Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 27.djvu/95

 cellaneous efforts are ‘Taste in High Life’ (24 May 1746), after a picture he had painted on commission in 1742; ‘Industry and Idleness’ (30 Sept. 1747), a set of twelve plates illustrating the contrasted careers of two Spitalfields apprentices, Frank Goodchild and Tom Idle; and the clever little ‘Stage Coach, or Country Inn Yard’ (1747), which might be an illustration to Smollett or Fielding. Besides these there are ‘O the Roast Beef of Old England, &c., or The Gate of Calais’ (6 March 1749), in the engraving of which he was assisted by C. Mosley; the famous ‘Representation of the March of the Guards towards Scotland in the year 1745’ (30–1 Dec. 1750), engraved by Luke Sullivan, and known more familiarly as ‘The March to Finchley;’ the pair of plates called ‘Beer Street’ and ‘Gin Lane;’ and the ‘Four Stages of Cruelty.’ It is not quite certain that these last six plates, all of which are dated 1 Feb. 1751, were engraved by Hogarth himself, as the inscription upon them is not explicit. But with the ‘Four Stages of Cruelty’ is connected an interesting experiment in the then dormant art of engraving on wood. In view of their circulation among the poorer classes, to whom their lesson was more especially addressed, an attempt was made to reproduce them in this way. It was abandoned because, upon trial, the process was found more expensive than reproduction upon metal. The third and fourth plates were, however, actually executed on wood in 1750 by J. Bell, and they are now exceedingly rare. They show that Hogarth's bold drawing upon the block, even in its rough knife-cut facsimile, has a vigour which is wanting in the copper, and they suggest that, even in his own graver-work, more was lost than one is accustomed to believe. Another ‘wooden-cut’ which belongs to this period was a rude headpiece for Fielding's ‘Jacobite's Journal’ (1747), and among lesser efforts may be mentioned ‘Hymen and Cupid’ (1748), a ticket for Mallet and Thomson's masque of ‘Alfred;’ a little etching of the house at Chiswick of the artist's neighbour and the king's serjeant-surgeon, Mr. Ranby; and in 1752 two more historical paintings, ‘Moses brought to Pharaoh's Daughter’ and ‘Paul before Felix.’ The former of these was engraved by Hogarth and Luke Sullivan. It is a significant commentary upon their merit that a coarse burlesque of ‘Paul before Felix,’ which Hogarth ‘design'd and scratch'd in the true Dutch taste,’ is far more sought after by collectors than the ambitious plates for which it served as subscription-ticket.

By this time (1752) Hogarth was fifty-four, and he had done his best work. As a pictorial satirist of the first order he was now universally accepted and feared. That he would add to his reputation was unlikely; it was essential only that he should not lessen it. Yet it is characteristic of his adventurous energy that he selected this precise moment of his career to seek fresh honours in new and untried fields. He wrote an ambitious treatise ‘to fix the fluctuating ideas of Taste,’ and he deliberately backed himself against his enemies, the ‘black masters,’ on their own ground. In the ‘Analysis of Beauty,’ which he published in December 1753, taking for his text a serpentine line which he had drawn upon a palette in the corner of his own portrait of 1745, he professed to define the principles of beauty and grace. Dr. Benjamin Hoadly, M.D., the Rev. James Townley of Merchant Taylors' School and ‘High Life below Stairs,’ Ralph of the ‘Champion,’ Dr. T. Morell of Chiswick, and other friends seem to have assisted in preparing the book—a combination of counsel not entirely to the profit of the work. Hogarth undoubtedly knew more than he could express or his friends could interpret, and the result was certainly not conspicuous for order or lucidity. His enemies, and his independent and aggressive character had gained him many, fell joyously upon his literary lapses and occasional incoherencies, while the mob of caricaturists, only too glad of the opportunity, diverted themselves hugely with ‘Painter Pugg’ and his ungainly Graces. The satirist was now himself satirised, and, like most of his race, he was only too vulnerable. The list of these performances will be found at length in vol. iii. pt. ii. of Mr. F. G. Stephens's ‘Catalogue of Satirical Prints and Drawings’ in the British Museum (see Nos. 3238 et seq.). Some admiring critics of course he had. Ralph declared that ‘composition is at last become a science; the student knows what he is in search of; the connoisseur what to praise; and fancy and fashion, or prescription, will usurp the hacknied name of taste no more;’ and friendly Sylvanus Urban put Hogarth into the introductory verses to his volume of 1754. The work was translated into German in the same year by Christlob Mylius, into Italian at Leghorn in 1761, and in 1805 into French by Talleyrand's librarian, Jansen. Of late years it has not been found necessary to reprint the book; but the two large chart-plates prepared by the artist to illustrate it, one of which has for its central design a ‘Statuary's Yard’ and the other a ‘Country Dance,’ continue to be sought after. More popular still is the little etching of ‘Columbus breaking the Egg,’ which was prepared as the subscription-ticket.