John Trusler

“ Nothing can be better imagined than the group in the alehouse. They have taken a refreshing walk into the country, and, being determined to have a cooling pipe, seat themselves in a chair-lumbered closet, with a low ceiling; where every man, pulling off his wig, and throwing a pocket-handkerchief over his head, inhales the fumes of hot punch, the smoke of half a dozen pipes, and the dust from the road. If this is not rural felicity, what is? The old gentleman in a black bag-wig, and the two women near him, sensibly enough, take their seats in the open air. ”

“ We have seen displayed the distress of a poet; in this the artist has exhibited the rage of a musician. Our poor bard bore his misfortunes with patience, and, rich in his Muse, did not much repine at his poverty. Not so this master of harmony, of heavenly harmony! To the evils of poverty he is now a stranger; his adagios and cantabiles have procured him the protection of nobles; and, contrary to the poor shirtless mendicant of the Muses that we left in a garret, he is arrayed in a coat decorated with frogs, a bag-wig, solitaire, and ruffled shirt. ”

“ A man adjoining enters into the spirit of the battle,—his whole soul is engaged. From his distorted countenance, and clasped hands, we see that he feels every stroke given to his favourite bird in his heart's core,—ay, in his heart of hearts! A person at the old peer's left hand is likely to be a loser. Ill-humour, vexation, and disappointment are painted in his countenance. The chimney-sweeper above, is the very quintessence of affectation. ”

“ The artist seemed sensible that it was necessary to account for the unsubstantial appearance of these shadows of men, and has hinted at their want of solid food, in the bare bones of beef hung up in the window, the inscription on the alehouse sign, "Soup maigre au Sabot Royal," and the spider-like officer roasting four frogs which he has impaled upon his sword. Such light and airy diet is whimsically opposed by the motto on the standard, which two of the most valorous of this ghastly troop are hailing with grim delight and loud exultation. ”

“ Nothing is without a meaning, but all either conspires to the great end, or forms an addition to the lively drama of human manners. His single pieces, however, are rather to be considered as studies, not perhaps for the professional artist, but for the searcher into life and manners, and for the votaries of true humour and ridicule. No furniture of the kind can vie with Hogarth's prints, as a fund of inexhaustible amusement, yet conveying at the same time lessons of morality. ”

“ Let us next turn our thoughts upon the alderman, in whose breast a struggle between mercy and justice is beautifully displayed. Who can behold the magistrate, here, without praising the man? How fine is the painter's thoughts of reclining the head on one hand, while the other is extended to express the pity and shame he feels that human nature should be so depraved! ”

“ At this melancholy season, reflection finds a passage to his heart, and he now revolves in his mind the folly and sinfulness of his past life;—considers within himself how idly he has wasted the substance he is at present in the utmost need of;—looks back with shame on the iniquity of his actions, and forward with horror on the rueful scene of misery that awaits him ”

“ View the hero of our piece, left to himself, upon the death of his father, possessed of a goodly inheritance. Mark how his mind is affected!—determined to partake of the mighty happiness he falsely imagines others of his age and fortune enjoy; see him running headlong into extravagance, withholding not his heart from any joy; but implicitly pursuing the dictates of his will. To commence this delusive swing of pleasure, his first application is to the tailor, whom we see here taking his measure, in order to trick out his pretty person. ”

“ The whole weight of an overgrown carpenter being laid upon his shoulder, forces our illustrious personage upon a man beneath; who being thus driven downward, falls upon a fourth, and the fourth, by the accumulated pressure of this ponderous trio, composed of the upper and lower house, loses his balance, and tumbling against the edge of the partition, his head is broke, and his wig, shook from the seat of reason, falls into the cockpit. ”

“ Though now, from the infatuated folly of his antiquated wife, in possession of a fortune, he is still the slave of that baneful vice, which, while it enslaves the mind, poisons the enjoyments, and sweeps away the possessions of its deluded votaries. Destructive as the earthquake which convulses nature, it overwhelms the pride of the forest, and engulfs the labours of the architect. ”

“ This plate displays our industrious young man attending divine service in the same pew with his master's daughter, where he shows every mark of decent and devout attention.
Mr. Hogarth's strong bias to burlesque was not to be checked by time or place. It is not easy to imagine any thing more whimsically grotesque than the female Falstaff. A fellow near her, emulating the deep-toned organ, and the man beneath, who, though asleep, joins his sonorous tones in melodious chorus with the admirers of those two pre-eminent poets, Hopkins and Sternhold. ”

“ This, added to the contagious company of women of her own description, vitiates her mind, eradicates the native seeds of virtue, destroys that elegant and fascinating simplicity, which gives additional charms to beauty, and leaves, in its place, art, affectation, and impudence.
Neither the painter of a sublime picture, nor the writer of an heroic poem, should introduce any trivial circumstances that are likely to draw the attention from the principal figures. Such compositions should form one great whole: minute detail will inevitably weaken their effect. ”

“ PLATE XI.
THE IDLE 'PRENTICE EXECUTED AT TYBURN.
"When fear cometh as desolation, and their destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress cometh upon them, then shall they call upon God, but he will not answer." Proverbs, chapter i. verse 7, 8.
Thus, after a life of sloth, wretchedness, and vice, does our delinquent terminate his career. Behold him, on the dreadful morn of execution, drawn in a cart (attended by the sheriff's officers on horseback, with his coffin behind him) through the public streets to Tyburn, there to receive the just reward of his crimes,—a shameful ignominious death. ”

“ Our artist, in this scene of horror, has taken an opportunity of pointing out to us the various causes of mental blindness; for such, surely, it may be called, when the intuitive faculties are either destroyed or impaired. In one of the inner rooms of this gallery is a despairing wretch, imploring Heaven for mercy, whose brain is crazed with lip-labouring superstition, the most dreadful enemy of human kind; which, attended with ignorance, error, penance and indulgence, too often deprives its unhappy votaries of their senses. ”

“ HOGARTH'S WORKS. THE RAKE'S PROGRESS.
Of all the follies in human life, there is none greater than that of extravagance, or profuseness; it being constant labour, without the least ease or relaxation. It bears, indeed, the colour of that which is commendable, and would fain be thought to take its rise from laudable motives, searching indefatigably after true felicity; now as there can be no true felicity without content, it is this which every man is in constant pursuit of; the learned, for instance, in his industrious quest after knowledge ”

“ He may be said to have created an entirely new species of painting, which may be termed the moral comic; and may be considered 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 ridicule familiarised 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. ”

“ The history opens, representing a scene crowded with all the monuments of avarice, and laying before us a most beautiful contrast, such as is too general in the world, to pass unobserved; nothing being more common than for a son to prodigally squander away that substance his father had, with anxious solicitude, his whole life been amassing.—Here, we see the young heir, at the age of nineteen or twenty, raw from the University, just arrived at home, upon the death of his father. ”

“ A divine, true to his cloth, swallows his soup with the highest goût. Not less gratified is the gentleman palating a glass of wine. The man in a black wig is a positive representative of famine; and the portly and oily citizen, with a napkin tucked in his button-hole, has evidently burnt his mouth by extreme eagerness. ”

“ Wilkes and Churchill dragged his heroine to the altar of politics, and mangled her with a barbarity that can hardly be paralleled, except in the history of her husband,—the artist retained his partiality; which seems to have increased in exact proportion to their abuse. The picture being thus contemplated through the medium of party prejudice, we cannot wonder that all its imperfections were exaggerated. The painted harlot of Babylon had not more opprobrious epithets from the first race of reformers than the painted Sigismonda of Hogarth from the last race of patriots. ”

“ See him then hastily rising, at dead of night, in the utmost horror from his own thoughts, being terrified in his sleep by the dreadful phantoms of an affrighted imagination, seizing on his sword, by way of defence against the foe his disordered fancy presents to him. So great is his agitation, that every nerve and muscle is in action, and even the ring is forced from his finger. When the heart is affected, how great is its influence on the human frame!—it communicates its sensibility to the extreme parts of the body, from the centre to the circumference ”

“ With respect to the drawing of the figures in this curious female coterie, Hogarth evidently intended several of them for beauties; and of vulgar, uneducated, prostituted beauty, he had a good idea. The hero of our tale displays all that careless jollity, which copious draughts of maddening wine are calculated to inspire; he laughs the world away, and bids it pass. The poor dupe, without his periwig, in the back-ground, forms a good contrast of character: he is maudlin drunk, and sadly sick. ”

“ All regular figures should be studiously avoided.—The light had been well distributed, if the bailiff holding the arrest, and the chairman, had been a little lighter, and the woman darker. The glare of the white apron is disagreeable.—We have, in this print, some beautiful instances of expression. The surprise and terror of the poor gentleman is apparent in every limb, as far as is consistent with the fear of discomposing his dress. The insolence of power in one of the bailiffs, and the unfeeling heart, which can jest with misery, in the other, are strongly marked. ”

“ In the time of Lucian, a philosopher was distinguished by three things,—his avarice, his impudence, and his beard. In the time of Hogarth, medicine was a mystery, and there were three things which distinguished the physician,—his gravity, his cane-head, and his periwig. With these leading requisites, this venerable party are most amply gifted. To specify every character is not necessary; but the upper figure on the dexter side, with a wig like a weeping willow, should not be overlooked. ”

“ Indeed, so callous is his heart, so wilfully blind is he to every thing tending to his future welfare, that the tombs, those standing monuments of mortality, cannot move him: even the new-dug grave, the sculls and bones, those lively and awakening monitors, cannot rouse him from his sinful lethargy, open his eyes, or pierce his heart with the least reflection; so hardened is he with vice, and so intent on the pursuit of his evil course. ”

“ A competition with either Guido, or Furino, would to any modern painter be an enterprise of danger: to Hogarth it was more peculiarly so, from the public justly conceiving that the representation of elevated distress was not his forte, and his being surrounded by an host of foes, who either dreaded satire, or envied genius. ”

“ Numberless spectators, upon every house and at every window, dart their desiring eyes on the procession; so great indeed was the interest taken by the good citizens of London in these civic processions that, formerly, it was usual in a London lease to insert a clause, giving a right to the landlord and his friends to stand in the balcony, during the time of "the shows or pastimes, upon the day commonly called the Lord Mayor's Day." ”