1728.
1. Head of Hesiod, from the bust at Wilton. The frontispiece to Cook's translation of Hesiod, in 2 vols. 4to. printed by N. Blandford for T. Green.
2. Rich's Glory, or his Triumphant Entry into Covent Garden. W. H. I. Et. SULP. Price Sixpence.
The date of the print before us has been conjectured from its reference to the Beggar's Opera, and Perseus and Andromeda,[1] both of which were acted in the year already mentioned.
This plate represents the removal of Rich and his scenery, authors, actors, &c. from Lincoln's-Inn Fields to the New House; and might therefore be as probably referred to the year 1733, when that event happened. The scene is the area of Covent Garden, across which, leading toward the door of the Theatre, is a long procession, consisting of a cart loaded with thunder and lightning; performers, &c. and at the head of them Mr. Rich (invested with the skin of the famous dog in Perseus and Andromeda) riding with his mistress in a chariot driven by Harlequin, and drawn by Satyrs. But let the verses at bottom explain our artist's meaning:
Not with more glory through the streets of Rome,
Return'd great conquerors in triumph home,
Than, proudly drawn with Beauty by his side,
We see gay R—-[2] in gilded chariot ride.
He comes, attended by a num'rous throng,
Who, with loud shouts, huzza the Chief along.
Behold two bards, obsequious, at his wheels,
Confess the joy each raptur'd bosom feels;
Conscious that wit by him will be receiv'd,
And on his stage true humour be retriev'd.
No sensible and pretty play will fall[3]
Condemn'd by him as not theatrical.
The players follow, as they here are nam'd,
Dress'd in each character for which they're fam'd.
Quin th' Old Bachelour, a Hero Ryan shows,
Who stares and stalks majestick as he goes.
Walker,[4] in his lov'd character we see
A Prince, tho' once a fisherman was he,
And Massanelo nam'd; in this he prides,
Tho' fam'd for many other parts besides.
Then Hall,[5] who tells the bubbled countrymen
That Carolus is Latin for Queen Anne.
Did ever mortal know so clean a bite?
Who else, like him, can copy Serjeant Kite!
To the Piazza let us turn our eyes,
See Johnny Gay on porters shoulders rise,
Whilst a bright Man of Tast his works despise.[6]
Another author wheels his works with care,
In hopes to get a market at this fair;
For such a day he sees not ev'ry year.
By the Man of Taste, Mr. Pope was apparently designed. He is represented, in his tye-wig, at one corner of the Piazza, wiping his posteriors with the Beggar's Opera. The letter P is over his head. His little sword is significantly placed, and the peculiarity of his figure well preserved.
The reason why our artist has assigned such an employment to him, we can only guess. It seems, indeed, from Dr. Johnson's Life of Gay, that Pope did not think the Beggar's Opera would succeed. Swift, however, was of the same opinion; and yet the former supported the piece on the first night of exhibition, and the latter defended it in his Intelligencer against the attacks of Dr. Herring,[7] then preacher to the Society of Lincoln's-Inn, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury. Hogarth might be wanton in his satire; might have founded it on idle report; or might have sacrificed truth to the prejudices of Sir James Thornhill, whose quarrel, on another occasion, he is supposed to have taken up, when he ridiculed The Translator of Homer in a view of "The Gate of Burlington-house."
There are besides some allusions in the verses already quoted, as well as in the piece they refer to, which I confess my inability to illustrate. Those who are best acquainted with the theatric and poetical history of the years 1728, &c. would prove the most successful commentators on the present occasion; but not many can possibly be now alive who were at that period competent judges of such matters.
This print, however, was not only unpublished, but in several places is unfinished. It was probably suppressed by the influence of some of the characters represented in it. The style of composition, and manner of engraving, &c. &c. would have sufficiently proved it to be the work of Hogarth, if the initials of his name had been wanting at the bottom of the plate.
[1] The Perseus and Andromeda, for which Hogarth engraved the plates mentioned in p. [170], was not published till 1730; but there was one under the same title at Drury-Lane in 1728. As both houses took each other's plans at that time, perhaps the Lincoln's-Inn Fields Perseus might have been acted before it was printed.
[2] Rich.
[3] No sensible and pretty play, &c. This refers to Cibber's decision on the merits of some piece offered for representation, and, we may suppose, rejected. In a copy of verses addressed to Rich on the building of Covent Garden Theatre, are the following lines, which seem to allude to the rejection already mentioned:
"Poets no longer shall submit their plays
To learned Cibber's gilded withered bays;
To such a judge the labour'd scene present,
Whom sensible and pretty won't content:
But to thy theatre with pleasure bear
The comic laughter and the tragic tear."
[4] The original Macheath. He used, however, to perform the heroes, particularly Alexander. From these lines it appears that Massanello, was a favourite part with him. From Chetwood's History of the Stage, p. 141, I learn that Walker had contracted the two parts of Durfey's Massanello into one piece, which was acted with success at Lincoln's-Inn Fields.
[5] The original Lockit, who was also celebrated for his performance of Serjeant Kite.
[6] The grammar and spelling of this line are truly Hogarthian.
[7] "A noted preacher near Lincoln's-Inn playhouse has taken notice of the Beggar's Opera in the pulpit, and inveighed against it as a thing of very evil tendency." Mist's Weekly Journal, March 30, 1728.
3. The Beggar's Opera. The title over it is in capitals uncommonly large.
Brittons attend—view this harmonious stage,
And listen to those notes which charm the age.
Thus shall your tastes in sounds and sense be shown,
And Beggar's Op'ras ever be your own.
No painter or engraver's name. The plate seems at once to represent the exhibition of The Beggar's Opera, and the rehearsal of an Italian one. In the former, all the characters are drawn with the heads of different animals; as Polly, with a Cat's; Lucy, with a Sow's; Macheath, with an Ass's; Lockit, and Mr. and Mrs. Peachum, with those of an Ox, a Dog, and an Owl. In the latter, several noblemen appear conducting the chief female singer forward on the stage, and perhaps are offering her money, or protection from a figure that is rushing towards her with a drawn sword. Harmony, flying in the air, turns her back on the English playhouse, and hastens toward the rival theatre. Musicians stand in front of the former, playing on the Jew's-harp, the salt-box, the bladder and string, bagpipes, &c. On one side are people of distinction, some of whom kneel as if making an offer to Polly, or paying their adorations to her. To these are opposed a butcher, &c. expressing similar applause. Apollo, and one of the Muses, are fast asleep beneath the stage. A man is easing nature under a wall hung with ballads, and shewing his contempt of such compositions, by the use he makes of one of them. A sign of the star, a gibbet, and some other circumstances less intelligible, appear in the back ground.
4. The same. The lines under it are engraved in a different manner from those on the preceding plate. Sold at the Print-Shop in The Strand, near Catherine Street.
5. A copy of the same, under the following title, &c.
The Opera House, or the Italian Eunuch's Glory. Humbly inscribed to those Generous Encouragers of Foreigners, and Ruiners of England.
From France, from Rome we come,
To help Old England to to b' undone.
Under the division of the print that represents the Italian Opera, the words—Stage Mutiny—are perhaps improperly added.
On the two sides of this print are scrolls, containing a list of the presents made to Farinelli. The words are copied from the same enumeration in the second plate of the Rake's Progress.[1]
At the bottom are the following lines:
"Brittains attend—view this harmonious stage,
And listen to those notes which charm the age.
How sweet the sound where cats and bears
With brutish noise offend our ears!
Just so the foreign singers move
Rather contempt than gain our love.
Were such discourag'd, we should find
Musick at home to charm the mind!
Our home-spun authors must forsake the field,
And Shakespear to the Italian Eunuchs yield."[2]
Perhaps the original print was the work of Gravelot, Vandergucht, or some person unknown.[3] The idea of it is borrowed from a French book, called Les Chats, printed at Amsterdam in 1728. In this work, facing p. 117, is represented an opera performed by cats, superbly habited. The design is by Coypel; the engraving by T. Otten. At the end of the treatise, the opera itself is published. It is improbable that Hogarth should have met with this jeu d'esprit; and, if he did, he could not have read the explanation to it.
[1] The following paragraph appeared in the Grub-street Journal for April 10, 1735; and to this perhaps Hogarth alluded in the list of donations already mentioned: "His Royal Highness the Prince hath been pleased to make a present of a fine wrought gold snuff-box, richly set with brilliants and rubies, in which was inclosed a pair of brilliant diamond knee buckles, as also a purse of 100 guineas, to the famous Signor Farinelli, &c."
[2] These two last lines make part of Addison's Prologue to Phædra and Hippolytus, reading only "the soft Scarlatti," instead of Italian Eunuchs.
[3] At the back of an old impression of it, in the collection of the late Mr. Rogers, I meet with the name of Echerlan, but am unacquainted with any such designer or engraver.——I have since been told he came over to England to dispose of a number of foreign prints, and was himself no mean caricaturist. Having drawn an aggravated likeness of an English nobleman, whose figure was peculiarly unhappy, he was forced to fly in consequence of a resentment which threatened little short of assassination.