Chapter VI: Mr. Harold Smith’s Lecture (1)

On the whole the party at Chaldicotes was very pleasant and the time passed away quickly enough. Mr. Robarts’s chief friend there, independently of Mr. Sowerby, was Miss Dunstable, who seemed to take a great fancy to him, whereas she was not very accessible to the blandishments of Mr. Supplehouse, nor more specially courteous even to her host than good manners required of her. But then Mr. Supplehouse and Mr. Sowerby were both bachelors, while Mark Robarts was a married man.

With Mr. Sowerby Robarts had more than one communication respecting Lord Lufton and his affairs, which he would willingly have avoided had it been possible. Sowerby was one of those men who are always mixing up business with pleasure, and who have usually some scheme in their mind which requires forwarding. Men of this class have, as a rule, no daily work, no regular routine of labour; but it may be doubted whether they do not toil much more incessantly than those who have.

“Lufton is so dilatory,” Mr. Sowerby said. “Why did he not arrange this at once, when he promised it? And then he is so afraid of that old woman at Framley Court. Well, my dear fellow, say what you will; she is an old woman and she’ll never be younger. But do write to Lufton and tell him that this delay is inconvenient to me; he’ll do anything for you, I know.”

Mark said that he would write, and, indeed, did do so; but he did not at first like the tone of the conversation into which he was dragged. It was very painful to him to hear Lady Lufton called an old woman, and hardly less so to discuss the propriety of Lord Lufton’s parting with his property. This was irksome to him, till habit made it easy. But by degrees his feelings became less acute and he accustomed himself to his friend Sowerby’s mode of talking.

And then on the Saturday afternoon they all went over to Barchester. Harold Smith during the last forty-eight hours had become crammed to overflowing with Sarawak, Labuan, New Guinea, and the Salomon Islands. As is the case with all men labouring under temporary specialities, he for the time had faith in nothing else, and was not content that any one near him should have any other faith. They called him Viscount Papua and Baron Borneo; and his wife, who headed the joke against him, insisted on having her title. Miss Dunstable swore that she would wed none but a South Sea islander; and to Mark was offered the income and duties of Bishop of Spices. Nor did the Proudie family set themselves against these little sarcastic quips with any overwhelming severity. It is sweet to unbend oneself at the proper opportunity, and this was the proper opportunity for Mrs. Proudie’s unbending. No mortal can be seriously wise at all hours; and in these happy hours did that usually wise mortal, the bishop, lay aside for awhile his serious wisdom.

“We think of dining at five to-morrow, my Lady Papua,” said the facetious bishop; “will that suit his lordship and the affairs of State? he! he! he!” And the good prelate laughed at the fun.

How pleasantly young men and women of fifty or thereabouts can joke and flirt and poke their fun about, laughing and holding their sides, dealing in little innuendoes and rejoicing in nicknames when they have no Mentors of twenty-five or thirty near them to keep them in order. The vicar of Framley might perhaps have been regarded as such a Mentor, were it not for that capability of adapting himself to the company immediately around him on which he so much piqued himself. He therefore also talked to my Lady Papua, and was jocose about the Baron,--not altogether to the satisfaction of Mr. Harold Smith himself.

For Mr. Harold Smith was in earnest and did not quite relish these jocundities. He had an idea that he could in about three months talk the British world into civilizing New Guinea, and that the world of Barsetshire would be made to go with him by one night’s efforts. He did not understand why others should be less serious, and was inclined to resent somewhat stiffly the amenities of our friend Mark.

“We must not keep the Baron waiting,” said Mark, as they were preparing to start for Barchester.

“I don’t know what you mean by the Baron, sir,” said Harold Smith. “But perhaps the joke will be against you, when you are getting up into your pulpit to-morrow and sending the hat round among the clodhoppers of Chaldicotes.”

“Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones; eh, Baron?” said Miss Dunstable. “Mr. Robarts’s sermon will be too near akin to your lecture to allow of his laughing.”

“If we can do nothing towards instructing the outer world till it’s done by the parsons,” said Harold Smith, “the outer world will have to wait a long time, I fear.”

“Nobody can do anything of that kind short of a member of parliament and a would-be minister,” whispered Mrs. Harold.

And so they were all very pleasant together, in spite of a little fencing with edge tools; and at three o’clock the _cortége_ of carriages started for Barchester, that of the bishop, of course, leading the way. His lordship, however, was not in it.

“Mrs. Proudie, I’m sure you’ll let me go with you,” said Miss Dunstable, at the last moment, as she came down the big stone steps. “I want to hear the rest of that story about Mr. Slope.”

Now this upset everything. The bishop was to have gone with his wife, Mrs. Smith, and Mark Robarts; and Mr. Sowerby had so arranged matters that he could have accompanied Miss Dunstable in his phaeton. But no one ever dreamed of denying Miss Dunstable anything. Of course Mark gave way; but it ended in the bishop declaring that he had no special predilection for his own carriage, which he did in compliance with a glance from his wife’s eye. Then other changes of course followed, and, at last, Mr. Sowerby and Harold Smith were the joint occupants of the phaeton.

The poor lecturer, as he seated himself, made some remark such as those he had been making for the last two days--for out of a full heart the mouth speaketh. But he spoke to an impatient listener. “D---- the South Sea islanders,” said Mr. Sowerby. “You’ll have it all your own way in a few minutes, like a bull in a china-shop; but for Heaven’s sake let us have a little peace till that time comes.” It appeared that Mr. Sowerby’s little plan of having Miss Dunstable for his companion was not quite insignificant; and, indeed, it may be said that but few of his little plans were so. At the present moment he flung himself back in the carriage and prepared for sleep. He could further no plan of his by a _tête-à-tête_ conversation with his brother-in-law.

And then Mrs. Proudie began her story about Mr. Slope, or rather recommenced it. She was very fond of talking about this gentleman, who had once been her pet chaplain but was now her bitterest foe; and in telling the story, she had sometimes to whisper to Miss Dunstable, for there were one or two fie-fie little anecdotes about a married lady, not altogether fit for young Mr. Robarts’s ears. But Mrs. Harold Smith insisted on having them out loud, and Miss Dunstable would gratify that lady in spite of Mrs. Proudie’s winks.

“What, kissing her hand, and he a clergyman!” said Miss Dunstable. “I did not think they ever did such things, Mr. Robarts.”

“Still waters run deepest,” said Mrs. Harold Smith.

“Hush-h-h,” looked, rather than spoke, Mrs. Proudie. “The grief of spirit which that bad man caused me nearly broke my heart, and all the while, you know, he was courting--” and then Mrs. Proudie whispered a name.

“What, the dean’s wife!” shouted Miss Dunstable, in a voice which made the coachman of the next carriage give a chuck to his horses as he overheard her.

“The archdeacon’s sister-in-law!” screamed Mrs. Harold Smith.

“What might he not have attempted next?” said Miss Dunstable.

“She wasn’t the dean’s wife then, you know,” said Mrs. Proudie, explaining.

“Well, you’ve a gay set in the chapter, I must say,” said Miss Dunstable. “You ought to make one of them in Barchester, Mr. Robarts.”

“Only perhaps Mrs. Robarts might not like it,” said Mrs. Harold Smith.

“And then the schemes which he tried on with the bishop!” said Mrs. Proudie.

“It’s all fair in love and war, you know,” said Miss Dunstable.

“But he little knew whom he had to deal with when he began that,” said Mrs. Proudie.

“The bishop was too many for him,” suggested Mrs. Harold Smith, very maliciously.

“If the bishop was not, somebody else was; and he was obliged to leave Barchester in utter disgrace. He has since married the wife of some tallow chandler.”

“The wife!” said Miss Dunstable. “What a man!”

“Widow, I mean; but it’s all one to him.”

“The gentleman was clearly born when Venus was in the ascendant,” said Mrs. Smith. “You clergymen usually are, I believe, Mr. Robarts.” So that Mrs. Proudie’s carriage was by no means the dullest as they drove into Barchester that day; and by degrees our friend Mark became accustomed to his companions, and before they reached the palace he acknowledged to himself that Miss Dunstable was very good fun.

We cannot linger over the bishop’s dinner, though it was very good of its kind; and as Mr. Sowerby contrived to sit next to Miss Dunstable, thereby overturning a little scheme made by Mr. Supplehouse, he again shone forth in unclouded good humour. But Mr. Harold Smith became impatient immediately on the withdrawal of the cloth. The lecture was to begin at seven, and according to his watch that hour had already come. He declared that Sowerby and Supplehouse were endeavouring to delay matters in order that the Barchesterians might become vexed and impatient; and so the bishop was not allowed to exercise his hospitality in true episcopal fashion.

“You forget, Sowerby,” said Supplehouse, “that the world here for the last fortnight has been looking forward to nothing else.”

“The world shall be gratified at once,” said Mrs. Harold, obeying a little nod from Mrs. Proudie. “Come, my dear,” and she took hold of Miss Dunstable’s arm, “don’t let us keep Barchester waiting. We shall be ready in a quarter-of-an-hour, shall we not, Mrs. Proudie?” and so they sailed off.

“And we shall have time for one glass of claret,” said the bishop.

“There; that’s seven by the cathedral,” said Harold Smith, jumping up from his chair as he heard the clock. “If the people have come it would not be right in me to keep them waiting, and I shall go.”

“Just one glass of claret, Mr. Smith; and we’ll be off,” said the bishop.

“Those women will keep me an hour,” said Harold, filling his glass, and drinking it standing. “They do it on purpose.” He was thinking of his wife, but it seemed to the bishop as though his guest were actually speaking of Mrs. Proudie!

It was rather late when they all found themselves in the big room of the Mechanics’ Institute; but I do not know whether this on the whole did them any harm. Most of Mr. Smith’s hearers, excepting the party from the palace, were Barchester tradesmen with their wives and families; and they waited, not impatiently, for the big people. And then the lecture was gratis, a fact which is always borne in mind by an Englishman when he comes to reckon up and calculate the way in which he is treated. When he pays his money, then he takes his choice; he may be impatient or not as he likes. His sense of justice teaches him so much, and in accordance with that sense he usually acts.

So the people on the benches rose graciously when the palace party entered the room. Seats for them had been kept in the front. There were three arm-chairs, which were filled, after some little hesitation, by the bishop, Mrs. Proudie, and Miss Dunstable--Mrs. Smith positively declining to take one of them; though, as she admitted, her rank as Lady Papua of the islands did give her some claim. And this remark, as it was made quite out loud, reached Mr. Smith’s ears as he stood behind a little table on a small raised dais, holding his white kid gloves; and it annoyed him and rather put him out. He did not like that joke about Lady Papua.

And then the others of the party sat upon a front bench covered with red cloth. “We shall find this very hard and very narrow about the second hour,” said Mr. Sowerby, and Mr. Smith on his dais again overheard the words, and dashed his gloves down to the table. He felt that all the room would hear it.

And there were one or two gentlemen on the second seat who shook hands with some of our party. There was Mr. Thorne of Ullathorne, a good-natured old bachelor, whose residence was near enough to Barchester to allow of his coming in without much personal inconvenience; and next to him was Mr. Harding, an old clergyman of the chapter, with whom Mrs. Proudie shook hands very graciously, making way for him to seat himself close behind her if he would so please. But Mr. Harding did not so please. Having paid his respects to the bishop he returned quietly to the side of his old friend Mr. Thorne, thereby angering Mrs. Proudie, as might easily be seen by her face. And Mr. Chadwick also was there, the episcopal man of business for the diocese; but he also adhered to the two gentlemen above named.

And now that the bishop and the ladies had taken their places, Mr. Harold Smith relifted his gloves and again laid them down, hummed three times distinctly, and then began.

“It was,” he said, “the most peculiar characteristic of the present era in the British islands that those who were high placed before the world in rank, wealth, and education were willing to come forward and give their time and knowledge without fee or reward, for the advantage and amelioration of those who did not stand so high in the social scale.” And then he paused for a moment, during which Mrs. Smith remarked to Miss Dunstable that that was pretty well for a beginning; and Miss Dunstable replied, “that as for herself she felt very grateful to rank, wealth, and education.” Mr. Sowerby winked to Mr. Supplehouse, who opened his eyes very wide and shrugged his shoulders. But the Barchesterians took it all in good part and gave the lecturer the applause of their hands and feet.

And then, well pleased, he recommenced--“I do not make these remarks with reference to myself----”

“I hope he’s not going to be modest,” said Miss Dunstable.

“It will be quite new if he is,” replied Mrs. Smith.

“----so much as to many noble and talented lords and members of the lower house who have lately from time to time devoted themselves to this good work.” And then he went through a long list of peers and members of parliament, beginning, of course, with Lord Boanerges, and ending with Mr. Green Walker, a young gentleman who had lately been returned by his uncle’s interest for the borough of Crew Junction, and had immediately made his entrance into public life by giving a lecture on the grammarians of the Latin language as exemplified at Eton school.

“On the present occasion,” Mr. Smith continued, “our object is to learn something as to those grand and magnificent islands which lie far away, beyond the Indies, in the Southern Ocean; the lands of which produce rich spices and glorious fruits, and whose seas are imbedded with pearls and corals, Papua and the Philippines, Borneo and the Moluccas. My friends, you are familiar with your maps, and you know the track which the equator makes for itself through those distant oceans.” And then many heads were turned down, and there was a rustle of leaves; for not a few of those “who stood not so high in the social scale” had brought their maps with them, and refreshed their memories as to the whereabouts of these wondrous islands.

And then Mr. Smith also, with a map in his hand, and pointing occasionally to another large map which hung against the wall, went into the geography of the matter. “We might have found that out from our atlases, I think, without coming all the way to Barchester,” said that unsympathizing helpmate Mrs. Harold, very cruelly--most illogically too, for there be so many things which we could find out ourselves by search, but which we never do find out unless they be specially told us; and why should not the latitude and longitude of Labuan be one--or rather two of these things?

And then, when he had duly marked the path of the line through Borneo, Celebes, and Gilolo, through the Macassar strait and the Molucca passage, Mr. Harold Smith rose to a higher flight. “But what,” said he, “avails all that God can give to man, unless man will open his hand to receive the gift? And what is this opening of the hand but the process of civilization--yes, my friends, the process of civilization? These South Sea islanders have all that a kind Providence can bestow on them; but that all is as nothing without education. That education and that civilization it is for you to bestow upon them--yes, my friends, for you; for you, citizens of Barchester as you are.” And then he paused again, in order that the feet and hands might go to work. The feet and hands did go to work, during which Mr. Smith took a slight drink of water.

He was now quite in his element and had got into the proper way of punching the table with his fists. A few words dropping from Mr. Sowerby did now and again find their way to his ears, but the sound of his own voice had brought with it the accustomed charm, and he ran on from platitude to truism, and from truism back to platitude, with an eloquence that was charming to himself.

“Civilization,” he exclaimed, lifting up his eyes and hands to the ceiling. “Oh, civilization----”

“There will not be a chance for us now for the next hour and a half,” said Mr. Supplehouse groaning.

Harold Smith cast one eye down at him, but it immediately flew back to the ceiling.

“Oh, civilization! thou that ennoblest mankind and makest him equal to the gods, what is like unto thee?” Here Mrs. Proudie showed evident signs of disapprobation, which no doubt would have been shared by the bishop, had not that worthy prelate been asleep. But Mr. Smith continued unobservant; or, at any rate, regardless.

“What is like unto thee? Thou art the irrigating stream which makest fertile the barren plain. Till thou comest all is dark and dreary; but at thy advent the noontide sun shines out, the earth gives forth her increase; the deep bowels of the rocks render up their tribute. Forms which were dull and hideous become endowed with grace and beauty, and vegetable existence rises to the scale of celestial life. Then, too, genius appears clad in a panoply of translucent armour, grasping in his hand the whole terrestrial surface, and making every rood of earth subservient to his purposes;--Genius, the child of civilization, the mother of the Arts!”

The last little bit, taken from the Pedigree of Progress, had a great success and all Barchester went to work with its hands and feet;--all Barchester, except that ill-natured aristocratic front-row together with the three arm-chairs at the corner of it. The aristocratic front-row felt itself to be too intimate with civilization to care much about it; and the three arm-chairs, or rather that special one which contained Mrs. Proudie, considered that there was a certain heathenness, a pagan sentimentality almost amounting to infidelity, contained in the lecturer’s remarks, with which she, a pillar of the church, could not put up, seated as she was now in public conclave.

“It is to civilization that we must look,” continued Mr. Harold Smith, descending from poetry to prose as a lecturer well knows how, and thereby showing the value of both--“for any material progress in these islands; and----”

“And to Christianity,” shouted Mrs. Proudie, to the great amazement of the assembled people and to the thorough wakening of the bishop, who, jumping up in his chair at the sound of the well-known voice, exclaimed, “Certainly, certainly.”

“Hear, hear, hear,” said those on the benches who particularly belonged to Mrs. Proudie’s school of divinity in the city, and among the voices was distinctly heard that of a new verger in whose behalf she had greatly interested herself.

“Oh, yes, Christianity of course,” said Harold Smith, upon whom the interruption did not seem to operate favourably.

“Christianity and Sabbath-day observance,” exclaimed Mrs. Proudie, who now that she had obtained the ear of the public seemed well inclined to keep it. “Let us never forget that these islanders can never prosper unless they keep the Sabbath holy.”

Poor Mr. Smith, having been so rudely dragged from his high horse, was never able to mount it again, and completed the lecture in a manner not at all comfortable to himself. He had there, on the table before him, a huge bundle of statistics with which he had meant to convince the reason of his hearers after he had taken full possession of their feelings. But they fell very dull and flat. And at the moment when he was interrupted he was about to explain that that material progress to which he had alluded could not be attained without money; and that it behoved them, the people of Barchester before him, to come forward with their purses like men and brothers. He did also attempt this; but from the moment of that fatal onslaught from the arm-chair, it was clear to him and to every one else, that Mrs. Proudie was now the hero of the hour. His time had gone by, and the people of Barchester did not care a straw for his appeal.

From these causes the lecture was over full twenty minutes earlier than any one had expected, to the great delight of Messrs. Sowerby and Supplehouse, who, on that evening, moved and carried a vote of thanks to Mrs. Proudie. For they had gay doings yet before they went to their beds.

“Robarts, here one moment,” Mr. Sowerby said, as they were standing at the door of the Mechanics’ Institute. “Don’t you go off with Mr. and Mrs. Bishop. We are going to have a little supper at the Dragon of Wantly, and after what we have gone through upon my word we want it. You can tell one of the palace servants to let you in.”

Mark considered the proposal wistfully. He would fain have joined the supper-party had he dared; but he, like many others of his cloth, had the fear of Mrs. Proudie before his eyes.

And a very merry supper they had; but poor Mr. Harold Smith was not the merriest of the party.

Tithonus.

Ay me! ay me! the woods decay and fall,
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the earth and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan.
Me only cruel immortality
Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms,
Here at the quiet limit of the world,
A white-hair’d shadow roaming like a dream
The ever silent spaces of the East,
Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn.

Alas! for this gray shadow, once a man--
So glorious in his beauty and thy choice,
Who madest him thy chosen, that he seem’d
To his great heart none other than a God!
I ask’d thee, “Give me immortality.”
Then didst thou grant mine asking with a smile,
Like wealthy men who care not how they give.
But thy strong Hours indignant work’d their wills,
And beat me down and marr’d and wasted me,
And tho’ they could not end me, left me maim’d
To dwell in presence of immortal youth,
Immortal age beside immortal youth,
And all I was, in ashes. Can thy love,
Thy beauty, make amends, tho’ even now,
Close over us, the silver star, thy guide,
Shines in those tremulous eyes that fill with tears
To hear me? Let me go: take back thy gift:
Why should a man desire in any way
To vary from the kindly race of men,
Or pass beyond the goal of ordinance
Where all should pause, as is most meet for all?

A soft air fans the cloud apart; there comes
A glimpse of that dark world where I was born.
Once more the old mysterious glimmer steals
From thy pure brows, and from thy shoulders pure,
And bosom beating with a heart renew’d.
Thy cheek begins to redden thro’ the gloom,
Thy sweet eyes brighten slowly close to mine,
Ere yet they blind the stars, and that wild team
Which love thee, yearning for thy yoke, arise,
And shake the darkness from their loosen’d manes,
And beat the twilight into flakes of fire.

Lo! ever thus thou growest beautiful
In silence, then before thine answer given
Departest, and thy tears are on my cheek.

Why wilt thou ever scare me with thy tears,
And make me tremble lest a saying learnt,
In days far-off, on that dark earth, be true?
“The Gods themselves cannot recall their gifts.”

Ay me! ay me! with what another heart
In days far-off, and with what other eyes
I used to watch--if I be he that watch’d--
The lucid outline forming round thee, saw
The dim curls kindle into sunny rings,
Changed with thy mystic change, and felt my blood
Glow with the glow that slowly crimson’d all
Thy presence and thy portals, while I lay,
Mouth, forehead, eyelids, growing dewy-warm
With kisses balmier than half-opening buds
Of April, and could hear the lips that kiss’d
Whispering I knew not what of wild and sweet,
Like that strange song I heard Apollo sing
While Ilion like a mist rose into towers.

Yet hold me not for ever in thine East:
How can my nature longer mix with thine?
Coldly thy rosy shadows bathe me, cold
Are all thy lights, and cold my wrinkled feet
Upon thy glimmering thresholds, when the steam
Floats up from those dim fields about the homes
Of happy men that have the power to die,
And grassy barrows of the happier dead.
Release me, and restore me to the ground;
Thou seëst all things, thou wilt see my grave:
Thou wilt renew thy beauty morn by morn;
I earth in earth forget these empty courts,
And thee returning on thy silver wheels.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

William Hogarth:

PAINTER, ENGRAVER, AND PHILOSOPHER.

_Essays on the Man, the Work, and the Time._

I.--LITTLE BOY HOGARTH.

“The Life and Adventures of William Hogarth,”--that would be a taking title, indeed! To do for the great painter of manners that which Mr. Forster has done for their great describer, would be a captivating task; and, successfully accomplished, might entitle a man to wear some little sprig of laurel in his cap, and rest, thenceforth, on his oars. It is not my fortune to have the means of writing such a book; and, for many reasons, this performance must be limited to a series of Essays upon the genius and character of the MAN Hogarth; upon the WORK he was permitted, by a healthful, sanguine constitution and by great powers of will and self-reliance backboning an unflagging industry, to get through in his appointed span here below; and upon the curious quaint TIME in which he lived and did his work. Hogarth’s life, away from his works and times, would be but a barren theme. Those old Italian painting men had strange adventures and vicissitudes. Rafaelle’s life was one brief glorious romance. Leonardo had a king’s arms to die in. Buonarotti lived amidst battles and sieges, and held flouting matches with popes. Titian’s pencil was picked up by an emperor. The Germans and Dutchmen, even, were picturesque and eventful in their careers. Was not Rubens an ambassador? Are there not mysterious dealings between Rembrandt and the Jews that have not yet been fathomed? Did not Peter de Laar kill a monk? But in what manner is the historian to extract exciting elements from the history of a chubby little man in a cocked hat and scarlet roque-laure, who lived at the sign of the “Painter’s Head” in Leicester Fields, and died in his bed there in competence and honour; who was the son of a schoolmaster in the Old Bailey, and the descendant of a long line of north country yeomen, of whom the prime progenitor is presumed to have kept pigs and to have gone by the rude name of “Hogherd”--whence Hogard and Hogart, at last liquefied into Hogarth? Benvenuto Cellini worked for the silversmiths, but at least he had poniarded his man and lain for his sins in the dungeons of St. Angelo; our Hogarth was a plain silversmith’s apprentice, in Cranbourn Alley. He kept a shop afterwards, and engraved tankards and salvers, and never committed a graver act of violence than to throw a pewter pot at the head of a ruffian who had insulted him during an outing to Highgate. Honest man! they never sent him to Newgate or the Tower. Only once he was clapped up for an hour or so in a Calais guardhouse, and, coming home by the next packet-boat, took a stout revenge on the frog-eaters with his etching needle upon copper. He was no great traveller; and beyond the Calais ship just spoken of, does not appear to have undertaken any journeys more important than the immortal excursion to Rochester, of which the chronicle, illustrated by his own sketches, is still extant, (those doughty setters-forth from the Bedford Head were decidedly the first Pickwickians,) and a jaunt to St. Alban’s after Culloden, to sketch the trapped fox Simon Fraser Lord Lovat, as he sate in the inn-room under the barber’s hands, counting the dispersed Highland clans and their available forces of caterans and brae-men on his half-palsied, crooked, picking and stealing fingers.

William Hogarth did but one romantic thing in his life, and that was, to run away with Sir James Thornhill’s pretty daughter; and even that escapade soon resolved itself into a cheery, English, business-like, house-keeping union. Papa-in-law--who painted cathedral cupolas at forty shillings a yard--forgave William and Jane. William loved his wife dearly--she had her tempers, and he was not a man of snow--took a country house for her, and set up a coach when things were going prosperously and he was Sergeant Painter to King George; and when William (not quite a dotard, as the twin-scamps Wilkes and Churchill called him) died, Jane made a comfortable living by selling impressions of the plates he had engraved. These and the writing of the _Analysis of Beauty_, the dispute concerning Sigismunda, the interest taken in the welfare of the Foundling Hospital, the dedication [in a pique against the king who hated “boets and bainters,”] of the _March to Finchley_ to Frederick the Great, and the abortive picture auction scheme, are very nearly all the notable events in the life of William Hogarth. And yet the man left a name remembered now with affection and applause, and which will be remembered, and honoured, and glorified when, to quote the self-conscious Unknown who used the _Public Advertiser_ as a fulcrum for that terrible lever of his, “kings and ministers are forgotten, the force and direction of personal satire are no longer understood, and measures are felt only in their remotest consequences.”

By the announcement, then, that I do not contemplate, here, a complete biography of Hogarth: that I do not know enough to complete a reliable and authentic life: “_nec, si sciam, dicere ausim_:” these papers are to be considered but as “_Mémoires pour servir_;” little photographs and chalk studies of drapery, furniture, accessories of costume and snuff-box, cocked hat and silver buckle detail, all useful enough in their place and way, but quite subordinate and inferior to the grand design and complete picture of the hero. I am aware that high critical authorities have been inveighing lately against the employment of the costumiers and _bric a brac_ shop-keepers and inventory takers’ attributes in biography; and writers are enjoined, under heavy penalties, to be, all of them, Plutarchs, and limn their characters in half a dozen broad vigorous dashes. It can conduce little, it has been argued, towards our knowledge of the Seven Years’ War to be told that Frederick the Great wore a pigtail, and that to his jackboots “Day and Martin with their soot-pots were forbidden to approach;” and it has been asked whether any likelihood exists of our knowing more of the character of Napoleon Bonaparte from the sight of his cocked hat and toothbrush at Madame Tussaud’s. Presuming to run counter to the opinion of the high critical authorities, I would point out that the very best biographies that have ever been written--those of Samuel Johnson, Samuel Pepys [his diary being eminently biographical], Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and Jean Jacques Rousseau [in the _Confessions_, and bating the lies and madnesses with which that poor crazed wanderer disfigures an otherwise limpid narrative]--are full of those little scraps and fragments of minute cross-hatching, chronicles of “seven livres three sols, parisis,” lamentable records of unpaid-for hose, histories of joyous carouses, anecdotes of men and women’s meannesses and generosities, and the like. On the other hand, how cold, pallid, unhuman, is the half-dozen-line character, with all its broad vigorous dashes! Certain Roman emperors might have come out far better fellows from the historian’s alembic if their togas and sandals had been more scrupulously dwelt upon. Is our awful veneration for St. Augustine one whit diminished by the small deer he condescends to hunt in the history of his youth? The heaviest blow and greatest discouragement to the composition of admirable biographies, are in the fact that strength and delicacy, vigour and finish, are seldom combined; and that a Milton with a dash of the macaroni in him is a _rara avis_ indeed. Now and then we find an elephant that can dance on the tight-rope without being either awkward or grotesque; now and then we find a man with a mind like a Nasmyth’s steam hammer, that can roll out huge bars of iron, and anon knock a tin-tack into a deal board with gentle accurate taps. These are the men who can describe a Revolution, and by its side the corned beef and carrots which country parsons were once glad to eat; who can tell us how the Bastille was stormed, and, a few pages on, what manner of coat and small clothes wore Philip Egalité at his guillotining. When we find such men we christen them Macaulay or Carlyle.

The latitude, therefore, I take through incapacity for accuracy, saves me from inflicting on you a long prolegomena; saves me from scoring the basement of this page with foot-notes, or its margins with references; saves me from denouncing the “British Dryasdust,” from whom I have culled the scanty dates and facts, the mile and year stones in William Hogarth’s life. Indeed, he has been very useful to me, this British Dryasdust, and I should have made but a sorry figure without him. He or they--Nichols, Steevens, Trusler, Rouquet, Ireland, Ducarel, Burn--have but little to tell; but that which they know, they declare in a frank, straightforward manner. Among commentators on Hogarth, Ireland is the best; Trusler, the worst. T. Clerk and T. H. Horne also edited (1810) a voluminous edition of Hogarth’s works, accompanied by a sufficiently jejune _Life_. Allan Cunningham, in the _British Painters_, has given a lively, agreeable adaptation of all who have come before him, spiced and brightened by his own clear appreciation of, and love for, art and its professors. Half a day’s reading, however, will tell you all that these writers know. Horace Walpole for criticism on Hogarth is admirable; lucid, elegant, and--a wonder with the dilettante friend of Madame du Deffand--generous. The mere explicatory testimony as to the principal Hogarthian series or engraved dramas by the Sire Rouquet [he was a Swiss] cited above, is valuable; the more so, that he was a friend of the painter, and, it is conjectured, took many of his instructions viva voce from William Hogarth himself. The Germans have not been indifferent to the merits of the great humoristic painter; and a certain Herr Von Fürstenburg has found out some odd things connected with suggestive objects in one of the most famous scenes of the first series--the _Kate Hackabout_, _Mother Needham_, and _Colonel Charteris epopœiœ_--never dreamt of previously in the good people of England’s philosophy. Occasionally, too, in a French _Revue_, you meet with an _Etude_ on _La vie et les ouvrages de Hogarth_, giving us little beyond a fresh opportunity to be convinced that, if there exist on earth a people of whose manners and customs the French know considerably less than about those of the man in the moon, that people are the English.

By his own countrymen, William Hogarth has ever been justly and honourably treated. He was an outspoken man, and his pencil and graver were as unbridled as his tongue. His works have a taint of the coarseness, but not of the vice of his age. Most at home would be many of his works, perhaps, in low tap-rooms and skittle-alleys; but he was no Boucher or Fragonard to paint alcoves or _dessus de portes_ for the contemporary Cotillons I. and Cotillons II., for the Pompadours and Dubarrys of Louis the well-beloved. He was vulgar and ignoble frequently, but the next generation of his countrymen forgave him these faults--forgave him for the sake of his honesty, his stern justice, his unbending defence of right and denunciation of wrong. This philosopher ever preached the sturdy English virtues that have made us what we are. He taught us to fear God and honour the King; to shun idleness, extravagance, and dissipation; to go to church, help the poor, and treat dumb animals with kindness; to abhor knavery, hypocrisy, and avarice. For this reason is it that Sectarianism itself (though he was hard against tub-thumping) has raised but a very weak and bleating voice against Hogarth’s “improprieties;” that cheap and popular editions of his works have been multiplied, even in this fastidious nineteenth century; that in hundreds of decorous family libraries a plump copy of Hogarth complete may be found [yes: I have heard the stateliest old ladies chat about the history of _Kate Hackabout_, and I have seen age explaining to youth and beauty--that came in a carriage to Marlborough House--the marvellous _Marriage à la Mode_ in the Vernon collections]; that, finally--and which may be regarded as a good and gratifying stamp of the man’s excellence and moral worth--the Church of England have always been favourable to William Hogarth. An Anglican bishop wrote the poetic legends to the _Rake’s Progress_; and Hogarth has been patronized by the beneficed and dignified clergy ever since.

So come, then, William Hogarth, and let me in these essays strive to glorify thy painting, thy engraving, and thy philosophy. Let me stand over against thee, and walk round thee--yea, and sometimes wander for a little while quite away from thee, endeavouring to explore the timeous world as thou knew it. But be thou always near: the statue on the pedestal, the picture on the wall, the genius of the place, to recall me when I stray, to remind me when I am forgetful, to reprove me when I err!

Born in the Old Bailey, and the ninth year of William the Dutchman, that should properly be my starting point; but the reader must first come away with me to Westmoreland, and into the Vale of Bampton--to a village sixteen miles north of Kendal and Windermere Lake. In this district had lived for centuries a family of yeomen, called Hogart or Hogard: the founder of the family, as I have hinted, may have been Hogherd, from his vocation--a guardian of swine. _His_ father, perchance, was that Gurth, the son of Beowulph, erst thrall to Cedric the Saxon, and who, after his emancipation by the worthy but irascible Franklin for good suit and service rendered in the merry greenwood, gave himself, or had given to him in pride and joy, that which he had never had before--a surname; and so, emigrating northwards, became progenitor of a free race of Hogherds. In this same Bampton Vale, the Hogarts possessed a small freehold; and of this tenement, the other rude elders being beyond my ken, the grandfather of the painter was holder in the middle of the seventeenth century. To him were three sons. The eldest succeeded to the freehold, and was no more heard of, his name being written in clods. He tilled the earth, ate of its fruits, and, his time being come, died. The two remaining sons, as the custom of Borough English did not prevail in Bampton, had to provide for themselves. Son intermediate--my William’s uncle--was a genius. Adam Walker, writer on natural philosophy, and who was the friend and correspondent of Nicholls of the _Anecdotes_, called him a “mountain Theocritus;” his contemporaries, with less elegance but more enthusiasm, dubbed him “Auld Hogart.” He was a poet, humorist, satirist, and especially a dramatist; and coarse plays of his, full of coarse fun, rough and ready action, and sarcastic hard hitting, yet linger, more by oral tradition than by any manuscript remains of his, among the Westmoreland fells. These were all written, too, in the very hardest, thickest, and broadest Westmoreland dialect; a patois to which Tim Bobbin’s Lancashire dialect is as mellifluous as the _langue d’oc_; a patois which has been compared to the speech of Demosthenes before his course of pebbles, but which, to my ears, offers more analogy to that which may have proceeded from the famous Anti-Philippian orator _during_ the pebble probation; and in order to speak which patois fluently (after the pebbles), an admirable apprenticeship is to fill your mouth as full as possible of the gritty oatcake, or “clapt bread,” which is kept in the “cratch,” or rack suspended from the ceiling in Westmoreland farmhouses. In this Scythian speech, however, “auld Hogart” concocted a famous drama, quite in the Lope de Vega’s manner, called _Troy Taken_. I do not compare the play unadvisedly with those of the prolific Spanish playwright. You know how artfully Lope’s plays begin: with what immediate action and seduction of its audience to a foregone conclusion. The curtain draws up. A man in a cloak crosses the stage. A masked cavalier rushes after him with a drawn sword. There is a _rixe_ at once established; the audience begin to imagine all sorts of terrible things, and the success of the piece is half assured. So “auld Hogart’s” play of _Troy Taken_, begins with a _rixe_. Paris is seen in the very act of running away with Helen; and Menelaus runs after them, calling “Stop thief!” With such an auspicious commencement, and plenty of good boisterous episodes throughout: Hector dragged about by the heels; Thersites cudgelled within an inch of his life; Achilles storming for half an hour at the loss of Patrocles, and a real wooden horse to finish up with: the whole spiced with “auld Hogart’s” broadest jokes: who can wonder that _Troy Taken_ achieved immense popularity, and that years after the death of the facetious author, natural philosopher Adam Walker saw the piece performed from recollection by the Troutbeck rustics, the stage a greensward, the auditorium a grassy knoll, the canopy, Heaven? The proceedings were inaugurated by a grand cavalcade, headed by the minstrels of five parishes, and a lusty yeoman mounted on a bull’s back and playing on the fiddle; and as a prologue to _Troy Taken_, there was a pilgrimage of the visitors to a stone dropped by the enemy of mankind in an unsuccessful attempt to build a bridge across Windermere!

The brother of the “auld” dramatist of the _Iliad_, and third son of the Bampton yeoman, was Richard Hogart. Without being dogmatical, I trust that I am justified in the assumption that the “liquefaction” of the patronymic into Hogarth was due partly to the more elegant education of this yeoman’s son, partly to our painter’s formation of a “genteel” connection, when he married Jane Thornhill. I have not seen his indentures; and take the authority of Ireland for the registry of his birth; but it is certain that he was at one period called,--ay, and pretty well known--as Hogart: witness Swift, in his hideously clever satire of the _Legion Club_:--

“How I want thee, hum’rous Hogart,
Thou, I hear, a pleasant rogue art”--

Now Swift wrote this in Ireland, at a distance from means of accuracy, and the “pleasant rogue’s” name was not likely to be found in a calendar of the nobility and gentry. If Bolingbroke or Pope had written to the dean about the rogue and his pleasantries, it is very probable that they might have spelt his name “Hogart,” “Hogard,” “Hoggert,” or “Hogarth.” You must remember that scores of the most distinguished characters of the eighteenth century were of my Lord Malmesbury’s opinion concerning orthography, that neither the great Duke of Marlborough, nay, nor his duchess, the terrible “old Sarah,” nay, nor Mrs. Masham, nay, nor Queen Anne herself, could spell, and that the young Pretender (in the Stuart papers) writes his father’s name thus: “Gems” for “James.” Again, Swift may have suppressed the “_th_” for mere rhythmical reasons; just as Pope, _aux abois_ between dactyls and spondees, barbarized a name which undeniably before had been pronounced “Saint John” into “Sinjin.” But, on the other hand, Jonathan Swift was not so dizzy when he wrote the _Legion Club_ to have lost one pin’s point of his marvellous memory; and he was too rich in rhymes to have resorted to the pusillanimous expedient of cutting off a letter. If ever a man lived who could have found an easy rhyme to “Hippopotamus,” it was the Dean of St. Patrick’s. I opine, therefore, that when Swift first heard of Hogarth--in the early days of George I.--he was really called “Hogart;” that such a name was carried by the dean with him to Dublin, and that the change to “Hogart” only took place when the great Drapier was dying “in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.”

Richard Hogart--whatever he called himself in the scholastic Latinity that converted “Saumaise” into “Salmasius,” and a Dutch logician, “Smygel” into “Smeglesius,”--was educated at St. Bees’ College, in Westmoreland; was too poor, it is thought, after his college course to take orders, and kept school for a time in his native county. His classical accomplishments were considerable. In the manuscript department of the British Museum are preserved some Latin letters by him; and he wrote besides a Latin-English dictionary, and a school-book entitled _Grammar Disputatations_, which has not attained the fame or immortality of the works of Cocker and Walkingame. It is stated that Richard Hogart was occasionally employed as a corrector of the press; an office then frequently discharged by trustworthy scholars quite extraneous to the recognized staff of the printing-office.

It is certain that, William and Mary reigning, Dominic Hogart came to London, and established himself as a schoolmaster, in Ship Court, Old Bailey. He had married, as it is the wont of poor schoolmasters to do, and his wife bare him two daughters and one son. The girls were Mary and Anne; and have only to be mentioned to pass out of this record:--Who cares about Joseph Mallard Turner’s nephews and nieces? The boy, WILLIAM HOGARTH, was born on the 10th of November, 1697, and stands in the parish register of St. Bartholomew the Great, as having been baptized, November the 28th.

You do not expect me to tell who nursed little chubby-baby Hogarth, whether he took to his pap kindly, and at what age he first evinced an affection for sweet-stuff? Making, however, a very early halt in his nonage, I am compelled to shake my head at a very pretty legend about him, and as prettily made into a picture, some years ago. According to this, little boy Hogarth was sent to a dame’s school, where he much vexed the good woman who boasted “unruly brats with birch to tame,” by a persistence in drawing caricatures on his slate. The picture represents him in sore disgrace, mounted on the stool of repentance, crowned with the asinine tiara of tribulation, holding in one hand the virgal rod of anguish, and in the other the slate which has brought him to this evil estate: a slate much bechalked with libellous representations of his dame. In the background is that Nemesis in a mob-cap, inflexible; around, an amphitheatre of children-spectators; the boys, as suits their boisterous character, jeering and exultant; the girls, as beseems their softer nature, scared and terrified. A very pretty, naïve picture, but apocryphal, I fear. There were no slates in dame-schools in those days. The hornbook, _Pellucid_, with its Christ Cross Row, was the beginning of knowledge, as the “baleful twig” that “frayed” the brats was the end thereof. If little boy Hogarth had been born at Kirby Thore, I would have admitted the dame-school theory in an instant; but it is far more feasible that he learnt his hornbook at his mother’s knee, and in due time was promoted to a bench in the school his father taught, and an impartial share in the stripes which the good pedagogue distributed. Nor need Dominie Hogart have been by any means a cruel pedagogue. In none of his pictures does Hogarth display any rancour against scholastic discipline (what school-scenes that pencil might have drawn!), and it generally happens that he who has suffered much in the flesh as a boy, will have a fling at the rod and the ferule when he is a man; even if he have had Orbilius for his father. And be it kept in mind, that, although the awful Busby, who called the birch “his sieve,” through which the cleverest boys must pass, and who of the Bench of Bishops taught sixteen mitred ones, was but just dead. Mr. John Locke was then also publishing his admirable treatise on _Education_, a treatise that enjoins and inculcates tenderness and mercy to children.

Ship Court, Old Bailey, is on the west side of that ominous thoroughfare, and a few doors from Ludgate Hill. By a very curious coincidence, the house No. 67, Old Bailey, corner of Ship Court, was occupied, about forty years ago, by a certain William Hone, an odd, quaint, restless man, but marvellously bustling and energetic: a man not to be “put down” by any magnates, civic, Westmonasterian, or otherwise; and who, at 67, had a little shop, where he sold prints and pamphlets, so very radical in their tendencies as to be occasionally seditious, and open to some slight accusation of ribaldry and scurrility. Here did Hone publish, in 1817, those ribald parodies of the Litany and Catechism for which he stood three trials before the then Lord Ellenborough, who vehemently assumed the part of public prosecutor (staining his ermine by that act), and tried his utmost to have Hone cast, but in vain. As to William Hone, the man drifted at last, tired, and I hope ashamed, out of sedition and sculduddry, and, so far as his literary undertakings went, made a good end of it. To him we owe those capital table-books, every-day books, and year-books, full of anecdote, quaint research, and folk-lore, which have amused and instructed so many thousands, and have done such excellent service to the book-making craft. Be you sure that I have Mr. Hone’s books for the table, day and year, before me, as I write, and shall have them these few months to come. Without such aids; without Mr. Cunningham’s _Handbook_ and Mr. Timbs’ _Curiosities of London_; without Walpole, Cibber, and “Rainy-day Smith;” without Ned Ward and Tom Brown; without the Somers Tracts and the Sessions Papers; without King and Nicholls’ anecdotes and the lives of Nollekens and Northcote; without a set of the _British Essayists_, from Addison to Hawkesworth; without the great _Grub-street Journal_ and the _Daily Courant_; without Gay’s _Trivia_ and Garth’s _Dispensary_; without Aubrey, Evelyn, and Luttrell’s diaries; without the _London Gazette_ and Defoe’s _Complete English Tradesman_; without Swift’s _Journal to Stella_, and Vertue and Faithorne’s maps, and Wilkinson, Strype, Maitland, Malcolm, Gwynn, and the great Crowle Pennant; with plenty of small deer in the way of tracts, broadsides, and selections from the bookstall-keepers’ sweepings and the cheesemongers’ rejected addresses; without these modest materials, how is this humble picture to be painted?