Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 27.djvu/90

 have come to an end, and he began business on his own account. With the exception of a snuff-box lid engraved (1717?) with a scene from the ‘Rape of the Lock,’ his earliest work is his own shop-card, embellished with cupids and inscribed ‘W. Hogarth, Engraver, Aprill ye 23rd 1720.’ ‘His first employment,’ says Nichols (Genuine Works, i. 17), ‘seems to have been the engraving of arms and shop-bills.’ From this he proceeded to design plates for the booksellers and printsellers. Two of these, each bearing the words ‘Willm Hogarth, Invt et Sculpsit,’ belong to the year 1721. They are ‘An Emblematical Print on the South Sea’ and ‘The Lottery.’ These were succeeded in 1723 by eighteen plates to the travels of Aubry de la Mottraye; seven plates to Briscoe's ‘Apuleius,’ 1724; a plate entitled ‘Some of the Principal Inhabitants of ye Moon, &c.; or Royalty, Episcopacy, and Law,’ 1724; another known as ‘Masquerades and Operas, Burlington Gate,’ 1724, said to be the first he published on his own account; a frontispiece to the sixth edition of Horneck's ‘Happy Ascetick,’ 1724; five plates for Cotterel's translation of ‘Cassandra,’ 1725; fifteen headpieces for Beaver's ‘Roman Military Punishments,’ 1725; a satire on William Kent's altarpiece for St. Clement Danes, 1725; a frontispiece to Amhurst's ‘Terræ-Filius,’ 1726; twenty-six figures for Blackwell's ‘Compendium of Military Discipline,’ 1726; and twelve large and seventeen small plates to Butler's ‘Hudibras.’ Besides these there are several doubtful works which belong to this period, e.g. ‘A Just View of the British Stage,’ 1725, being a satire upon Booth, Wilks, and Cibber, the patentees of Drury Lane; a plate of the singers Berenstat, Cuzzoni, and Senesino, 1725; ‘Cunicularii,’ a squib upon Mary Tofts, the Godalming rabbit-breeder, and ‘The Punishment Inflicted on Lemuel Gulliver,’ a coarse incident à la Swift, both of which last belong to 1726. Of these earlier works Walpole in his ‘Anecdotes of Painting’ speaks too sweepingly. More than one of them are interesting from their indications of the artist's future career as a designer and satirist. In ‘Masquerades and Operas,’ which he himself calls ‘The Taste of the Town,’ he already declares against foreign singers and fashionable quackeries. In the St. Clement Danes burlesque he gives the coup de grâce to Kent's discredited masterpiece; and in the illustrations to ‘Hudibras’ he begins to manifest his incomparable sense of the grotesque, his perception of character, and his power of composition.

In these last-named designs there is moreover a marked advance in executive skill. The artist's ambition, bounded at first by engraving on copper, was growing wider. He had begun to attend the private art school on the east side of James Street, Covent Garden, established as far back as 1724 by Sir James Thornhill, a fact with which Hogarth's detestation of Sir James's rival, Kent, may perhaps be connected, and he was beginning to dream of success as a painter. In 1727–8 he undertook to execute a design on canvas representing the ‘Element of Earth’ for one Joshua Morris, a tapestry-worker. But Morris, having subsequently been told that Hogarth was ‘an engraver and no painter,’ endeavoured to shuffle out of the commission, whereupon the artist took the case into court, gaining his suit (28 May 1728). Possibly it is due to the considerations arising out of this incident that he now turned his thoughts more deliberately in the direction of oils. At all events about this time, i.e. 1728–9, we find him painting ‘small conversation-pieces from twelve to fifteen inches high.’ These were groups of family portraits connected by some common interest or occupation, and ‘having novelty,’ he says, ‘succeeded for a few years.’ Among the earlier works executed before 1732 may be mentioned ‘The Wanstead Assembly,’ ‘The Committee of the House of Commons examining Bambridge, an infamous Warden of the Fleet Prison’ [see ]; several scenes from the ‘Beggar's Opera;’ a little portrait of Mr. Tibson, a laceman in the Strand, entitled ‘The Politician;’ and a scene from Dryden's ‘Indian Emperor,’ as performed by certain ‘children of quality’ at the house of Mr. Conduit, the master of the mint. A list by himself, including some of these, is printed by John Ireland (iii. 23). His activity as a designer and engraver during this period is less marked. Between 1727 and 1732 his efforts were chiefly frontispieces, e.g. to Leveridge's ‘Songs,’ 1727; to Thomas Cooke's ‘Hesiod,’ 1728; to James Miller's comedy of the ‘Humours of Oxford,’ 1729; to Theobald's ‘Perseus and Andromeda,’ 1730; to Molière; to Fielding's ‘Tragedy of Tragedies,’ 1731 (which perhaps indicates the beginning of his friendship with that author); and to Mitchell's ‘Highland Fair,’ 1731. But the only original satirical prints for this date are the so-called ‘Large Masquerade Ticket,’ 1727, a satire upon Heidegger's popular entertainments, and ‘Taste’ (or the ‘Man of Taste,’ or ‘Burlington Gate’), 1731, prompted by Pope's ‘Epistle to Lord Burlington’ attacking the Duke of Chandos, for whom Hogarth took up the cudgels. Two other doubtful works, a burlesque on the ‘Beggar's Opera,’ and a plate entitled ‘Rich's Glory, or his Triumphant Entry into Covent Garden,’ complete the list.