foreign singers, and, above all, for foreign painters, whom he held in the most amusing contempt.

It must have been great fun to hear him rage against Correggio and the Caracci; to watch him thump the table and snap his fingers, and say, "Historical painters be hanged! here's the man that will paint against any of them for a hundred pounds. Correggio's 'Sigismunda!' Look at Bill Hogarth's Sigismunda;' look at my altar-piece at Saint Mary Redcliffe, Bristol; look at my 'Paul before Felix,' and see whether I'm not as good as the best of them." *

6

Posterity has not quite confirmed honest Hogarth's opinion about his talents for the sublime. Although Swift could not see the difference between tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum, posterity has not shared the Dean's contempt for Handel; the world has discovered a difference between tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum, and given a hearty applause and admiration to Hogarth, too, but not exactly as a painter of scriptural sub

banker) for payment, without success. The painter, however, at last hit upon an expedient. . . . It was couched in the following card :

"Mr. Hogarth's dutiful respects to Lord Finding that he does not mean to have the picture which was drawn for him, is informed again of Mr. Hogarth's necessity for the money. If, therefore, his Lordship does not send for it, in three days it will be disposed of, with the addition of a tail, and some other little appendages, to Mr. Hare, the famous wild-beast man: Mr. Hogarth having given that gentleman a conditional promise of it, for an exhibitionpicture, on his Lordship's refusal.'

"This intimation had the desired effect."-Works, by NICHOLS and STEEVENS, vol. i. p. 25.

64

十 Garrick himself was not more ductile to flattery. A word in favour of 'Sigismunda' might have commanded a proof-print or forced an original print out of our artist's hands.

"The following authenticated story of our artist (furnished by the late Mr. Belchier, F.R.S., a surgeon of eminence) will also serve to show how much more easy it is to detect ill-placed or hyperbolical adulation respecting others, than when applied to ourselves. Hogarth, being at dinner with the great Cheselden and some other company, was told that Mr. John Freke, surgeon of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, a few evenings before at Dick's Coffee-house, had asserted that Greene was as eminent in composition as Handel. That fellow Freke,' replied Hogarth, is always shooting his bolt absurdly, one way or another. Handel is a giant in music; Greene only a light Florimel kind of a composer.' 'Ay,' says our artist's informant, but at the same time Mr. Freke declared you were as good a portrait-painter as Vandyke.' 'There he was right,' adds Hogarth, and so, by G——, I am, give me my time and let me choose my subject.'" Works, by NICHOLS and STEEVENS, vol. i. pp. 236, 237.

jects, or as a rival of Correggio. It does not take away from one's liking for the man, or from the moral of his story, or the humour of it—from one's admiration for the prodigious merit of his performances, to remember that he persisted to the last in believing that the world was in a conspiracy against him with respect to his talents as an historical painter, and that a set of miscreants, as he called them, were employed to run his genius down. They say it was Liston's firm belief, that he was a great and neglected tragic actor; they say that every one of us believes in his heart, or would like to have others believe, that he is something which he is not. One of the most notorious of the "miscreants," Hogarth says, was Wilkes, who assailed him in the North Briton; the other was Churchill, who put the North Briton attack into heroic verse, and published his "Epistle to Hogarth." Hogarth replied by that caricature of Wilkes, in which the patriot still figures before us, with his Satanic grin and squint, and by a caricature of Churchill, in which he is represented as a bear with a staff, on which, lie the first, lie the second-lie the tenth, are engraved in unmistakable letters. There is very little mistake about honest Hogarth's satire: if he has to paint a man with his throat cut, he draws him with his head almost off; and he tried to do the same for his enemies in this little controversy. "Having an old plate by me," says he, "with some parts ready, such as the background, 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 pleasure and pecuniary advantage which I derived from these two engravings, together with occasionally riding on horseback, restored me to as much health as I can expect at my time of life."

And so he concludes his queer little book of Anecdotes: "I have gone through the circumstances of a life which till lately passed pretty much to my own satisfaction, and I hope in no respect injurious to any other man. This I may safely assert, that I have done my best to make those about me tolerably happy, and my greatest enemy cannot say I ever did an intentional injury. What may follow, God knows." *

* Of Hogarth's kindliness of disposition, the story of his rescue of the

A queer account still exists of a holiday jaunt taken by Hogarth and four friends of his, who set out like the redoubted Mr. Pickwick and his companions, but just a hundred years before those heroes; and made an excursion to Gravesend, Rochester, Sheerness, and adjacent places.* One of the gentlemen noted down the proceedings of the journey, for which Hogarth and a brother artist made drawings. The book is chiefly curious at this moment from showing the citizen life of those days, and the rough jolly style of merriment, not of the five companions merely, but of thousands of jolly fellows of their time. Hogarth and his friends, quitting the "Bedford Arms," Covent Garden, with a song, took water to Billingsgate, exchanging compliments with the bargemen as they went down the river. At Billingsgate Hogarth made a "caracatura" of a facetious porter, called the Duke of Puddledock, who agreeably entertained the party with the humours of the place. Hence they took a Gravesend boat for themselves; had straw to lie upon, and a tilt over their heads, they say, and went down the river at night, sleeping and singing jolly choruses.

They arrived at Gravesend at six, when they washed their faces and hands, and had their wigs powdered. Then they sallied forth for Rochester on foot, and drank by the way three pots of ale. At one o'clock they went to dinner with excellent port, and a quantity more beer, and afterwards Hogarth and Scott played at hopscotch in the town hall. It would appear that they slept most of them in one room, and the chronicler of the party describes them all as waking at seven o'clock, and telling each other their dreams. You have rough sketches by Hogarth of the incidents of this holiday excursion. sturdy little painter is seen sprawling over a plank to a boat at Gravesend; the whole company are represented in one design, in a fisherman's room, where they had all passed the night. One gentleman in a nightcap is shaving himself; another is being shaved by the fisherman; a third, with a

The

drummer-girl from the ruffian at Southwark Fair is an illustration: and in this case virtue was not its own reward, since her pretty face afterwards served him for a model in many a picture.

* He made this excursion in 1732, his companions being John Thornhill (son of Sir James), Scott the landscape-painter, Tothall, and Forrest.