"Such dispositions of the body and limbs as appear most graceful when
seen at rest, depend upon gentle winding contrasts, mostly governed
by the precise serpentine line, which in attitudes of authority are
more extended and spreading than ordinary, but reduced somewhat below
the medium of grace in those of negligence and ease; and as much
exaggerated in insolent and proud carriage, or distortions of pain
(see Number 9, in PLATE I.), as lessened and contracted into plain
and parallel lines, to express meanness, awkwardness, and submission.
"The general idea of an action, as well as of an attitude, may be
given with a pencil in very few lines. It is easy to conceive that
the attitude of a person upon the cross may be fully signified by
the true straight lines of the cross; so the extended manner of St.
Andrew's crucifixion is wholly understood by the X-like cross.
"Thus, as two or three lines at first are sufficient to show the
intention of an attitude, I will take this opportunity of presenting
my reader with the sketch of a country-dance, in the manner I began
to set out the design. In order to show how few lines are necessary
to express the first thoughts, as to different attitudes, see
Number 71 (top of the plate), which describes in some measure the
several figures and actions, mostly of the ridiculous kind, that are
represented in the chief part of Plate II.
"The most amiable person may deform his general appearance by
throwing his body and limbs into plain lines; but such lines appear
still in a more disagreeable light in people of a particular make. I
have therefore chose such figures as I thought would agree best with
my first score of lines, Number 71.
"The two parts of curves next to 71, served for the figures of the
old woman and her partner, at the farther end of the room. The curve,
and two straight lines at right angles, gave the hint for the fat
man's sprawling posture. I next resolved to keep a figure within
the bounds of a circle, which produced the upper part of the fat
woman, between the fat man and the awkward one in the bag-wig, for
whom I had made a sort of an X. The prim lady his partner, in the
riding habit, by pecking back her elbows, as they call it, from the
waist upwards, made a tolerable D, with a straight line under it, to
signify the scanty stiffness of her petticoat; and the Z stood for
the angular position the body makes with the legs and thighs of the
affected fellow in the tie-wig; the upper part of his plump partner
was confined to an O, and this changed into a P, served as a hint
for the straight lines behind. The uniform diamond of a card was
filled up by the flying dress, etc. of the little capering figure
in the Spencer wig, whilst a double L marked the parallel position
of his poking partner's hands and arms: and lastly, the two waving
lines were drawn for the more genteel turns of the two figures at the
hither end."[20]
Such is the author's alphabetical analysis of his serpentine system,
which some of my readers may possibly think borders on the visionary:
certain it is, that however he may have failed in his two specimens
of grace, those of awkwardness are carried as far as they could have
been in a Russian dance, when Peter the Great ordained that no lady
of any age should presume to get drunk before nine o'clock.
I have seen the print framed as a companion to Guido's _Aurora_;
nothing surely can form a stronger contrast to the golden age, when
"Universal Pan,
Knit with the Graces and the Hours, in dance
Led on th' eternal Spring."
They are said to represent the _Wanstead assembly_, and contain
portraits of the first Earl Tylney, his Countess, their children,
tenants, etc. In the tall young lady he has evidently aimed at
Milton's description of motion--_smooth sliding without step_; but
her _air_ is affected. Her noble partner was originally intended for
a portrait of the present King, then Prince of Wales; and though I
learn from Mr. Walpole that it was afterward altered to the first
Duke of Kingston, still retains so much of its original designation
as to bear a resemblance.
The design was made about the year 1728, and might be a just
representation of the Wanstead belles and beaux; but since that
period we have had so many ship-loads of _grace_ imported from the
Continent, and such numbers of _well-educated gentlemen_,[21] who
have exerted their talents in perfecting this _divine art_, that the
picture would not do for the present day.
The _sighing_ Celadon, privately delivering a letter _fraught with
love_ to his fair Amelia, is evidently the native of a country that
has furnished many of our English heiresses with _good_ husbands.
Her impatient father's watch is precisely twelve, which determines
what were then thought late hours, on so particular an occasion as
a wedding-ball, the sketch being originally designed for a series
illustrative of _a happy marriage_.[22]
Hogarth is said to have boasted that each of the hats which lie upon
the floor are so characteristic of their respective proprietors, that
any man who understood the form of the human _caput_ might assign
each to its owner. Among them is a cushion, which was formerly part
of the ball-room furniture, for what was called _the cushion-dance_,
in the progress of which the gentleman kneels down and salutes his
partner.
The light diffused from the chandelier shows an attention to nature
worthy the study and imitation of many modern painters, whose figures
are illuminated by _beams unaccountable_!
Thus much may suffice for the prints; as to the book, a pen was not
Hogarth's instrument. His life had been devoted to the study of the
pencil; and however clear in idea, he felt the consciousness that
his language might be rendered more worthy public attention by the
advice and assistance of literary friends. This he acknowledges, in
the style of a man who felt that his character did not depend on the
power of constructing a sentence, in which branch of the work he was
aided by Doctor Hoadley, Doctor Morrell, and his friend the Reverend
Mr. Townley,[23] whose son told me, that when his father corrected
the first sheet, he found a _plentiful crop of errors_; the second
and third were less incorrect; and the fourth much more accurate than
the preceding. Such is the power of genius, whatever its direction.
I will not go so far as Mr. Ralph, who says, "that by means of this
volume composition is become a science; the student knows what he is
in search of, the connoisseur what to praise, and fancy or fashion,
or prescription, will usurp the hackneyed name of taste no more;
because I think with Lady Luxborough, that in the line of beauty
no man can literally fix _the precise degree of obliquity_;" but I
think with the same lady, "that between his pencil and his pen, he
conveys an idea which enables one to conceive his meaning," and that
he gives many hints which may be of great use to the artist, actor,
dancer, or connoisseur.[24]
Though many profitable opportunities were offered by the politics of
the day, it does not appear that Hogarth ever degraded his character
by either servile adulation or interested abuse of _the powers which
were_.
In an account of the March to Finchley, it will be found that when
the print was presented to George II., the king returned it in a
way that must have mortified and wounded the artist, who, though he
was tremblingly alive to professional indignity, made no _graven
retaliation_. He could not therefore be considered as an opponent it
was proper to silence, or as an advocate it was necessary to retain;
notwithstanding which, on the 16th of July 1757, when Mr. Thornhill
(son to Sir James) resigned his place of sergeant painter, William
Hogarth was appointed his successor; and very soon after, engaged in
a _pencil competition_ that did not terminate to his advantage.
I have had frequent occasion to mention the opinion he entertained
of _ancient paintings_. By ridiculing copies and contemptible
originals, he got a habit of laughing at them all; and when, in 1758,
Sir Thomas Sebright, at Sir Luke Schaub's sale, gave £404, 5s. for
Correggio's Sigismunda,[25] Hogarth, _in evil hour_, asserted that,
were he paid as good a price, he could paint a better picture. Sir
Richard (afterwards Lord) Grosvenor unluckily gave him an order for
the same subject, _guarded with the qualifying monosyllable_ IF.
The work was finished,--sent to the purchaser,--and returned to the
artist,--_because_,--as the ironical epistle[26] which accompanied
it expressed,--"_Contemplating such a subject must excite melancholy
ideas, which a curtain being drawn before it would not diminish._"[27]
This rejection produced a letter from Hogarth to a friend, relating
the whole transaction, in rhymes that might perhaps give our painter
a niche amongst the minor poets; but which, having neither the
harmony of Pope nor the ardour of Dryden, shall find no place here.
The prophecy it concludes with has not been absolutely fulfilled, but
in the form of a _wish_ may be a suitable motto for the next print.
_SIGISMUNDA._
"Let the picture rust;
Perhaps Time's price-enhancing dust,
As statues moulder into earth,
When I'm no more, may mark its worth;
And future connoisseurs may rise,
Honest as ours, and full as wise,
To puff the piece, and painter too,
And make me _then_ what Guido's _now_."
--_Hogarth's Epistle._
[Illustration: SIGISMUNDA.]
A competition with either Guido or Furino would to any modern painter
be _an enterprise of danger_: to Hogarth it was more peculiarly so,
from the public justly conceiving that the representation of elevated
distress was not his _forte_, and his being surrounded by an _host of
foes_, who either dreaded satire or envied genius. The connoisseurs
considering the challenge as too insolent to be forgiven,--_before
his picture appeared_, determined to decry it. The painters rejoiced
in his attempting what was likely to end in disgrace; and to satisfy
those who had formed their ideas of Sigismunda upon the inspired page
of Dryden, was no easy task.
The bard has consecrated the character, and his heroine glitters with
a brightness that cannot be transferred to the canvas. Mr. Walpole's
description, though equally radiant, is too _various_ for the utmost
powers of the pencil.
Hogarth's Sigismunda, as this gentleman poetically expresses it,
"_has none of the sober grief, no dignity of suppressed anguish,
no involuntary tear, no settled meditation on the fate she meant
to meet, no amorous warmth turned holy by despair; in short, all
is wanting that should have been there, all is there that such a
story would have banished from a mind capable of conceiving such
complicated woe; woe so sternly felt, and yet so tenderly_." This
glowing picture presents to the mind a being whose contending
passions may be felt, but were not delineated even by Correggio. Had
his tints been aided by the grace and greatness of Raphael, they must
have failed.
The author of the _Mysterious Mother_ sought for sublimity, where the
artist strictly copied nature, which was invariably his archetype,
but which the painter, who soars into _fancy's fairy regions_,
must in a degree desert. Considered with this reference, though
the picture has faults, Mr. Walpole's satire is surely too severe.
It is built upon a comparison with works painted in a language
of which Hogarth knew not the idiom,--trying him before a tribunal
whose authority he did not acknowledge; and from the picture having
been in many respects altered after the critic saw it, some of the
remarks become unfair. To the frequency of these alterations we may
attribute many of the errors:[28] the man who has not confidence in
his own knowledge of the leading principles on which his work ought
to be built, will not render it perfect by following the advice of
his friends. Though Messrs. Wilkes and Churchill dragged his heroine
to the altar of politics, and mangled her with a barbarity that can
hardly be paralleled, except in the history of her husband,--the
artist retained his partiality, which seems to have increased
in exact proportion to _their_ abuse. The picture being thus
contemplated through the medium of party prejudice, we cannot wonder
that all its imperfections were exaggerated. The _painted harlot_ of
Babylon had not more opprobrious epithets from the _first race_ of
reformers, than the _painted_ Sigismunda of Hogarth from the _last
race_ of patriots.[30]
When a favourite child is chastised by his preceptor, a partial
mother redoubles her caresses. Hogarth, estimating this picture by
the labour he had bestowed upon it, _was certain_ that the public
were prejudiced, and requested, if his wife survived him, she would
not sell it for less than five hundred pounds. Mrs. Hogarth acted
in conformity to his wishes; but after her death, the painting
was purchased by Messrs. Boydell, and exhibited in the Shakspeare
Gallery. The colouring, though not brilliant, is harmonious and
natural: the attitude, drawing, etc., may be generally conceived
by the print engraved by Mr. Benjamin Smith. I am much inclined to
think, that if some of those who have been most severe in their
censures, had consulted their own feelings, instead of depending upon
connoisseurs, poor Sigismunda would have been in higher estimation.
It has been said that the first sketch was made from Mrs. Hogarth, at
the time she was weeping over the _corse_ of her mother.
Hogarth once intended to have appealed from the critics' fiat to
the world's opinion, and employed Mr. Basire to make an engraving,
which was begun, but set aside for some other work, and never
completed.[31]