But to multiply examples of Hogarth's humour would come very near to cataloguing his every work. Let us turn now from that work to the man himself, and study something of those conditions of life of which his genius gives us our most vivid impress.
William Hogarth was born in 1697 or 1698, in London, but of a Westmorland family (Hoggard would seem to have been the earlier spelling), one member of which, the artist's father, after working as a schoolmaster in Westmorland, had settled in London as corrector of the Press.
He must have been a man of some education, since we hear of a Latin-English Dictionary of his composition, though there seems some uncertainty as to whether it ever got beyond the initial stage of MS.; and his son William was early in life bound 'prentice to a silversmith named Gamble, his business being to learn the graving of arms and ciphers upon plate. His marvellous gift for caricature soon showed itself; and a tavern quarrel at Highgate seems to have afforded subject for an early manifestation of his talent in this direction. As the period of his 'prenticeship came to its close he entered an Academy of drawing in St. Martin's Lane, where he may have come under Sir James Thornhill's notice; but seems to have failed to show any exceptional proficiency in his life studies. Form, we have seen already, lay outside—in certain manifestations entirely outside—the peculiar limits of his temperament. Shop-bills and coats-of-arms were probably the mainstay of his livelihood at this period, though plates for books were beginning, little by little, to come in his way; but when in 1730 he clandestinely married the daughter of Sir James Thornhill, the Court painter was so incensed at this mèsalliance that he refused the young couple any acknowledgment. It was at this very time that Hogarth created his first work of individual genius in that superb series of plates to which he gave the name of "The Harlot's Progress"; and it is said that Lady Thornhill designedly placed one of the plates in her husband's way, only to elicit the grudging praise of: "The man who can produce these can also maintain a wife without a portion."
But the ice was broken, and the ensuing thaw led to a complete reconciliation. Sir James Thornhill treated his daughter and son-in-law more generously, and lived with them in future till his death in 1733.
At the same time the Series which had brought about domestic reconciliation, had also brought fame and fortune to the artist. The third scene of the Progress, in which the erring girl is arrested, contained, it would seem, a clever portrait of Sir James Gonson, a magistrate whose energies were famous in this direction. The print is passed around at a meeting of the Board of Treasury, at which Sir James is present; every Lord must repair to the print-shop, to obtain for himself a copy; the vogue was started, and twelve hundred subscribers entered their names for the Series, the price of each set being one guinea.
William Hogarth was now well started in his career of fame; and deservedly so, for in some respects "The Harlot's Progress" is one of the most characteristic and the most brilliant of his creations. Its popularity was immense and instantaneous; it was played in pantomime, and reproduced on ladies' fans. But if he did not surpass the genius of his first invention he certainly came very close to it, both in the "Rake's Progress" and in his ["Marriage à la Mode."]
Each of these Series, as well as that of the "Industrious and Idle 'Prentices" are complete stories, worked out to their dénoûment—tragedies, one might say, written with a burlesque pencil, of eighteenth-century life. And if the note struck seem sometimes too insistent, if the Industrious one be too sleek, too self-complacent, the prodigal too immersed in sensual folly and indulgence; if the blacks seem too black, and the whites too white, and those half-tones which accord the values of life be generally missing; if a more refined age demands a subtler analysis, a more artistic treatment, can we yet deny the truth and necessity of the eternal lesson? Have we yet reached, or shall we ever reach, an age in which ineptitude, insolence, idleness, fail to work out their inevitable resultant? Or is it less true for us than for those earlier ages—the message which the writer of that magnificent thirty-eighth Psalm reiterates, as though he would drive deep into our souls its lasting verity. "Put thou thy trust in the Lord and be doing good; dwell in the land and verily thou shall be fed. Delight thou in the Lord; and he shall give thee thy heart's desire.... Yet a little while and the ungodly shall be clean gone ... the Lord shall laugh him to scorn, for he hath seen that his day is coming."
Just as insistent, just as certain of his concluding verdict as the Psalmist is the eighteenth-century engraver and humorist. Even his own day may already have seen "the ungodly" set high above men in social position, quoted with respect in financial circles, perhaps even a regular attendant at the local conventicle,—"flourishing," in short, to quote that inimitable phrase of the same Psalmist, "like a green bay-tree"; but he, at least will admit no doubt of the ultimate conclusion. "In all his delineation," says Mr. Austin Dobson,[[3]] with fine insight, "as in that famous design of Prudhon, we see Justice and Vengeance following hard upon the criminal. He knew, no doubt, as well as we, that not seldom (humanly speaking) the innocent are punished and the guilty go at large. What matter! that message should not be preached by him at any rate. So he drew his 'Bogey' bigger ... and drove his graver deeper in the copper."
Yet it is to be noted that from the first his genius is attracted to social satire. The Masquerades and Operas, Burlington Gate, 1724 (which he calls in his own notes The Taste of the Times)—the first plate which he published on his own account,—was popular enough to be freely pirated. "The Wanstead Assembly" brings him close to the later caricaturists; "The Burning of Rumps" shows us a London crowd beside old Temple Bar, with its ghastly trophies of Jacobite relics; and all these lead up to his later success in the two Progresses and the Marriage Series. In 1733 he had settled in his house in Leicester Fields, with its gilt sign of the Golden Head—the sign which he had fashioned and gilded himself, in the similitude of the painter Van Dyck; and here the most of his life was to be spent, varied by visits in later years to the villa which he then acquired at Chiswick. He is now fairly facing his life work, and a brief survey of this is all we can hope to attempt in the limits of this chapter.
I have already mentioned "The Harlot's Progress," and its immediate successor, "The Rake's Progress," the subjects of which speak for themselves. The country maiden's arrival in London, the breakfast scene with her Jewish admirer, and the scene in Bridewell are to be noted among the prints of the first Series; but all are full of character and interest. In "The Rake's Progress" the second plate introduces us to a side of Hogarth's talent which he was to develop later on more fully in his ["Marriage à la Mode"]—namely, his satire of eighteenth-century life of fashion.