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Collection of Pictures most of us have seen the best and most carefully finished series of his comic paintings, and the portrait of his own honest face, of which the bright blue eyes

of retaining in my mind's eye, without coldly copying it on the spot, whatever I intended to imitate.

"The instant I became master of my own time, I determined to qualify myself for engraving on copper. In this I readily got employment; and frontispieces to books, such as prints to Hudibras, in twelves, &c., soon brought me into the way. But the tribe of booksellers remained as my father had left them. . . which put me upon publishing on my own account. But here again I had to encounter a monopoly of printsellers, equally mean and destructive to the ingenious; for the first plate I published, called 'The Taste of the Town,' in which the reigning follies were lashed, had no sooner begun to take a run, than I found copies of it in the print-shops, vending at half-price, while the original prints were returned to me again, and I was thus obliged to sell the plate for whatever these pirates pleased to give me, as there was no place of sale but at their shops. Owing to this, and other circumstances, by engraving, until I was near thirty, I could do little more than maintain myself; but even then I was a punctual paymaster.

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[But William is going too fast here. He made a "stolen union," on March 23, 1729, with Jane, daughter of Sir James Thornhill, serjeant-painter. For some time Sir James kept his heart and his purse-strings close, but "soon after became both reconciled and generous to the young couple."-Hogarth's Works, by NICHOLS and STEEVENS, vol. i. p. 44.}

"-commenced painter of small Conversation Pieces, from twelve to fifteen inches high. This, being a novelty, succeeded for a few years."

[About this time Hogarth had summer lodgings at South Lambeth, and did all kinds of work, " embellishing" the "Spring Gardens" at "Vauxhall," and the like. In 1731, he published a satirical plate against Pope, founded on the well-known imputation against him of his having satirised the Duke of Chandos, under the name of Timon, in his poem on "Taste." The plate represented a view of Burlington House, with Pope whitewashing it, and bespattering the Duke of Chandos's coach. Pope made no retort, and has never mentioned Hogarth.]

"Before I had done anything of much consequence in this walk, I entertained some hopes of succeeding in what the puffers in books call The Great Style of History Painting; so that without having had a stroke of this grand business before, I quitted small portraits and familiar conversations, and with a smile at my own temerity, commenced history-painter, and on a great staircase at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, painted two Scripture stories, the Pool of Bethesda' and the Good Samaritan,' with figures seven feet high. . . . But as religion, the great promoter of this style in other countries, rejected it in England, I was unwilling to sink into a portrait manufacturer; and, still ambitious of being singular, dropped all expectations of advantage from that source, and returned to the pursuit of my former dealings with the public at large.

"As to portrait-painting, the chief branch of the art by which a painter

shine out from the canvas and give you an idea of that keen and brave look with which William Hogarth regarded the world. No man was ever less of a hero; you see him before

can procure himself a tolerable livelihood, and the only one by which a lover of money can get a fortune, a man of very moderate talents may have great success in it, as the artifice and address of a mercer is infinitely more useful than the abilities of a painter. By the manner in which the present race of professors in England conduct it, that also becomes still life."

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"By this inundation of folly and puff" (he has been speaking of the success of Vanloo, who came over here in 1737), "I must confess I was much disgusted, and determined to try if by any means I could stem the torrent, and, by opposing, end it. I laughed at the pretensions of these quacks in colouring, ridiculed their productions as feeble and contemptible, and asserted that it required neither taste nor talents to excel their most popular performances. This interference excited much enmity, because, as my opponents told me, my studies were in another way. You talk,' added they, with ineffable contempt. of portrait-painting; if it is so easy a task, why do not you convince the world, by painting a portrait yourself?' Provoked at this language, I, one day at the Academy in St. Martin's Lane, put the following question: Supposing any man, at this time, were to paint a portrait as well as Vandyke, would it be seen or acknowledged, and could the artist enjoy the benefit or acquire the reputation due to his performance?'

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They asked me in reply, if I could paint one as well; and I frankly answered, I believed I could.

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Of the mighty talents said to be requisite for portrait painting I had not the most exalted opinion."

Let us now hear him on the question of the Academy:—

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To pester the three great estates of the empire, about twenty or thirty students drawing after a man or a horse, appears, as must be acknowledged, foolish enough: but the real motive is, that a few bustling characters, who have access to people of rank, think they can thus get a superiority over their brethren, be appointed to places, and have salaries, as in France, for telling a lad when a leg or an arm is too long or too short.

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France, ever aping the magnificence of other nations, has in its turn assumed a foppish kind of splendour sufficient to dazzle the eyes of the neighbouring states, and draw vast sums of money from this country. . . .

"To return to our Royal Academy: I am told that one of their leading objects will be, sending young men abroad to study the antique statues, for such kind of studies may sometimes improve an exalted genius, but they will not create it; and whatever has been the cause, this same travelling to Italy has, in several instances that I have seen, seduced the student from nature and led him to paint marble figures, in which he has availed himself of the great works of antiquity, as a coward does when he puts on the armour of an Alexander; for, with similar pretensions and similar vanity, the painter supposes he shall be adored as a second Raphael Urbino."

We must now hear him on his "Sigismunda :

"As the most violent and virulent abuse thrown on 'Sigismunda' was from

you, and can fancy what he was--a jovial, honest London citizen, stout and sturdy; a hearty, plain-spoken man,* loving his laugh, his friend, his glass, his roast beef of Old England, and having a proper bourgeois scorn for French frogs, for mounseers, and wooden shoes in general, for foreign fiddlers, a set of miscreants, with whom I am proud of having been ever at war-I mean the expounders of the mysteries of old pictures-I have been sometimes told they were beneath my notice. This is true of them individually; but as they have access to people of rank, who seem as happy in being cheated as these merchants are in cheating them, they have a power of doing much mischief to a modern artist. However mean the vendor of poisons, the mineral is destructive :-to me its operation was troublesome enough. Ill nature spreads so fast that now was the time for every little dog in the profession to bark!"

Next comes a characteristic account of his controversy with Wilkes and Churchill.

“The stagnation rendered it necessary that I should do some timed thing, to recover my lost time, and stop a gap in my income. This drew forth my print of The Times,' a subject which tended to the restoration of peace and unanimity, and put the opposers of these humane objects in a light which gave great offence to those who were trying to foment disaffection in the minds of the populace. One of the most notorious of them, till now my friend and flatterer, attacked me in the North Briton, in so infamous and malign a style, that he himself, when pushed even by his best friends, was driven to so poor an excuse as to say he was drunk when he wrote it.

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This renowned patriot's portrait, drawn like as I could as to features, and marked with some indications of his mind, fully answered my purpose. The ridiculous was apparent to every eye! A Brutus! A saviour of his country with such an aspect-was so arrant a farce, that though it gave rise to much laughter in the lookers-on, galled both him and his adherents to the bone. . . .

"Churchill, Wilkes's toad-echo, put the North Briton attack into verse, in an Epistle to Hogarth; but as the abuse was precisely the same, except a little poetical heightening, which goes for nothing, it made no impression. . . However, having an old plate by me, 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 can be expected at my time of life."

"It happened in the early part of Hogarth's life, that a nobleman who was uncommonly ugly and deformed came to sit to him for his picture. It was executed with a skill that did honour to the artist's abilities; but the likeness was rigidly observed, without even the necessary attention to compliment or flattery. The peer, disgusted at this counterpart of himself, never once thought of paying for a reflection that would only disgust him with his deformities. Some time was suffered to elapse before the artist applied for his money; but afterwards many applications were made by him (who had then no need of a

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