upon which he rung his bell with such violence that he broke it, and expired about two hours afterwards in the arms of Mrs. Mary Lewis, who was called up on his being taken suddenly ill.’ He was buried in Chiswick churchyard, where, in 1771, a monument was erected to him by his friends, with an epitaph by Garrick as follows:
Farewel, great Painter of Mankind!
Who reach'd the noblest point of Art,
Whose pictur'd Morals charm the Mind,
And through the Eye correct the Heart.
If Genius fire thee, Reader, stay:
If Nature touch thee, drop a tear;
If neither move thee, turn away,
For Hogarth's honour'd dust lies here.
A variation of this by Dr. Johnson is sometimes quoted as if it had been a rival attempt:
The Hand of Art here torpid lies
That traced the essential form of Grace:
Here Death has closed the curious eyes
That saw the manners in the face.
That it was not a rival attempt is clear from a letter from Johnson to Garrick, dated 12 Dec. 1771, and printed in Croker's ‘Boswell,’ 1860, p. 225. Johnson's quatrain was only a suggested emendation of the first form of Garrick's verses.
By his will, dated 16 Aug. 1764, Hogarth left all his property, which consisted mainly of his engraved plates, to his wife. She continued to reside when in town at the Golden Head with the above-named Mary Lewis, and to sell her husband's prints. Richard Livesay, the portrait-painter and engraver, was one of her lodgers there. Cheesman, the engraver, was another, and the Scotch artist, Alexander Runciman [q. v.] When the sale of the prints declined, as, notwithstanding that the copyright had been secured to her personally for twenty years by special act of parliament, it gradually did, her failing income was assisted by a pension of 40l. from the Royal Academy. Old inhabitants of Chiswick long remembered the once handsome Jane Thornhill, transformed by advancing years into a stately and venerable lady, dressed in a silk sacque, raised headdress, and black calash, whom a faithful and equally ancient man-servant wheeled regularly in her Bath-chair to Chiswick Church. She died 13 Nov. 1789, being then eighty years of age, and was buried by her husband's side. There are several portraits of her. One by Hogarth, taken when she was about five-and-thirty, was exhibited by Mr. H. B. Mildmay at the Grosvenor Gallery in the summer of 1888. A lock of her hair is preserved in the manuscripts department of the British Museum. Mary Lewis, her cousin, to whom she left her property, shortly afterwards, in consideration of a life-annuity of 250l., transferred her right in the plates to Alderman Boydell.
Of Hogarth's two houses, that in Leicester Fields, as already stated, now no longer exists; but it was inhabited after Mrs. Hogarth's death by the Pole, Thaddeus Kosciusko, and by Byron's friend, the Countess Guiccioli (Memorable London Houses, 1890, p. 3). The little red-brick ‘country box by the Thames,’ much altered for the worse as to its environment, still stands in the lane leading from the Duke's Avenue towards Chiswick Church. One of the post-Hogarthian tenants was the Rev. H. F. Cary [q. v.], the translator of Dante, who between 1814 and 1826 held the curacy of Chiswick. A later resident was a transpontine actor, known popularly as ‘Brayvo’ Hicks. An old mulberry-tree, the fruit of which was formerly the occasion of an annual festival to the children of the neighbourhood, still stands in the once well-ordered and nightingale-haunted garden, but of the filbert avenue, where the painter was wont to play nine-pins, there is no discernible sign. The outbuildings at the end of the garden have long been pulled down, and two quaint little tombstones to a dog and bullfinch, the latter of which was said to have been scratched by Hogarth himself, only exist now in the sketch made of them, circa 1848, by Mr. F. W. Fairholt for Mrs. S. C. Hall's ‘Pilgrimages to English Shrines.’ One of the upper rooms of the house, conspicuous by its overhanging bay-window, is conjectured to be that represented in ‘Picquet, or Virtue in Danger.’ In this case, its size in the picture must be considerably exaggerated. It is matter for congratulation that this interesting relic has recently (1890) been purchased by Mr. Alfred Dawson, an old resident in Chiswick, who proposes to restore and preserve it as a relic of the painter. Meanwhile various sketches of the house and tomb are in existence, e.g. in the ‘Pictorial World,’ 26 Sept. 1874, ‘Graphic,’ 14 Nov. 1874, ‘Magazine of Art,’ December 1882 (two admirable sketches by Frank Murray), and ‘Century Magazine,’ June 1886. A sketch by Mr. Charles J. Staniland in the ‘Illustrated London News’ for 18 Oct. 1873 shows the garden as it was during Mr. Hicks's tenancy and before it had been subjected to the questionable ‘improvements’ of its latest proprietors. There is also an excellent representation of the mulberry-tree by Mr. C. Graham in ‘Harper's Magazine’ for August 1888. In 1856 the tomb was repaired by an enthusiastic namesake of the painter, William Hogarth of Aberdeen, and of late years it has again been cleaned and renovated upon the
