In the "Progress of an Harlot," and the "Adventures of a Rake," Mr.
Hogarth displayed his powers of painting history. Holding the mirror
up to Nature, he shows
"Virtue her own feature, Vice her own image, and the very age and
body of the time his form and pressure."
Had he exhibited no other specimen of his art, these fourteen prints
would have given him a right to the title of a moral painter; and
thus was he denominated by the late Mr. Fielding, in his _Adventures
of Joseph Andrews_.
In the series before us he treads poetic ground. A description of the
day, particularly the morning, has been generally deemed the bard's
peculiar province. Considering Homer as the father of poesy, the
whole family of Apollo have echoed his notes, and run their divisions
of fancy upon his scale. With one of them,
"The morn, wak'd by the circling hours,
Unbars the gates of light."
With another, she "sows the earth with orient pearl." At one time,
with a star as her gentleman usher, she
"Draws night's humid curtains, and proclaims
The new-born day forth dawning from the east;"
is now the grey Aurora, then the meek-ey'd morn, array'd in a dewy
robe, with saffron streamers, placed in a glittering chariot, and
drawn by etherial coursers, where, holding the reins with her red
hands, _she drives the day_.
These heathenish descriptions may be very beautiful in their way; but
hear our own Shakspeare:
"Night's tapers are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain's top."
Again:
"The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,
And 'gins to pale her ineffectual fire."
This comes home to all men's business and bosoms: it is picturesque,
it is poetical; it is intelligible to the peasant or the philosopher,
to the classic admirer of ancient mythology, or the man who never
heard that the gates which Aurora unbars are made of the purest
crystal.
The pictures drawn by Homer, and those feeble imitators who debase
his splendid images by the mixture of their own dross, have their
scenes laid in the country; but Hogarth has represented his _dramatis
personæ_ in the centre of a great city. Had the learned author of
_Hudibras_ been a painter, I believe he would have done the same. It
will not be easy to select two lines that have more wit than his
description of the morning:
"Now, like a lobster boil'd, the morn
From black to red began to turn."
This is appropriate to either city or country.
In Mr. Hogarth's "Four Times of the Day" there is only one scene
laid out of town; and that may, I think, be properly enough called
a London pastoral, for it is at the pleasant village of Islington.
The three others are described as in the most public parts of the
metropolis, and exhibit a picture which will give a very correct idea
of the dresses and pursuits of the inhabitants of London in the year
1738.