By the "Man of Taste," Mr. Pope was apparently designed. He is represented in his tie-wig, at a dark corner of the Piazza, amusing himself (not very delicately) with the Beggars' Opera. The letter P is over his head; his little sword is significantly placed, and the peculiarity of his figure is well preserved. The reason why our artist has assigned such an employment to him, we can only guess. It seems, indeed, from Dr. Johnson's Life of Gay, that Pope did not think the Beggars' Opera would succeed. Swift, however, was of the same opinion; and yet the former supported the piece on the first night of exhibition, and the latter defended it in his Intelligencer against the attacks of Dr. Herring, then Preacher to the Society of Lincoln's-Inn, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. Hogarth might be wanton in his satire, might have founded it on an idle report, or might have sacrificed truth to the prejudice of Sir James Thornhill, whose quarrel on another occasion he is supposed to have taken up, when he ridiculed the translator of Homer, in a view of "The Gate of Burlington House."
THE POOL OF BETHESDA, AND THE GOOD SAMARITAN.
THE POOL OF BETHESDA.
THE GOOD SAMARITAN.
These magnificent prints are placed among the early productions of Hogarth, as the paintings from which they are copied were completed in 1737; and in 1748 a small copy of the "Pool of Bethesda" was engraved by Ravenet, as a frontispiece to Stackhouse's Family Bible.
Mr. Walpole observes, that "the burlesque turn of our artist's mind mixed itself with his most serious compositions; and that, in the 'Pool of Bethesda,' a servant of a rich ulcerated lady beats back a poor man (perhaps woman) who sought the same celestial remedy." To this I may add, that the figure of the priest, in the "Good Samaritan," is supremely comic, and rather resembles some purse-proud burgomaster, than the character it was designed to represent.