Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 27.djvu/92

 In November 1732 one E. Kirkall or Kirkhall, in particular, published a set of reversed mezzotint copies in green ink, with descriptive verses.

A few weeks after the issue of the prints of ‘A Harlot's Progress’ to the subscribers took place one of the rare incidents which brighten Hogarth's busy life. In May 1732 he set out with four companions—his brother-in-law, John Thornhill, Ebenezer Forrest [q. v.], an attorney, William Tothall, a draper in Tavistock Street, and Samuel Scott, the landscape-painter—on a five-days' jaunt from the Bedford Arms Tavern in Covent Garden to the Island of Sheppey. Their experiences, which were much those of a party of overgrown boys on a holiday, are recorded in a manuscript account by Forrest, with illustrations by Hogarth, Scott, and Thornhill, drawn up for the edification of the members of the Bedford Arms Club, and now in the print room of the British Museum. It is entitled ‘An Account of what seem'd most remarkable in the five days' peregrination of the five following persons, vizt Messieurs Tothall, Scott, Hogarth, Thornhill, and Forrest. Begun on Saturday, May the 27th, 1732, and finish'd on the 31st of the same month. Abi tu et fac similiter. Inscription on Dulwich Colledge Porch.’ This prose tour was afterwards turned into Hudibrastic verse by the Rev. William Gostling [q. v.], a minor canon of Canterbury Cathedral, and Nichols printed twenty copies of it in 1781. The original prose version, with facsimiles of the drawings, was published by R. Livesay in 1782. It is also to be found in the third volume of the ‘Genuine Works,’ 1817, pp. 113–31, and in September 1887 supplied the theme for a set of charming illustrations by Mr. Charles Green in the ‘Graphic’ newspaper, with text by Mr. Joseph Grego.

Towards the middle of 1732 Hogarth had lodgings at Isleworth (Genuine Works, i. 26). In 1733, according to the rate-books, he took a house, the last but two on the east side of Leicester Square, then Leicester Fields. Part of Archbishop Tenison's school now occupies its site, but it is distinguishable in contemporary prints, e.g. in those of Maurer and Bowles of 1753. Hogarth occupied it as a town residence until his death. It was known in those days of unnumbered houses as the Golden Head, its sign being a bust of Vandyck, which the painter had himself carved out of cork and gilded; and as it was rated to the poor in 1756 at 60l. per annum, must have been fairly commodious. In March 1733 he painted and engraved a portrait of Sarah Malcolm, the murderess, who was executed in Fleet Street on the 7th. It is a confirmation of his alleged reconciliation with his wife's father that Sir James Thornhill is said to have been present when the picture was painted. Thornhill died not long afterwards, in May 1734, but apparently before his son-in-law had yet become really famous, because in his obituary notice Hogarth is only spoken of as ‘admired for his curious Miniature Conversation Paintings.’ His death led to a modification of his drawing-school, to which Hogarth thus refers: ‘Sir James dying,’ he says, ‘I became possessed of his neglected apparatus; and thinking that an academy conducted on proper and moderate principles had some use, I proposed that a number of artists should enter into a subscription for the hire of a place large enough to admit of thirty or forty persons to draw after a naked figure. This was soon agreed to, and a room taken in St. Martin's Lane. … The academy has now,’ he says in 1762, ‘subsisted nearly thirty years; and is, to every useful purpose, equal to that in France, or any other’ (, iii. 66, 69).

The engravings of ‘A Harlot's Progress’ were followed by the popular drinking-scene known as ‘A Midnight Modern Conversation,’ the advent of which had been heralded in 1732 by a little subscription-plate representing the rehearsal of William Huggins's oratorio of ‘Judith,’ and described as ‘A Chorus of Singers.’ But Hogarth was by this time already well advanced with a second ‘Progress,’ that of a rake. From an advertisement in the ‘Country Journal’ for 29 Dec. 1733, it is probable that the paintings, eight in number, were already finished, for he was busily engaged in transferring them to copper. The ticket for the subscription, then announced, was the admirable etching of ‘A pleased Audience at a Play,’ commonly called ‘The Laughing Audience,’ 1733. It was also the subscription-ticket to another plate, known popularly as ‘Southwark Fair,’ which was executed in 1733, but was kept back until 25 June 1735, for the same reason that deferred the issue of ‘A Rake's Progress.’

This was the coming into operation of the act 8 Geo. II, cap. 13, vesting in designers the exclusive right to their own designs. It is frequently spoken of as ‘Hogarth's Act,’ and was, in fact, the result of an appeal made to parliament by the artist and his colleagues to protect them against piracy. As already stated, ‘A Harlot's Progress’ had been shamelessly copied, and before he could complete the plates of ‘A Rake's Progress,’ the fraudulent imitator, under pretence of viewing the original pictures at the artist's house, where they were exhibited, had contrived to carry away enough to enable him to put forth plagiarised copies (Genuine Works, 1808, i.