In 1732 (the year in which he was one of the party who made A Tour by land and Water, which will be duly noticed in the [Catalogue]) he ventured to attack Mr. Pope, in a plate called "The Man of Taste;" containing a view of the Gate of Burlington-house; with Pope whitewashing it, and bespattering the Duke of Chandos's coach.[27] This plate was intended as a satire on the translator of Homer, Mr. Kent the architect, and the Earl of Burlington. It was fortunate for Hogarth that he escaped the lash of the former. Either Hogarth's obscurity at that time was his protection, or the bard was too prudent to exasperate a painter who had already given such proof of his abilities for satire. What must he have felt who could complain of the "pictured shape" prefixed to Gulliveriana, Pope Alexander's Supremacy and Infallibility examined, &c. by Ducket, and other pieces, had our artist undertaken to express in colours a certain transaction recorded by Cibber?
Soon after his marriage, Hogarth had summer-lodgings at South-Lambeth; and being intimate with Mr. Tyers, contributed to the improvement of The Spring Gardens at Vauxhall, by the hint of embellishing them with paintings, some of which were the suggestions of his own truly comic pencil. Among these were the "Four parts of the Day," copied by Hayman from the designs of our artist. The scenes of "Evening" and "Night" are still there; and portraits of Henry VIII. and Anne Bullen once adorned the old great room on the right hand of the entry into the gardens. For his assistance, Mr. Tyers gratefully presented him with a gold ticket of admission for himself and his friends, inscribed
in perpetuam beneficii memoriam.
This ticket, now in the possession of his widow, is still occasionally made use of.
In 1733 his genius became conspicuously known. The third scene of his "Harlot's Progress" introduced him to the notice of the great. At a board of Treasury which was held a day or two after the appearance of that print, a copy of it was shewn by one of the lords, as containing, among other excellencies, a striking likeness of Sir John Gonson.[28] It gave universal satisfaction; from the Treasury each lord repaired to the print-shop for a copy of it, and Hogarth rose completely into fame. This anecdote was related to Mr. Huggins by Christopher Tilson, esq. one of the four chief clerks in the Treasury, and at that period under-secretary of state. He died August 25, 1742, after having enjoyed the former of these offices fifty-eight years. I should add, however, that Sir John Gonson is not here introduced to be made ridiculous, but is only to be considered as the image of an active magistrate identified.
The familiarity of the subject, and the propriety of it's execution, made the "Harlot's Progress" tasted by all ranks of people. Above twelve hundred names were entered in our artist's subscription-book. It was made into a pantomime by Theophilus Cibber; and again represented on the stage, under the title of The Jew decoyed, or a Harlot's Progress, in a Ballad Opera. Fan-mounts were likewise engraved, containing miniature representations of all the six plates. These were usually printed off with red ink, three compartments on one side, and three on the other.[29]
The ingenious Abbé Du Bos has often complained, that no history-painter of his time went through a series of actions, and thus, like an historian, painted the successive fortune of an hero, from the cradle to the grave. What Du Bos wished to see done, Hogarth performed. He launches out his young adventurer a simple girl upon the town, and conducts her through all the vicissitudes of wretchedness to a premature death. This was painting to the understanding and to the heart; none had ever before made the pencil subservient to the purposes of morality and instruction; a book like this is fitted to every soil and every observer, and he that runs may read. Nor was the success of Hogarth confined to his persons. One of his excellencies consisted in what may be termed the furniture[30] of his pieces; for as in sublime and historical representations the fewer trivial circumstances are permitted to divide the spectator's attention from the principal figures, the greater is their force; so in scenes copied from familiar life, a proper variety of little domestic images contributes to throw a degree of verisimilitude on the whole. "The Rake's levee-room," says Mr. Walpole, "the nobleman's dining-room, the apartments of the husband and wife in Marriage Alamode, the Alderman's parlour, the bed-chamber, and many others, are the history of the manners of the age."
It may also be observed, that Hogarth, both in the third and last plate of the Harlot's Progress, has appropriated a name to his heroine which belonged to a well-known wanton then upon the town. The Grub-street Journal for August 6, 1730, giving an account of several prostitutes who were taken up, informs us that "the fourth was Kate Hackabout (whose brother was lately hanged at Tyburn), a woman noted in and about the hundreds of Drury, &c."
In 1735 our artist lost his mother, as appears by the following extract from an old Magazine: "June 11, 1735. Died Mrs. Hogarth, mother to the celebrated painter, of a fright from the fire which happened on the 9th, in Cecil Court, St. Martin's Lane, and burnt thirteen houses;[31] amongst others, one belonging to John Huggins, esq. late Warden of The Fleet, was greatly damaged."