the distance, inflamed by drink, inspired by the freedom of these festive times, and touched a little by personal interest, are engaged in a fierce attack on the Porto-Bello public-house. Both candidates are busied in bribing and conciliating the male and female proprietors of the Borough; and a very ancient and meritorious son of freedom, Punch, has declared himself a candidate upon the united interest of fun and frolic.

The third is the Polling. The lame, the blind, the deaf, the maimed, the dying, and even the dead, are moving or carried onwards to the hustings. The first man who tenders his vote is an old soldier, who has lost a leg and his right hand: he is opposed by a quibbling attorney, on the ground that the law requires the voter to lay his right hand on the sacred book and swear. The second voter is deaf, and not a little insane; but he is prompted by Dr. Shebbeare, who is roaring into his ear the name of the candidate to whom he promised his vote. This worthy person was pilloried by Mansfield for a libel on the king, and pensioned into silence by Bute. The third voter is a sick man, borne along in a blanket, with his doctor by his side. This is a satire on Dr. Barrowby, who persuaded a dying patient to accompany him in his chariot to vote for Sir George Vandeput: the man went, voted, and expired. The rear of the electors is brought up by a blind man and a cripple. The carriage of Britannia is overturning, while her coachman and footman are cheating at cards on the box. A woman admonishes them in vain, by holding up for sale a last dying speech, inscribed with a ready gibbet and an empty noose.

The fourth and concluding scene is the Chairing of the Member, and it is one of the busiest and best of the series. This fortunate person-who was thought to look very like Bubb Doddington, afterward Lord Melcombe, is seated on a chair, raised on the shoulders of four brawny constituents, and borne

in triumph through the free and loyal borough of Guzzledown. Foes, however, mingle with friends, and it cannot be supposed that his triumph will be endured without opposition and strife. The fray which is to trouble him in the midst of his success is begun. A thrasher, with his flail, prostrates by a blow, meant for another, one of the living props of the chair: the member's wig rises from his head with fear; a lady swoons at the sight: a sow, with a litter of pigs, goes grunting in desperation through the thickest of the mob; while a scared goose flies over the borough to carry to St. Stephen's an account of the insult offered to the pure and honourable House in this attack on the independent representative of Guzzledown.

Of the likenesses of living persons introduced into these designs, it is scarcely necessary to speak. These are merits which are temporary and fleeting: faces are forgotten as generations pass away; and of all the millions who lived and breathed in 1756, a few names only remain on the sunny side of oblivion. All who smarted from the artist's satire are as cold and silent as himself; and by inserting in my narrative the names of Thomas Potter, Dr. Shebbeare, the Rev. Dr. Cosserat, and Sir John Parnell-nay, even of Lord Melcombe and the Duke of Newcastle -I add but little to the interest of these four pictures. The merits of original fancy, natural action, ceaseless humour, and amusing and instructive incident, are matters of another kind; and these keep, and will keep, the works of Hogarth as fresh and interesting as they ever were. All who are acquainted with the business of the English hustings will perceive and feel the accuracy of these designs. There is always some noisy patriot of the hour to mislead and inflame the people; there is always some shrewd and crafty courtier to sooth and bribe his way; and shall we ever want a swarm of sordid electors to sell their votes to the most opulent?

I have remarked elsewhere that when Hogarth painted his own portrait he etched upon the palette a winding line with this motto, “Line of Beauty and Grace." The mystery of the winding line and these words remained unexplained till 1753, when he published "The Analysis of Beauty"-a work very clearly and cleverly written, containing many origi nal and natural notions concerning art, and composed on purpose to establish the principle that the winding or serpentine line is the foundation of all that is fair and beautiful in the works of art as well as the productions of nature. The examples which he cites, and the arguments which he uses, are ingenious, if not convincing. In nature the leaves which clothe the trees, and the flowers which cover the ground, with all that buds and blooms, and yields fragrance or fruit, are formed of winding lines. The line of grace is found in the varied beauty of the hills, in the grandeur of the mountains, in things the most minute or magnificent. The beasts, the birds, the insects, and the fishes, support or illustrate the maxim of the artist; and in the shells which cover our shores the most beautiful undulating lines are united with the most exquisite colours. Of woman's beauty and of man's gracefulness we may say the same. The heavens above, the earth beneath, and the waters under the earth, are all supporters of the universal principle-of which Hogarth claims the merit of being the discoverer.

Of the great artists of Greece and the eminent artists of Italy he observes that they wrought in the express spirit of the great principle of nature -from the glorious instinct of genius more probably than from knowledge. Their works contain the line of beauty in its most natural and elegant forms, and he nowhere observed stiff and rigid lines in any of the highest productions. This was accomplished, he supposes, by imitating with great exactness the beauties of nature. Michael Angelo,

he imagines, had some notion of the existence of this principle, when he advised his scholar, Marcus de Sciena, to make "a figure pyramidical, serpent-like, and multiplied by one, two, and three: in which precept the whole mystery of the art consisteth; for the greatest grace and life which a picture can have is that it expresses motion, which painters call the spirit of a picture."

A book of so much pretension coming from a selfeducated man, accompanied with numerous etchings illustrating the author's principles of excellence in art, and containing, moreover, some little satire upon portrait painters and copiers of pictures, was not likely to go unchallenged. Those who were hurt worst spoke first. It was not indeed likely that a man who openly scorned the mere mechanical productions of the easel, who thought and said that academies which instructed students in making new pictures from old ones were injurious to art, and that portrait painting was unworthy of genius, would be allowed to publish such a bold lesson without opposition or remark. A storm of verse and prose assailed his heresy, and spared neither his works, his person, nor his fireside."

The truth of the principle of beauty was sharply questioned and severely ridiculed; and the authorship of the volume itself was ascribed to some literary friends. Hogarth modestly says, that he persuaded a friend to correct his language, and prepare his work for the press. It was urged, that a man gross in conversation, unacquainted with literary composition, and of very humble scholarship, was unlikely to be the author of a work which, to sustain their own theory, the critics acknowledged to be clever. It was remarked too, with some show of triumph, that he could not spell his native language, and specimens of careless or intentional mis-spelling were quoted from his prints. Even John Wilkes, long after the controversy had sub

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sided, strove to renew the clamour by a fierce in vective, in which he calls him "the humorous W Hogarth, the supposed author of the Analysis of Beauty. He never caught," says the veracious patriot, "a single idea of beauty, grace, or elegance but, on the other hand, he never missed the least flaw in almost any production of nature or of art. This arose in some measure from his head, but much more from his heart. After Marriage-à-laMode, the public wished for a series of prints of a Happy Marriage. Hogarth made the attempt, but the rancour and malevolence of his mind made him very soon turn away with envy and disgust from objects of so pleasing contemplation, to dwell and feast a bad heart on others of a hateful cast, which he pursued, for he found them congenial, with the most unabating zeal and the most unrelenting gall."

All such remarks might have been spared. Hogarth had natural genius enough to conceive, and knowledge sufficient to enable him to mature, the new-discovered principle of beauty, and render it worthy of publication. That the skill and kindness of his friends suggested emendations there can be no doubt, since he says so himself; but no one can dispute the title to the work with him, and no critic of comprehension or candour will cast suspicion upon his claim of authorship because he made blunders in orthography and mistakes in grammar. > Men of great literary eminence might be named who made slips in both; nor have there been wanting men who denied to poets the merit of their own productions. Garth was accused of not writing his Dispensary, and from Allan Ramsay some have tried to take away the honours of the Gentle Shepherd. Time has disposed of all these objections, and allowed, in spite of the malice of Wilkes, that the Analysis of Beauty is the work of Hogarth :but the truth of the principle which the work was