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
