"O vanity of youthful blood,
So by misuse to poison good!
Reason awakes, and views unbarr'd
The sacred gates he wish'd to guard;
Approaching, see 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 fear, despair, and horror fraught,
Call back his guilty pleasures dead,
Whom he hath wrong'd, and whom betray'd."
[Illustration: THE RAKE'S PROGRESS, PLATE IV.]
The career of dissipation is here stopped. Dressed in the first style
of the _ton_, and getting out of a sedan chair, with the hope of
shining in the circle, and perhaps forwarding a former application
for a place or a pension, he is arrested! To intimate that being
plundered is the certain consequence of such an event, and to show
how closely one misfortune treads upon the heels of another, a boy is
at the same moment picking his pocket.
The unfortunate girl whom he basely deserted is now a milliner,
and naturally enough attends in the crowd to mark the fashions of the
day. Seeing his distress, with all the eager tenderness of unabated
love, she flies to his relief. Possessed of a small sum of money,
the hard earnings of unremitted industry, she generously offers her
purse for the liberation of her worthless favourite. This releases
the captive beau, and displays a strong instance of female affection,
which, being once planted in the bosom, is rarely eradicated by the
coldest neglect or harshest cruelty.
The high-born, haughty Welshman, with an enormous leek, and a
countenance keen and lofty as his native mountains, establishes the
chronology, and fixes the day to be the first of March; which, being
sacred to the titular saint of Wales, was observed at court.[78]
The background exhibits a view of St James's Palace, and White's
Chocolate House, then the rendezvous of the first gamesters in
London. At this fountainhead of dissipation the artist has aimed a
flash of lightning; and to show the contagion of example, and how
much this ruinous vice prevails even in the lowest ranks of society,
he has in one corner of the print represented an assembly composed
of shoe-blacks, chimney-sweepers, etc.,[79] who, aping the vices of
their superiors, are engaged at cards, dice, cups and balls, and
pricking in the belt. To intimate how eagerly these minor gamblers
enter into the spirit of what they are engaged in, one of them is
naked, and having staked and lost his clothes, is now throwing for
his stock in trade, a basket, brushes, and blacking. The little
smutty smoking politician is reading the _Farthing Post_; his
attention is exquisitely marked; his whole soul is engaged; and,
regardless of the confusion which reigns around, he contemplates
"The fate of empires, and the fall of kings."
A chimney-sweeper peeping at the postboy's cards, and informing his
adversary that he has two honours, by holding up two fingers, is
a fine stroke of humour; as the inscription _Black's_, being on a
post[80] close to where this congress of the _privileged orders_ are
assembled, is an excellent antithesis when contrasted to _White's_,
on the opposite side.
The grouping is good, the perspective agreeable, and the expression
admirable. The trembling terror of the beau, agitated to the very
soul, is well contrasted by the hard unfeeling insolence of two
bailiffs; and that, again, opposed by the tender solicitude of the
poor girl. The gunpowder mark of a star on the side of the naked
shoe-black, who is putting his last stake on the hazard of a die,
is another well-pointed piece of satire on the conduct of those
high-born gamesters, who at the opposite house, with a dignified
disregard for the future fate of themselves or their families, put
their last acre on the same issue. The boy with a pipe and little
pewter measure and glass by his side, shows that smoking and drinking
drams was not peculiar to adults, but sometimes practised by young
gentlemen before their attainment of what the law calls years of
discretion.