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My scattered and once-loved schoolmates, their characters, and their various fortunes, passed in rapid review before me;-my schoolmaster, his wife, and all the gentry, and heads of families, whose orderly attendance at Divine service on Sundays, while those well-remembered bells were "chiming for church," (but now departed and mouldering in the adjoining graves,) were rapidly presented to my recollection. With what pomp and form they used to enter and depart from their house of God! I saw with the mind's eye, the Widow Hogarth, and her maiden relative, Richardson, walking up the aisle, draped in their silken sacks, their raised head-dresses, their black calashes, their lace ruffles, and their high-crook'd canes, preceded by their aged servant, Samuel; who, after he had wheeled his mistress to church in her Bath-chair, carried the prayer-books up the aisle, and opened and shut the pew. There, too, was the portly Dr. Griffiths, of the Monthly Review, with his literary wife, in her neat and elevated wire-winged cap. And ofttimes the vivacious and angelic Duchess of Devonshire, whose bloom had not then suffered from the canker-worm of pecuniary distress, created by the luxury of charity! Nor could I forget the humble distinction of the aged sexton, Mortefee, whose skill in psalmody enabled him to lead that wretched group of singers whom Hogarth so happily portrayed. Yes, simple and happy villagers, I remember scores of you!"-A Morning's Walk from London to Kew, p. 214.

MRS. HOGARTH.

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Hogarth, after a long and active life, left a very inconsiderable sum to his widow, with whom, as Jane Thornhill, he must have received a large portion.

By her husband's Will, Mrs. Hogarth received the sole property of his numerous plates, and the copyright was secured to her for twenty years, by Act of Parliament. There were seventy-two plates, the sale of the impressions from which produced a respectable annual income. But she outlived the period of her right; and before this, through the fluctuation of public taste, the sale of the prints had so diminished as to reduce Mrs. Hogarth to the border of

want.

The King interposed with the Royal Academy, and obtained for her an annuity of 407., which she lived but two years to enjoy Walpole says that, after her death, Mr. Steevens was allowed to ransack her house in Leicester Fields for obsolete and unfinished plates, to be completed and published.

Hogarth's sister Anne followed him to the grave in 1771; and his wife, who loved him living, and honoured him dead, was laid beside him in 1789.

At length, the stock at the Golden Head was sold; and in the "Catalogue of the Pictures and Prints, the property of the late Mrs. Hogarth, deceased, sold by Mr. Greenwood, the

Golden Head, Leicester-square, Saturday, April 24, 1790," were the following Pictures by Hogarth:

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41. Two Portraits of Ann and Mary Hogarth.

42. A daughter of Mr. Rich, the comedian, finely coloured.
43. The original portrait of Sir James Thornhill.

44. The heads of six servants of the Hogarth family.

45. His own portrait a head.

46. A ditto a whole length painting.

47. A ditto, Kit-Kat, with the favourite dog, exceedingly fine.

48. Two portraits of Lady Thornhill and Mrs. Hogarth.

49. The first sketch of the Rake's Progress.

50. A ditto of the altar of Bristol Church.

51. The Shrimp Girl-a sketch.

52. Sigismunda.

53. An historical sketch, by Sir James Thornhill.

54. Two sketches of Lady Pembroke and Mr. John Thornhill.
55. Three old Pictures.

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56. The bust of Sir Isaac Newton, terra cotta.

57. Ditto of Mr. Hogarth, by Roubilliac.

58. Ditto of the favourite Dog, and cast of Mr. Hogarth's hand.

HOGARTH'S MAUL-STICK.

The maul-stick of the great painter, some years after his death, fell into the hands of Sir George Beaumont, who determined to keep it till a painter should appear who was worthy to receive it. Sir George kept the maul-stick until he saw the Village Politicians of Wilkie, and then presented it to that great artist.

COLLECTIONS OF HOGARTH'S WORKS.

A Rev. Mr. Gilpin, writing near the time of Hogarth, represents him as ignorant of composition! This shows how little the painter was then understood. There have been

occasional exhibitions of collections of his works: Cook, the engraver, re-engraved Hogarth's pictures, and exhibited the prints in the Haymarket early in the present century; but Mr. Leslie doubts whether Hogarth's entire excellence was fully felt by the public until his works were collected in 1814, and exhibited at the Gallery of the British Institution.

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CHARACTERISTICS, RETROSPECTIVE OPINIONS, AND PERSONAL TRAITS.

HOGARTH'S EARLY PORTRAITS.

THE success of our painter in the Wanstead Assembly led him to commence painting portraits; "the most ill-suited employment," says Walpole, "imaginable to a man whose turn certainly was not flattery, nor his talent adapted to look on vanity without a sneer. Yet his facility in catching a likeness, and the method he chose of painting families and conversation in small, then a novelty, drew him prodigious business for some time. It did not last, either from his applying to the real bent of his disposition, or from his customers apprehending that a satirist was too formidable a confessor for the devotees of self-love." Nichols adds, "There are still many family pictures by Mr. Hogarth existing, in the style of serious conversation-pieces. He was not, however, lucky in all his resemblances, and has sometimes failed where a crowd of other artists have succeeded. Nichols instances the whole length of Garrick sitting at a table, with his wife behind him taking the pen out of his hand; in which he has missed the character of Garrick's countenance while undisturbed by passion; but was more lucky in seizing his features when aggravated by terror, as in the tent-scene of King Richard III. It appears that Garrick was dissatisfied with the former portrait, or that some dispute arose between him and the painter, who then struck his pencil across the face, and damaged it. The picture was unpaid for at the time of Hogarth's death; when his widow sent it home to Garrick, without any demand."

Among the painter's early portraits was a whole-length of Mr. Western, painted for Mr. Cole's gallery at Milton, near Cambridge. Mr. Western is seated in his fellow-commoner's habit, and square cap with gold tassel, in his chamber at Clare Hall, with a cat sitting near him, as Nichols says, "agreeable to his humour, to show the situation," by his fireside. Mr. Cole relates that when he sat to Hogarth for this portrait, the custom of giving vails to servants was not discon

tinued. On his taking leave of the painter, and his servant opening the door, Mr. Cole offered him a gratuity, which the man politely refused, adding, it would be as much as the loss of his place, were he to accept the money, and his master know it.*

It was Hogarth's custom to sketch on the spot any remarkable face, of which he wished to preserve the remembrance; and a friend informed Nichols, that being with Hogarth at the Bedford coffee-house, he observed him drawing with a pencil on his nail, which proved to be a sketch of the features of a person at a small distance, in the coffee-room. At another time, he drew his friend Ben Read, sound asleepwith pen and ink, without sitting down-a curious and clever likeness, and still existing.

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His sitters already included different ranks. One day, a nobleman, by no means remarkable for his personal beauty, and deformed in figure, sat to Hogarth, and the portrait proved a correct likeness, without the least attention to compliment or flattery. His lordship was disgusted at this counterpart of himself; and the painter frequently applied for payment, but without success. He then wrote to the peer as follows: "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. H.'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 wildbeast man; Mr. H. having given that gentleman a conditional promise of it for an exhibition-picture, on his lordship's refusal." This intimation had the desired effect: the picture was sent home, and committed to the flames.

It was likewise Hogarth's practice to introduce striking resemblances of well-known characters of his time. Thus, almost all of the personages who attend the levee, in the series of the Rake's Progress, are undoubted portraits; and certain notabilities figure in the Southwark Fair and Modern Midnight Conversation, and the Rake's Progress.

At length, an opportunity occurred for bringing out Hogarth's force in portrait-painting with still greater effect. In 1729, Bambridge, warden of the Fleet Prison, and Huggins,

*Nor is it likely such a thing would happen again-Sir Joshua Reynolds gave his servant 61. annually of wages, and offered him 1007. a year for the door!—Cunningham.

his predecessor, were accused before the House of Commons of breaches of trust, extortions, and cruelties, and sent to Newgate. "The scene," says Walpole, "is a Committee of the Commons; on the table are the instruments of torture. A prisoner in rags, half-starved, appears before them; the poor man has a good countenance that adds to the interest. On the other hand is the inhuman jailer. It is the very figure which Salvator Rosa would have drawn for Iago in the moment of detection. Villany, fear, and conscience, are mixed in yellow and livid upon his countenance, his lips are contracted by tremor, his face advances as eager to lie, his legs step back as thinking to make his escape, one hand is thrust forward into his bosom, the fingers of the other are catching uncertainly at his button-hole. If this was a portrait, it was the most striking that ever was drawn-if it was not, it is still finer." Cunningham adds: "The face was that of Bambridge-the rest was the imagination of the artist." The Committee, according to Nichols, are all portraits. The picture was painted in 1729, for Sir Archibald Grant, of Monymusk, Bart. It became the property of the son of Huggins, after whose death it passed into the collection of the Earl of Carlisle. The frame is surmounted with a bust of Sir Francis Page, one of the judges, with a halter round his neck, emblematic of his character for severity.*

A sketch in oil of Bambridge was given by Hogarth to Walpole, and added to the Strawberry-hill collection.

Hogarth painted as a companion picture to the above a scene from the Beggars' Opera, with a bust of Gay on its frame, which picture also became the property of Mr. Huggins.

Strangely enough, Thornhill and Hogarth afterwards jointly painted for Huggins's son an allegorical ceiling, at his house, Headley Park, Hants.

*

Savage, in a "Character" of great power, has gibbeted Sir Francis Page to public detestation. Nor was Savage less severe in his prose. On the trial of this unfortunate poet, for the murder of James Sinclair in 1727, Judge Page, who was then on the bench, treated him with his usual insolence and severity; and when he had summed up the evidence, endeavoured to exasperate the jury, as Savage used to relate, with this eloquent harangue : "Gentlemen of the jury, you are to consider that Mr. Savage is a very great man, a much greater man than you or I, Gentlemen of the Jury; that he wears very fine clothes, much finer clothes than you or I, Gentlemen of the Jury; that he has abundance of money in his pocket, much more money than you or I, Gentlemen of the

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