graving. To expressing them as I felt them, I have paid the utmost attention, and as they were addressed to hard hearts, have rather preferred leaving them hard, and giving the effect, by a quick touch, to rendering them languid and feeble by fine strokes and soft engraving; which require more care and practice than can often be attained, except by a man of a very quiet turn of mind. Mason, who gave two strokes to every particular hair that he engraved, merited great admiration; but at such admiration I never aspired, neither was I capable of obtaining it if I had.

The prints were engraved with the hope of, in some degree, correcting that barbarous treatment of animals, the very sight of which renders the streets of our metropolis so distressing to every feeling mind. If they have had this effect, and checked the progress of cruelty, I am more proud of having been the author, than I should be of having painted Raphael's Cartoons.

The French, among their other mistakes respecting our tragedies, &c. &c. assert, that such scenes could not be represented except by a barbarous people. Whatever may be our national character, I trust that our national conduct will be an unanswerable refutation.*

VII. ELECTION ENTERTAINMENT. 1755.

These two patriots,† who, let what party will prevail, can

* [Humanity and tenderness of mind were the leading characteristics of my most valued and most regretted friend Mortimer; he would not have trod on a worm; yet, in painting subjects from which the common eye would revolt, he had the greatest delight. J. IRELAND.] [The Butcher with pro patria in

his cap, and his wounded companion. N.]

F

be no gainers, yet spend their time, which is their fortune, for what they suppose right, and for a glass of gin lose their blood, and sometimes their lives, in support of the cause, are, as far as I can see, entitled to an equal portion of fame with many of the emblazoned heroes of ancient Rome; but such is the effect of prejudice, that though the picture of an antique wrestler is admired as a grand character, we necessarily annex an idea of vulgarity to the portrait of a modern boxer. An old blacksmith in his tattered garb is a coarse and low being; strip him naked, tie his leathern apron round his loins,―chisel out his figure in free-stone or marble, precisely as it appears, he becomes elevated, and may pass for a philosopher, or a Deity.

VIII. THE BENCH.

:

I have ever considered the knowledge of character, either high or low, to be the most sublime part of the art of painting or sculpture; and caricatura as the lowest indeed as much so as the wild attempts of children, when they first try to draw: yet so it is, that the two words, from being similar in sound, are often confounded. When I was once at the house of a foreign face-painter, and looking over a legion of his portraits, Monsieur, with a low bow, told me that he infinitely admired my caricatures! I returned his congé, and assured him, that I equally admired his.

I have often thought that much of this confusion might be done away, by recurring to the three branches of the drama, and considering the difference between Comedy, Tragedy, and Farce. Dramatic dialogue, which represents nature as it really is, though neither in the most elevated nor yet the most familiar style, may fairly be denominated Co

medy for every incident introduced might have thus happened, every syllable have been thus spoken, and so acted in common life. Tragedy is made up of more extraordinary events. The language is in a degree inflated, and the action and emphasis heightened. The performer swells his voice, and assumes a consequence in his gait, even his habit is full and ample, to keep it on a par with his deportment. Every feature of his character is so much above common nature, that, were people off the stage to act, speak, and dress in a similar style, they would be thought fit for Bedlam. Yet with all this, if the player does not o'erstep the proper bounds, and, by attempting too much, become swoln, it is not caricatura, but elevated character. I will go further, and admit that with the drama of Shakspeare, and action of Garrick, it may be a nobler species of entertainment than comedy.

As to Farce, where it is exaggerated, and outré, I have no objection to its being called caricatura, for such is the proper title.

IX. THE FIVE ORDERS OF PERRIWIGS.

There is no great difficulty in measuring the length, breadth, or height of any figures, where the parts are made up of plain lines. It requires no more skill to take the dimensions of a pillar or cornice, than to measure a square box, and yet the man who does the latter is neglected, and he who accomplishes the former, is considered as a miracle of genius; but I suppose he receives his honours for the distance he has travelled to do his business.*

*[This is a pointed ridicule in Stuart's" Antiquities of Athens," in which the measurements of all the members of the Greek architecture are given with minute accuracy. J. IReland.

CHARACTERS OF HOGARTH;

WITH

CRITICISMS ON HIS WORKS.

I. BY THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE.*

HAVING dispatched the herd of our painters in oil, I reserved to a class by himself that great and original genius, Hogarth; considering him rather as a writer of comedy with a pencil, than as a painter. If catching the manners and follies of an age living as they rise, if general satire on vices and ridicules, familiarized by strokes of nature, and heightened by wit, and the whole animated by proper and just expressions of the passions, be comedy, Hogarth composed comedies as much as Moliere: in his Marriage A-la-mode there is even an intrigue carried on throughout the piece. He is more true to character than Congreve; each personage is distinct from the rest, acts in his sphere, and cannot

* "Since the first edition of this work, a much ampler account of Hogarth and his works has been given by Mr. Nichols, which is not only more accurate, but much more satisfactory than mine; omitting nothing that a collector would wish to know, either with regard to the history of the painter himself, or to the circumstances, different editions, and variations of his prints. H. WALPOLE."

be confounded with any other of the Dramatis Personæ. The alderman's footboy, in the last print of the set I have mentioned, is an ignorant rustic; and if wit is struck out from the characters in which it is not expected, it is from their acting conformably to their situation and from the mode of their passions, not from their having the wit of fine gentlemen. Thus there is wit in the figure of the alderman, who when his daughter is expiring in the agonies of poison, wears a face of solicitude, but it is to save her gold ring, which he is drawing gently from her finger. The thought is parallel to Moliere's, where the miser puts out one of the candles as he is talking. Moliere, inimitable as he has proved, brought a rude theatre to perfection. Hogarth had no model to follow and improve upon. He created his art ; and used colours instead of language. His place is between the Italians, whom we may consider as epic poets and tragedians, and the Flemish painters, who are as writers of farce and editors of burlesque nature. They are the Tom Browns of the mob. Hogarth resembles Butler, but his subjects are more universal, and amidst all his pleasantry he observes the true end of comedy, reformation; there is always a moral to his pictures. Sometimes he rose to tragedy, not in the catastrophe of kings and heroes, but in marking how vice conducts insensibly and incidentally to misery and shame. He warns against encouraging cruelty and idleness in young minds, and discerns how the different vices of the great and the vulgar lead by various paths to the same unhappiness. The fine lady in Marriage A-la-mode, and Tom Nero in the Four Stages of Cruelty, terminate their story in blood-she occasions the murder of her husband, he assassinates his mistress. How delicate and superior too is his satire, when he intimates in the College of