Yesterday Mr. Hogarth's subscription was closed. 1843 chances being subscribed for, Mr. Hogarth gave the remaining 157 chances to The Foundling Hospital. At two o'clock the box was opened, and the fortunate chance was N° 1941, which belongs to the said Hospital; and the same night Mr. Hogarth delivered the picture to the Governors.
[2] PRUSIA, in the earliest impressions. I have been assured that only twenty-five were worked off with this literal imperfection, as Hogarth grew tired of adding the mark ~ with a pen over one S, to supply the want of the other. He therefore ordered the inscription to be corrected before any greater number of impressions were taken. Though this circumstance was mentioned by Mr. Thane, to whose experience in such matters some attention is due, it is difficult to suppose that Hogarth was fatigued with correcting his own mistake in so small a number of the first Impressions. I may venture to add, that I have seen, at least, five and twenty marked in the manner already described: and it is scarce possible, considering the multitudes of these plates dispersed in the world, that I should have met with all that were so distinguished.
[3] The real or nick name of this man, who was by trade a cobler, is said to have been Jockey James.
[4] This figure is repeated in the last print but one of Industry. and Idleness, and was designed for Mother Douglas of the Piazza.
[5] Proofs were anciently a few impressions taken off in the course of an engraver's process. He proved a plate in different states, that he might ascertain how far his labours had been successful, and when they were complete. The excellence of such early impressions, worked with care, and under the artist's eye, occasioning them to be greedily sought after, and liberally paid for, it has been customary among our modern printsellers to take off a number of them, amounting, perhaps, to hundreds, from every plate of considerable value; and yet their want of rareness has by no means abated their price. On retouching a plate, it has been also usual, among the same conscientious fraternity, to cover the inscription, which was immediately added after the first proofs were obtained, with slips of paper, that a number of secondary proofs might also be created. This device is notorious, and too often practised, without discovery, on the unskilful purchaser. A new print, in short, is of the same use to a crafty dealer, as a fresh girl to a politic bawd. In both instances le fausse pucelage is disposed of many times over.
1751.
1. Beer-street;[1] two of them, with variations, (the former price 1 s. the latter 1 s. 6 d.), and Gin Lane. The following verses under these two prints are by the Rev. Mr. James Townley, Master of Merchant Taylors School:
Beer-Street.
Beer, happy product of our isle,
Can sinewy strength impart,
And, wearied with fatigue and toil,
Can chear each manly heart.
Labour and Art, upheld by thee,
Successfully advance;
We quaff thy balmy juice with glee,
And water leave to France.
Genius of Health, thy grateful taste
Rivals the cup of Jove,
And warms each English generous breast
With Liberty and Love.
Gin-Lane.
Gin, cursed fiend! with fury fraught,
Makes human race a prey;
It enters by a deadly draught,
And steals our life away.
Virtue and Truth, driven to despair,
Its rage compels to fly,
But cherishes, with hellish care,
Theft, Murder, Perjury.
Damn'd cup! that on the vitals preys,
That liquid fire contains,
Which madness to the heart conveys,
And rolls it thro' the veins.
Mr. Walpole observes, that the variation of the butcher lifting the Frenchman in his hand, was an after-thought;[2] but he is mistaken. This butcher is in reality a blacksmith; and the violent hyperbole is found in the original drawing, as well as in the earliest impressions of the plate. The first copies of Beer-street, Gin Lane, and The Stages of Cruelty, were taken off on very thin paper; but this being objected to, they were afterwards printed on thicker. The painter, who in the former of these scenes is copying a bottle from one hanging by him as a pattern, has been regarded as a stroke of satire on John Stephen Liotard, who (as Mr. Walpole observes) "could render nothing but what he saw before his eyes."[3]