"The snares are set, the plot is laid,
Ruin awaits thee, hapless maid!
Seduction sly assails thine ear,
And gloating, foul desire is near;
Baneful and blighting are their smiles,
Destruction waits upon their wiles:
Alas! thy guardian angel sleeps,
Vice clasps her hands, and virtue weeps."--E.
[Illustration: THE HARLOT'S PROGRESS, PLATE I.]
The general aim of historical painters has been to emblazon some
signal exploit of an exalted and distinguished character. To go
through a series of actions, and conduct their hero from the cradle
to the grave, to give a history upon canvas, and tell a story with
the pencil, few of them attempted. Mr. Hogarth saw with the intuitive
eye of genius, that one path to the temple of Fame was yet untrodden:
he took Nature for his guide, and gained the summit. He was the
painter of nature; for he gave not merely the ground-plan of the
countenance, but marked the features with every impulse of the mind.
He may be denominated the biographical dramatist of domestic life.
Leaving those heroic monarchs who have blazed through their day with
the destructive brilliancy of a comet to their adulatory historians,
he, like Lillo, has taken his scenes from humble life, and rendered
them a source of entertainment, instruction, and morality.
This series of prints gives the history of a Prostitute. The story
commences with her arrival in London, where, initiated in the
school of profligacy, she experiences the miseries consequent to
her situation, and dies in the morning of life. Her variety of
wretchedness forms such a picture of the way in which vice rewards
her votaries, as ought to warn the young and inexperienced from
entering this path of infamy. The first scene of this domestic
tragedy is laid at the Bell Inn, in Wood Street, and the heroine
may possibly be daughter to the poor old clergyman who is reading
the direction of a letter close to the York waggon, from which
vehicle she has just alighted. In attire, neat, plain, unadorned;
in demeanour, artless, modest, diffident; in the bloom of youth,
and more distinguished by native innocence than elegant symmetry;
her conscious blush and downcast eyes attract the attention of a
female fiend who panders to the vices of the opulent and libidinous.
Coming out of the door of the inn we discover two men, one of
whom is eagerly gloating on the devoted victim. This is a portrait,
and said to be a strong resemblance of Colonel Francis Chartres,[45]
whose epitaph was written by Doctor Arbuthnot: in that epitaph his
character is most emphatically described.[46]
The old procuress, immediately after the girl's alighting from the
waggon, addresses her with the familiarity of a friend rather than
the reserve of one who is to be her mistress.
Had her father been versed in even the first rudiments of
physiognomy, he would have prevented her engaging with one of
so decided an aspect; for this also is the portrait of a woman
infamous in her day:[47] but he, good, easy man, unsuspicious as
Fielding's Parson Adams, is wholly engrossed in the contemplation
of a superscription to a letter addressed to the bishop of the
diocese. So important an object prevents his attending to his
daughter, or regarding the devastation occasioned by his gaunt and
hungry Rozinante having snatched at the straw that packs up some
earthenware, and produced
"The wreck of flower-pots, and the crash of pans!"
From the inn she is taken to the house of the procuress, divested
of her home-spun garb, dressed in the gayest style of the day, and
the tender native hue of her complexion encrusted with paint and
disguised by patches. She is then introduced to Colonel Chartres,
and by artful flattery and liberal promises becomes intoxicated with
the dreams of imaginary greatness. A short time convinces her of how
light a breath these promises were composed. Deserted by her keeper,
and terrified by threats of an immediate arrest for the pompous
paraphernalia of prostitution, after being a short time protected by
one of the tribe of Levi, she is reduced to the hard necessity of
wandering the streets for that precarious subsistence which flows
from the drunken rake or profligate debauchee. Here her situation
is truly pitiable! Chilled by nipping frost and midnight dew, the
repentant tear trickling on her heaving bosom, she endeavours to
drown reflection in draughts of destructive poison. This, added to
the contagious company of women of her own description, vitiates her
mind, eradicates the native seeds of virtue, destroys that elegant
and fascinating simplicity which gives additional charms to beauty,
and leaves in its place art, affectation, and impudence.
Neither the painter of a sublime picture nor the writer of an heroic
poem should introduce any trivial circumstances that are likely to
draw the attention from the principal figures. Such compositions
should form one great whole: minute detail will inevitably weaken
their effect. But in little stories which record the domestic
incidents of familiar life, these accessory accompaniments, though
trifling in themselves, acquire a consequence from their situation;
they add to the interest, and realize the scene. In this, as in
almost all that were delineated by Mr. Hogarth, we see a close regard
paid to things as they then were; by which means his prints become a
sort of historical record of the manners of the age.
The balcony, with linen hanging to dry; the York waggon, which
intimates the county that gave birth to our young adventurer; parcels
lying on the ground, and a goose, directed _To my lofen coosin in
Tems Stret London_, prove the peculiar attention he paid to the
_minutiæ_. The initials M. H. on one of the trunks give us the name
of the heroine of this drama,--Hackabout was a character then well
known, and infamous for her licentiousness and debauchery.[48]
Of elegant beauty Mr. Hogarth had not much idea; but he has marked
his heroine with natural simplicity. To the old procuress he has
given her physiognomical distinction, and to the Colonel his
appropriate stamp.[49]