"His wig was full as old as he,
In which one curl you could not see.
His neckcloth loose, his beard full grown,
An old torn night-gown not his own.
L———, great schemist, that can pay,
The nation's debt an easy way."
In Plate VIII. (which appears in three different states) is a half-penny reversed (struck in the year 1763) and fixed against the wall, intimating, that Britannia herself was fit only for a mad-house. This was a circumstance inserted by our artist (as he advertises) about a year before his death. I may add, that the man drawing lines against the wall just over the half-penny, alludes to Whiston's proposed method of discovering the Longitude by the firing of bombs, as here represented. The idea of the two figures at each corner of the print appears to have been taken from Cibber's statues at Bedlam. The faces of the two females are also changed. That of the woman with a fan, is entirely altered; she has now a cap on, instead of a hood, and is turned, as if speaking to the other.
Mr. Gilpin's opinion concerning this set of prints is too valuable to be omitted, and is therefore transcribed below.[12] The plates were thus admirably illustrated by Dr. John Hoadly.
Plate I.
O Vanity of Age, untoward,
Ever spleeny, ever froward!
Why these Bolts, and massy chains,
Squint suspicions, jealous Pains?
Why, thy toilsome Journey o'er,
Lay'st thou in an useless store?
Hope along with Time is flown,
Nor canst thou reap the field thou'st sown.
Hast thou a son? in time be wise—.
He views thy toil with other eyes.
Needs must thy kind, paternal care,
Lock'd in thy chests be buried there?
Whence then shall flow that friendly ease,
That social converse, home-felt peace,
Familiar duty without dread,
Instruction from example bred,
Which youthful minds with freedom mend,
And with the father mix the friend?
Uncircumscrib'd by prudent rules,
Or precepts of expensive schools
Abus'd at home, abroad despis'd,
Unbred, unletter'd, unadvis'd;
The headstrong course of youth begun,
What comfort from this darling son?
Plate II.
Prosperity (with harlot's smiles,
Most pleasing when she most beguiles)
How soon, sweet foe, can all thy train
Of false, gay, frantic, loud, and vain,
Enter the unprovided mind,
And Memory in fetters bind;
Load Faith and Love with golden chain,
And sprinkle Lethe o'er the brain!
Pleasure, in her silver throne,
Smiling comes, nor comes alone;
Venus comes with her along,
And smooth Lyæus ever young;
And in their train, to fill the press,
Come apish Dance, and swol'n Excess,
Mechanic Honour, vicious Taste,
And Fashion in her changing vest.
Plate III.
O vanity of youthful blood,
So by misuse to poison good!
Woman, fram'd for social love,
Fairest gift of powers above;
Source of every houshold blessing,
All charms in innocence possessing—
But turn'd to Vice, all plagues above,
Foe to thy Being, foe to Love!
Guest divine to outward viewing,
Ablest Minister of Ruin!
And thou, no less of gift divine,
"Sweet poison of misused wine!"
With freedom led to every part,
And secret chamber of the heart;
Dost thou thy friendly host betray,
And show thy riotous gang the way
To enter in with covert treason,
O'erthrow the drowsy guard of reason,
To ransack the abandon'd place,
And revel there in wild excess?
Plate IV.
O vanity of youthful blood,
So by misuse to poison good!
Reason awakes, and views unbarr'd
The sacred gates he watch'd to guard;
Approaching sees the harpy, Law,
And Poverty, with icy paw,
Ready to seize the poor remains—
That Vice has left of all his gains.
Cold Penitence, lame After-thought,
With fears, despair, and horrors fraught,
Call back his guilty pleasures dead,
Whom he hath wrong'd, and whom betray'd.
Plate V.
New to the School of hard Mishap,
Driven from the ease of Fortune's lap,
What schemes will Nature not embrace
T' avoid less shame of drear distress!
Gold can the charms of youth bestow,
And mask deformity with show:
Gold can avert the sting of Shame,
In winter's arms create a flame;
Can couple youth with hoary age,
And make antipathies engage.
Plate VI.
Gold, thou bright son of Phœbus, source
Of universal intercourse;
Of weeping Virtue soft redress,
And blessing those who live to bless!
Yet oft behold this sacred truth,
The tool of avaricious Lust:
No longer bond of human kind,
But bane of every virtuous mind.
What chaos such misuse attends!
Friendship stoops to prey on friends;
Health, that gives relish to delight,
Is wasted with the wasting night;
Doubt and mistrust is thrown on Heaven,
And all its power to Chance is given.
Sad purchase of repentant tears,
Of needless quarrels, endless fears,
Of hopes of moments, pangs of years!
Sad purchase of a tortur'd mind
To an imprison'd body join'd!
Plate VII.
Happy the man, whose constant thought
(Though in the school of hardship taught)
Can send Remembrance back to fetch
Treasures from life's earliest stretch;
Who, self-approving, can review
Scenes of past virtues, which shine through
The gloom of age, and cast a ray
To gild the evening of his day!
Not so the guilty wretch confin'd:
No pleasures meet his conscious mind;
No blessings brought from early youth,
But broken faith and wrested truth,
Talents idle and unus'd,
And every trust of Heaven abus'd.
In seas of sad reflection lost,
From horrors still to horrors toss'd,
Reason the vessel leaves to steer,
And gives the helm to mad despair.
Plate VIII.
Madness! thou chaos of the brain;
What art, that pleasure giv'st and pain?
Tyranny of Fancy's reign!
Mechanic Fancy! that can build
Vast labyrinths and mazes wild,
With rule disjointed, shapeless measure,
Fill'd with horror, fill'd with pleasure!
Shapes of horror, that would even
Cast doubt of mercy upon Heaven!
Shapes of pleasure, that but seen
Would split the shaking sides of spleen.
O vanity of age! here see
The stamp of Heaven effac'd by thee!
The headstrong course of youth thus run,
What comfort from this darling son?
His rattling chains with terror hear;
Behold Death grappling with despair;
See him by thee to ruin sold,
And curse Thyself, and curse thy Gold.
On this occasion also appeared an 8vo pamphlet, intituled, "The Rake's Progress, or the Humours of Drury-Lane, a poem in eight canto's, in Hudibrastick verse, being the ramble of a modern Oxonian, which is a compleat key to the eight prints lately published by the celebrated Mr. Hogarth." The second edition with additions, particularly an "epistle to Mr. Hogarth" was "printed for J. Chetwood, and sold at Inigo Jones's-Head against Exeter Change in The Strand, 1735." This is a most contemptible and indecent performance. Eight prints are inserted in some copies of it; but they are only the designs of Hogarth murdered, and perhaps were not originally intended for the decoration of the work already described.
The original paintings, both of the Rake's and Harlot's Progress, were at Fonthill, in Wiltshire, the seat of Mr. Beckford,[13] where the latter were destroyed by a fire, in the year 1755; the former set was happily preserved. Mr. Barnes, of Rippon, in Yorkshire, has the Harlot's Progress in oil. It must, however, be a copy. Mr. Beckford has also twenty-five heads from the Cartoons by Hogarth, for which he paid twenty-five guineas.
There is reason to believe that Hogarth once designed to have introduced the ceremony of a Marriage Contract into the Rake's Progress, instead of the Levee. An unfinished painting of this scene is still preserved. We have here the Rake's apartment as now exhibited in Plate II. In the anti-room, among other figures, we recognize that of the poet who at present congratulates our hero on his accession to wealth and pleasure. The bard is here waiting with an epithalamium in his hand. The Rake has added connoisseurship to the rest of his expensive follies. One of his purchases is a canvas containing only the representation of a human foot. [Perhaps this circumstance might allude to the dissection of Arlaud's Leda. See Mr. Walpole's Anecdotes, &c. vol. IV. p. 39.] A second is so obscure, that no objects in it are discernible. [A performance of the same description is introduced in our artist's Piquet, or Virtue in Danger.] A third presents us with a Madona looking down with fondness on the infant she holds in her arms. [This seems intended as a contrast to the grey headed bride who sits under it, and is apparently past child-bearing.] The fourth is emblematical, and displays perhaps too licentious a satire on transubstantiation. The Blessed Virgin is thrusting her Son down the hopper of a mill, in which he is ground by priests till he issues out in the shape of the consecrated wafer, supposed by Catholicks to contain the real presence. At a table sits a toothless decrepit father, guardian, or match-maker, joining the hand of the rake with that of the antiquated female, whose face is highly expressive of eagerness, while that of her intended husband is directed a contrary way, toward a groom who is bringing in a piece of plate won at a horse-race.[14] On the floor in front lie a heap of mutilated busts, &c. which our spendthrift is supposed to have recently purchased at an auction. The black boy, who is afterwards met with in Plate IV. of Marriage Alamode, was transplanted from this canvas. He is here introduced supporting such a picture of Ganymede as hangs against the wall of the lady's dressing-room in the same plate of the same work.
[1] The face of this female has likewise been changed on the last plate. In the intermediate ones it remains as originally designed. To give the same character two different casts of countenance, was surely an incongruity without excuse.
[2] The inscription on this bill is—"London, bought of William Tothall, Woollen-draper in Covent-Garden." See the corner figure looking over the music in the Rehearsal of the Oratorio of Judith; and note [88] above.