[HOGARTH.]
This great and original Genius is said by Dr. Burn to have been the descendant of a family originally from Kirkby Thore,[1] in Westmoreland: and I am assured that his grandfather was a plain yeoman, who possessed a small tenement in the vale of Bampton, a village about 15 miles North of Kendal, in that county. He had three sons. The eldest assisted his father in farming, and succeeded to his little freehold. The second settled in Troutbeck, a village eight miles North West of Kendal, and was remarkable for his talent at provincial poetry.[2] The third, educated at St. Bee's, who had kept a school in the same county, and appears to have a man of some learning, went early to London, where he resumed his original occupation of a school-master in Ship Court in The Old Bailey, and was occasionally employed as a corrector of the press. A Latin letter, from Mr. Richard Hogarth, in 1697 (preserved among the MSS. in The British Museum, N° 4277. 50.) relates to a book which had been printed with great expedition. But the letter shall speak for itself.[3]
A Dictionary in Latin and English, which he composed for the use of schools,[4] still exists in MS. He married in London; and our Hero, and his sisters Mary and Anne, are believed to have been the only product of the marriage.
William Hogarth[5] it said (under the article Thornhill in the Biographia Britannica) to have been born in 1698, in the parish of St. Bartholomew,[6] London, to which parish, it is added, he was afterwards a benefactor. The outset of his life, however, was unpromising. "He was bound," says Mr. Walpole, "to a mean engraver of arms on plate." Hogarth probably chose this occupation, as it required some skill in drawing, to which his genius was particularly turned, and which he contrived assiduously to cultivate. His master, it since appears, was Mr. Ellis Gamble, a silversmith of eminence, who resided in Cranbourn-street, Leicester-fields. In this profession it is not unusual to bind apprentices to the single branch of engraving arms and cyphers on every species of metal; and in that particular department of the business young Hogarth was placed;[7] "but, before his time was expired, he felt the impulse of genius, and that it directed him to painting."
During his apprenticeship, he set out one Sunday, with two or three companions, on an excursion to Highgate. The weather being hot, they went into a public-house, where they had not been long, before a quarrel arose between some persons in the same room. One of the disputants struck the other on the head with a quart pot, and cut him very much. The blood running down the man's face, together with the agony of the wound, which had distorted his features into a most hideous grin, presented Hogarth, who shewed himself thus early "apprised of the mode Nature had intended he should pursue," with too laughable a subject to be overlooked. He drew out his pencil, and produced on the spot one of the most ludicrous figures that ever was seen. What rendered this piece the more valuable was, that it exhibited an exact likeness of the man, with the portrait of his antagonist, and the figures in caricature of the principal persons gathered round him. This anecdote was furnished by one of his fellow apprentices then present, a person of indisputable character, and who continued his intimacy with Hogarth long after they both grew up into manhood.
"His apprenticeship was no sooner expired," says Mr. Walpole, "than he entered into the academy in St. Martin's Lane, and studied drawing from the life, in which he never attained to great excellence. It was character, the passions, the soul, that his genius was given him to copy. In colouring he proved no greater a master: his force lay in expression, not in tints and chiaro scuro."
To a man who by indefatigable industry and uncommon strength of genius has been the artificer of his own fame and fortune, it can be no reproach to have it said that at one period he was not rich. It has been asserted, and we believe with good foundation, that the skill and assiduity of Hogarth were, even in his servitude, a singular assistance to his own family, and to that of his master. It happened, however, that when he was first out of his time, he certainly was poor. The ambition of indigence is ever productive of distress. So it fared with Hogarth, who, while he was furnishing himself with materials for subsequent perfection, felt all the contempt which penury could produce. Being one day distressed to raise so trifling a sum as twenty shillings, in order to be revenged of his landlady, who strove to compel him to payment, he drew her as ugly as possible, and in that single portrait gave marks of the dawn of superior genius.[8] This story I had once supposed to be founded on certainty; but since, on other authority, have been assured, that had such an accident ever happened to him, he would not have failed to talk of it afterwards, as he was always fond of contrasting the necessities of his youth with the affluence of his maturer age. He has been heard to say of himself, "I remember the time when I have gone moping into the city with scarce a shilling in my pocket; but as soon as I had received ten guineas there for a plate, I have returned home, put on my sword, and sallied out again, with all the confidence of a man who had ten thousand pounds in his pocket." Let me add, that my first authority may be to the full as good as my second.