attachments, a sworn foe to servility and adulation, and no follower of
great men. This temper stood in the way of his progress to riches. It
was his maxim, that a man should be very careful in his writings,
careful enough in his actions, and moderately careful in his words; and
the latter clause was probably that which he best observed. In more than
one instance his plain drollery gave offence to persons of influence at
court, and frustrated the exertions of his friends to improve his
fortunes. Fortunately he united simple tastes with an independent,
fearless, and benevolent mind; and it is said that he gave away one half
of his income, when it did not amount to £350. His own account of his
own character, written in the third person, runs in the following terms,
and is confirmed by the testimony of his friends:—“Devoted to study and
privacy till the age of twenty-five, he entered late into the world, and
was never much pleased with it. He could never bend himself to learn its
usages and language, and perhaps even indulged a sort of petty vanity in
despising them. He is never rude, because he is neither brutal nor
severe; but he is sometimes blunt, through inattention or ignorance.
Compliments embarrass him, because he never can find a suitable answer
immediately; when he says flattering things, it is always because he
thinks them. The basis of his character is frankness and truth, often
rather blunt, but never disgusting. He is impatient and angry, even to
violence, when any thing goes wrong, but it all evaporates in words. He
is soon satisfied and easily governed, provided he does not see what you
aim at; for his love of independence amounts to fanaticism, so that he
often denies himself things which would be agreeable to him, because he
is afraid that they would put him under some restraint; which makes some
of his friends call him, justly enough, the slave of his liberty.” In
his religious opinions D’Alembert was, in the true meaning of the word,
a sceptic, and his name has obtained an unenviable notoriety as
co-editor, with Diderot, of the celebrated Encyclopédie. His
superintendence, however, extended only to the end of the second volume,
after which the work was stopped by the French Government; and on its
resumption D’Alembert confined himself strictly to the mathematical
department. In one respect his conduct may be advantageously contrasted
with that of some of his colleagues; he intruded his own opinions on no
man, and he took no pleasure in shocking others, by insulting what they
hold sacred. “I knew D’Alembert,” says La Harpe, “well enough to say
that he was sceptical in every thing but mathematics. He would no more
have said positively that there was no religion, than that there was a
God; he only thought that the probabilities were in favour of theism,
and against revelation. On this subject he tolerated all opinions: and
this disposition made him think the intolerant arrogance of the Atheists
odious and unbearable. I do not think that he ever printed a sentence,
which marks either hatred or contempt of religion.”
We proceed to mention the most remarkable of D’Alembert’s mathematical
works. He published in 1743 a treatise on Dynamics, in which he
enunciated the law now known under the name of D’Alembert’s principle,
one of the most valuable of modern contributions to mechanical science.
In the following year appeared a treatise on the Equilibrium and Motion
of Fluids; and in 1746, Reflections on the general Causes of Winds,
which obtained the prize of the Academy of Berlin. This work is
remarkable as the first which contained the general equations of the
motion of fluids, as well as the first announcement and use of the
calculus of partial differences. We may add to the list of his
discoveries, the analytical solutions of the problem of vibrating
chords, and the motion of a column of air; of the precession of the
equinoxes, and the nutation of the earth’s axis, the phenomenon itself
having been recently observed by Bradley. In 1752 he completed his
researches into fluids, by an Essay on the Resistance of Fluids. We have
to add to the list his Essay on the Problem of Three Bodies, as it is
called by astronomers, an investigation of the law by which three bodies
mutually gravitating affect each other; and Researches on various points
connected with the system of the Universe: the former published in 1747,
and the latter in 1754–6. His Opuscules, or minor pieces, were collected
in eight volumes, towards the end of his life.
Of his connexion with the Encyclopédie, we have already spoken. He is
said to be singularly clear and happy in his expositions of the
metaphysical difficulties of abstract science. He is also honourably
known in less abstruse departments of literature by his Mélanges de
Philosophie, Memoirs of Christina of Sweden, Essay on the Servility of
Men of Letters to the Great, Elements of Philosophy, and a work on the
Destruction of the Jesuits. On his election to the office of perpetual
Secretary to the Academy, he wrote the Eloges of the members deceased
from 1700 up to that date. His works and correspondence were collected
and published in eighteen volumes 8vo. Paris, 1805, by M. Bastien, to
whose first volume we refer the reader for complete information on this
subject.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
HOGARTH.
“I was born,” says Hogarth in his Memoirs of himself, “in the city of
London, November 10, 1697. My father’s pen, like that of many authors,
did not enable him to do more than put me in a way of shifting for
myself. As I had naturally a good eye, and a fondness for drawing, shows
of all sorts gave me uncommon pleasure when an infant; and mimicry,
common to all children, was remarkable in me. An early access to a
neighbouring painter drew my attention from play; and I was, at every
possible opportunity, employed in making drawings. I picked up an
acquaintance of the same turn, and soon learnt to draw the alphabet with
great correctness. My exercises when at school were more remarkable for
the ornaments which adorned them, than for the exercise itself. In the
former I soon found that blockheads with better memories could much
surpass me; but for the latter I was particularly distinguished.”
To this account of Hogarth’s childhood we have only to add, that his
father, an enthusiastic and laborious scholar, who like many of his
craft owed little to the favour of fortune, consulted these indications
of talent as well as his means would allow, and bound his son apprentice
to a silver-plate engraver. But Hogarth aspired after something higher
than drawing cyphers and coats-of-arms; and before the expiration of his
indentures he had made himself a good draughtsman, and obtained
considerable knowledge of colouring. It was his ambition to become
distinguished as an artist; and not content with being the mere copier
of other men’s productions, he sought to combine the functions of the
painter with those of the engraver, and to gain the power of delineating
his own ideas, and the fruits of his acute observation. He has himself
explained the nature of his views in a passage which is worth attention.
[Illustration:
_Engraved by J. Mollison._
HOGARTH.
_From the original Picture by Himself
in the National Gallery._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street, & Pall Mall
East._
]
“Many reasons led me to wish that I could find the shorter path,—fix
forms and characters in my mind,—and instead of copying the lines try to
read the language, and, if possible, find the grammar of the art by
bringing into one focus the various observations I had made, and then
trying by my power on the canvass how far my plan enabled me to combine
and apply them to practice. For this purpose I considered what various
ways, and to what different purposes, the memory might be applied; and
fell upon one most suitable to my situation and idle disposition; laying
it down first as an axiom, that he who could by any means acquire and
retain in his memory perfect ideas of the subjects he meant to draw,
would have as clear a knowledge of the figure as a man who can write
freely hath of the twenty-five letters of the alphabet and their
infinite combinations.” Acting on these principles, he improved by
constant exercise his natural powers of observation and recollection. In
his rambles among the motley scenes of London he was ever on the watch
for striking features or incidents; and not trusting entirely to memory,
he was accustomed, when any face struck him as peculiarly grotesque or
expressive, to sketch it on his thumb-nail, to be treasured up on paper
at his return home.
For some time after the expiration of his apprenticeship, Hogarth
continued to practise the trade to which he was bred; and his
shop-bills, coats-of-arms, engravings upon tankards, &c., have been
collected with an eagerness quite disproportionate to their value. Soon
he procured employment in furnishing frontispieces and designs for the
booksellers. The most remarkable of these are the plates to an edition
of Hudibras, published in 1726: but even these are of no distinguished
merit. About 1728 he began to seek employment as a portrait painter.
Most of his performances were small family pictures, containing several
figures, which he calls “Conversation Pieces,” from twelve to fifteen
inches high. These for a time were very popular, and his practice was
considerable, as his price was low. His life-size portraits are few; the
most remarkable are that of Captain Coram in the Foundling Hospital, and
that of Garrick as King Richard III. But his practice as a portrait
painter was not lucrative, nor his popularity lasting. Although many of
his likenesses were strong and characteristic, in the representation of
beauty, elegance, and high-breeding, he was little skilled. The nature
of the artist was as uncourtly as his pencil; he despised, or affected
to despise, what is called embellishment, forgetting that every great
painter of portraits has founded his success upon his power of giving to
an object the most favourable representation of which it is susceptible.
When Hogarth obtained employment and eminence of another sort, he
abandoned portrait painting, with a growl at the jealousy of his
professional brethren, and the vanity and blindness of the public.
March 23, 1729, Hogarth contracted a stolen marriage with the only
daughter of the once fashionable painter, Sir James Thornhill. The
father, for some time implacable, relented at last; and the
reconciliation, it is said, was much forwarded by his admiration of the
“Harlot’s Progress,” a series of six prints, commenced in 1731, and
published in 1734. The novelty as well as merit of this series of prints
won for them extraordinary popularity; and their success encouraged
Hogarth to undertake a similar history of the “Rake’s Progress,” in
eight prints, which appeared in 1735. The third, and perhaps the most
popular, as it is the least objectionable of these pictorial novels,
“Marriage Alamode,” was not engraved till 1745.
The merits of these prints were sufficiently intelligible to the public:
their originality and boldness of design, the force and freedom of their
execution, rough as it is, won for them an extensive popularity and a
rapid and continued sale. The Harlot’s Progress was the most eminently
successful, from its novelty rather than from its superior excellence.
Twelve hundred subscribers’ names were entered for it; it was dramatized
in several forms; and we may note, in illustration of the difference of
past and present manners, that fan-mounts were engraved, containing
miniature copies of the six plates. The merits of the pictures were less
obvious to the few who could afford to spend large sums on works of art;
and Hogarth, too proud to let them go for prices much below the value
which he put upon them, waited for a long time, and waited in vain, for
a purchaser. At last he determined to commit them to public sale; but
instead of the common method of auction, he devised a new and complex
plan, with the intention of excluding picture-dealers, and obliging men
of rank and wealth, who wished to purchase, to judge and bid for
themselves. The scheme failed, as might have been expected. Nineteen of
Hogarth’s best pictures, the Harlot’s Progress, the Rake’s Progress, the
Four Times of the Day, and Strolling Actresses dressing in a Barn,
produced only 427_l._ 7_s._, not averaging 22_l._ 10_s._ each. The
Harlot’s Progress was purchased by Mr. Beckford, at the rate of fourteen
guineas a picture; five of the series perished in the fire at Fonthill.
The Rake’s Progress averaged twenty-two guineas a picture; it has passed
into the possession of Sir John Soane, at the advanced price of five
hundred and seventy guineas. The same eminent architect became the
proprietor of the four pictures of an Election, for the sum of 1732_l._
Marriage Alamode was disposed of in a similar way in 1750; and on the
day of sale one bidder appeared, who became master of the six pictures,
together with their frames, for 115_l._ 10_s._ Mr. Angerstein purchased
them, in 1797, for 1381_l._, and they now form a striking feature in our
National Gallery.
The number and variety of Hogarth’s moral and satiric works preclude our
naming any but the more remarkable. To those already mentioned we would
add the March to Finchley, Southwark Fair, the Distressed Poet, the
Enraged Musician, Modern Midnight Conversation, Gin Lane and Beer
Street, the four prints of an Election, and two entitled “The Times,”
which would hardly require notice, except for having produced a
memorable quarrel between himself on one side, and Wilkes and Churchill
on the other. The satire of the first, published in 1762, was directed,
not against Wilkes himself, but his political friends, Pitt and Temple;
nor is it so biting as to have required Wilkes, in defence of his party,
to retaliate upon one with whom he had lived in familiar and friendly
intercourse. He did so, however, in a number of the North Briton,
containing not only abuse of the artist, but unjust and injurious
mention of his wife. Hogarth was deeply wounded by this attack, and he
retorted by the well-known portrait—it ought not to be called a
caricature—of Wilkes with the cap of liberty. “I wished,” he says, “to
return the compliment, and turn it to some advantage. The renowned
patriot’s portrait, drawn as like as I could, as to features, and marked
with some indications of his mind, answered every purpose. A Brutus, a
saviour of his country, with such an aspect, was so arrant a farce, that
though it gave rise to much laughter in the lookers-on, it galled both
him and his adherents. This was proved by the papers being crammed every
day with invectives against the artist, till the town grew sick of thus
seeing me always at full length. Churchill, Wilkes’s toad-eater, put the
North Briton into verse in an epistle to Hogarth; but as the abuse was
precisely the same, except a little poetical heightening, it made no
impression, but perhaps effaced or weakened the black strokes of the
North Briton. However, having an old plate by me, with some parts ready
sunk, as the back-ground and a dog, I began to consider how I could turn
so much work laid aside to some account; and so patched up a print of
Master Churchill in the character of a bear.” The quarrel was unworthy
of the talents either of the painter or poet. “Never,” says Walpole,
“did two angry men of their abilities throw dirt with less dexterity.”
It is the more to be regretted, because its effects, as he himself
intimates, were injurious to Hogarth’s declining health. The summer of
1764 he spent at Chiswick, and the free air and exercise worked a
partial renovation of his strength. The amendment, however, was but
temporary; and he died suddenly, October 26, the day after his return to
his London residence in Leicester Square.
If we have dwelt little upon Hogarth’s merits in his peculiar style of
art, it is still less necessary to say much concerning his historical
pictures. Of their merits he himself formed a high and most exaggerated
estimate, not hesitating to give out that nothing but envy and ignorance
prevented his own pictures from commanding as much admiration, and as
high prices, as the most esteemed productions of foreign masters.
Posterity has confirmed the judgment of his contemporaries, and
Hogarth’s serious compositions are very generally forgotten. The only
one which merits to be excepted from this observation is his Sigismunda,
painted in 1759, in competition with the well-known and beautiful
picture, ascribed by some to Correggio, by others to Furino. Our
painter’s vanity and plain dealing had raised up a host of enemies
against him among painters, picture-dealers, and connoisseurs; and all
whose self-love he had wounded, or whose tricks he had denounced,
eagerly seized this opportunity to vent their anger in retaliation. The
picture is well known, both by engravings and by Walpole’s severe
criticism. We abstain from quoting it: we have passed lightly over a
great artist’s excellences, and it would be unfair to expatiate on his
defects and errors. Besides this, Hogarth’s chief historical works are
the Pool of Bethesda and the Good Samaritan, executed in 1736 as a
specimen of his powers, and presented to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital;
Paul before Felix, painted for the Hall of Lincoln’s Inn, in 1749; and
Moses brought before Pharaoh’s daughter, painted in 1752, and presented
to the Foundling Hospital.
Hogarth was not a mere painter: he used the pen as well as the pencil,
and aspired to teach as well as to exercise his art. He has left a
memoir of his own life, which contains some curious and interesting and
instructive matter concerning his own modes and motives of thought and
action. He wrote verses occasionally in a rough and familiar style, but
not without some sparkles of his humorous turn. But his most remarkable
performance is the “Analysis of Beauty,” composed with the ambitious
view of fixing the principles of taste, and laying down unerring
directions for the student of art. Its leading principle is, that the
serpentine line is the foundation of all that is beautiful, whether in
nature or art. To the universality of this assertion we should be
inclined to demur; Nature works by contrast, and loves to unite the
abrupt and angular with the flowing and graceful, in one harmonious
whole. The work, however, unquestionably contains much that was original
and valuable. But when it was found that Hogarth, a man unpolished in
conversation, not regularly trained either to the use of the pen or the
pencil, and, above all, a profound despiser of academics, of portrait
painters, and of almost all things conventionally admired, had written a
book professing to teach the principles of art, the storm of criticism
which fell upon him was hot and furious. It was discovered that Hogarth
was not the author of the book, that the principle was false and
ridiculous, and that every body had been in possession of it long
before. The last objection, certainly, is so far true, that every one
instinctively must feel a line of easy curvature to be more graceful
than one of abrupt and angular flexure. But the merit of first
enunciating this as a rule of art belongs to Hogarth; and it is recorded
to have been the opinion of West, uttered after the author’s death, that
the Analysis is a work of the highest value to the student of art, and
that, examined after personal enmity and prejudice were laid to sleep,
it would be more and more read, studied, and understood. We doubt
whether this judgment of the President is altogether sanctioned by the
practice of the present day; but time, without altogether establishing
the author’s theory, has at least laid asleep the malicious whispers
which denied to Hogarth the merit of it, whatever that may be.
In the executive part of his art, either as painter or engraver, Hogarth
did not attain to first-rate excellence. His engravings are spirited,
but rough; but they have the peculiar merit (one far above mechanical
delicacy and correctness of execution) of representing accurately, by a
few bold touches, the varied incidents and expression which he was so
acute and diligent in observing. A faithful copier, his works are
invaluable as records of the costume and spirit of the time; and they
preserve a number of minute illustrative circumstances, which his
biographers and annotators have laboured to explain, with the precision
used by critics in commenting upon Aristophanes. Wit and humour are
abundant in all of them, even in accessories apparently insignificant;
and they require to be studied before half the matter condensed in them
can be perceived and apprehended. “It is worthy of observation,” says
Mr. Lamb, “that Hogarth has seldom drawn a mean or insignificant
countenance.” This is so far true, that there are few of his faces which
do not contribute to the general effect. Mean and insignificant in the
common sense of the words they often are, and the fastidious observer
will find much to overcome in the general want of pleasing objects in
his compositions. But the vacancy or expression, the coarseness or
refinement of the countenance, are alike subservient to convey a meaning
or a moral; and in this sense it may justly be said, that few of
Hogarth’s faces are insignificant. Through the more important of his
works, a depth and unity of purpose prevails, which sometimes rises into
high tragic effect, the more striking from the total absence of
conventional objects of dignity, as in the two last plates of the
“Rake’s Progress.” “Gin Lane” has been included by Mr. Lamb in the same
praise, and its power cannot be denied; but it contains too much that is
purely disgusting, mixed with much that is in the nature of caricature,
to be a general favourite.
The nationality of Hogarth’s prints has given to them a more lasting and
extensive popularity than any class of engravings has ever enjoyed. Not
to mention the large impressions from the original plates, which were
touched and retouched again and again, they have been frequently
engraved on a smaller scale, accompanied with an historical and
descriptive text; and there is scarcely a library of any pretensions
which has not a “Hogarth Illustrated,” in some shape or other, upon its
shelves. Of these works, the first was Dr. Trusler’s “Hogarth
Moralized,” republished lately in a very elegant shape; the most
complete is the quarto edition of Hogarth’s works, by Nichols and
Stevens. There is a long and valuable memoir of the artist in Rees’s
“Cyclopædia,” by Mr. Phillips, R.A., and an extended life by Allan
Cunningham in the “Family Library.” The works of Walpole, Gilpin,
Hazlitt, and others, will furnish much of acute criticism; and we
especially recommend the perusal of an Essay by Charles Lamb on the
“Genius and Character of Hogarth,” published originally in the
“Reflector,” No. 3. It is chiefly occupied by a minute criticism upon
the “Rake’s Progress,” and though, in our opinion, somewhat partial and
excessive in praise, is admirably calculated to show the reader in what
spirit the moral works of Hogarth should be studied.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
_Engraved by Rob^t. Hart._
GALILEO.
_From a picture by Ramsay
in Trinity College, Cambridge._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street, & Pall Mall
East._
]
[Illustration]
GALILEO.
The great Tuscan astronomer is best known as the first telescopic
observer, the fortunate discoverer of the Medicean stars (so Jupiter’s
satellites were first named): and what discovery more fitted to
immortalize its author, than one which revealed new worlds, and thus
gave additional force to the lesson, that the universe, of which we form
so small a part, was not created only for our use or pleasure! Those,
however, who consider Galileo only as a fortunate observer, form a very
inadequate estimate of one of the most meritorious and successful of
those great men who have bestowed their time for the advantage of
mankind in tracing out the hidden things of nature.
Galileo Galilei was born at Pisa, February 15, 1564. In childhood he
displayed considerable mechanical ingenuity, with a decided taste for
the accomplishments of music and painting. His father formed a just
estimate of his talents, and at some inconvenience entered him, when
nineteen years old, at the university of his native town, intending that
he should pursue the medical profession. Galileo was then entirely
ignorant of mathematics; and he was led to the study of geometry by a
desire thoroughly to understand the principles of his favourite arts.
This new pursuit proved so congenial to his taste, that from
thenceforward his medical books were entirely neglected. The elder
Galilei, a man of liberal acquirements and enlarged mind, did not
require the devotion of his son’s life to a distasteful pursuit.
Fortunately the young man’s talents attracted notice, and in 1589 he was
appointed mathematical lecturer in the University of Pisa. There is
reason to believe that, at an early period of his studentship, he
embraced, upon inquiry and conviction, the doctrines of Copernicus, of
which through life he was an ardent supporter.