Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 27.djvu/93

 82–5). The above-mentioned act, which came into force on 24 June, to a great extent remedied the evil at which it was levelled, and with this originates the ‘Published as the Act directs,’ now so familiar upon engravings. Hogarth commemorated his success by a jubilant inscription on a plate entitled ‘Crowns, Mitres,’ &c., afterwards used as a subscription-ticket to a later series; and, as a further blow at the pirate, he authorised the sale of reduced copies of ‘A Rake's Progress’ by a Fleet Street printseller, Mr. Bakewell. His minor prints for 1734 are unimportant, being confined to a frontispiece for Henry Carey's ‘Chrononhotonthologos,’ and a print of Cuzzoni, Farinelli, and Heidegger. But in 1735 an engraver named Sympson engraved one of his paintings, the subject of which was ‘A Woman swearing a Child to a grave Citizen.’ In 1735 also he lost his mother, long his near neighbour in St. Martin's Lane. She died of fright caused by a fire which broke out in June of that year in Cecil Court (Gent. Mag. v. 333).

By this time the circulation and imitation of Hogarth's ‘pictur'd Morals’ had considerably extended his reputation. Vincent Bourne of Westminster wrote him hendecasyllabics; Somerville dedicated ‘Hobbinol’ to him; Swift, in the terrible ‘Legion Club’ of 1736, apostrophised him as ‘hum'rous Hogart;’ and he was shortly to receive from a more congenial spirit, the author of ‘Joseph Andrews,’ the noble commendation that his figures did more than seem to breathe, ‘they appeared to think.’ Yet, by a curious perversion of ambition, his desires for distinction lay rather in the direction of history-painting as practised by Thornhill and Hayman, than in that ‘cast of style’ which he had so successfully followed. His own words here best explain his views. ‘Before I had done anything of much consequence in this walk,’ he says (and by ‘this walk’ he must be understood to refer to one or both of the ‘Progresses’), ‘I entertained some hopes of succeeding in what the puffers in books call the great style of history-painting; so that, without having had a stroke of this grand business before, I quitted small portraits and familiar conversations, and, with a smile at my own temerity, commenced history-painter, and on a great staircase at St. Bartholomew's Hospital painted two Scripture stories, the “Pool of Bethesda” and the “Good Samaritan,” with figures seven feet high. These I presented to the Charity, and thought they might serve as a specimen to show that were there an inclination in England for encouraging historical pictures, such a first essay might prove the painting them more easily attainable than is generally imagined. But as religion, the great promoter of this style in other countries, rejected it in England, I was unwilling to sink into a portrait manufacturer; and, still ambitious of being singular, dropped all expectations of advantage from that source, and returned to the pursuit of my former dealings with the public at large’ (, iii. 29–31).

The date of the ‘Pool of Bethesda’ and the ‘Good Samaritan,’ still to be seen upon the staircase at St. Bartholomew's, is 1736. As may be inferred from the foregoing quotation, the public did not accept these works at the painter's valuation, and they were not engraved until some years after his death. Between ‘A Rake's Progress’ and his next great tragic drama, the ‘Marriage à-la-Mode,’ he executed nothing very important, though for some time before April 1745, when the engravings of that series appeared, he must have been occupied in elaborating the original oils. But one or two of the more popular of his smaller works belong to this decade. The delightful little print of ‘The Distrest Poet’ (3 March), ‘The Company of Undertakers; or a Consultation of Physicians’ (same date), and ‘The Sleeping Congregation’ (26 Oct.), all belong to 1736. In 1738 (25 March) appeared ‘The Four Times of the Day,’ already referred to as having been repeated by Hayman for the alcoves at Vauxhall Gardens, and the admirable ‘Strolling Actresses dressing in a Barn.’ They were followed in 1741 (30 Nov.) by ‘The Enraged Musician,’ the plate of which, says Fielding (Voyage to Lisbon, 1755, p. 50), is ‘enough to make a man deaf to look at.’ Besides these works, Hogarth at the same period painted portraits of Captain Coram of the Foundling Hospital, 1739; of Frances, lady Byron; of Martin Folkes, president of the Royal Society, 1741; of Dr. Benjamin Hoadly, bishop of Winchester; and of Gustavus, viscount Boyne. A ticket for Fielding's benefit in ‘Pasquin,’ 25 April 1736, some plates for Jarvis's ‘Don Quixote,’ and one or two more or less doubtful caricatures complete the list for 1735–44. The portrait of Coram and a little headpiece (‘The Foundlings’) to a power of attorney which he executed for the Foundling Hospital in 1739, testify to his active interest in the establishment of that famous charity. He appears as a ‘governor and guardian’ in its charter of incorporation, and he aided it with his money, his graver, and his brush. With him, it is said, originated the proposal to decorate it with pictures, a suggestion which not only made it a fashionable morning lounge under George II, but is even credited with the honour of sug-