dexterity of hand." It appears from the following advertisement that
this was a man of great consequence in his profession: "Whereas the town
hath been lately alarmed, that the famous Fawks was robbed and murdered,
returning from performing at the duchess of Buckingham's house at
Chelsea; which report being raised and printed by a person to gain money
to himself, and prejudice the above-mentioned Mr. Fawks, whose
unparalleled performance has gained him so much applause from the
greatest of quality, and most curious observers: We think, both in
justice to the injured gentleman, and for the satisfaction of his
admirers, that we cannot please our readers better than to acquaint them
he is alive, and will not only perform his usual surprising dexterity of
hand, posture-master, and musical clock: but, for the greater diversion
of the quality and gentry, has agreed with the famous Powell of the Bath
for the season, who has the largest, richest, and most natural figures,
and finest machines in England, and whose former performances in Covent
Garden were so engaging to the town, as to gain the approbation of the
best judges, to show his puppet-plays along with him, beginning in the
Christmas holidays next, at the Old Tennis-court, in James's-street,
near the Haymarket; where any incredulous persons may be satisfied he is
not left this world, if they please to believe their hands, though they
can't believe their eyes."--"May 25," indeed, "1731, died Mr. Fawks,
famous for his dexterity of hand, by which he had honestly acquired a
fortune of 10,000_l._ being no more than he really deserved for his
great ingenuity, by which he had surpassed all that ever pretended to
that art."
This satirical performance of Hogarth, however, was thought to be
invented and drawn at the instigation of Sir James Thornhill, out of
revenge, because Lord Burlington had preferred Mr. Kent before him to
paint for the king at his palace at Kensington. Dr. Faustus was a
pantomime performed to crowded houses throughout two seasons, to the
utter neglect of plays, for which reason they are cried about in a
wheel-barrow.
[Illustration: MASQUERADES AND OPERAS, BURLINGTON GATE.]
MORNING.
Keen blows the blast, and eager is the air;
With flakes of feather'd snow the ground is spread;
To step, with mincing pace, to early prayer,
Our clay-cold vestal leaves her downy bed.
And here the reeling sons of riot see,
After a night of senseless revelry.
Poor, trembling, old, her suit the beggar plies;
But frozen chastity the little boon denies.
This withered representative of Miss Bridget Alworthy, with a shivering
foot-boy carrying her prayer-book, never fails in her attendance at
morning service. She is a symbol of the season.--
-------------Chaste as the icicle
That's curdled by the frost from purest snow,
And hangs on Dian's temple
she looks with scowling eye, and all the conscious pride of severe and
stubborn virginity, on the poor girls who are suffering the embraces of
two drunken beaux that are just staggered out of Tom King's
Coffee-house. One of them, from the basket on her arm, I conjecture to
be an orange girl: she shows no displeasure at the boisterous salute of
her Hibernian lover. That the hero in a laced hat is from the banks of
the Shannon, is apparent in his countenance. The female whose face is
partly concealed, and whose neck has a more easy turn than we always see
in the works of this artist, is not formed of the most inflexible
materials.
An old woman, seated upon a basket; the girl, warming her hands by a few
withered sticks that are blazing on the ground, and a wretched
mendicant,[3] wrapped in a tattered and parti-coloured blanket,
entreating charity from the rosy-fingered vestal who is going to church,
complete the group. Behind them, at the door of Tom King's Coffee-house,
are a party engaged in a fray, likely to create business for both
surgeon and magistrate: we discover swords and cudgels in the
combatants' hands.
On the opposite side of the print are two little schoolboys. That they
have shining morning faces we cannot positively assert, but each has a
satchel at his back, and according with the description given by the
poet of nature, is
Creeping, like snail, unwillingly to school.
The lantern appended to the woman who has a basket on her head, proves
that these dispensers of the riches of Pomona rise before the sun, and
do part of their business by an artificial light. Near her, that
immediate descendant of Paracelsus, Dr. Rock, is expatiating to an
admiring audience, on the never-failing virtues of his wonder-working
medicines. One hand holds a bottle of his miraculous panacea, and the
other supports a board, on which is the king's arms, to indicate that
his practice is sanctioned by royal letters patent. Two porringers and a
spoon, placed on the bottom of an inverted basket, intimate that the
woman seated near them, is a vender of rice-milk, which was at that time
brought into the market every morning.
A fatigued porter leans on a rail; and a blind beggar is going towards
the church: but whether he will become one of the congregation, or take
his stand at the door, in the hope that religion may have warmed the
hearts of its votaries to "Pity the sorrows of a poor blind man," is
uncertain.
Snow on the ground, and icicles hanging from the penthouse, exhibit a
very chilling prospect; but, to dissipate the cold, there is happily a
shop where spirituous liquors are sold _pro bono publico_, at a very
little distance. A large pewter measure is placed upon a post before the
door, and three of a smaller size hang over the window of the house.
The character of the principal figure is admirably delineated. She is
marked with that prim and awkward formality which generally accompanies
her order, and is an exact type of a hard winter; for every part of her
dress, except the flying lappets and apron, ruffled by the wind, is as
rigidly precise as if it were frozen. It has been said that this
incomparable figure was designed as the representative of either a
particular friend, or a relation. Individual satire may be very
gratifying to the public, but is frequently fatal to the satirist.
Churchill, by the lines,
----------------Fam'd Vine-street,
Where Heaven, the kindest wish of man to grant,
Gave me an old house, and an older aunt,
lost a considerable legacy; and it is related that Hogarth, by the
introduction of this withered votary of Diana into this print, induced
her to alter a will which had been made considerably in his favour: she
was at first well enough satisfied with her resemblance, but some
designing people taught her to be angry.
Extreme cold is very well expressed in the slip-shod footboy, and the
girl who is warming her hands. The group of which she is a part, is well
formed, but not sufficiently balanced on the opposite side.
The church dial, a few minutes before seven; marks of little shoes and
pattens in the snow, and various productions of the season in the
market, are an additional proof of that minute accuracy with which this
artist inspected and represented objects, which painters in general have
neglected.
Govent Garden is the scene, but in the print every building is reversed.
This was a common error with Hogarth; not from his being ignorant of the
use of the mirror, but from his considering it as a matter of little
consequence.
FOOTNOTE:
[3] "What signifies," says some one to Dr. Johnson, "giving halfpence to
common beggars? they only lay them out in gin or tobacco." "And why,"
replied the doctor, "should they be denied such sweeteners of their
existence? It is surely very savage to shut out from them every possible
avenue to those pleasures reckoned too coarse for our own acceptance.
Life is a pill which none of us can swallow without gilding, yet for the
poor we delight in stripping it still more bare, and are not ashamed to
show even visible marks of displeasure, if even the bitter taste is
taken from their mouths."
[Illustration: MORNING.]
NOON.
Hail, Gallia's daughters! easy, brisk, and free;
Good humour'd, _debonnaire_, and _degagee_:
Though still fantastic, frivolous, and vain,
Let not their airs and graces give us pain:
Or fair, or brown, at toilet, prayer, or play,
Their motto speaks their manners--TOUJOURS GAI.
But for that powder'd compound of grimace,
That capering he-she thing of fringe and lace;
With sword and cane, with bag and solitaire,
Vain of the full-dress'd dwarf, his hopeful heir,
How does our spleen and indignation rise,
When such a tinsell'd coxcomb meets our eyes,
Among the figures who are coming out of church, an affected, flighty
Frenchwoman, with her fluttering fop of a husband, and a boy, habited
_a-la-mode de Paris_, claim our first attention. In dress, air, and
manner, they have a national character. The whole congregation, whether
male or female, old or young, carry the air of their country in
countenance, dress, and deportment. Like the three principal figures,
they are all marked with some affected peculiarity. Affectation, in a
woman, is supportable upon no other ground than that general indulgence
we pay to the omnipotence of beauty, which in a degree sanctifies
whatever it adopts. In a boy, when we consider that the poor fellow is
attempting to copy what he has been taught to believe praiseworthy, we
laugh at it; the largest portion of ridicule falls upon his tutors; but
in a man, it is contemptible!
The old fellow, in a black periwig, has a most vinegar-like aspect, and
looks with great contempt at the frippery gentlewoman immediately before
him. The woman, with a demure countenance, seems very piously
considering how she can contrive to pick the embroidered beau's pocket.
Two old sybils joining their withered lips in a chaste salute, is
nauseous enough, but, being a national custom, must be forgiven. The
divine seems to have resided in this kingdom long enough to acquire a
roast-beef countenance. A little boy, whose woollen nightcap is pressed
over a most venerable flowing periwig, and the decrepit old man, leaning
upon a crutch-stick, who is walking before him, "I once considered,"
says Mr. Ireland, "as two vile caricatures, out of nature, and unworthy
the artist. Since I have seen the peasantry of Flanders, and the
plebeian youth of France, I have in some degree changed my opinion, but
still think them rather _outre_."
Under a sign of the Baptist's Head is written, Good Eating; and on each
side of the inscription is a mutton chop. In opposition to this head
without a body, unaccountably displayed as a sign at an eating-house,
there is a body without a head, hanging out as the sign of a
distiller's. This, by common consent, has been quaintly denominated the
good woman. At a window above, one of the softer sex proves her
indisputable right to the title by her temperate conduct to her husband,
with whom having had a little disagreement, she throws their Sunday's
dinner into the street.
A girl, bringing a pie from the bakehouse, is stopped in her career by
the rude embraces of a blackamoor, who eagerly rubs his sable visage
against her blooming cheek.
Good eating is carried on to the lower part of the picture. A boy,
placing a baked pudding upon a post, with rather too violent an action,
the dish breaks, the fragments fall to the ground, and while he is
loudly lamenting his misfortune, and with tears anticipating his
punishment, the smoking remnants are eagerly snatched up by a poor girl.
Not educated according to the system of Jean Jacques Rousseau, she feels
no qualms of conscience about the original proprietor, and, destitute of
that fastidious delicacy which destroys the relish of many a fine lady,
eagerly swallows the hot and delicious morsels, with all the
concomitants.
The scene is laid at the door of a French chapel in Hog-lane; a part of
the town at that time almost wholly peopled by French refugees, or their
descendants.
By the dial of St. Giles's church, in the distance, we see that it is
only half past eleven. At this early hour, in those good times, there
was as much good eating as there is now at six o'clock in the evening.
From twenty pewter measures, which are hung up before the houses of
different distillers, it seems that good drinking was considered as
equally worthy of their serious attention.
The dead cat, and choked kennels, mark the little attention shown to the
streets by the scavengers of St. Giles's. At that time noxious effluvia
was not peculiar to this parish. The neighbourhood of Fleet-ditch, and
many other parts of the city, were equally polluted.
Even at this refined period, there would be some use in a more strict
attention to the medical police of a city so crowded with inhabitants.
We ridicule the people of Paris and Edinburgh for neglecting so
essential and salutary a branch of delicacy, while the kennels of a
street in the vicinity of St. Paul's church are floated with the blood
of slaughtered animals every market-day. Moses would have managed these
things better: but in those days there was no physician in Israel!
[Illustration: NOON.]
EVENING.
One sultry Sunday, when no cooling breeze
Was borne on zephyr's wing, to fan the trees;
One sultry Sunday, when the torrid ray
O'er nature beam'd intolerable day;
When raging Sirius warn'd us not to roam,
And Galen's sons prescrib'd cool draughts at home;
One sultry Sunday, near those fields of fame
Where weavers dwell, and Spital is their name,
A sober wight, of reputation high
For tints that emulate the Tyrian dye,
Wishing to take his afternoon's repose,
In easy chair had just began to doze,
When, in a voice that sleep's soft slumbers broke,
His oily helpmate thus her wishes spoke:
"Why, spouse, for shame! my stars, what's this about?
You's ever sleeping; come, we'll all go out;
At that there garden, pr'ythee, do not stare!
We'll take a mouthful of the country air;
In the yew bower an hour or two we'll kill;
There you may smoke, and drink what punch you will.
Sophy and Billy each shall walk with me,
And you must carry little Emily.
Veny is sick, and pants, and loathes her food;
The grass will do the pretty creature good.
Hot rolls are ready as the clock strikes five--
And now 'tis after four, as I'm alive!"
The mandate issued, see the tour begun,
And all the flock set out for Islington.
Now the broad sun, refulgent lamp of day,
To rest with Thetis, slopes his western way;
O'er every tree embrowning dust is spread,
And tipt with gold is Hampstead's lofty head.
The passive husband, in his nature mild,
To wife consigns his hat, and takes the child;
But she a day like this hath never felt,
"Oh! that this too, too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew."
Such monstrous heat! dear me! she never knew.
Adown her innocent and beauteous face,
The big, round, pearly drops each other chase;
Thence trickling to those hills, erst white as snow,
That now like AEtna's mighty mountains glow,
They hang like dewdrops on the full blown rose,
And to the ambient air their sweets disclose.
Fever'd with pleasure, thus she drags along;
Nor dares her antler'd husband say 'tis wrong.
The blooming offspring of this blissful pair,
In all their parents' attic pleasures share.
Sophy the soft, the mother's earliest joy,
Demands her froward brother's tinsell'd toy;
But he, enrag'd, denies the glittering prize,
And rends the air with loud and piteous cries.
Thus far we see the party on their way--
What dire disasters mark'd the close of day,
'Twere tedious, tiresome, endless to obtrude;
Imagination must the scene conclude.
It is not easy to imagine fatigue better delineated than in the
appearance of this amiable pair. In a few of the earliest impressions,
Mr. Hogarth printed the hands of the man in blue, to show that he was a
dyer, and the face and neck of the woman in red, to intimate her extreme
heat. The lady's aspect lets us at once into her character; we are
certain that she was born to command. As to her husband, God made him,
and he must pass for a man: what his wife has made him, is indicated by
the cow's horns; which are so placed as to become his own. The hopes of
the family, with a cockade in his hat, and riding upon papa's cane,
seems much dissatisfied with female sway. A face with more of the shrew
in embryo than that of the girl, it is scarcely possible to conceive.
Upon such a character the most casual observer pronounces with the
decision of a Lavater.
Nothing can be better imagined than the group in the alehouse. They have
taken a refreshing walk into the country, and, being determined to have
a cooling pipe, seat themselves in a chair-lumbered closet, with a low
ceiling; where every man, pulling off his wig, and throwing a
pocket-handkerchief over his head, inhales the fumes of hot punch, the
smoke of half a dozen pipes, and the dust from the road. If this is not
rural felicity, what is? The old gentleman in a black bag-wig, and the
two women near him, sensibly enough, take their seats in the open air.
From a woman milking a cow, we conjecture the hour to be about five in
the afternoon: and, from the same circumstance, I am inclined to think
this agreeable party is going to their pastoral bower, rather than
returning from it.
The cow and dog appear as much inconvenienced by heat as any of the
party: the former is whisking off the flies; and the latter creeps
unwillingly along, and casts a longing look at the crystal river, in
which he sees his own shadow. A remarkably hot summer is intimated by
the luxuriant state of a vine, creeping over an alehouse window. On the
side of the New River, where the scene is laid, lies one of the wooden
pipes employed in the water-works. Opposite Sadler's Wells there still
remains the sign of Sir Hugh Middleton's head, which is here
represented; but how changed the scene from what is here represented!
[Illustration: EVENING.]
NIGHT.
Now burst the blazing bonfires on the sight,
Through the wide air their corruscations play;
The windows beam with artificial light,
And all the region emulates the day.
The moping mason, from yon tavern led,
In mystic words doth to the moon complain
That unsound port distracts his aching head,
And o'er the waiter waves his clouded cane.
Mr. Walpole very truly observes, that this print is inferior to the
three others; there is, however, broad humour in some of the figures.
The wounded free-mason, who, in zeal of brotherly love, has drank his
bumpers to the craft till he is unable to find his way home, is under
the guidance of a waiter. This has been generally considered as intended
for Sir Thomas de Veil, and, from an authenticated portrait which I have
seen, I am, says Mr. Ireland, inclined to think it is, notwithstanding
Sir John Hawkins asserts, that "he could discover no resemblance." When
the knight saw him in his magisterial capacity, he was probably sober
and sedate; here he is represented a little disguised. The British
Xantippe showering her favours from the window upon his head, may have
its source in that respect which the inmates of such houses as the
Rummer Tavern had for a justice of peace. On the resignation of Mr.
Horace Walpole, in February, 1738, De Veil was appointed
inspector-general of the imports and exports, and was so severe against
the retailers of spirituous liquors, that one Allen headed a gang of
rioters for the purpose of pulling down his house, and bringing to a
summary punishment two informers who were there concealed. Allen was
tried for this offence, and acquitted, upon the jury's verdict declaring
him lunatic.
The waiter who supports his worship, seems, from the patch upon his
forehead, to have been in a recent affray; but what use he can have for
a lantern, it is not easy to divine, unless he is conducting his charge
to some place where there is neither moonlight nor illumination.
The Salisbury flying coach oversetting and broken, by passing through
the bonfire, is said to be an intended burlesque upon a right honourable
peer, who was accustomed to drive his own carriage over hedges, ditches,
and rivers; and has been sometimes known to drive three or four of his
maid servants into a deep water, and there leave them in the coach to
shift for themselves.
The butcher, and little fellow, who are assisting the terrified
passengers, are possibly free and accepted masons. One of them seems to
have a mop in his hand;--the pail is out of sight.
To crown the joys of the populace, a man with a pipe in his mouth is
filling a capacious hogshead with British Burgundy.
The joint operation of shaving and bleeding, performed by a drunken
'prentice on a greasy oilman, does not seen a very natural exhibition on
a rejoicing night.
The poor wretches under the barber's bench display a prospect of penury
and wretchedness, which it is to be hoped is not so common now, as it
was then.
In the distance is a cart laden with furniture, which some unfortunate
tenant is removing out of the reach of his landlord's execution.
There is humour in the barber's sign and inscription; "Shaving,
bleeding, and teeth drawn with a touch. ECCE SIGNUM!"
By the oaken boughs on the sign, and the oak leaves in the free-masons'
hats, it seems that this rejoicing night is the twenty-ninth of May, the
anniversary of our second Charles's restoration; that happy day when,
according to our old ballad, "The king enjoyed his own again." This
might be one reason for the artist choosing a scene contiguous to the
beautiful equestrian statue of Charles the First.
In the distance we see a house on fire; an accident very likely to
happen on such a night as this.
On this spot once stood the cross erected by Edward the First, as a
memorial of affection for his beloved queen Eleanor, whose remains were
here rested on their way to the place of sepulture. It was formed from a
design by Cavalini, and destroyed by the religious fury of the
Reformers. In its place, in the year 1678, was erected the animated
equestrian statue which now remains. It was cast in brass, in the year
1633, by Le Soeur; I think by order of that munificent encourager of
the arts, Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel. The parliament ordered it to
be sold, and broken to pieces; but John River, the brazier who purchased
it, having more taste than his employers, seeing, with the prophetic eye
of good sense, that the powers which were would not remain rulers very
long, dug a hole in his garden in Holborn, and buried it unmutilated. To
prove his obedience to their order, he produced to his masters several
pieces of brass, which he told them were parts of the statue. M. de
Archenholtz adds further, that the brazier, with the true spirit of
trade, cast a great number of handles for knives and forks, and offered
them for sale, as composed of the brass which had formed the statue.
They were eagerly sought for, and purchased,--by the loyalists from
affection to their murdered monarch,--by the other party, as trophies of
triumph.
The original pictures of Morning and Noon were sold to the Duke of
Ancaster for fifty-seven guineas; Evening and Night to Sir William
Heathcote, for sixty-four guineas.
[Illustration: NIGHT.]
SIGISMONDA
----------------Let the picture rust,
Perhaps Time's price-enhancing dust,--
As statues moulder into earth,
When I'm no more, may mark its worth;
And future connoisseurs may rise,
Honest as ours, and full as wise,
To puff the piece, and painter too,
And make me then what Guido's now.
HOGARTH'S EPISTLE.
A competition with either Guido, or Furino, would to any modern painter
be an enterprise of danger: to Hogarth it was more peculiarly so, from
the public justly conceiving that the representation of elevated
distress was not his _forte_, and his being surrounded by an host of
foes, who either dreaded satire, or envied genius. The connoisseurs,
considering the challenge as too insolent to be forgiven, before his
picture appeared, determined to decry it. The painters rejoiced in his
attempting what was likely to end in disgrace; and to satisfy those who
had formed their ideas of Sigismonda upon the inspired page of Dryden,
was no easy task.
The bard has consecrated the character, and his heroine glitters with a
brightness that cannot be transferred to the canvass. Mr. Walpole's
description, though equally radiant, is too various, for the utmost
powers of the pencil.
Hogarth's Sigismonda, as this gentleman poetically expresses it, "has
none of the sober grief, no dignity of suppressed anguish, no
involuntary tear, no settled meditation on the fate she meant to meet,
no amorous warmth turned holy by despair; in short, all is wanting that
should have been there, all is there that such a story would have
banished from a mind capable of conceiving such complicated woe; woe so
sternly felt, and yet so tenderly." This glowing picture presents to the
mind a being whose contending passions may be felt, but were not
delineated even by Corregio. Had his tints been aided by the grace and
greatness of Raphael, they must have failed.