Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/418

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. XL MAY i, im

g_ T. C. I cannot think this portrait one oJ Hogarth's happy works. It is, as Hazlitt says of Sir J.'s ' Mrs. Siddons,' neither Garrick nor Richard a defect which besets theatrical por- traits in general. Richard is too handsome, and

wants the wild supernatural terror of

Shakespeare. The expression is that of bodily pain more gout than ghost about it. It does not tell its own story. But yet it must be a fine picture.

A. C. Hogarth loq. Comedy in painting ought to be allotted the first place (on account of its moral utility).

g t T. C. Therein he spoke in the language and spirit of his age, which was much more utilitarian than the present. By comedy, however, he does not mean ludicrous composition, but representa- tion of actual life.

That he set the ludicrous above the serious I cannot believe. As for the heroic, he was too thorough a John Bull to know anything about it. The only heroics he was acquainted with were those of the French School of Le Brun's pictures and Dryden's tragedies, and for these, I doubt not, he entertained a sovereign contempt.

A. C. The pictures by Hogarth on the stair- case of Bartholomew's Hospital (the Pool of Bethesda and the Good Samaritan).

g. T. C. I have often remarked this picture on the Hospital stairs, where it is so placed that one cannot see it. Though it is in bad preserva- tion, it shows Hogarth, however, as a colourist. But he should have left Scripture alone. His religious pictures have no devotion, no faith in them. It is not enough to represent Bible History as it might have appeared in real life. Very possibly St. Peter might look very like a Jew, and St. Matthew retain some traits of the receipt of custom. But an artist should paint up to the desire of the mind, should gratify the affections and conform to the reverence of a pious mind. This representation should accord with the feelings which Xtians connect with the symbolic acts of the founders and fathers of their faith. Even the landscape, the building, the furniture and still-life should be sublimed by a devout imagination ; the palm trees should lift their heads in an air consecrated by angel voices. The burning bush should not be copied from the nearest thicket, nor Jonah's gourd be sketched in the garden. I cannot better explain myself than by saying that the adjuncts of a religious picture should be as thoroughly per- meated with the spirit of the action as those of Hogarth's satires are with his peculiar humour and the characteristic expression of the same.

Thus in Gin Lane, at the very houses are

dramatic. Much of this must be imparted by the imagination of the beholder. There are no precise rules for drawing religious stools or trees or animals, but then it is only a true artist that can communicate to the imagination that fitting

Some modern artists, and some even of the

Italian painters, are as much too pretty, too amiable, too Greek, or it may be too English in their delineation of scripture as Hogarth is too gross and literal. The Flemings are a great deal too Flemish. Catholic pictures are often more Catholic than scriptural, but still they have a tincture of devotion, though it is not devotion of the purest order. Neither Poets nor Painters have been sufficiently careful to distinguish Greek from Hebrew genius the sacred from the

mythological. Others substitute bigness (?) for grandeur, and think to attain the Ideal by arbi- trarily departing from Nature and common sense. They aim at breadth by the omission of details, and instead of developing the parts from the whole, slur over the parts altogether. This may not be always amiss in theological or allegorical subjects, but it is highly so in scriptural pieces, which should never lose the air of reality, should always look like facts, not mere fancies, but facts representative of everlasting truths.

A. C. Many of the figures [in ' The Rake's Progress '] are believed to be portraits.

S. T. C. It is not, I believe, difficult to guess which among Hogarth's persons are portraits, but he almost always makes the portrait of the individual representative of the species. The pilfering scrivener in the first scene, the parson in 'The Marriage,' Captain Stab in 'The Levee,' whom he introduces again in ' The Masquerade Ticket,' the projector in ' The Fleet Prison,' are obviously from nature ; but then it remains for Hogarth to bring out the inner man and make the whole life apparent in a single act. The Rake himself does not preserve the o/zoiov in person, nor completely in character. He is best in the fleet. The deserted damsel might easily have been prettier (?).

A. C. ' The Sleeping Congregation.'

S. T. C. Hogarth is certainly the most audible of painters, as Dante is the most visible of poets. The soporific drawl of the parson, said to repre- sent Desaguiliers, and the whole gamut of snores in the congregation, rise from the print like a stream of rich distilled perfumes.

A. C. His wife in ' The Distrest Poet. '

S. T. C. The Poet's Wife is perhaps the most loveable figure that ever Hogarth drew ; while the milkwoman has as little milkiness

about her as if she had been suckled on and

brimstone.

A. C. ' The Enraged Musician.'

S. T. C. The Enraged Musician is the most purely comic of all Hogarth's works. I was going to say, the most purely good-natured, but I am afraid the artist, who certainly begrudged the lavish rewards of foreign musicians, took malicious delight in the torments of the poor Frenchman.

A. C. ' Morning ' in ' The Four Times of the Day.'

S. T. C. Cowper has translated the old maid into verse with great success, but the fearful denunciation at the close is in bad taste, of which there is much more in Cowper's early couplet poems than in ' The Task.' Fielding has also adopted this unlovely specimen of Eve's Flesh in the likeness of Miss Bridget Alworthy. ' Morning ' is one of the very best of Hogarth's prints. It makes you shiver to look at it. ' Noon ' is capital too, particularly the miniature beau and the yet more diminutive old man in the Welsh wig. What expression in the stream of backs ! Hogarth had doubtless observed how very self-satisfied, happy, and benevolent people always look when coming out of church. The damsel with the dish is a beauty of Hogarth's school. You feel she is pretty, though her picture is but ordinary.

A. C. On ' Night.'

S. T. C. Pictures so derogatory to human nature should not, I think, be set forth without some definite purpose. Hogarth did not lov