1751.
1. Beer-street;[1] two of them, with variations, (the former price 1 s. the latter 1 s. 6 d.), and Gin Lane. The following verses under these two prints are by the Rev. Mr. James Townley, Master of Merchant Taylors School:
Beer-Street.
Beer, happy product of our isle,
Can sinewy strength impart,
And, wearied with fatigue and toil,
Can chear each manly heart.
Labour and Art, upheld by thee,
Successfully advance;
We quaff thy balmy juice with glee,
And water leave to France.
Genius of Health, thy grateful taste
Rivals the cup of Jove,
And warms each English generous breast
With Liberty and Love.
Gin-Lane.
Gin, cursed fiend! with fury fraught,
Makes human race a prey;
It enters by a deadly draught,
And steals our life away.
Virtue and Truth, driven to despair,
Its rage compels to fly,
But cherishes, with hellish care,
Theft, Murder, Perjury.
Damn'd cup! that on the vitals preys,
That liquid fire contains,
Which madness to the heart conveys,
And rolls it thro' the veins.
Mr. Walpole observes, that the variation of the butcher lifting the Frenchman in his hand, was an after-thought;[2] but he is mistaken. This butcher is in reality a blacksmith; and the violent hyperbole is found in the original drawing, as well as in the earliest impressions of the plate. The first copies of Beer-street, Gin Lane, and The Stages of Cruelty, were taken off on very thin paper; but this being objected to, they were afterwards printed on thicker. The painter, who in the former of these scenes is copying a bottle from one hanging by him as a pattern, has been regarded as a stroke of satire on John Stephen Liotard, who (as Mr. Walpole observes) "could render nothing but what he saw before his eyes."[3]
It is probable that Hogarth received the first idea for these two prints from a pair of others by Peter Breugel (commonly called Breugel d'enfer, or Hellish Breugel), which exhibit a contrast of a similar kind. The one is entitled La grasse, the other La maigre Cuisine. In the first, all the personages are well-fed and plump; in the second, they are starved and slender. The latter of them also exhibits the figures of an emaciated mother and child, sitting on a straw-mat upon the ground, whom I never saw without thinking on the female, &c. in Gin Lane.[4] In Hogarth, the fat English blacksmith is insulting the gaunt Frenchman; and in Breugel, the plump cook is kicking the lean one out of doors. Our artist was not unacquainted with the works of this master, as will appear by an observation on the [Lilliputians giving Gulliver a clyster].
On the subject of these two plates, and the four following ones, was published a stupid pamphlet, intituled, "A Dissertation on Mr. Hogarth's Six Prints lately published, viz. Gin-Lane, Beer-street, and The Four Stages of Cruelty, Containing, I. A genuine narrative of the horrible deeds perpetrated by that fiery dragon, Gin; the wretched and deplorable condition of its votaries and admirers; the dreadful havock and devaluation it has made amongst the human species; its pernicious effects on the soldiers, sailors, and mechanicks of this kingdom; and its poisonous and pestilent qualities in destroying the health, and corrupting the morals of the people. II. Useful observations on wanton and inhuman cruelty, severely satirizing the practice of the common people in sporting with the lives of animals. Being a proper key for the right apprehension of the author's meaning in those designs. Humbly inscribed to the Right Honourable Francis Cockayne, Esq; Lord Mayor of the City of London, and the worshipful Court of Aldermen, who have so worthily distinguished themselves in the measures they have taken to suppress the excessive use of spirituous liquors. London: Printed for B. Dickinson on Ludgate-Hill. 1751. Price one shilling;" and eleven pence three farthings too dear, being compiled out of Reynolds's "God's Revenge against Murder," &c.
[1] General Advertiser, February 13, 1750-51.
On Friday next will be published, price one shilling each.
Two large Prints designed and etched by Mr. Hogarth, called Beer-street and Gin-lane.
A number will be printed in a better manner for the Curious at 1 s. 6 d. each.
And on Thursday following will be published,
Four Prints on the subject of Cruelty. Price and size the same.
N. B. As the subjects of these Prints are calculated to reform some reigning vices peculiar to the lower class of people, in hopes to render them of more extensive use, the author has published them in the cheapest manner possible.
To be had at the Golden Head in Leicester Fields, where may be had all his other works.
[2] I am sorry to perceive that this observation remains in the octavo edition of the "Anecdotes of Painting," vol. IV. p. 147.
[3] The opinion which Hogarth entertained of the writings of Dr. Hill may be discovered in his Beer-Street, where Hill's critique upon the Royal Society is put into a basket directed to the Trunk-Maker, in St. Paul's Church-Yard.
[4] This emaciated figure, who appears drunk and asleep at the corner of this print, was painted from nature.
2. The Stages of Cruelty, in four prints. Designed by Wm. Hogarth, price 4 s. Of the two latter of these there are wooden plates[1] on a large scale, Invd. and published by Wm. Hogarth, Jan. 1, 1750. J. Bell sculp. They were done by order of our artist, who wished to diffuse the salutary example they contain, as far as possible, by putting them within the reach of the meanest purchaser; but finding this mode of executing his design was expensive beyond expectation, he proceeded no further in it, and was content to engrave them in his own coarse, but spirited manner. Impressions from the wooden blocks are to be had at Mrs. Hogarth's house in Leicester-fields. This set of prints, however, is illustrated with the following verses:
First Stage of Cruelty.
While various scenes of sportive woe
The infant race employ,
And tortur'd Victims bleeding shew
The tyrant in the boy;
Behold! a youth of gentler heart,
To spare the Creature's pain,[2]
O take, he cries—take all my tart,
But tears and tart are vain.
Learn from this fair example—you,
Whom savage sports delight,
How Cruelty disgusts the view,
While pity charms the sight.
Second Stage of Cruelty.
The generous steed, in hoary age,
Subdu'd by labour lies;
And mourns a cruel master's rage,
While Nature strength denies.
The tender Lamb, o'erdrove and faint,
Amidst expiring throes,
Bleats forth it's innocent complaint,
And dies beneath the blows.
Inhuman wretch! say whence proceeds
This coward Cruelty?
What int'rest springs from barb'rous deeds
What joy from misery?
III. Cruelty in Perfection.
To lawless Love when once betray'd,
Soon crime to crime succeeds;
At length beguil'd to Theft, the maid
By her beguiler bleeds.
Yet learn, seducing man, not night
With all its sable cloud,
Can skreen the guilty deed from sight:
Foul Murder cries aloud.
The gaping wounds, the blood-stain'd steel,
Now shock his trembling soul:
But oh! what pangs his breast must feel,
When Death his knell shall toll.
IV. The Reward of Cruelty.
Behold, the Villain's dire disgrace
Not death itself can end:
He finds no peaceful burial-place;
His breathless corse, no friend,
Torn from the root, that wicked Tongue,
Which daily swore and curst!
Those eye-balls, from their sockets wrung,
That glow'd with lawless lust.
His heart, exposed to prying eyes,
To pity has no claim;
But, dreadful! from his bones shall rise
His monument of shame.[3]
[1] N. B. The first of these wooden cuts differs in many circumstances from the engraving. In the former, the right hand of the murderer is visible; in the latter it is pinioned behind him. Comparison will detect several other variations in this plate and its fellow.
[2] The thrusting an arrow up the fundament of a dog, is not an idea of English growth. No man ever beheld the same act of cruelty practised on any animal in London. Hogarth, however, met with this circumstance in Callot's Temptation of St. Antony, and transplanted it, without the least propriety, into its present situation.
[3] In the last of these plates, "how delicate and superior," as Mr. Walpole observes, "is Hogarth's satire, when he intimates, in the College of Physicians and Surgeons that preside at a dissection, how the legal habitude of viewing shocking scenes hardens the human mind, and renders it unfeeling. The president maintains the dignity of insensibility over an executed corpse, and considers it but as the object of a lecture. In the print of the Sleeping Judges, this habitual indifference only excites our laughter." To render his spectacle, however, more shocking, our artist has perhaps deviated from nature, against whose laws he so rarely offends. He has impressed marks of agony on the face of the criminal under dissection; whereas it is well known, that, the most violent death once past, the tumult of the features subsides for ever. But, in Hogarth's print, the wretch who has been executed, seems to feel the subsequent operation. Of this plate Mr. S. Ireland has the original drawing.
3. Boys peeping at Nature, with Variations.
Receipt for Moses brought to Pharaoh's Daughter, and St. Paul before Felix.
The burlesque Paul, &c. being the current receipt for these two prints, I know not why our artist should have altered and vamped up his Boys peeping at Nature (see p. [188].) for the same purpose. This plate was lately found at Mrs. Hogarth's, but no former impressions from it appear to have been circulated. It might have been a first thought, before the idea of its ludicrous successor occurred. Hogarth, however, with propriety, effaced all the wit in his original design, before he meant to offer it as a prologue to his uninteresting serious productions.
4. Paul before Felix, designed and scratched in the true Dutch taste, by W. Hogarth. This was the receipt for Pharaoh's daughter, and for the serious Paul and Felix; and is a satire on Dutch pictures. It also contains, in the character of a serjeant tearing his brief, a portrait of Hume Campbell, who was not over-delicate in the language he used at the bar to his adversaries and antagonists. This, however, is said by others to be the portrait of William King,[1] LL. D. Principal of St. Mary Hall, Oxford. In a variation of this print, the Devil is introduced sawing off a leg of the stool on which Paul stands. In the third impression, as is noted in the collection sold last at Christie's, "Hogarth has again taken out the Devil. By these variations of Devil and no Devil, he glances at Collectors, who give great prices for such rarities; and perhaps he had in his eye the famous print of the Shepherd's Offering by Poilly, after Guido, which sells very dear, without the Angels." This, however, is erroneous. After the dæmon was once admitted, he was never discarded. The plate in Mrs. Hogarth's keeping confirms my assertion. In the first proof of Poilly's Shepherd's Offering, the angels are lightly sketched in; in the finished proof they are totally omitted; but were afterwards inserted. There are similar variations relative to the arms at the bottom of it.
Of this burlesque Paul, &c. none were originally intended for sale; but our artist gave them away to such of his acquaintance, &c. as begged for them. The number of these petitioners, however, increasing every day, he resolved at last to part with no copies of it at a less price than five shillings.[2] All the early proofs were stained by himself, to give them that tint of age which is generally found on the works of Rembrandt. Of this plate, however, there are two impressions. The inscription under the first is "Paul before Felix. Design'd and scratch'd in the true Dutch taste by &c." Under the second, "Designed and etch'd in the ridiculous manner of Rembrant, &c." From the former of these Hogarth took off a few reverses. He must have been severely mortified when he found his ludicrous representation of Paul before Felix was more coveted and admired than his serious painting on the same subject.
[1] Of Dr. King, who was "a tall, lean, well-looking man," there is a striking likeness in Worlidge's View of the Installation of Lord Westmoreland as chancellor of Oxford in 1761. Some particulars of his life and writings may be seen in the "Anecdotes of Mr. Bowyer," p. 594.
[2] Mr. Walpole has honoured a passage in the first edition of this hasty work, with the following stricture: (see Anecdotes of Painting, vol. IV. p. 149).
"I have been blamed for censuring the indelicacies of Flemish and Dutch painters, by comparing them with the purity of Hogarth, against whom are produced many instances of indelicacy, and some repetitions of the same indelicacy. I will not defend myself by pleading that these instances are thinly scattered through a great number of his works, and that there is at least humour in most of the incidents quoted, and that they insinuate some reflection, which is never the case of the foreigners—but can I chuse but smile when one of the nastiest examples specified is from the burlesque of Paul before Felix, professedly in ridicule of the gross images of the Dutch?"
In consequence of private remarks from Mr. W. this questionable position, as well as a few others, had been obviated in my second impression of the trifling performance now offered to the public: but as our author cannot chuse but smile, when the occasion of his mirth was no longer meant to be in his way, I would ask, in defence of my former observation, if moralists usually attempt to reform profligates by writing treatises of profligacy? or, if painters have a right to chastise indelicacy, by exhibiting gross examples of it in their own performances? To become indecent ourselves, is an unwarrantable recipe for curing indecency in others. The obscenities of Juvenal have hitherto met with no very successful vindication: "Few are the converts Aretine has made." According to our critic's mode of reasoning, a homicide might urge that the crime of which he stands accused was committed only as a salutary example of the guilt of murder; nay, thus indeed every human offence might be allowed to bring with it its own apology.—I forbear to proceed in this argument, or might observe in behalf of our "foreigners," that their incidents insinuate some reflections as well as Hogarth's. The evacuations introduced in Dutch pictures, most certainly inculcate the necessity of temperance, for those only who eat and drink too much at fairs, or in ale-houses, are liable to such public and unseemly accidents as Heemskirk, Ostade, and Teniers, have occasionally represented. If we are to look for "Sermons in stones, and good in everything," this inference is as fair as many which Mr. W. seems inclined to produce in honour of poor Hogarth, who, like Shakspeare, often sought to entertain, without keeping any moral purpose in view. But was there either wit or morality in Hogarth's own evacuation against the door of a church, a circumstance recorded by Mr. Forrest in his MS. tour, though prudently suppressed in his printed copy of it? Perhaps, following Uncle Toby's advice, he had better have wiped the whole up, and said nothing about the matter. Our worthy Tour-writer, however, was by no means qualified to be the author of a Sentimental Journey. He rather (and purposely, as we are told) resembles Ben Jonson's communicative traveller, who says to his companion,
——I went and paid a moccinigo
For mending my silk stockings; by the way
I cheapen'd sprats, and at St. Mark's I urin'd.
Faith, these are politic notes!