"To Galen's great descendant list,--oh list!
Behold a surgeon, sage, anatomist,
Mechanic, antiquarian, seer, collector,
Physician, barber, bone-setter, dissector.
The sextons, registers, and tombstones tell,
By his prescriptions, what an army fell;
Med'cines--by him compos'd will stop the breath,
And every pill is fraught with certain death."[9]--E.
[Illustration: MARRIAGE A LA MODE. PLATE III.]
This has been said to be the most obscure delineation that Hogarth
ever published: how far the short explanation copied from Mr. Lane's
papers may contribute to sanction my previous description, I do not
presume to judge. Hitherto there have certainly been many different
opinions as to the meaning of this print, and Churchill is said to
have asserted, that from its appearing so ambiguous to him, he once
requested Hogarth to explain it, but that the artist, like many other
commentators, left his subject as obscure as he found it. "From this
circumstance," added the poet, "I am convinced he formed his tale
upon the ideas of Hoadley, Garrick, Townley, or some other friend,
and never perfectly comprehended what it meant."
How it was possible for Hoadley, Garrick, and Townley, or any other
friend, to furnish Hogarth with ideas to compose the third plate of
an historical series, I cannot comprehend.
I can suppose it possible that the artist might not choose to
explain to Churchill what he himself thought obvious, and therefore
declined giving him any explanation. I can suppose that, admirably
as Hogarth told a story with his pencil, he might not be qualified
to express his verbal meaning with equal accuracy, and therefore be
misunderstood; but, above all, I can suppose it not only possible,
but probable, that this bitter satirist, making the declaration
_after_ the publication of "Wilkes' Portrait," "The Bruiser," and
"The Times," might, from resentment to the artist, be provoked to
give a poetical colouring to the story about the "Marriage à la Mode."
I think it must be considered as a sort of episode, no further
connected with the main subject than as it exhibits the consequences
of an alliance entered into from sordid and unworthy motives. In
the two preceding prints the hero and heroine of this tragedy show
a fashionable indifference towards each other. On the part of
the Viscount, we see no indication of any wish to conciliate the
affections of his lady. Careless of her conduct, and negligent of
her fame, he leaves her to superintend the musical dissipations
of his house, and lays the scene of his own licentious amusements
abroad. The female heart is naturally susceptible, and much
influenced by first impressions. Formed for love, and gratefully
attached by delicate attentions; but chilled by neglect, and frozen
by coldness,--by contempt it is estranged, and by habitual and
long-continued inconstancy sometimes lost.
To show that our unfortunate victim to parental ambition has
suffered this mortifying climax of provocation, the artist has made
a digression, and exhibited her profligate husband attending a quack
doctor. In the last plate he appears to have dissipated his fortune;
in this he has injured his health. From the hour of marriage he has
neglected the woman to whom he plighted his troth. Can we wonder at
her conduct? By the Viscount she was despised; by the Counsellor
adored. This insidious, insinuating villain, we may naturally suppose
acquainted with every part of the nobleman's conduct, and artful
enough to make a proper advantage of his knowledge. From such an
agent the Countess would probably learn how her lord was connected:
from his subtle suggestions, being aided by resentment, she is
tempted to think that these accumulated insults have dissolved the
marriage vow, and given her a right to retaliate. Thus impelled,
thus irritated, and attended by such an advocate, can we wonder
that this fair unfortunate deserted from the standard of honour,
and sought refuge in the camp of infamy? To her husband many of her
errors must be attributed. She saw he despised her, and therefore
hated him; found that he had bestowed his affections on another, and
followed his example. To show the consequence of his unrestrained
wanderings, the author, in this plate, exhibits his hero in the
house of one of those needy empirics who play upon public credulity,
and vend poisons under the name of drugs. This quack being family
surgeon to the old procuress who stands at his right hand, formerly
attended the young girl, and received his fee as having recovered
his patient. That he was paid for what he did not perform, appears
by the countenance of the enraged nobleman, who lifts up his cane
in a threatening style, accompanying the action with a promise to
bastinado both surgeon and procuress for having deceived him by a
false bill of health. These menaces our natural son of Æsculapius
treats with that careless nonchalance which shows that his ears are
accustomed to such sounds; but the haggard high priestess of the
temple of Venus,[10] tenacious of her good name, and tremblingly
alive to any aspersion which may tend to injure her professional
reputation, unclasps her knife, determined to wash out this foul
stain upon her honour with the blood of her accuser.
The nick-nackitory collection that forms this motley museum is
exactly described by Doctor Garth; one would almost think Hogarth
made the dispensary his model in designing the print.
"Here mummies lie, most reverently stale,
And there, the tortoise hung her coat of mail:
Not far from some huge shark's devouring head,
The flying fish their finny pinions spread;
Aloft, in rows, large poppy-heads were strung,
And near, a scaly alligator hung:
In this place, drugs in musty heaps decay'd,
In that, dry'd bladders and drawn teeth were laid."
An horn of the sea unicorn is so placed as to give the idea of a
barber's pole; this, with the pewter basin and broken comb, clearly
indicate the former profession of our mock doctor. The high-crowned
hat and antique spur, which might once have been the property of
Butler's redoubted knight, the valiant Hudibras, with a model of
the gallows, and sundry nondescript rarities, show us that this
great man, if not already a member of the Antiquarian Society, is
qualifying himself to be a candidate. The dried body[11] in the
glass-case, placed between a skeleton and the sage's wig-block,
form a trio that might serve as the symbol of a consultation of
physicians. A figure above the mummies seems at first sight to be
decorated with a flowing periwig, but on a close inspection will be
found intended for one of Sir John Mandeville's _anthropophagi_, a
sort of men "whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders." Even the
skulls have character; and the principal mummy has so majestic an
aspect, that one is almost tempted to believe it the mighty Cheops,
king of Egypt, whose body was certainly to be known, being the only
one entombed in the large pyramid.[12]
By two machines, constructed upon the most complicated principles,
though intended for performing very simple operations, we discover
that our quack studies mechanics. On one of them lies a folio
treatise descriptive of their uses; by which we are informed that the
largest is to reduce a dislocated limb, the smallest is to draw a
cork!--each of them invented by Monsieur De la Pilulæ, and inspected
and approved by the Royal Academy of Paris.