[2] I am sorry to perceive that this observation remains in the octavo edition of the "Anecdotes of Painting," vol. IV. p. 147.
[3] The opinion which Hogarth entertained of the writings of Dr. Hill may be discovered in his Beer-Street, where Hill's critique upon the Royal Society is put into a basket directed to the Trunk-Maker, in St. Paul's Church-Yard.
[4] This emaciated figure, who appears drunk and asleep at the corner of this print, was painted from nature.
2. The Stages of Cruelty, in four prints. Designed by Wm. Hogarth, price 4 s. Of the two latter of these there are wooden plates[1] on a large scale, Invd. and published by Wm. Hogarth, Jan. 1, 1750. J. Bell sculp. They were done by order of our artist, who wished to diffuse the salutary example they contain, as far as possible, by putting them within the reach of the meanest purchaser; but finding this mode of executing his design was expensive beyond expectation, he proceeded no further in it, and was content to engrave them in his own coarse, but spirited manner. Impressions from the wooden blocks are to be had at Mrs. Hogarth's house in Leicester-fields. This set of prints, however, is illustrated with the following verses:
First Stage of Cruelty.
While various scenes of sportive woe
The infant race employ,
And tortur'd Victims bleeding shew
The tyrant in the boy;
Behold! a youth of gentler heart,
To spare the Creature's pain,[2]
O take, he cries—take all my tart,
But tears and tart are vain.
Learn from this fair example—you,
Whom savage sports delight,
How Cruelty disgusts the view,
While pity charms the sight.
Second Stage of Cruelty.
The generous steed, in hoary age,
Subdu'd by labour lies;
And mourns a cruel master's rage,
While Nature strength denies.
The tender Lamb, o'erdrove and faint,
Amidst expiring throes,
Bleats forth it's innocent complaint,
And dies beneath the blows.
Inhuman wretch! say whence proceeds
This coward Cruelty?
What int'rest springs from barb'rous deeds
What joy from misery?
III. Cruelty in Perfection.
To lawless Love when once betray'd,
Soon crime to crime succeeds;
At length beguil'd to Theft, the maid
By her beguiler bleeds.
Yet learn, seducing man, not night
With all its sable cloud,
Can skreen the guilty deed from sight:
Foul Murder cries aloud.
The gaping wounds, the blood-stain'd steel,
Now shock his trembling soul:
But oh! what pangs his breast must feel,
When Death his knell shall toll.
IV. The Reward of Cruelty.
Behold, the Villain's dire disgrace
Not death itself can end:
He finds no peaceful burial-place;
His breathless corse, no friend,
Torn from the root, that wicked Tongue,
Which daily swore and curst!
Those eye-balls, from their sockets wrung,
That glow'd with lawless lust.
His heart, exposed to prying eyes,
To pity has no claim;
But, dreadful! from his bones shall rise
His monument of shame.[3]
[1] N. B. The first of these wooden cuts differs in many circumstances from the engraving. In the former, the right hand of the murderer is visible; in the latter it is pinioned behind him. Comparison will detect several other variations in this plate and its fellow.
[2] The thrusting an arrow up the fundament of a dog, is not an idea of English growth. No man ever beheld the same act of cruelty practised on any animal in London. Hogarth, however, met with this circumstance in Callot's Temptation of St. Antony, and transplanted it, without the least propriety, into its present situation.
[3] In the last of these plates, "how delicate and superior," as Mr. Walpole observes, "is Hogarth's satire, when he intimates, in the College of Physicians and Surgeons that preside at a dissection, how the legal habitude of viewing shocking scenes hardens the human mind, and renders it unfeeling. The president maintains the dignity of insensibility over an executed corpse, and considers it but as the object of a lecture. In the print of the Sleeping Judges, this habitual indifference only excites our laughter." To render his spectacle, however, more shocking, our artist has perhaps deviated from nature, against whose laws he so rarely offends. He has impressed marks of agony on the face of the criminal under dissection; whereas it is well known, that, the most violent death once past, the tumult of the features subsides for ever. But, in Hogarth's print, the wretch who has been executed, seems to feel the subsequent operation. Of this plate Mr. S. Ireland has the original drawing.
3. Boys peeping at Nature, with Variations.
Receipt for Moses brought to Pharaoh's Daughter, and St. Paul before Felix.