It was added after the three former epistles had been printed off, and before the plate was published. The entire performance, however, in my opinion, exhibits very strong marks of the vivacious compiler's taste, country, and prejudices. Indeed many passages must have been inserted without the privity of his employer, who had no skill in the French language. That our clergy always affect to ride on white horses, and other remarks of a similar turn, &c. &c. could never have fallen from the pen of Hogarth, or any other Englishman.
This epistle bears also internal evidence to the suggestions Rouquet received from Hogarth. Are not the self-congratulations and prejudices of our artist sufficiently visible in the following passage?
"Ce Tableau dis-je a le defaut d'etre encore tout brillant de cette ignoble fraîcheur qu'on decouvre dans la nature, et qu'on ne voit jamais dans les cabinets bien célèbres. Le tems ne l'a point encore obscurci de cette decte fumée, de ce usage sacré, qui le cachera quelque jour aux yeux profanes du vulgaire, pour ne laisser voir ses beautés qu'aux initiés."
The title of this performance, is, "Lettres de Monsieur * * à un de ses Amis à Paris, pour lui expliquer les Estampes de Monsieur Hogarth.—Imprimé à Londres: et se vend chez R. Dodsley, dans Pall Mall; et chez M. Cooper, dans Paternoster Row, 1746." (Le prix est de douze sols.)
I should here observe, that this pamphlet affords only descriptions of the Harlot's and Rake's Progress, Marriage à la Mode, and the March to Finchley. Nine other plates, viz. the Modern Midnight Conversation, the Distressed Poet, the Enraged Musician, the Fair, Strolling Actresses dressing in a Barn, and the Four Times of the Day, are enumerated without particular explanation.
I am authorized to add, that Hogarth, not long before his death, had determined, in compliance with the repeated solicitations of his customers, to have this work enlarged and rendered into English, with the addition of ample comments on all his performances undescribed by Rouquet.
"Hogarth Moralised"[80] will however in some small degree (a very small one) contribute to preserve the memory of those temporary circumstances which Mr. Walpole is so justly apprehensive will be lost to posterity. Such an undertaking indeed, requires a more intimate acquaintance with fleeting customs, and past occurrences, than the compiler of this work can pretend to. Yet enough has been done by him to awaken a spirit of enquiry, and point out the means by which it may be farther gratified.
The works of Hogarth, as his elegant biographer has well observed, are his history;[81] and the curious are highly indebted to Mr. Walpole for a catalogue of prints, drawn up from his own valuable collection, in 1771. But as neither that catalogue, nor his appendix to it in 1780, have given the whole of Mr. Hogarth's labours, I hope that I shall not be blamed if, by including Mr. Walpole's catalogue, I have endeavoured from later discoveries of our artist's prints in other collections, to arrange them in chronological order. It may not be unamusing to trace the rise and progress of a Genius so strikingly original.
Hogarth gave first impressions of all his plates to his late friends the Rev. Mr. Townley and Dr. Isaac Schomberg.[82] Both sets were sold since the death of these gentlemen. That which was Dr. Schomberg's became the property of the late Sir John Chapman, baronet; and passed after his death into the hands of his brother, the late Sir William Chapman. I should add, indeed, that our artist never sorted his impressions, selecting the slight from the strong ones: so that they who wish to possess any equal series of his prints, must pick it out of different sets.