projectors; read a lesson, and a terrible one, to the heartless alliances which rank forms with riches; attacked the House of Commons in the corrupt elections of members of parliament; and, at the hazard of his sovereign's displeasure, satirized the royal guards. Hogarth now held the situation of sergeantpainter to the king, and might think himself justified, if not called upon, in defending the government. The Times at any rate presented a fit subject for humorous satire, and he was not sparing. And for Wilkes-whose whole life was one systematic and continual act of aggression against others, who had devoted himself to the service of a faction, and spared neither wit nor falsehood in furthering of his cause -for him to order Hogarth to relinquish his own constant satiric employment, and leave to him a monopoly of party bitterness, seems a strange and romantic demand.

When the venomous article in the North Briton appeared, Hogarth, who had not then attacked Wilkes, felt deeply the insinuations which it contained, both in a domestic and a loyal sense, and sought immediate revenge. What the pen was to the politician, the pencil was to the artist, and he accordingly produced that celebrated piece, which can scarcely be called a caricature, since it represents strongly, but truly, the bodily and mental image of John Wilkes. The artist has placed in the civic chair this patron saint of purity and liberty -a mark for perpetual laughter and loathing. For what he thought of his work we have his own words. "My friends advised me," says Hogarth, "to laugh at the nonsense of party writing-who would mind it? But I could not rest, for

He that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.

Such being my feelings, I wished to return the

compliment, and turn it to some advantage. This renowned patriot's portait, drawn as like as I could as to features, and marked with some indications of his mind, answered my purpose. The ridiculous was apparent to every eye. A Brutus-a saviour of his country, with such an aspect, was so arrant a farce, that, though it gave rise to much laughter in the lookers-on, it galled both him and his adherents. This was proved by the papers being crammed every day with invectives against the artist, till the town grew sick of thus seeing me always at full length. Churchill, Wilkes's toad-eater, put the North Briton into verse in an Epistle to Hogarth; but as the abuse was precisely the same, except a little poetical heightening, it made no impression, but perhaps effaced or weakened the black strokes of the North Briton. However, having an old plate by me, with some parts ready sunk as the background and a dog, I began to consider how I could turn so much work laid aside to some account; and so patched up a print of Master Churchill, in the character of a bear. The pleasure and pecuniary advantage derived from these two engravings, together with occasional riding on horseback, restored me to as much health as can be expected at my time of life."

Of the attack by Churchill, Hogarth speaks lightly -and with reason. The poet's character entitled him to take no such liberty with a man of genius, whose name was spotless; he had first disgraced the clerical character by his libertinism, and afterward flung it aside in scorn and contempt of all decorum: he then commenced satirist by profession with great success, and during a short and loose life published various poems, of very unequal merits, though all vehement, bitter, and distinguished by a vigorous swing of versification, recalling a shadow at least of the charm of Dryden. Licentious manners, with wit at will, made Churchill welcome to Wilkes--a man as gay, as witty, and as loose as himself.

The

abuse of such a personage ought not to have been very formidable; but his popularity made it so-and with the buyers and quoters of his libels be the blame. "Hogarth," he thus writes to Wilkes, "has broke into my pale of private life, and set that example of illiberality which I wanted. I intend an elegy on him, supposing him dead; but (naming a courtesan) tells me, with a kiss, that he will be really dead before it comes out, for that I have already killed him. How sweet is flattery from the woman we love!"

The consistency of Churchill no one can praise, the malevolence of his nature all must condemn. Of Hogarth he had already written very sharp and venomous things, and had pulled him down, as he boasted and imagined, to the brink of the grave before the artist moved his pencil against him. In his celebrated epistle he had accused the great painter of being envious, jealous, and vain; of liking his own works and disliking those of the ancients; and, finally, of being weak, helpless, and gray-headed; and yet, when Hogarth retaliates in a feeble performance, the poet cries out in an ecstasy, "He has broken into my pale of private life, has set the example of illiberality which 1 wanted, and as he is dying from the effects of my former chastisement, I shall hasten his decease by writing his elegy." An attack such as this came ungracefully from a man so impure as Churchill. He writes the atrocious letter which I have quoted with his concubine at his side, to reward his satire with her purchased caresses. Wilkes says truly, in allusion to his own portrait, that he did not inake himself, and cared little about the beauty of the case that contained his soul; neither did Hogarth inake himself old-yet Churchill exults in the declining health and old age of Hogarth, and rejoices that his enemy is nigh the grave. The green ear is spared sometimes no more than the ripe-the youthful poet

was near his own. claim the merit of having shortened the life of Salmasius, and Churchill had such faith in the terrors of his own verse, that his vanity was pleased when the death of Hogarth was imputed to his satire. On the whole-this quarrel showed more venom than wit. Never did two angry men of their abilities throw mud with less dexterity.

Milton was not unwilling to

The print of The Times, which occasioned these invectives, verses, and caricatures, is a performance exclusively political-and therefore of local and temporary interest. We must view it through the vista of the year 1764, and not with the hope that general knowledge of nature will supply us with skill to feel and comprehend it. To those unacquainted with the bickerings, and heartburnings, and political manœuvrings of those shifting and slippery times, the print will appear as a ridiculous mystery or an unintelligible riddle. It was intended as a satire upon Mr. Pitt, afterward Earl of Chatham; a man of commanding eloquence and astonishing energy of mind, but who was accused of being more charmed with the applause of the mob than became one aspiring to the rule of a mighty nation.

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The last work of Hogarth was worthy of his genius, and is known to the world by the title of Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism." It was the intention of the artist to give a literal representation of the strange effects resulting from literal and low conceptions of sacred things; as also of the idolatrous tendency of pictures in churches, and prints in religious books. To exemplify this he had not far to travel; the more grovelling of the sectaries--they whose enthusiastic delusions Bishop Lavington terms "religion run mad"-supplied the first; the Church of Rome-the old queen and mother of hypocrisy and corruption-furnished the rest.

He has pictured forth a fierce preacher and a startled congregation. Over the heads of his audience the divine shakes a god with his right hand, holding a devil as a reserve in his left, to intimate, that should the former fail to draw them to godliness, with the latter will be their portion. He thinks, with Burns, that

The fear of hell's a hangman's whip
To hold the wretch in order.

His looks speak plainly-and never did fanatic preside over a congregation more devoutly delirious. One hearer has sprung to his feet in a kind of agony of rapture; the hair of a second has risen fairly on end, and seems resolved to stand; a third has fallen into a swoon; a fourth hugs an image with peculiar ecstasy; a fifth-a female devoteefaints, and falls back in a very ecstatic manner; while a sixth, one of the soft sex, whose celestial visions, like those of Saint Theresa, suffer discredit by the loose company she keeps, has got a male devotee at her left hand, whose touches have shaken her sanctity so much that she is dropping the image of her patron saint from her bosom. A Turk looks in at the window, smoking his cigar, and seemingly highly pleased at the sight of superstition which surpasses his own.-The burlesque of Hogarth, after all, goes no farther than the seriousness of others. "Over a popish altar at Worms," says Burnet, "there is a picture one would think invented to ridicule transubstantiation. There is a

windmill, and the Virgin Mary throws Christ into the hopper, and he comes out at the eye of the mill all in wafers, which a priest takes up to give to the people."

But the time was now approaching when superstition, and folly, and vice were to be relieved from the satiric pencil which had awed them so long