"The Times are out of joint."
THE TIMES. PLATE II.
A painter engaging in the political disputes of his day, is in a situation similar to a gentleman beginning to rebuild a family mansion. The pencil of one, dipped in these troubled streams, or the fingers of the other but touch-brick and mortar,—it is not in the tables of De Moivre to calculate the conclusion of their labours. Each of them sets out upon a certain plan, determines that he will go so far, and no further: but the gentleman is induced to make a first addition to his original plan, because it will be more convenient; a second, because it will be magnifique; and a third and fourth must be, because without them the building will not be uniform.
The artist engraves a political print, which raises an host of enemies, who buzz about him like a nest of disturbed hornets. To them, wording not being the painter's province, he replies by a second print, which produces a second volume of abuse; "another and another still succeeds," and he must either sink under this load of obloquy, or devote the residue of his days to the defence of his character. Such at least was the political progress of Hogarth.
By his first print of "The Times" he roused two very formidable adversaries, and they treated him with as much ceremony as two deputies from the Bow Street magistrates would an incendiary or an assassin. They did not consider him as a man whose conduct it was needful to investigate, or whose opinions it was necessary to confute, but as a criminal, whose aggravated crimes had outraged every law of society, and whom they would therefore drag to the place of execution. To defend himself from these furious assailants, he had no shield but a copperplate, no weapons but a pencil and a burin. The use he made of them may be seen in the two last prints; but though this was engraved during the time of the contest, it was not published while he lived. Whether a sudden change in politics, a supposed ambiguity in part of his design, or the advice of judicious or timid friends, induced him to suppress his work, cannot now be ascertained; but whatever were the reasons, his widow's respect for his memory induced her to adopt the same conduct. She retained a reverence for even the dust of her husband, and dreaded its being raked from the sepulchre where he had been quietly inurned, mixed with the poisonous aconite of party, and by sacrilegious hands cast into the agitated cauldron of politics. If we add to this the specimen of political candour which she had experienced in her own person, can we wonder that she cautiously avoided whatever could be tortured into a provocation to the renewal of hostilities? From these considerations she never suffered more than one impression to be taken, and that was struck off at the earnest request of Lord Exeter.
In withholding this plate from the public she acted prudently; in attempting to describe it, I may be thought to act otherwise. To enter into a discrimination of characters who now live, "or step upon ashes which are not yet cold," is liable to invidious construction. Let it be remembered, that though I have endeavoured to point out the characters delineated by Hogarth, it does not follow that my explanation will always be right.
Though several of the figures are marked in a style so obtrusive that they cannot be mistaken, there are others where I can only guess at the originals. From those who were engaged in the politics of that day I have sought information, but their communications have been neither important nor consistent with each other. They generally ended in an acknowledgment, that "in thirty years they had forgotten much which they once knew, and which, if now recollected, would materially elucidate." To this was added what I am compelled to admit, that parts of the print are obscure. I have before observed that neither politics nor allegory were Hogarth's forte, and this delineation was made under the impression of resentment.
The exact time of its being engraved I cannot positively ascertain, but conjecture it must have been some time in the year 1762. A small part of the sky was left unfinished, and in that state still remains, as the present proprietors would not suffer any other engraver to draw a line on the copperplate of Hogarth.