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49 HOGARTH 49 Head Bagnio,&quot; the quack-doctor s museum in St Martin s Lane, or the mean opulence of the merchant s house in the city. And what story could be more vividly, more per spicuously, more powerfully told than this godless alliance of sacs et parchemins this miserable tragedy of an ill- assorted marriage ] There is no defect of invention, no superfluity of detail, no purposeless stroke. It has the merit of a work by a great master of fiction, with the addi tional advantages which result from the pictorial fashion of the narrative ; and it is matter for congratulation that it is still to be seen by all the world in the National Gallery, where it can tell its own tale better than pages of com mentary. The engravings of Marriage ^ la Mode were dated April 1745. Although the painter by this time found a ready market for his engravings, he does not appear to have been equally successful in selling his pictures. The people bought his prints ; but the more opulent and not numerous connoisseurs who purchased pictures were wholly in the hands of the importers and manufacturers of &quot; old masters.&quot; In February 1745 the original oil paintings of the two Progresses, the Four Times of the Day, and the Strolling Actresses were still unsold. On the last day of that month Hogarth disposed of them by an ill-devised kind of auction, the details of which may be read in Nichols s Anecdotes, for the paltry sum of 427, 7s. No better fate attended Marriage a la Mode, which five years later became the property of Mr Lane of Hillingdon for 120 guineas, being then in Carlo Maratti frames which had cost the artist four guineas a piece. Something of this was no doubt due to Hogarth s impracticable arrangements, but the fact shows conclusively how completely blind his contemporaries were to his merits as a painter, and how hopelessly in bondage to the all-powerful picture-dealers. Of these latter the painter himself gave a graphic picture in a letter addressed by him under the pseudonym of &quot; Britophil &quot; to the St James s Evening Post, in 1737. But, if Hogarth was not successful with his dramas on canvas, he occasionally shared with his contemporaries in the popularity of portrait painting. For a picture, executed in 1746, of Garrick as Richard III. he was paid 200, &quot; which was more,&quot; says he, &quot;than any English artist ever received for a single portrait.&quot; In the same year a sketch of Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, afterwards beheaded on Tower Hill, had an exceptional success. Our limits do not, however, enable us to refer to his remaining works in detail, and we must content ourselves with a brief enumera tion of the most important. These are The Stage Coach or Country Inn Yard, 1747; the series of twelve plates entitled Industry and Idleness, 1747, depicting the career of two London apprentices; the Gate of Calais, 1749, which had its origin in a rather unfortunate visit paid to France by the painter after the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle ; the March to Finchley, 1750 ; Beer Street, Gin Lane, and the Four Stages of Cruelty, 1751; the admirable representa tions of election humours in the days of Sir Robert Walpole, entitled Four Prints of an Election, 1755-8 ; and the plate of Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism, a Medley, 1762, adapted from an earlier unpublished design called Enthusi asm Delineated. Besides these must be chronicled three more essays in the &quot; great style of history painting,&quot; viz., Paul before Felix, Moses brought to Pharaoh s Daughter, and the Altarpiece for St Mary Redcliff at Bristol. The first two were engraved in 1751-2, the last in 1794. A subscription ticket to the earlier pictures, entitled Paul j before Felix Burlesqued, had a popularity far greater than that of the prints themselves. In 1745 Hogarth painted that admirable portrait of himself with his pug-dog Trump, which is now in the National Gallery. In a corner of this he had drawn on a palette a serpentine line with the words &quot; The Line of Beauty and Grace.&quot; Much inquiry ensued aa to &quot;the meaning of this hieroglyphic ; &quot; arid in an unpropitious hour the painter resolved to explain his meaning in writing. The result was the well-known Analysis of Beauty, 1753, a treatise &quot; to fix the fluctuating ideas of Taste,&quot; otherwise a desultory essay having for pretext the precept attributed to Michelangelo that a figure should be always &quot; Pyramidall, Serpent-like, and multiplied by one two and three.&quot; The fate of the book was what might have been expected. By the painter s adherents it was praised as a final deliverance upon aesthetics ; by his enemies and professional rivals, its obscurities, and the minor errors which, notwithstanding the benevolent efforts of literary friends, the work had not escaped, were made the subject of endless ridicule and cari cature. It added little to its author s fame, and it is perhaps to be regretted that he ever undertook it. Moreover, there were further humiliations in store for him. In 1759 the success of a little picture called The Lady s Last Stake, painted for Lord Charlemont, procured him a commission from Sir Richard Grosvenor to paint another picture &quot; upon the same terms.&quot; Unhappily on this occasion he deserted his own field of genre and social satire, to select the story from Boccaccio (or rather Dryden) of Sigismonda weeping over the heart of her murdered lover Guiscardo, being the subject of a picture by Furini in Sir Luke Schaub s collection which had recently been sold for 400. The picture, over which he spent much time and patience, was not regarded as a success ; and Sir Richard rather meanly shuffled out of his bargain upon the plea that &quot; the con stantly having it before one s eyes would be too often occasioning melancholy thoughts to arise in one s mind.&quot; Sigismonda, therefore, much to the artist s mortification, and the delight of the malicious, remained upon his hands. As, by her husband s desire, his widow valued it at 500, it found no purchaser until after her death, when the Boydells bought it for 56 guineas. It was exhibited, with others of Hogarth s pictures, at the Spring Gardens exhibi tion of 1761, for the catalogue of which Hogarth engraved a Head-piece and a Tail-piece which are still the delight of collectors ; and finally, by the bequest of the late Mr J. H. Anderdon, it passed in 1879 to the National Gallery, where, in spite of theatrical treatment and a repulsive theme, it still commands admiration for its colour, drawing, and expression. In 1761 he was sixty-five years of age, and he had but three years more to liva These three years were embittered by that unhappy quarrel with Wilkes and CliurcLill, over which most of his biographers are contented to pass rapidly, Having succeeded John Thornhill in 1757 as Serjeant painter (to which post he was reappointed at the accession of George III.), an evil genius prompted him in 1762 to do some &quot; timed &quot; thing in the ministerial interest, and he accordingly published the indifferent satire of The Times, plate i. This at once brought him into collision with his, quondam friends, John Wilkes and Churchill the poet ; and the immediate result was a violent attack upon him, both as a man and an artist in the opposition North flriton, No. 17. The alleged decay of his powers, the miscarriage of Sigismonda, the cobbled composition of the Analysis, were all discussed with scurrilous malignity by those who had known his domestic life and learned his weaknesses. The old artist was deeply wounded, and his health was failing. Early in the next year, however, he replied by that squinting portrait of Wilkes which will for ever carry his features to posterity. Churchill retaliated in July by a savage Epistle to William Hogarth, to which the artist rejoined by a print of Churchill as a bear, in torn bands and ruffles, not the most successful of his works. &quot; The pleasure, and pecuniary advantage,&quot; writes Hogarth, XII. 7