[61] On what account I know not, but he had then forborn painting for more than a year.
[62] See hereafter, note [65].
[63] In the Beauties of all the Magazines, 1773, p. 440, is a droll "Epistle from Jacob Henriques, born anno Domini, &c. to Messieurs Hogarth and Churchill greeting."
[64] For this the Satirist unmercifully apologizes in the conclusion of his poem, which may be seen in the Catalogue, under the year 1763, in a [note] on N° 2.
[65] As much of this paper as relates to our artist is here subjoined:
"The humourous Mr. Hogarth, the supposed author of the Analysis of Beauty, has at last entered the list of politicians, and given us a print of The Times. Words are man's province, says Pope; but they are not Mr. Hogarth's province. He somewhere mentions his being indebted to a friend for a third part of the wording: that is his phrase. We all titter the instant he takes up a pen, but we tremble when we see the pencil in his hand. I will do him the justice to say, that he possesses the rare talent of gibbetting in colours, and that in most of his works he has been a very good moral satirist. His forte is there, and he should have kept it. When he has at any time deviated from his own peculiar walk, he has never failed to make himself perfectly ridiculous. I need only make my appeal to any one of his historical or portrait pieces, which are now considered as almost beneath all criticism. The favourite Sigismunda, the labour of so many years, the boasted effort of his art, was not human. If the figure had a resemblance of any thing ever on earth, or had the least pretence to meaning or expression, it was what he had seen, or perhaps made, in real life, his own wife in an agony of passion; but of what passion no connoisseur could guess. All his friends remember what tiresome discourses were held by him day after day about the transcendent merit of it, and how the great names of Raphael, Vandyke, and others, were made to yield the palm of beauty, grace, expression, &c. to him, for this long laboured, yet still, uninteresting, single figure. The value he himself set on this, as well as on some other of his works, almost exceeds belief; yet from politeness or fear, or some other motives, he has actually been paid the most astonishing sums, as the price, not of his merit, but of his unbounded vanity.
"The darling passion of Mr. Hogarth is to shew the faulty and dark side of every object. He never gives us in perfection the fair face of nature, but admirably well holds out her deformities to ridicule. The reason is plain. All objects are painted on his retina in a grotesque manner, and he has never felt the force of what the French call la belle nature. He never caught a single idea of beauty, grace, or elegance; but, on the other hand, he never missed the least flaw in almost any production of nature or of art. This is his true character. He has succeeded very happily in the way of humour, and has miscarried in every other attempt. This has arisen in some measure from his head, but much more from his heart. After Marriage à la Mode, the public wished for a series of prints of a happy marriage. Hogarth made the attempt, but the rancour and malevolence of his mind made him very soon turn with envy and disgust from objects of so pleasing contemplation, to dwell and feast a bad heart on others of a hateful cast, which he pursued, for he found them congenial, with the most unabating zeal, and unrelenting gall.
"I have observed some time his setting sun. He has long been very dim, and almost shorn of his beams. He seems so conscious of this, that he now glimmers with borrowed light. John Bull's house in flames has been hackney'd in fifty different prints; and if there is any merit in the figure on stilts, and the mob prancing around, it is not to be ascribed to Hogarth, but to Callot. That spirited Italian, whom the English painter has so carefully studied, has given us in the Balli di Sfessania di Jacomo Callot, the very same ideas, but infinitely more ludicrous in the execution. The piece is Smaraolo cornuto. Ratsa di Boio. The Times must be confessed destitute of every kind of original merit. The print at first view appears too much crouded with figures; and is in every part confused, perplexed, and embarrassed. The story is not well told to the eye; nor can we any where discover the faintest ray of that genius, which with a few strokes of the pencil enabled us to penetrate into the deepest recesses of thought, and even caprice, in a rake, a harlot, and a profligate young man of quality.
"I own too that I am grieved to see the genius of Hogarth, which should take in all ages and countries, sunk to a level with the miserable tribe of party-etchers, and now, in his rapid decline, entering into the poor politics of the faction of the day, and descending into low personal abuse, instead of instructing the world, as he could once, by manly moral satire. Whence can proceed so surprizing a change? Is it the frowardness of old age? Or is it that envy and impatience of resplendent merit in every way, at which he has always sickened? How often has he been remarked to droop at the fair and honest applause given even to a friend, though he had particular obligations to the very same gentleman! What wonder then that some of the most respectable characters of the age become the objects of his ridicule? It is sufficient that the rest of mankind applaud; from that moment he begins the attack, and you never can be well with him, till he hears an universal outcry against you, and till all your friends have given you up. There is besides a silly affectation of singularity, joined to a strong desire of leading the rest of the world: when that is once found impracticable, the spleen engendered on such an occasion is discharged at a particular object, or ends in a general misanthropy. The public never had the least share of Hogarth's regard, or even good-will. Gain and vanity have steered his little bark quite through life. He has never been consistent but with respect to those two principles. What a despicable part has he acted with regard to the society of Arts and Sciences! How shuffling has his conduct been to the whole body of Artists! Both these useful societies have experienced the most ungenteel and offensive behaviour from him. There is at this hour scarcely a single man of any degree of merit in his own profession, with whom he does not hold a professed enmity. It is impossible the least degree of friendship could ever subsist in this intercourse of the arts with him; for his insufferable vanity will never allow the least merit in another, and no man of a liberal turn of mind will ever condescend to feed his pride with the gross and fulsome praise he expects, or to burn the incense he claims, and indeed snuffs like a most gracious god. To this he joins no small share of jealousy; in consequence of which, he has all his life endeavoured to suppress rising merit, and has been very expert in every mean underhand endeavour, to extinguish the least spark of genuine fire. Rut all genius was not born, nor will die, with Mr. Hogarth: and notwithstanding all his ungenerous efforts to damp or chill it in another, I will trust to a discerning and liberal spirit in the English nation, to patronize and reward all real merit. It will in the end rise superior to the idle laugh of the hour, which these triflers think it the highest praise to be able to raise. For my part, I scarcely know a more profligate principle, than the indiscriminately sacrificing every thing, however great or good, to the dangerous talent of ridicule; and a man, whose sole object is dummodo risum excutiat, ought to be avoided as the worst pest of society, as the enemy most to be feared, I mean a treacherous friend. Such a man will go all lengths to raise a laugh at your expence, and your whole life will be made miserable from his ambition of diverting the company for half an hour.
"I love to trace the ideas of a Genius, and to mark the progress of every art. Mr. Hogarth has heard much of the cobwebs of the law, and the spinning fine spider-webs, &c. This is thrown on paper, and the idea carefully treasured. Lord Hardwicke being at the head of the law, and deservedly in as high esteem with his countrymen as any man who ever held the seals, unspotted in life, and equally revered by prince and people, becomes an excellent subject for the satirical pencil of a malevolent painter. He is accordingly emblematically represented by Mr. Hogarth as a great spider in a large, thick web, with myriads of the carcases of flies, clients I suppose, sucked to death by the gloomy tyrant. Mr. Hogarth had heard of Mr. Pitt's being above all his fellow-citizens, and of his superior virtue having raised him to an envied and dangerous height of grandeur. Now this he has taken literally, and, with the kind aid of Callot, has put Mr. Pitt on stilts, and made the people look up to him; which, after all this insipid ridicule, they will continue to do, as a kind of tutelar deity, from whom they expect that security and those blessings they despair of from others. As to the conceit of the bellows, to signify, I suppose, Mr. Pitt's endeavours to blow up the flames of war and discord, it is at once very poor and very false. His whole conduct the last session in parliament, and out of the house ever since, has demonstrated the contrary: neque vero hoc oratione solum, sed multo magis vitâ et moribus comprobavit. Cic. de Fin.