HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING.
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his breakfast; and Hogarth is sketching the whole scene.
They describe at night how they returned to their quarters, drank to their friends, as usual, emptied several cans of good flip, all singing merrily.
It is a jolly party of tradesmen engaged at highjinks. These were the manners and pleasures of Hogarth, of his time very likely, of men not very refined, but honest and merry. It is a brave London citizen, with John Bull habits, prejudices, and pleasures.[1]
- ↑ "Dr. Johnson made four lines once, on the death of poor Hogarth, which were equally true and pleasing; I know not why Garrick's were preferred to them:—"Mr. Hogarth, among the variety of kindnesses shown to me when I was too young to have a proper sense of them, was used to be very earnest that I should obtain the acquaintance, and if possible, the friendship of Dr. Johnson; whose conversation was, to the talk of other men, like Titian's painting compared to Hudson's, he said; 'but don't you tell people now that I say so (continued he) for the connoisseurs and I are at war, you know; and because I hate them, they think I hate Titian—and let them! . . . Of Dr. Johnson, when my father and he were talking about him one day, 'That man (says Hogarth) is not contented with believing the Bible; but he fairly resolves, I think, to believe nothing but the Bible. Johnson (added he), though so wise a fellow, is more like King David than King Solomon, for he says in his haste, all men are liars.'"—Mrs. Piozzi."'The hand of him here torpid lies,
That drew th' essential forms of grace;
Here closed in death, th' attentive eyes,
That saw the manners in the face.'
Hogarth died on the 26th of October, 1764. The day before his death, he was removed from his villa at Chiswick to Leicester Fields, "in a very weak condition, yet remarkably cheerful." He had just received an agreeable letter from Franklin. He lies buried at Chiswick.
