They are said to represent the Wanstead assembly, and contain portraits of the first Earl Tylney, his Countess, their children, tenants, etc. In the tall young lady he has evidently aimed at Milton's description of motion—smooth sliding without step; but her air is affected. Her noble partner was originally intended for a portrait of the present King, then Prince of Wales; and though I learn from Mr. Walpole that it was afterward altered to the first Duke of Kingston, still retains so much of its original designation as to bear a resemblance.
The design was made about the year 1728, and might be a just representation of the Wanstead belles and beaux; but since that period we have had so many ship-loads of grace imported from the Continent, and such numbers of well-educated gentlemen,[21] who have exerted their talents in perfecting this divine art, that the picture would not do for the present day.
The sighing Celadon, privately delivering a letter fraught with love to his fair Amelia, is evidently the native of a country that has furnished many of our English heiresses with good husbands. Her impatient father's watch is precisely twelve, which determines what were then thought late hours, on so particular an occasion as a wedding-ball, the sketch being originally designed for a series illustrative of a happy marriage.[22]
Hogarth is said to have boasted that each of the hats which lie upon the floor are so characteristic of their respective proprietors, that any man who understood the form of the human caput might assign each to its owner. Among them is a cushion, which was formerly part of the ball-room furniture, for what was called the cushion-dance, in the progress of which the gentleman kneels down and salutes his partner.
The light diffused from the chandelier shows an attention to nature worthy the study and imitation of many modern painters, whose figures are illuminated by beams unaccountable!
Thus much may suffice for the prints; as to the book, a pen was not Hogarth's instrument. His life had been devoted to the study of the pencil; and however clear in idea, he felt the consciousness that his language might be rendered more worthy public attention by the advice and assistance of literary friends. This he acknowledges, in the style of a man who felt that his character did not depend on the power of constructing a sentence, in which branch of the work he was aided by Doctor Hoadley, Doctor Morrell, and his friend the Reverend Mr. Townley,[23] whose son told me, that when his father corrected the first sheet, he found a plentiful crop of errors; the second and third were less incorrect; and the fourth much more accurate than the preceding. Such is the power of genius, whatever its direction.
I will not go so far as Mr. Ralph, who says, "that by means of this volume composition is become a science; the student knows what he is in search of, the connoisseur what to praise, and fancy or fashion, or prescription, will usurp the hackneyed name of taste no more; because I think with Lady Luxborough, that in the line of beauty no man can literally fix the precise degree of obliquity;" but I think with the same lady, "that between his pencil and his pen, he conveys an idea which enables one to conceive his meaning," and that he gives many hints which may be of great use to the artist, actor, dancer, or connoisseur.[24]
Though many profitable opportunities were offered by the politics of the day, it does not appear that Hogarth ever degraded his character by either servile adulation or interested abuse of the powers which were.
In an account of the March to Finchley, it will be found that when the print was presented to George II., the king returned it in a way that must have mortified and wounded the artist, who, though he was tremblingly alive to professional indignity, made no graven retaliation. He could not therefore be considered as an opponent it was proper to silence, or as an advocate it was necessary to retain; notwithstanding which, on the 16th of July 1757, when Mr. Thornhill (son to Sir James) resigned his place of sergeant painter, William Hogarth was appointed his successor; and very soon after, engaged in a pencil competition that did not terminate to his advantage.
I have had frequent occasion to mention the opinion he entertained of ancient paintings. By ridiculing copies and contemptible originals, he got a habit of laughing at them all; and when, in 1758, Sir Thomas Sebright, at Sir Luke Schaub's sale, gave £404, 5s. for Correggio's Sigismunda, [25] Hogarth, in evil hour, asserted that, were he paid as good a price, he could paint a better picture. Sir Richard (afterwards Lord) Grosvenor unluckily gave him an order for the same subject, guarded with the qualifying monosyllable IF. The work was finished,—sent to the purchaser,—and returned to the artist,—because,—as the ironical epistle[26] which accompanied it expressed,—"Contemplating such a subject must excite melancholy ideas, which a curtain being drawn before it would not diminish."[27]