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out all their beauties and making the most of their charms, could never move the nerves of a Stoic. It is in vain that a goddess tumbles naked through a whole quarter of the sky. It is astonishing how much and how long these works were admired, and with what ardour men of education and talent praised them.

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Thornhill enjoys all the advantage of the praise of Pilkington, and the approbation of Lord Orford. "His genius," says the former, "was well adapted to historical and allegorical compositions. He possessed a fertile and fine invention, and sketched his thoughts with great ease, freedom, and spirit. He was so eminent in many parts of his profession, that he must for ever be ranked among the first painters of his time." "Sir James Thornhill," says Walpole, man of much note in his time, who succeeded Verrio, and was the rival of La Guerre in the decorations of our palaces and public buildings, was born at Weymouth, in Dorsetshire; was knighted by George the First, and was elected. to represent his native town in Parliament. His chief works were the dome of St. Paul's; an apartment at Hampton Court; the altar-piece of the chapel of All Souls, at Oxford; another for Weymouth, of which he made them a present; the hall at Blenheim; the chapel at Lord Orford's, at Whimpole, in Cambridgeshire; the saloon and other things for Mr. Styles, at More Park, Hertfordshire ; and the great hall of Greenwich Hospital. Yet, high as his reputation was, and laborious as his works were, he was far from being generously rewarded for some of them, and for others he found it difficult to obtain the stipulated prices. His demands were contested at Greenwich, and though La Fosse received £2000 for his works at Montague House, and was allowed £500 for his diet besides, Sir James could obtain but forty shillings a square yard for the cupola of St. Paul's, and I think no more for Greenwich.

I now approach the period when native painters of genius and fame make their appearance-men whose works merit minute examination, and whose lives contain matters of lasting interest. It is plain that up to this time no British

artist had arisen capable of leading the way in paintingno one who possessed at once talent for original composition, and skill to render his conceptions permanent. The heart of the country had as yet been but little moved by this art; -and all the splendid colouring, and academic forms, the fixed and approved attitudes and long-established graces, went for nothing, when a man appeared who sought lasting fame and found it-in moral sentiment, nervous satire, sarcastic humour, and actual English life.

WILLIAM HOGARTH.

WILLIAM HOGARTH was born in the parish of St. Bartholomew the Great, London, on the 10th of December 1697. That he was baptised on the 28th of the same month we have the authority of his own manuscripts-the parish registers have been examined for confirmation with fruitless solicitude. He was a descendant of the family of Hogard, Hogart, or Hogarth, of Kirkby-Thore, in the county of Westmoreland ;* his father being the youngest of three brothers—the eldest of whom lived and died in the condition of yeoman, on a small hereditary freehold in the vale

*Nichols says, in his earlier years he wrote himself Hogart or Hogard, but in this he is certainly incorrect. His father to his books and his letters added Richard Hogarth, and there is no reason to believe that the son, even for a time, refused to adopt an improvement so graceful. That the name, in London pronunciation, would have the concluding th hardened into t, there can be little doubt; such is the fate of all northern names with similar terminations. Thus in conversation he was called Hogart, which the following lines, from Swift's "Legion Club," sufficiently prove :

"How I want thee, humorous Hogart!
Thou, I hear, a pleasant rogue art!
Were but you and I acquainted,
Every monster should be painted;
You should try your graving tools

On this odious group of fools;
Draw the beasts as I describe them
From their features while I gibe them.
Draw them like, for I assure-a

You'll need no caricatura;

Draw them so that we may trace

All the soul in every face.'

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of Bampton. The second held the plough at Troutbeck, in the same district; and Richard, the youngest, having been educated at the school of St. Bees, carried thence his learning and his health to the market of the great metropolis.

For his small success in London we have the testimony of his son. He arrived, we know not at what period; obtained employment as a corrector of the press; married a woman whose name or kindred no one has mentioned ;* kept it is not known how long a school in Ship Court, Old Bailey; and having sought in vain for the distinction of an author and the patronage of the powerful, sunk under disappointed hope and incessant labour about the year 1721 -leaving one son, WILLIAM, and two daughters, whose names were Ann and Mary.

When the fame of William Hogarth was such as rendered some account of his kindred a matter of public curiosity, it was discovered that his uncle, who lived at Troutbeck, was a rustic poet and satirist, whose rude and witty productions (in the opinion of Adam Walker, the natural philosopher) reformed the manners of the people as much, at least, as the sermons of the clergyman; and that he had written a singular and humorous dramatic poem on the destruction of Troy, which was acted with applause in the open air, among the pastoral hills, by the peasants of Westmoreland. "The wooden horse"-says the philosopher, "Hector dragged by the heels-the fury of Diomed-the flight of Eneas—and the burning of the city, were all represented. I remember not what fairies had to do in all this; but as I happened to be about three feet high at the time-I personated one of those tiny beings. The stage was a fabric of boards placed about six feet high, on strong posts; the green-room was partitioned off with the same materials, its ceiling was the canopy of heaven, and the boxes, pit, and galleries, were *Of Mrs. Hogarth, the mother of the painter, it is stated in the "Gentleman's Magazine," for June 11, 1735, that she "died of a fright occasioned by the fire on the 9th instant." For an account of this fire see "Gentleman's Magazine," vol. v. p. 330.

laid out into one by the great Author of Nature, for they were the green slope of a fine hill." When Nichols collected his anecdotes of Hogarth,* he was desirous of tasting the spirit of the rustic dramatist of Westmoreland; and many ballads and satires were gathered and laid before him. George Steevens-a fellow-labourer in the collection -made the following estimate of their merits—“ These poems are every way contemptible. Want of grammar, metre, sense, and decency, are their invariable characteristics." But a critic who recognised only humour and burlesque in the works of the immortal nephew, might see nothing but the defects of the Bard of Troutbeck; the man who wrote to excite the laughter of a rustic audience was not likely to be solicitous about grammar, or fastidious about delicacy of phrase.

Respecting his father also inquiries were made; but they were left unanswered till the death of the painter, when the following particulars were found among his memoranda. Richard Hogarth wrote a volume of about four hundred pages as an addition to Littleton's Latin Dictionary, and obtained testimonials to its usefulness and merit "from some of the greatest scholars in England, Scotland, and Ireland." He submitted it to a bookseller with the intention of printing it, but delays took place, and the work was finally withdrawn and laid aside. He then published "Grammar Disputations; or an Examination of the Eight Parts of Speech, by way of Question and Answer, English and Latin, whereby Children in a very little time will learn not only the knowledge of Grammar, but likewise to speak and write Latin, as I have found by

*This curious work was written by two able men, John Nichols and George Steevens; but the former had the sole reputation of the authorship from 1785 till 1810, when in the second edition the different contributions were distinguished. By following the first edition, I have done unintentional wrong to the memory of Nichols. The passages most injurious to Hogarth were written, it appears, by Steevens, who seems to have taken pleasure in mingling his own gall with the milk of his coadjutor's narrative. In this edition [2nd] I have made all the reparation I can for such a very natural mistake.

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