The clock in the front of Inigo Jones' barn has the motto, "SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI." Had Mr. Hervey of Weston Favel written upon the works of Hogarth, he would have expatiated for ten pages upon the relation which this motto has to the smoke which is issuing from the chimney beneath; he would have written about it, and about it, and told his readers that the glory of this world is typified by the smoke, and like the smoke it passeth away; that man himself is a mere vapour, etc. etc. etc.
Snow on the ground, and icicles hanging from the pent-house, exhibit a very chilling prospect; but, to dissipate the cold, there is happily a shop where spirituous liquors are sold pro bono publico, at a very little distance. A large pewter measure is placed upon a post before the door, and three of a smaller size hung over the window of the house.
The character of the principal figure[133] is admirably delineated. She is marked with that prim and awkward formality which generally accompanies her order, and is an exact type of a hard winter; for every part of her dress, except the flying lappets and apron, ruffled by the wind, is as rigidly precise as if it were frozen. Extreme cold is very well expressed in the slipshod footboy,[134] and the girl who is warming her hands. The group of which she is a part is well formed, but not sufficiently balanced on the opposite side.
The church dial, a few minutes before seven; marks of little shoes and pattens in the snow; and various productions of the season in the market, are an additional proof of that minute accuracy with which this artist inspected and represented objects which painters in general have neglected.
Covent Garden is the scene, but in the print every building is reversed.[135] This was a common error with Hogarth; not from his being ignorant of the use of the mirror, but from his considering it as a matter of little consequence.
The propriety of exhibiting a scene of riot in Tom King's Coffeehouse is proved by the following quotation from the Weekly Miscellany for June 9, 1739:—"Monday, Mrs. Mary King, of Covent Garden, was brought up to the King's Bench bar, at Westminster, and received the following sentence for keeping a disorderly house, viz. to pay a fine of two hundred pounds, to suffer three months' imprisonment, to find security for her good behaviour for three years, and to remain in prison till the fine be paid." When her imprisonment ended, she retired from trade, built three houses on Haverstock Hill, near Hampstead, and in one of them, on the 10th of September 1747, she died. Her mansion was afterwards the residence of Nancy Dawson, and with the two others constitutes what is still distinguished by the appellation of Moll King's Row.
NOON.
"Hail, Gallia's daughters! easy, brisk, and free;
Good-humour'd, debonnaire, and degagée: