, from the testimony of those who recollect him, equally correct.
This "great man" is said to have been originally a porter; for which his strong, squat figure excellently adapted him. An anecdote, in some degree confirmed, is told of him, that passing one day by the end of Fleet Market, with his gold-laced hat and cane, a brother porter, who knew his origin, and was resting his load near the spot, said, "Dr. Rock, you once carried a knot as well as myself." "Yes; and had I been as great a dunce as you," replied the pill merchant, "I should have carried a knot still."