[1] From some late examples in our courts of justice, I have thought
it barely possible that this dignified descendant of crowned heads,
at the same time that he is admiring his own person, may be observing
the Counsellor's attention to his lady, and hoping that he shall find
some future opportunity of detecting her infidelity and obtaining
a divorce. But this is merely conjecture. I wish, for the honour
of human nature, that there had been no example to justify such a
suspicion.
[2] The following whimsical imitation of Chaucer was written, I
believe, by Hermes Harris:--
"Right welle my lerned clerkis it is said,
That womanhoode for manne his use was made;
But naughtie manne liketh not one, or soe,
But wisheth aye unthriftilie for mo;
And when by holie church to one he's tied,
Then for his soule he cannot her abide.
Thus when a dogge first lighteth on a bone,
His taile he waggeth,--gladde thereof y-growne;
But if thilke bone untoe his taile thou tie,
Pardie, he fearing it, away doth flie."
[3] Hogarth might intend by this, and the improprieties and
violations of order in the unfinished building seen out of a window,
to hint at the absurdities of the then fashionable architect, William
Kent. As a painter Kent was beneath satire, as an architect he was
above it; but he was protected by Lord Burlington, patronized by Lord
Pembroke, and employed by all who aspired to a character for _virtu_.
Hogarth saw with disgust bordering upon indignation that his taste in
one art, modern gardening (of which he was the acknowledged father),
procured him the reputation of excellence in another, in which he
was grossly ignorant and glaringly erroneous. In some of the grounds
laid out by Kent's directions, he realized that Paradise which Milton
had described; his patrons saw that he could improve nature in their
plantations, and very kindly gave him credit for a power which he
never possessed--that of giving an imitation of nature on his canvas.
By the Dryades his sacrifice had been accepted; but the offering
he laid upon the altar sacred to the fine arts was rejected with
disdain. It was the praise of Hercules that he destroyed monsters and
discomfited giants; it was the praise of William Kent that he cleared
our gardens of their representatives. Before his time the plantations
round the seats of our nobility were a kind of vernal menagerie:
the lion shook his shaggy mane in yew; the dragon waved his wings
in evergreen; and in box, the wild boar displayed his bristled neck
and tusks terrific. Our disciple of true taste cleared away these
fantastic forms, and in their place gave us nature,--"nature to
advantage dressed." But when consulted about interior decorations,
his taste evaporated. The heavy canopy over the nobleman's head, the
ponderous chairs and massy frames which decorate the room, are from
his designs. In some of the old houses of our ancient nobility we see
furniture of a similar appearance, though the greatest part of it,
after passing through the purgatory of a broker's shop, has either
been placed in very inferior situations or consigned to the flames.
Of Kent's abilities as a painter the public thought so highly,
that he was absurdly enough opposed to Sir James Thornhill. This
circumstance might be one source of Hogarth's dislike; he, however,
took an early opportunity of showing it, by what is called a
"Burlesque of Kent's Altarpiece at St. Clement's Church," but which
Hogarth declared to be a fair delineation of the original. A reduced
copy is in vol. iii. of this work; see p. 17 of the 2d edition.
[4] Some of the portraits of Louis XIV. are quite as absurd. We are
told that he once sent to Rome for Poussin, to paint him in the
character of Jupiter. This great artist obeyed the summons, and
prepared his canvas and colours; when, to his extreme astonishment,
the monarch informed him that, although he was to be delineated as
the representative of Jove, etiquette did not permit him to appear
without his major peruke, and he must consequently be so painted.
Poussin, not able to conceive any way of giving appropriate dignity
to the thunderer of Olympus with this flowing appendage, declined
beginning the picture, and returned to Rome without making his
_congé_.
[5] By the loose negligence of her habit, and some circumstances,
I am inclined to think the artist intended to represent her as
pregnant. It has been said that after Baron had finished the plate,
Mr. Hogarth added a lock of hair with Indian ink, but after a few
impressions were taken off, inserted this supplemental ornament with
the graver. In his _Analysis of Beauty_, he makes a remark which
in some degree accounts for the introduction of this fascinating
attraction:--
"It was once the fashion to have two curls of equal size, stuck at
the same height close upon the forehead, which probably took its rise
from seeing the pretty effect of curls falling loosely over the face.
"A lock of hair falling thus across the temples, and by that means
breaking the regularity of the oval, has an effect too alluring to
be strictly decent, as is very well known to the loose and lowest
classes of women; but being paired in so stiff a manner as they
formerly were, they lost the desired effect, and ill deserved the
name of ornaments."
Moralists of different nations have considered hair as calculated to
entangle hearts, and one of our pious writers of the last century
wrote a furious treatise on the _un_loveliness of love-locks.
[6] A chair kicked down, an _Essay on Whist_, cards scattered on the
floor, and the general confusion of everything in the room, seem
to intimate that this _right honourable society_ were actuated by
passions somewhat similar to those which inflame the gentlemen in the
sixth plate of "The Rake's Progress." Though a genuine gamester is
not apt to lose his presence of mind on slight occasions, yet when a
man of rank is stripped of sums that will draw into their vortex many
anticipated years of his revenue, he is liable to lose his temper,
and on such occasions apt to vent his spleen on inanimate objects.
Such things sometimes happen even now.
[7] Absurd as this may seem, yet until Mr. Wedgwood introduced those
beautiful Etruscan forms which now decorate the rooms, and form the
taste of the possessors, these shapeless monsters disgraced the most
splendid apartments in the metropolis.
[8] "Kent was not only consulted for furniture, as frames of
pictures, glasses, tables, chairs, etc., but for plate, for a barge,
for a cradle. So impetuous was fashion, that two great ladies
prevailed on him to make designs for their birthday gowns. The one
he dressed in a petticoat decorated with columns of the five orders;
the other, like a bronze, in copper-coloured satin, with ornaments of
gold."--Walpole's _Anecdotes_, 2d edit., vol. iv. p. 239.
[9] This race still roll round the metropolis; and while some put
their trust in chariots, horses, and impudence, others depend on the
credulity of his Majesty's liege subjects.