Hogarth's Works, with life and anecdotal descriptions of his pictures. Volume 3 (of 3)

by John Ireland; John Nichols

CHAPTER I.

HOGARTH'S OWN ACCOUNT OF HIS BIRTH AND EARLY EDUCATION. REASONS FOR HIS BEING APPRENTICED TO A SILVER-PLATE ENGRAVER; WITH WHICH EMPLOYMENT BECOMING DISGUSTED, HE COMMENCES AN ENGRAVER ON COPPER. METHOD OF STUDY. THE FATE OF THE FIRST PRINT HE PUBLISHED, ETC.

"As many sets of my works have been lately sent to foreign countries, and others sold to persons who, from their ignorance of the particular circumstances at which I aimed, have mistaken their meaning and tendency, I have been told that a short account of such parts as are obscure, or have been most liable to misconstruction, in those prints that are not noticed in Mr. Rouquet's book,[4] would be highly acceptable.

"I am further told, that the public have sometimes expressed a curiosity to know what were the motives by which the author was induced to make choice of subjects so different from those of other painters, and what were his modes of study in a walk which had not been trode by any other man. These reasons will, I hope, be deemed a sufficient apology for my attempting the following brief history; in which must necessarily be introduced my opinion of the present state of the arts, and conduct of contemporary artists, and a vindication of myself and my productions from the aspersions which they have so liberally bestowed upon each.

"With respect to my life,—to begin sufficiently early,—I was born in the city of London, on the 10th day of November 1697, and baptized the 28th of the same month. My father's pen, like that of many other authors, did not enable him to do more than put me in a way of shifting for myself. As I had naturally a good eye and a fondness for drawing, shows of all sorts gave me uncommon pleasure when an infant; and mimicry, common to all children, was remarkable in me. An early access to a neighbouring painter drew my attention from play, and I was at every possible opportunity employed in making drawings. I picked up an acquaintance of the same turn, and soon learnt to draw the alphabet with great correctness. My exercises when at school were more remarkable for the ornaments which adorned them, than for the exercise itself.[5] In the former I soon found that blockheads with better memories could much surpass me, but for the latter I was particularly distinguished.

"Besides the natural turn I had for drawing rather than learning languages, I had before my eyes the precarious situation of men of classical education. I saw the difficulties under which my father laboured, and the many inconveniences he endured from his dependence being chiefly on his pen, and the cruel treatment he met with from booksellers and printers, particularly in the affair of a Latin Dictionary,[6] the compiling of which had been a work of some years. It was deposited in confidence in the hands of a certain printer; and during the time it was left, letters of approbation were received from the greatest scholars in England, Scotland, and Ireland. But these flattering testimonies from his acquaintance (who, as appears from their letters which I have still by me, were of the first class) produced no profit to the author.[7] It was therefore very conformable to my own wishes that I was taken from school and served a long apprenticeship to a silver-plate engraver.

"I soon found this business in every respect too limited. The paintings of St. Paul's Cathedral and Greenwich Hospital,[8] which were at that time going on, ran in my head, and I determined that silver-plate engraving should be followed no longer than necessity obliged me to it. Engraving on copper was, at twenty years of age, my utmost ambition. To attain this it was necessary that I should learn to draw objects something like nature instead of the monsters of heraldry; and the common methods of study were much too tedious for one who loved his pleasure and came so late to it, for the time necessary to learn in the usual mode would leave me none to spare for the ordinary enjoyments of life. This led me to considering whether a shorter road than that usually travelled was not to be found. The early part of my life had been employed in a business rather detrimental than advantageous to those branches of the art which I wished to pursue, and have since professed. I had learned by practice to copy with tolerable exactness in the usual way, but it occurred to me that there were many disadvantages attending this method of study, as having faulty originals, etc.; and even when the pictures or prints to be imitated were by the best masters, it was little more than pouring water out of one vessel into another. Drawing in an academy, though it should be after the life, will not make the student an artist; for as the eye is often taken from the original to draw a bit at a time, it is possible he may know no more of what he has been copying when his work is finished than he did before it was begun.

"There may be, and I believe are, some who, like the engrossers of deeds, copy every line without remembering a word; and if the deed should be in law Latin or old French, probably without understanding a word of their original,—happy is it for them, for to retain would be indeed dreadful.

"A dull transcriber who, in copying Milton's Paradise Lost, hath not omitted a line, has almost as much right to be compared to Milton as an exact copier of a fine picture by Rubens hath to be compared to Rubens. In both cases the hand is employed about minute parts, but the mind scarcely ever embraces the whole. Besides this, there is an essential difference between the man who transcribes the deed and he who copies the figure; for though what is written may be line for line the same with the original, it is not probable that this will often be the case with the copied figure: frequently far from it. Yet the performer will be much more likely to retain a recollection of his own imperfect work than of the original from which he took it.