"Madness! thou chaos of the brain,
What art? that pleasure giv'st and pain,
Tyranny of fancy's reign!
Mechanic fancy! that can build
Vast labyrinths and mazes wild,
With rule disjointed, shapeless measure,
Fill'd with horror, fill'd with pleasure!
Shapes of horror, that would even
Cast doubt of mercy upon Heaven;
Shapes of pleasure, that but seen,
Would split the shaking sides of Spleen.
O vanity of age! here see
The stamp of Heaven effac'd by thee!
The headstrong course of youth thus run,
What comfort from this darling son?
His rattling chains with terror hear,
Behold death grappling with despair!
See him by thee to ruin sold,
And curse thyself, and curse thy gold!"
[Illustration: THE RAKE'S PROGRESS, PLATE VIII.]
"Last scene of all,--which ends this strange eventful history!"
But in this scene, dreary and horrid as are its accompaniments, he is
attended by the faithful and kind-hearted female whom he so basely
betrayed. In the first plate we see him refuse her his promised hand.
In the fourth she releases him from the harpy fangs of a bailiff; she
is present at his marriage. In the hope of relieving his distress,
she follows him to a prison. Wishing to soothe his misery and
alleviate his woe, she here attends him in a madhouse! What a return
for deceit and desertion!
The Reverend Mr. Gilpin, in his elucidation of these eight prints,
asserts that "this thought is rather unnatural, and the moral
certainly culpable."[93] With the utmost deference for his critical
abilities, I must entertain a different opinion. We have had many
similar examples of female attachment. If it be culpable to forgive
those which have despitefully used us, to free those which are in
bonds, to visit those which are in prison, and to comfort those which
are in affliction, what meaning have the divine precepts of our holy
religion?
The female mind is naturally credulous, affectionate, and--in its
attachments--ardent. If, in her peculiar situation, her assiduities
must be deemed in any degree culpable, let us remember that this is
but a frail vessel of refined clay. When the awful record of her
errors is unrolled, may that sigh which was breathed for the misery
of a fellow-mortal waft away the scroll, and the tears which flowed
for the calamities of others float the memorial down the stream of
oblivion!
On the errors of women, let us look with the allowance and humanity
of men. Enchanting woman! thou balm of life! soother of sorrow!
solace of the soul! how dost thou lessen the load of human misery,
and lead the wretched into the valley of delight! Without thee, how
heavily would man drag through a dreary world; but if the white hand
of a fascinating female be twined round his arm, how joyous, how
lightly doth he trip along the path!
That warm and tender friend, who in the most trying situations
retains her enthusiastic fondness, and in every change of fortune
preserves unabated love, ought to be embraced as the first bension of
heaven, the completion of earthly happiness! Let man but draw such a
prize in the lottery of life, and glide down the stream of existence
with such a partner, and neither the cold averted eye of a summer
friend, nor the frowns of an adverse fortune, should ever produce a
pang or excite a murmur. But enough,--let not the chaste feelings
of blushing innocence be wounded by this rhapsody, or for a moment
suppose that the episode, or effusion, or e'en whatever she pleases,
is intended as a vindication of female folly; in good truth it is
not. The writer would not wish it delivered to the cold-fingered
portress of Diana's temple, but it may be laid upon that altar which
is sacred to Friendship, to Hymen, to Love.--There we will leave it,
and return to the plate before us.
A gentleman[94] from whom I have once or twice reluctantly presumed
to differ, says that "the drawing of the principal figure is a more
accurate piece of anatomy than we commonly find in the works of this
master." The observation is perfectly just, but the inaccuracies
of Mr. Hogarth did not arise from inability, but from inattention.
He says further, that "the expression of the principal figure is
rather unmeaning." The late and ever to be lamented Mr. Mortimer,
whose wonderful abilities as an artist were only equalled by his
amiable and kind-hearted virtues as a man,--the late Mr. Mortimer, of
whom I can never think without a sigh of regard and regret, thought
very differently. He was once requested to delineate several of the
passions, as they are personified by Mr. Gray. One of the subjects
proposed was,--
"Moody madness, laughing wild, amid severest woe."
The instant this line was read to him, he opened a portfolio, took
out the eighth plate of the "Rake's Progress," and pointing to the
principal figure, exclaimed, "Sir, if I had never seen this print, I
should say it was not possible to paint these contending passions in
the same countenance. Having seen this, which exactly displays Mr.
Gray's idea, I dare not attempt it. I could only make a correct copy;
for the alteration of a single line would be a departure from the
character."
The reclining figure, with a cross leaning near him, is in a high
degree terrific.[95]
"With horror wild,
'Tis Devotion's ruin'd child,
Sunk in the emphasis of grief;
Nor can he feel, nor dares he ask relief."
In the cell are the portraits of three saints, whose systems were
built on the necessity of propagating the religion of mercy by the
sword and the wheel.
Near him are two astronomers, one with a paper rolled up to imitate a
telescope, gazing at the roof, in the idea that it is
"The spacious canopy of heaven, fretted with golden fires."
The other, delineating the firing off a bomb and a ship moored at
a distance, is an immediate ridicule of Whiston's project for the
discovery of the longitude,--an object which at this time engaged the
attention of the philosophical world, and in the fruitless search
after which many a feeble head hath become mad, north--north-west!
The opposite group form a whimsical trio. A mad musician, a
counterfeit presentment of St. Peter, and a poor gentleman, with his
hands clasped together, that appears by the inscription of "Charming
Betty Careless," which he has chalked upon a board, to be
"Craz'd with care, and cross'd by hopeless love."
He is absorbed in thought, and his whole soul so engrossed by the
charms of his Dulcinea, that neither the discordant sounds of the
fiddler, whose trembling strings
"Grate harshly on the nerve auricular,"
nor the roar of the pope, who is furiously denouncing destruction on
all heretics, nor the ear-piercing noise of a barking cur, can awake
him from his reverie.
A crazy tailor and a mimic monarch complete this congregation of
calamity.
Two women, impelled by a most unaccountable curiosity, are walking
in the background. Devoid of that delicacy which gives beauty new
attractions, they forget that an eagerness to witness woe which
they cannot alleviate, gives strong indication of an hardened and
unfeeling heart.
The halfpenny stuck against a wall, and dated 1763, was inserted by
Mr. Hogarth the year before his death, and is designed to intimate
that Britannia was then mad. This is one of the few instances wherein
he has called in the aid of allegory, but his allegory was always
seasoned with wit.
Of the expression I have already spoken. The disposition of the
figures is good. That group in which the usurper of St. Peter's
chair is the principal object, is well contrived. There is great
simplicity and breadth in the background, and the light and
perspective are judicious.
"Protract not, curious ears, the mournful tale;
But o'er the hapless group low drop Compassion's veil."
The eight prints of the "Rake's Progress," with "Southwark Fair,"
were advertised in the _London Daily Post_ to be delivered June 25th,
1735, with an apology for the publication being deferred, which Mr.
Hogarth states to have been occasioned by his waiting until the royal
assent was given to an Act intended to secure all new invented prints
from being copied, etc.
This series are in every respect superior to those which preceded
them, but were not honoured with an equal attention by the public.
From what did this arise? Were the town more interested in the story
of an harlot than in the adventures of a rake, or had this new mode
of engraving history lost its novelty?
On this occasion was published an octavo pamphlet, entitled, "_The
Rake's Progress, or the Humours of Drury Lane_, a Poem in eight
Cantos, in Hudibrastic verse; being the Rambles of a modern Oxonian:
which is a complete Key to the eight Prints lately published by
the celebrated Mr. Hogarth. Printed for John Chetwood, and sold at
Inigo Jones' Head, against Exeter Change, Strand, 1735." This is a
most contemptible and indecent performance. In some of the copies
are inserted eight prints; but they are only the designs of Hogarth
mutilated, and perhaps were originally engraved for the decoration of
some other work.
There is reason to believe that the artist once intended to have
introduced the ceremony of a marriage contract, instead of the levee,
as an unfinished painting of the scene is still preserved. In this
sketch he appears to have thought of taking the same ground with Mr.
Pope:
"What brought Sir Visto's ill-got wealth to waste?
Some demon whisper'd, 'Visto, have a taste.'"
For our Rake is there turned connoisseur; and among a number of
articles which prove him a man of _virtu_, is a canvas containing the
representation of a human foot.[96]
In the year 1745 the eight pictures were sold by auction, at Mr.
Hogarth's in Leicester Fields, and produced twenty-two guineas each;
total, one hundred and eighty-four pounds, sixteen shillings. They
are now, I believe, in the possession of Mr. Beckford of Fonthill, in
Wiltshire.