to Chiswick Gardens, still stands the little red-brick Georgian villa in which from September 1749 until his death he spent the summer seasons. After many vicissitudes and changes of ownership it was purchased in 1902 by Lieut.-Colonel Shipway of Chiswick, who turned it into a Hogarth museum and preserved it to the nation.
From such records of him as survive, Hogarth appears to have been much what from his portrait one might suppose him to have been—a blue-eyed, honest, combative little man, thoroughly insular in his prejudices and antipathies, fond of flattery, sensitive like most satirists, a good friend, an intractable enemy, ambitious, as he somewhere says, in all things to be singular, and not always accurately estimating the extent of his powers. With the art connoisseurship of his day he was wholly at war, because, as he believed, it favoured foreign mediocrity at the expense of native talent; and in the heat of argument he would probably, as he admits, often come “to utter blasphemous expressions against the divinity even of Raphael Urbino, Correggio and Michelangelo.” But it was rather against the third-rate copies of third-rate artists—the “ship-loads of dead Christs, Holy Families and Madonnas”—that his indignation was directed; and in speaking of his attitude with regard to the great masters of art, it is well to remember his words to Mrs Piozzi:—“The connoisseurs and I are at war, you know; and because I hate them, they think I hate Titian—and let them!”
But no doubt it was in a measure owing to this hostile attitude of his towards the all-powerful picture-brokers that his contemporaries failed to recognize adequately his merits as a painter, and persisted in regarding him as an ingenious humorist alone. Time has reversed that unjust sentence. He is now held to have been a splendid painter, pure and harmonious in his colouring, wonderfully dexterous and direct in his handling, and in his composition leaving little or nothing to be desired. As an engraver his work is more conspicuous for its vigour, spirit and intelligibility than for finish and beauty of line. He desired that it should tell its own tale plainly, and bear the distinct impress of his individuality, and in this he thoroughly succeeded. As a draughtsman his skill has sometimes been debated, and his work at times undoubtedly bears marks of haste, and even carelessness. If, however, he is judged by his best instead of his worst, he will not be found wanting in this respect. But it is not after all as a draughtsman, an engraver or a painter that he claims his unique position among English artists—it is as a humorist and a satirist upon canvas. Regarded in this light he has never been equalled, whether for his vigour of realism and dramatic power, his fancy and invention in the decoration of his story, or his merciless anatomy and exposure of folly and wickedness. If we regard him—as he loved to regard himself—as “author” rather than “artist,” his place is with the great masters of literature—with the Thackerays and Fieldings, the Cervantes and Molières.
Authorities.—The main body of Hogarth literature is to be found in the autobiographical Memoranda published by John Ireland in 1798, and in the successive Anecdotes of the antiquary John Nichols. Much minute information has also been collected in F. G. Stephens’s Catalogue of the Satirical Prints and Drawings in the British Museum. But a copious bibliography of books, pamphlets, &c., relating to Hogarth, together with detailed catalogues of his paintings and prints, will be found in the Memoir of Hogarth by Austin Dobson. First issued in 1879, this was reprinted and expanded in 1891, 1897, 1902 and finally in 1907. Pictures by Hogarth from private collections are constantly to be found at the annual exhibitions of the Old Masters at Burlington House; but most of the best-known works have permanent homes in public galleries. “Marriage à la mode.” “Sigismunda,” “Lavinia Fenton,” the “Shrimp Girl,” the “Gate of Calais,” the portraits of himself, his sister and his servants, are all in the National Gallery; the “Rake’s Progress” and the Election Series, in the Soane Museum; and the “March to Finchley” and “Captain Coram” in the Foundling. There are also notable pictures in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge and the National Portrait Gallery. At the Print Room in the British Museum there is also a very interesting set of sixteen designs for the series called “Industry and Idleness,” the majority of which formerly belonged to Horace Walpole. (A. D.)
HOGG, JAMES (1770–1835), Scottish poet, known as the
“Ettrick Shepherd,” was baptized at Ettrick in Selkirkshire
on the 9th of December 1770. His ancestors had been shepherds
for centuries. He received hardly any school training, and
seems to have had difficulty in getting books to read. After
spending his early years herding sheep for different masters, he
was engaged as shepherd by Mr Laidlaw, tenant of Blackhouse,
in the parish of Yarrow, from 1790 till 1799. He was treated
with great kindness, and had access to a large collection of
books. When this was exhausted he subscribed to a circulating
library in Peebles. While attending to his flock, he spent a
great deal of time in reading. He profited by the company of
his master’s sons, of whom William Laidlaw is known as the
friend of Scott and the author of Lucy’s Flittin’. Hogg’s first
printed piece was “The Mistakes of a Night” in the Scots
Magazine for October 1794, and in 1801 he published his Scottish
Pastorals. In 1802 Hogg became acquainted with Sir Walter
Scott, who was then collecting materials for his Border Minstrelsy.
On Scott’s recommendation Constable published Hogg’s miscellaneous
poems (The Mountain Bard) in 1807. By this work,
and by The Shepherd’s Guide, being a Practical Treatise on the
Diseases of Sheep, Hogg realized about £300. With this money
he unfortunately embarked in farming in Dumfriesshire, and
in three years was utterly ruined, having to abandon all his
effects to his creditors. He returned to Ettrick, only to find
that he could not even obtain employment as a shepherd; so
he set off in February 1810 to push his fortune in Edinburgh
as a literary adventurer. In the same year he published a collection
of songs, The Forest Minstrel, to which he was the largest
contributor. This book, being dedicated to the countess of
Dalkeith (afterwards duchess of Buccleuch), and recommended
to her notice by Scott, was rewarded with a present of 100
guineas. He then began a weekly periodical, The Spy, which
he continued from September 1810 till August 1811. The
appearance of The Queen’s Wake in 1813 established Hogg’s
reputation as a poet; Byron recommended it to John Murray,
who brought out an English edition. The scene of the poem
is laid in 1561; the queen is Mary Stuart; and the “wake”
provides a simple framework for seventeen poems sung by rival
bards. It was followed by the Pilgrims of the Sun (1815), and
Mador of the Moor (1816). The duchess of Buccleuch, on her
death-bed (1814), had asked her husband to do something for
the Ettrick bard; and the duke gave him a lease for life of the
farm of Altrive in Yarrow, consisting of about 70 acres of moorland,
on which the poet built a house and spent the last years
of his life. In order to obtain money to stock his farm Hogg
asked various poets to contribute to a volume of verse which
should be a kind of poetic “benefit” for himself. Failing in
his applications he wrote a volume of parodies, published in
1816, as The Poetic Mirror, or the Living Bards of Great Britain.
He took possession of his farm in 1817; but his literary exertions
were never relaxed. Before 1820 he had written the prose tales
of The Brownie of Bodsbeck (1818) and two volumes of Winter
Evening Tales (1820), besides collecting, editing and writing
part of two volumes of The Jacobite Relics of Scotland (1819–1821),
and contributing largely to Blackwood’s Magazine. “The
Chaldee MS.,” which appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine (October
1817), and gave such offence that it was immediately withdrawn,
was largely Hogg’s work.
In 1820 he married Margaret Phillips, a lady of a good Annandale family, and found himself possessed of about £1000, a good house and a well-stocked farm. Hogg’s connexion with Blackwood’s Magazine kept him continually before the public; his contributions, which include the best of his prose works, were collected in the Shepherd’s Calendar (1829). The wit and mischief of some of his literary friends made free with his name as the “Shepherd” of the Noctes Ambrosianae, and represented him in ludicrous and grotesque aspects; but the effect of the whole was favourable to his popularity. “Whatever may be the merits of the picture of the Shepherd [in the Noctes Ambrosianae]—and no one will deny its power and genius,” writes Professor Veitch—“it is true, all the same, that this Shepherd was not the Shepherd of Ettrick or the man James Hogg. He was neither a Socrates nor a Falstaff, neither to be credited
