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most ill-suited employment imaginable to a man whose turn certainly was not flattery, uor his talent adapted to look ou vanity without a sneer; yet his facility in catching a likeness, and the method he chose of painting families and conversations 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 selflove. He had already dropped a few of his smaller prints on some reigning follies, but as the dates are wanting on most of them I cannot ascertain which, though those on the Southsea and Rabbit-woman prove that he had early discovered his talent for ridicule, though be did not then think of building his reputation or fortune on its powers.

no serious a style; but it would be suppressing || menced painter, a painter of portraits; the the merits of his heart to consider him only as a promoter of laughter,-his views were more generous and extensive. Mirth coloured his pictures, but benevolence designed them. He smiled like Socrates, that men might not be offended at his lectures, and might learn to laugh at their own follies. When his topics were harmless, all his touches were marked with pleasantry and fun. He never laughed like Rabelais at nonsense that he imposed for wit; but like Swift combined incidents that divert one from their unexpected encounter, and illustrate the tale he means to tell. Such are the hens roosting on the upright waves in the scene of the Strollers, and the devils drinking porter on the altar. The manners, or costume, are more than observed in every one of his works; the very furniture of his rooms describe the characters of the persons to whom they belong,-a lesson that might be of use to comic authors. It was reserved to Hogarth to write a scene of furniture; the rake's leveeroom, the nobleman's dining-room, the apart ments of the husband and wife in Marriage Alamode, the alderman's parlour, the poet's bedchamber, and many others, are the history of the mauners of the age.

But perhaps too much has been said of this || great genius as an author, it is time to speak of him as a painter, and to mention the circumstances of his life, in both of which we shall be more brief. His works are his history; as a painter, he had but slender merit.

His Midnight Modern Conversation was the first work that showed his command of character; but it was the Harlot's Progress, | published in 1729 or 1730 that established his fame. The pictures were scarce finished, and no sooner exhibited to the public and the subscription opened, than above twelve hundred names were entered on his book. The familiarity of the subject, and the propriety of the execution, made it tasted by all ranks of people. Every engraver set himself to copy it, and thousands of imitations were dispersed all over the kingdom. It was made into a pautomime, and performed on the stage. The Rake's Progress, perhaps superior, had not so much success from want of novelty; nor indeed is the print of the Arrest equal in merit to the others.

not done justice to his ideas.

He was born in the parish of St. Bartholomew, London, the son of a low tradesman, who bound him to a mean engraver of arms on plate; but before his time was expired, he felt the impulse of genius, and fcit it directed him The curtain was now drawn aside, and his to painting, though little apprized at that genius stood displayed in its full lustre. From, time of the mode nature had intended he time to time he continued to give those works should pursue. His apprenticeship was no that should be immortal if the nature of his sooner expired than he entered into the aca- art will allow it. Even the receipts for his demy in St. Martin's-lane, and studied drawing subscriptions had wit in them. Many of his from the life, in which he never attained to plates he engraved himself, and often expunged great excellence. It was character, the pas-faces etched by his assistants when they had sions, the soul, that his genius was given him to copy. In colouring he proved no great master; his force lay in expression, not in tints and chiaro-scuro. At first he worked for booksellers, and designed and engraved plates for several books; and, which is extraor dinary, no symptom of genius dawned in those plates. His Hudibras was the first of his works that marked him as above the common; yet what made him then noticed, now surprizes us to find so little humour in an undertaking so congenial to his talents. On the success however of those plates he com

Not content with shining in a path untrod den before, he was ambitious of distinguishing himself as a painter of history; but not only his colouring and drawing rendered him unequal to the task, the genius that had entered so feelingly into the calamities and crimes of familiar life, deserted him in a walk that called for dignity and grace. The burlesque turn of his mind mixed itself with the most serious subjects. In his Danae the old nurse tries a coin of the golden shower with her teeth, to see if it is true gold; in the Pool of Bethesda

a servant of a rich ulcerated lady beats back a poor man that sought the same celestial remedy. Both circumstances are justly thought, but rather too ludicrous. It is a much more capital fault that Danae herself is a mere nymph of Drury. He seems to have conceived no higher idea of beauty.

So little had he eyes to his own deficiencies, that he believed he had discovered the priuciple of grace. With the enthusiasm of a discoverer he cried, Eureka! This was his famous line of beauty, the ground-work of his Analysis, a book that has many sensible hints and observations, but that did not carry the conviction nor meet the universal acquiescence he expected. As he treated his cotemporaries with scorn, they triumphed over this publication, and imitated him to expose him. Many wretched burlesque prints came out to ridicule his system. There was a better answer to it in one of the two prints that he gave to illustrate his hypothesis. In the Ball had he confined himself to such outlines as compose awkwardness and deformity, he would have proved half his assertion-but he has added two samples of grace in a young lord and lady, that are strikingly stiff and affected; they are a Bath beau and a country beauty.

But this was the failing of a visionary; he fell afterwards into a grosser mistake. From a contempt of the ignorant virtuosi of the age, and from indignation at the impudent tricks of picture dealers, whom he saw continually recommending and vending vile copies to bubble-collectors, and from having never studied, indeed having seen, few good pictures of the great Italian masters, he persuaded himself that the praises bestowed on those glorious works were nothing but the effects of prejudice. He talked this language till he believed it; and having heard if often asserted, as is true, that time gives a mellowness to colours and improves them, he not only denied the proposition, but maintained that pictures only grew black and worse by age, not distinguishing between the degrees in which the proposition might be true or false. He went farther; he determined to rival the ancients and unfortunately chose one of the finest pictures in England as the object of his competition. This was the celebrated Sigismonda of Sir Luke Schaub, now in the possession of the Duke of Newcastle, said to be painted by Corregio, probably by Furino, but no matter by whom. It is impossible to see the picture or read Dryden's inimitable tale, and not feel that the same soul animated both. After many essays Hogarth at last produced his Sigismonda.—But not to mention the

wretchedness of the colouring, it was the representation of a maudlin strumpet just turned out of keeping, and with eyes red with rage and usquebaugh, tearing off the ornaments her keeper had given her. To add to the disgust raised by such vulgar expression, her fingers were bloodied by her lover's heart that lay before her like that of a sheep's for her dinner. None of the sober grief, no dignity of suppressed anguish, no involuntary tear, no settled meditation on the fate she meant to meet, no amorous warmth turned holy by despair; in short all was wanting that should bave been there, all was there that such a story would have banished from a mind capable of conceiving such complicated woe; woe so sternly felt and yet so tenderly. Hogarth's performance was more ridiculous than any thing he had ever ridiculed. He set the price of four hundred pounds on it, and had it returned on his hands by the person for whom it was painted. He took subscriptions for a plate of it, but had the sense at last to suppress it. We make no more apology for this account than for the encomiums we have bestowed on him. Both are dictated by truth, and are the history of a great mau's excellencies and errors. Milton, it is said, preferred his Paradise Regained to his immortal poem.

The last memorable event of our artist's life was his quarrel with Mr. Wilkes, in which if Mr. Hogarth did not commence direct hostilities on the latter, he at least obliquely gave the first offence by an attack on the friends and party of that gentleman. This conduct was the more surprizing, as he had all his life avoided dipping his pencil in political contests, and had early refused a very lucrative offer that was made to engage him in a set of prints against the head of a court-party. Without entering into the merits of the cause, we shall only state the fact. In September 1762, Mr. Hogarth published his print of the Times. It was answered by Mr. Wilkes in a severe NorthBriton. On this the painter exhibited the caricatura of the writer. Mr. Churchill, the poet, then engaged in the war, and wrote his epistle to Hogarth, not the brightest of his works, and in which the severest strokes fell on a defect that the painter had neither caused nor could amend-his age; and which however was neither remarkable nor decrepid; much less had it impaired his talents, as appeared by his having composed but six months before one of his most capital works, the satire on the Methodists. In revenge for this epistle, Hogarth caricatured Churchill under the form of a canonical bear, with a club and a pot of porter-et vitulù tu dignus et hic; never

did two angry men of their abilities throw mud pictures by auction in 1745. Mr. Vincent with less dexterity.

Hogarth, in the year 1780, married the only daughter of Sir James Thornhill, by whom he had no children. He died of a dropsy in his breast, at his house in Leicesterfields, October 26, 1764.

Bourne addressed a copy of Latin hendecasyllables to him on his chief pictures; and Roquetti, the enameller, published a French explanation, though a superficial one, of many of his prints, which, it was said, he had drawn up for the use of Marshal Belleiste,

He sold about twenty-four of his principal then a prisoner in England.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PLATE.

SAMUEL AND ELI.

BY T. S. COPLEY, ESQ. R. A.

[Given in our last Number.]

FIRST BOOK OF SAMUEL, CHAP. III. VERSES 4, 5, 6, 8, 9.

"And the Lord called Samuel, and he answered, Here am I.

"And he ran unto Fli, and said, "Here am I, for thou calledst me.—And he said, I called not; lie donen again.—And he went and lay down again.

"And the Lord called yet again Samuel; and Samuel arose, and went unto Eli, and said, IIere am I; for thou didst call me.And he answered, I called not my son.-Lie down again.

"And the Lord called Samuel again the third time.-And he arose and went unto Eli, and said, Ilere am I; for thou didst call me.--And Eli perceived that the Lord had called the child."

THE moment of time which the artist has chosen in this composition, is that in which Samuel rushes, for the third time, into the presence of Eli, and points to the clouds from which he heard the voice addressing himEli is immediately struck with a consciousness that God himself had vouchsafed to call the child, and his countenance assumes the appearance of deep reflexion, whilst his hands are raised up in mute wonder and gratitude.

that of an old man, such as Scripture describes him, "whose eyes began to wax dim, that he could not see."-The solemnity of the scene is likewise heightened by being cast in the Temple,-the time night, and the lamp of God not yet extinguished. Every thing around is at once awful and sublime, and the moment seemed favourable to the interposition of the Divine Being. The juvenile and innocent appearance of Samuel, whose counThis composition, simple as it is, is put tenance is marked with a pleasing astonishtogether with great art and propriety.-The||ment, forms a striking contrast with the figure centre of the picture is filled by Eli, who is and apparent emotions of Eli. In a word, arrayed in all the splendour and majesty of his this composition, for fine taste and learning sacerdotal habit, and surrounded by the sump-in the art, does as much credit to Mr. Copley tuous trappings of the Jewish religion. The as any he has ever produced. figure of Eli is extremely well conceived; it is

ON PAINTING.
[Continued from Page 108.]

PAINTING did not long continue in the imperfect condition in which it was left by those who first cultivated it among the mo derus. It was natural that their successors should endeavour to surpass them by joining some degree of theory to the barbarous practice they had adopted. The first thing which they discovered, or rather which they revived after the manner of the ancients, was perspective. This made the artists capable of expressing what is called foreshortening, and of giving more effect and more truth to their works.

Dominique Ghirlandaio, a Florentine, was the first who enriched the style of his composition by grouping his figures, and who gave depth to his pictures, by distinguishing, by exact gradations, the spaces which his figures occupied, but his successors have far surpassed him in boldness of composition.

Leonard da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Giorgione, Titian, Bartholemew de St. Marc, and Raphael, flourished about the end of the fourteenth century. Leonard da Vinci was the inventor of a great many details in the art; Michael Angelo, by studying the ancients, and by his knowledge of anatomy, arrived at great elegance in drawing the outlines of his figures: Giorgione enriched the art in general, and gave greater brilliancy to his colours than his predecessors: Titian, by a careful imitation of nature, made great proficency in the truth and perfection of his tones: Bartholemew de St. Marc studied particularly the part of drapery, and discovered the claro-obscuro, the best manner of giving drapery to his figures, and of making the naked to be felt even where they were covered: Raphael, endowed with a superior genius, began with studying carefully all his predecessors and all his contemporaries. He united in himself all the excellencies which they possessed; and formed a style more perfect and more universal than any pajater who went before or who has succeeded him. But while he excelled in every part of the art, he was chicly superior in those of invention and of composition. It is probable that the Greeks || themselves would have been filled with admiration if they had beheld his chief pieces in the Vatican, where to the greatest abundance of paintings is joined so much perfection, and purity, and ease.

After painting had arrived at the greatest perfection among the Greeks by the exertions

of Zeuxis and Parrhasius, Apelles found nothing to add to the art except grace; in the same manner among the moderns, after Raphael had appeared, grace was the only thing wanting to the art, and Corregio became the Apelles of Europe. Painting was by him carried to the highest degree among the moderns; the taste of the best crities and the eye of the vulgar were equally gratified.

After these great masters a considerable interval elapsed till the time of the Caracci. Those artists, born at Bologna, by studying the works of their predecessors with great care, and particularly those of Corregio, became the first and the most celebrated of their imitators. Hannibal possessed a very correct design, and united somewhat of the ancient style to that of Lewis his brother; but be ne. glected to inquire into the intricate principles and philosophy of the art. The pupils of the Caracci formed a school after their, manner; but Guido, a painter of an easy and happy talent, formed a style altogether graceful, and rich, and easy. Guercino formed after Caravaggio, or invented himself a particular style of the claro-obscuro, composed of strong shades and vivid oppositions.

Peter de Cortona succeeded those great imitators of their predecessors and of nature; who finding it difficult to succeed in that kind of painting, and having besides great natural abilities, applied himself chiefly to composition or arrangement, and to what the artists call taste. He distinguished invention from composition; appeared not to have attended to the former, but chiefly to those parts which are most prominent in the picture, and to the contrasting of groups. It was then that the practice was introduced of loading pictures with a great number of figures, without examining whether or not they agreed with the subject of the history. The ancient Greeks employed a very small number of figures in their works, in order to make the perfection of those which they admitted more evident. The disciples or imitators of Cortona, on the other band, have sought to conceal their imperfections by multiplying their figures. This school of Cortona is divided into many branches, and has changed the character of the art. The multiplication of figures, without a udicious and proper choice, carried back the art of painting to that point where the first restorers

of it among the moderns had left it; while at the same time the disciples of Cortona were enabled to give to this first condition of the art a greater degree of perfection than the first artists.

the French school, are decided proofs of this increasing bad taste.

It appears that for some time past greater pains have been taken to form men for the art than to encourage those who possess the talent. In consequence of this ruinous practice, schools for drawing, very different from those formed by able painters, have been ex

About the middle ofthe seventeenth century flourished at Rome Carlo Maratti, who, aiming at the greatest perfection, carefully studied the works of the first painters, and particular-ceedingly multiplied; and these give the elely those of the school of the Caracci. Although he had already studied nature, he discovered by the works of these artists that it is not always proper to imitate her with a scrupulous exactness. This principle, which he extended to every part of the art, gave to his school a certain style of carefulness, which however is considerably degenerated.

ments according to an uniform system, by which the mind is laid under a regular restraint at the very threshold of the profession. This evil is productive of two inconveniences ; it gives middling painters, and it multiplies them to that degree as to hasten the downfal and bring into contempt the art itself.

The particular reputation of the Italian painters furnishes another reason for the decline of the art. The first painters of that country were few in number; they were bo

France has also produced great masters, particularly in the part of composition; in which Poussin, after Raphael, is the best imitator of the style of the ancient Greeks.|noured, and they deserved to be honoured. Charles le Brun and many others distinguished themselves for great fertility of genius; and as long as the French school departed not from the principles of the Italian school, it produced masters of great merit in the different branches of the art.

The first masters of the great schools of painting, with the ancients and nature for their guides, and their genius for their support, carried every part of the art to the greatest height of perfection. Those who followed them, and who had the example of their predecessors in addition to the first sources of truth and beauty, did by no means arrive at the same excellence. The Caraccis in their school, Paul Veronese, and all the painters of his time, Vandyke, and all those who exercised the art in Italy, in Flanders, and in France, supported it with great brilliancy. But soon after the number of artists was inultiplied; and slavishly copying men of inferior talents, they produced works of an inferior nature. Some wanting to be colourists, their pieces were exaggerated; others affecting simplicity, became cold and insipid. At this period of the art, men of real abilities, and covetous of fame, who wished to rise superior to the mediocrity of the times, seem not to have taken the road of truth and nature. They affected a style of pompous preparation, and annexed a kind of merit to the expert management of the pencil. The affected forms of Cortona and of his pupils, the fantastical attitudes and the poignant effects of Piazetta, and in short the ingenious contrivances of the last masters of

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Their distinguished reputation has conferred a value on the general paintings of their countrymen. The desire of possessing taste, or of being thought to possess it, has led the rich and the ignoraut of all natious to give a preference to the Italian market. Necessity, in this case, would multiply the painters; and their abilities must bear a pretty exact proportion to the discrimination of those who give the price.

The decline of painting has also arisen from the despotism which for some time reigued in the academic societies. In fact, these have often been ruled by men who would force every exertion of genius into their peculiar track of operation. If they required such or such merit of execution, the first principles of the art were neglected for that peculiar excellency. In this manner the schools were absolute in behalf of design as long as statuary was held in chief estimation. The artist whose abili ties and inclination led him to colouring, was obliged to abandon a pursuit which could be of no service to him, and devote himself to that for which he was not qualified by nature. On the other hand, if the instructions of the schools be confined to colouring, a mind disposed to the choice and exactness of forms will find no encouragement, and be for ever lost to the art. In this manner the ignorance of those who wish to be connoisseurs, and the narrow views of those who pretend to direct the general taste, have equally contributed to the decline of the arts.

[To be continued.]

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