was enabled to say, "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." He was enabled to give the first narrow vent to his depictive powers, by being apprenticed, early in life, as an engraver on plate to a respectable goldsmith, of the name of Ellis Gamble, at "the Golden Angel in Cranbourn-street, Leicester-fields." We have evidence of his knowledge of taste, and of the rules of drawing, in specimens earlier than those in which he displayed his discernment of character. Two cards for the shop of his employer, and one for an individual in the same profession, have been religiously preserved and re-engraved. These, when we hold in view the restricted nature of the work, exhibit a fund of varied and apt illustration, and of correct drawing. We find in them all that can be applied to use, of the theory of the waving line of beauty which he afterwards so elaborately illustrated, while in the lines and attitudes he has shown a disposition to imitate the manner of one of the best of early French engravers, Callot. If such was his intention, he quickly improved upon his model. Some plates, which he soon afterwards executed for a work on Roman military punishments, are evidently after Callot's method of grouping, while the figures have more variety and proportion; but, in a small plate executed for his own card as an engraver, which bears date, April, 1720, the beauty of the arrangement in the tiny parts, and the easy flow of the drapery and attitudes of two symbolical figures, so far excel Callot in purity of taste, that the resemblance ceases. Nichols tells us that an accident first drew his latent powers into their natural channel. He had taken an excursion with some companions to Highgate, one hot sunny evening, and entered a public house, where some people were quarrelling. One of the disputants lacerated the face of another with a blow from a quartpot. The bloody face, the agonized attitude of the sufferer, and perhaps the emotions depicted on the features of the perpetrator and his companions, struck the comic feeling of the artist so forcibly, that he snatched out his pencil, and committed the incident to paper on the spot, with caricature portraits of all the persons engaged. But perhaps the earliest specimen of his attempts at character which has survived, is a rude outline sketch of one of the scenes in Pope's Rape of the Lock,' said to have been an impression from a scratching on the lid of a gold snuff-box. This production is so meagre, and so negligently executed, that it is only on being informed of the name of the artist, that, with the assistance perhaps of a slight tinge of fancy, we are enabled to detect his characteristics; yet so much do collectors prefer the possession of what another cannot procure to the best works of art, that while the paintings of the Harlot's Progress' sold at fourteen guineas each, and from one to two guineas were frequently the prices of the best impressions of his best plates, the single impression from the snuff-box was purchased at Mr Gulstone's sale, in 1786, for £33. We bestow disproportionate space on the description of the early productions of the great artist, because they are comparatively unknown, and his more mature works are so generally circulated, so well appreciated, and so voluminously illustrated, that an equal attention to them would be but a faint addition to the abundance of knowledge on the subject, which most general readers possess. He gladly left his situa

tion with the goldsmith, and established himself as an engraver, in which capacity his efforts were for a considerable period limited to engraving shop cards, coats of arms, and illustrations of obscure books. He appears, during this period, to have lived an obscure and laborious life: "by engraving," he says, "until I was near thirty, I could do little more than maintain myself; but, even then, I was a punctual paymaster."

About the year 1728 he appears to have aimed at the higher branch of the art, by commencing to paint portraits, and small family conversation pieces. He was no flatterer of the human countenance, yet, in his obscurer years, several, who probably grudged the prices of fashionable artists, saw inducement in his talent, when added to economy, sufficient to make them become his employers. In the capacity of a portrait painter, an anecdote of the artist has been preserved, exceedingly characteristic of his desire to sport with human follies and frailties. A peer, whose ugliness exceeded that generally allotted to humanity, sat to Hogarth for his picture. The painter could not resist the happy opportunity of depicting a hideous likeness of an hereditary legislator. The peer, actuated by feelings somewhat different from those of the artist, showed considerable reluctance to receive the portrait and pay the price. Hogarth sent him the following note:-" Mr Hogarth's dutiful respects to Lord ; finding that he does not mean to have the picture which was drawn for him, is informed again of Mr H.'s necessity for the money; if, therefore, his lordship does not send for it in three days, it will be disposed of, with the addition of a tail, and some other little appendages, to Mr Hare, the famous wild-beast man ; Mr H. having given that gentleman a conditional promise of it for an exhibition-picture, on his lordship's refusal." The picture was sent for and burnt. While on the subject of portrait-painting, we may here make a remark on a matter of much dispute, regarding the genius of Hogarth. It has been asserted by some, that he never depicted a female face of mental beauty; while others have doubted whether he could have guided his pencil to the delineation of a really pleasing female face. In his pictures of life and character the point admits of much dispute: the features of the bride, in the first picture of Marriage a la Mode,' have certainly all that could be wished of the air of a highbred beauty; and, in an illustration of the 'Beggar's Opera,' he has given us the picture of an exceedingly pleasing and pretty girl. In these instances the ideal perfection of classic sculpture was neither requisite nor natural; but it must be allowed, that, in his female forms in general, deformity is more frequent and more strikingly interesting than beauty. There is, however, one female head and bust, which, in form of feature, in the reflection of a soul within, nay, even in the attitude and the adjustment of the head-dress, appears to have approached all that can be imagined of the most exquisite female beauty. It is unknown whether this is a portrait or a study; most probably the former. The features have all the marks of individuality; had these been the marks of low passion, of folly, or of meanness, their peculiarities would have been no reason for supposing the portrait not to have been a design by Hogarth, but they are the marks of individual graces and beauties. Hogarth's servant, Ben Ives, was aware of the excellence of this picture: showing it to Garrick, he exclaimed, "There, sir! there's a picture!

They say my master can't paint a portrait, and does not know what true beauty is there is a head that, I think, must confound and put all his enemies to the blush." Nor in the male portraits which have survived do we find much propensity to caricature, or a wilful blindness to outward dignity of form or expression denoting good or high mental principle. His portraits, he says, "by some were said to be nature itself, by others most execrable;" and he refers to the full length portrait of Captain Thomas Coram, painted for the Foundling Hospital, as a proof of the injustice of his traducers. This represents the living figure of an easy, excellent old gentleman, with a hale body, an excellent heart, and a strong head. The portraits of Archbishop Herring, and of Gibbs the architect, may be adduced as specimens of the mental dignity which he could produce when he willed it.

The earliest of his works now known, in which he attempted a complicated arrangement of figures, is in the Wanstead Assembly, afterwards used as an illustration to the Analysis of Beauty.' The period of life at which he painted this picture is unknown. It is impossible to mistake in it the master-hand, although it is comparatively uninteresting little is represented but a complication of vulgarity and clumsiness, of awkwardness varied and contrasted almost without end. There is more ingenuity in displaying grotesqueness than genius, and we look in vain for the moral satire of Marriage a la Mode,' or the revolting horrors of Gin-lane.'

In 1730 Hogarth married Jane, the only daughter of Sir James Thornhill, sergeant painter, and history painter to King George I.—a lady, who, if we may judge from a portrait by her husband, must have possessed considerable attractions. The young artist, low born, little distinguished in his profession, illiterate, and totally destitute of any courtly ingredients in his manners, it is very natural to suppose would not have appeared a fitting son-in-law in the eyes of Sir James, and the marriage was clandestine. About a year after his marriage he had just finished the pictures of the 'Harlot's Progress,' and was advised by Lady Thornhill to have some of the scenes placed before Sir James. Mrs Hogarth placed the pictures in his dining-room, and when she satisfied the inquiries of the astonished sergeant painter as to the hand whence they had sprung, he remarked, "Very well; the man who can furnish representations like these, can also maintain a wife without a portion." In this inimitable series of pictures, and in the 'Rake's Progress,' which speedily followed, it had been the intention of the artist to present the world with painted dramas,—with series of pictures in which the mind saw so much connection, that it could dovetail the whole into narratives, inore living than the pen could be made to depict. We need not say how well he accomplished his object. From the moment when they appeared before the world to the present day, the most critical eyes have been employed in examining, and the most elegant pens in analyzing, the endless varieties of these complicated productions of the human intellect; nor does it seem they could ever cease, like the nature from which they are derived, to pour forth new matter for the critic or the moralist. The conventional attributes of these plates may become strange and unnatural with the improvements or degeneracies of time,

Nichols says she was only eighteen at the period of her marriage; Dallaway, in a note to Walpole's Anecdotes, says she was twenty-one. Vol. iv. p. 145.

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and indeed many of them are already antiquated. The swords, the ponderous wigs, the extended petticoats, nay, the villanous assembly congregated in the chambers of the spendthrift, in the second plate, and the roaring debauchery exhibited in the third of the Rake's Progress,' are things unseen and almost forgotten in the nineteenth century; but the swaggering, consequential brutality of the jailor, the silly strut of the fop, the maudlin leer of the exhausted and decrepit drunkard, the furious contortions of the ruined gambler, and the ghastly horrors and imbecilities of the madhouse, will tell truths of the human heart to ages vet unborn. Their effect cannot change so long as mankind remain the same; and had they been painted in ancient Babylon or Rome, with the corresponding costume and manners, they could not have lost many of their attractions for the present age. The remarks of Mr Gilpen on one of these pictures-the 'Rake's Levee'-affords a good comment on the method of Hogarth's genius, and the sacrifices he made to give it freedom :-" The composition seems to be entirely subservient to the expression. It appears as if Hogarth had sketched, in his memorandum book, all the characters which he has here introduced; but was at a loss how to group them; and chose rather to introduce them in detached figures, as he had sketched them, than to lose any part of the expression by combining them. The light is very ill distributed; it is spread indiscriminately over the print, and destroys the whole. We have no instance of grace in any of the figures." These remarks, considered in the light of objections, spring from the technical feelings of the amateur, and we require to be told of their existence, and to search for them in the pictures, before we are aware of their existence. In the pictures of the 'Levee,' the Gambling House,' or the 'Asylum,' we feel scarcely more inclined to search for grouping and light, than if the actual scenes were presented before us. The artist had narrative and the display of character in view, and he has not altered the position of a limb, or darkened a feature, where, for the sake of effect, he might have deviated, in the most minute proportion, from the truth of the character. His earlier and less distinguished works show him to have been an excellent master of grouping and light. When we add to the pictures we have just been alluding to, the 'Marriage a la Mode,' the Four Stages of Cruelty,'' Beer Street,' and 'Gin Lane,' and the Idle and Industrious Apprentice' we have before us a set of sermons against vice, and satires on folly, which the world scarcely elsewhere equals. To weak minds the view of vice is generally either shocking or depraving, while it is well it should be known that it may be avoided: the artist seems to have glutted in its horrors, that he might represent it almost living, for the avoidance of others. "Hogarth," says Horace Walpole, "resembles Butler, but his subjects are more universal, and, amidst all his pleasantry, he observes the true end of comedy-reformation; there is always a moral in his pictures. Sometimes he rose to tragedy, not in the catastrophe of kings and heroes, but in marking how vice conducts, insensibly and incidentally, to misery and shame. He warns against encouraging cruelty and idleness in young minds, and discerns how the different vices of the great and the vulgar lead, by various paths, to the same unhappiness. The fine lady in Marriage a la Mode,' and Tom Nero, in the Four Stages of Cruelty,' terminate their story in bloodshe occasions the murder of her husband, he assassinates his mistress,"

Soon after his marriage, Hogarth lived at South Lambeth, and contributed to the ornaments of the gardens of Vauxhall, for which he painted the well-known Four parts of the Day.' The prints of his Harlot's Progress' introduced him speedily to the highest notice in the land, and the events of the series were made popular by dramatic performances. It is singular that a man whose eyes were so universally open to the follies of his race, should have indulged in one of the most despicable foibles of mankind-national prejudice. But he never attempted by reflection to curb the natural rough outlines of his temper; in society he was frequently rude, vulgar, overbearing, and disagreeable; and an incident which happened at this period of his life, affords a specimen of how luxuriantly he allowed his prejudices and narrow views to grow. In 1747, he made an excursion to France, for the purpose of seeing and ridiculing the inferiority of that country to his native land. Whenever he met an object which in the slightest degree attracted his tenacious attention to the ludicrous, he invariably visited it with a torrent of English abuse. Towards the termination of his journey he sat down and commenced the sketching of the gate of Calais, from which he prepared the curious caricature termed Roast Beef at the Gate of Calais.' His labours were interrupted by a sentinel, who seized him as a person most audaciously acting as a spy. On being brought before the commandant, he was courteously informed, that, had not the articles of the peace of Aix la Chapelle been concluded, he should have been strung up to the rampart. An examination of his sketch-book showing his designs not to be of a political nature, he was permitted to depart in the company of two guards, who attended him on board, and did not leave him until he had proceeded three miles from the shore, when they spun him round on the deck, and left him to meditate on the inferiority of the French nation. He could never patiently permit the circumstances of his journey to be alluded to in his presence.

In the year 1745, Hogarth, conceiving that his prints were sufficiently numerous for the purpose, formed them into a handsome volume, and engraved his own portrait for the frontispiece. On the corner of this celebrated portrait was a palette with a waving line, inscribed The Line of Beauty.' The meaning of the artist in this representation created considerable discussion, and the disputes which originated on the matter prompted him to a literary explanation of his favourite curve. In 1753 he published the well-known Analysis of Beauty, written with a view of fixing the fluctuating ideas of Taste.' Few men adopt a metaphysical theory without arguments in its support, founded on observation of nature; hence, the acuteness of Hogarth enabled him, while supporting his very limited theory, to make many original observations on the origin of taste, which, with the general fate of such discoveries, have found their way into the works of more enlarged and compact theorists, while their original source is neglected. His theories are laid down with uncompromising boldness; for his success in one branch of genius had not taught him humility in others. There were few things, indeed, which entered his imagination as being worthy of achievement, for which he did not conceive himself capable; and the surest way to gain his favour, was by flattering him on the performances which the world considered he had ill-achieved. "A word in