he took up the outline, corrected and finished it, and made a capital likeness. The world is seldom satisfied with a common account of any thing that interests it more especially as a marvellous one is easily manufactured. The following, then, is the second history. Garrick, having dressed himself in a suit of Fielding's clothes, presented himself unexpectedly before the artist, mimicking his step, and assuming the look of their deceased friend. Hogarth was much affected at first, but, on recovering, took his pencil, and drew the portrait. For those who lovea soberer history, the third edition is ready. Mrs. Hogarth, when questioned concerning it, said, that she remembered the affair well; her husband began the picture, and finished it, one evening, in his own house, and sitting by her side.

Captain Coram, the projector of the Foundling Hospital, sat for his portrait to Hogarth, and it is one of the best he ever painted. There is a natural dignity and great benevolence expressed in a face which, in the original, was rough and forbidding. This worthy man, having laid out his fortune and impaired his health in acts of charity and mercy, was reduced to poverty in his old age. An annuity of a hundred pounds was privately purchased, and when it was presented to him, he said, "I did not I waste the wealth which I possessed in self-indulgence or vain expense, and am not ashamed to own that in my old age I am poor."

The last which I shall notice of this class of productions, is the portrait of the celebrated demagogue John Wilkes. This singular performance originated in a quarrel with that witty libertine and his associate Churchill the poet: it immediately followed an article, from the pen of Wilkes, in the North Britain, which insulted Hogarth as a man and traduced him as an artist. It is so little of a caricature, that Wilkes good-humouredly observes somewhere in his correspondence, "I am growing every

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day more and more like my portrait by Hogarth." The terrible scourge of the satirist fell bitterly upon the personal and moral deformities of the man. Compared with his chastisement, the hangman's whip is but a proverb, and the pillory a post of honour. He might hope oblivion from the infamy of both; but from Hogarth there was no escape. It was little indeed that the artist had to do, to brand and emblazon him with the vices of his nature-but with how much discrimination that little is done! He took up the correct portrait, which Walpole upbraids him with skulking into a court of law to obtain, and in a few touches the man sunk, and the demon of hypocrisy and sensuality sat in his stead. It is a fiend, and yet it is Wilkes still. It is said that when he had finished this remarkable portrait, the former friendship of Wilkes overcame him, and he threw it into the fire, from which it was saved by the interposition of his wife.

To describe his portraits, or even barely to enumerate them, would take more space than can be spared; but the reader will be pleased to know the extent of his employment and the nature of his engagements. I transcribe the following account from a manuscript list, written by the artist, and entitled, "Account taken January 1st, 1731, of all the pictures that remain unfinished-half-payment re ceived." He had been then married about a

vear.

"A family-piece, consisting of four figures, for Mr. Rich, begun in 1728. An assembly of twentyfive figures, for lord Castlemain, begun Aug. 28, 1729. Family of four figures, for Mr. Wood, 1728. A conversation of six figures, for Mr. Cork, Nov. 1728. A family of five figures, for Mr. Jones, March, 1730. The Committee of the House of Commons, for Sir Arch. Grant, Nov. 5, 1729: the Beggars' Opera, for ditto. A single figure, for Mr. Kirkman, April 18, 1730. A family of nine, for Mr. Vernon, Feb.

27, 1730. Another of two, for Mr. Cooper. Another of five, for the duke of Montague. Two little pictures, for ditto. Single figure, for Sir Robert Pye, Nov. 18, 1730. Two little pictures, called Before and After, for Mr. Thomson, Dec. 7, 1730. A head, for Mr. Sarmond, Jan. 12, 1730-Pictures bespoke for the present year." Here the memorandum concludes. There is nothing said of the amount of price, and it has been observed that Hogarth has nowhere acknowledged what money he received for his family-pieces and portraits. For his Garrick as Richard the Third he had £200; but that was later in life, when his fame justified the demand. It is believed that, at the period we are now treating, his prices were extremely low.

I have already mentioned some of the reasons which Hogarth assigned for relinquishing portraitpainting: there were other reasons behind; and these he expressed, in a manner sufficiently bitter, when near the close of his career he looked back on early days, and thought of the impediments which rivalry and affectation had thrown in his way to riches and fame. "For the portrait of Garrick as Richard (says he) I received more than any English artist ever before received for a single portrait, and that too by the sanction of several painters who were consulted about the price. Notwithstanding all this, the current remark was, that portraits were not my province; and I was tempted to abandon the only lucrative branch of the art; for the practice brought the whole nest of phyzmongers on my back, where they buzzed like so many hornets. All those people had their friends, whom they incessantly taught to call my women harlots-my Essay on Beauty borrowed-and my engraving contemptible. This so

much disgusted me that I sometimes declared I would never paint another portrait, and frequently refused when applied to; for I found, by mortifying experience, that whoever will succeed in this branch

must adopt the mode recommended in Gay's Fables, and make divinities of all who sit to him. Whether or not this childish affectation will ever be done away is a doubtful question: none of those who have attempted to reform it have yet succeeded; nor, unless portrait-painters in general become more honest and their customers less vain, is there much reason to expect they ever will.".... Hogarth afterward imbodied his satire in a small print, wherein the current of royal favour is set forth as watering the trees of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture: the 'two latter flourish luxuriantly; but of the former a single branch, and a low one, alone remains green -and this, by an ingenious contrivance, is shown to represent Portrait.

During this busy period, while he was contending with the world for bread, and with his brother artists for reputation in "the only lucrative branch of the art," he was silently collecting materials for those works of a satirical and moral order on which his fame depends. He had not forgotten the precepts which he laid down, to the amusement of his fellowstudents, about studying from living nature. To find excellence in art without perfection of form-to make use of human beings such as they moved and breathed before him-and to imbody the characters with which observation had peopled his fancy, was the wish of Hogarth; and to this task he now addressed himself with the alacrity of one stung by disappointment, and who is determined to vindicate his confidence in nature and his consciousness of his own strength. The schools in which he delighted to study were the haunts of social freedom-scenes where the chained-up natures of men are let loose by passion, wine, and contradiction. With subjects well suiting the sarcastic talent of the artist London abounded, and neither public vice nor private deformity escaped his satiric strokes.

I have mentioned the displeasure of Sir James

Thornhill respecting his daughter's marriage, and that time and the rising fame of his son-in-law softened the old gentleman's feelings gradually into kindness and affection. During this period Hogarth designed and etched the first portion of “The Harlot's Progress," so much to the gratification of Lady Thornhill that she advised her daughter to place it in her father's way. "Accordingly, one morning," says Nichols, "Mrs. Hogarth conveyed it secretly into his dining-room. When he rose, he inquired from whence it came, and by whom it was brought? When he was told, he cried out, 'Very well! very well! The man who can make works like this, can maintain a wife without a portion.' He designed this remark as an excuse for keeping his purse-strings close; but soon after became both reconciled and generous to the young people." The reconciliation was sincere. Hogarth was ever the earnest admirer and the ready defender of the conduct and reputation of Sir James Thornhill.

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The artist has told with the pen the reasons which induced him to "turn his thoughts to painting and engraving subjects of a modern kind and moral nature-a field not broken up in any country or age. I transcribe his own memorandums. "The reasons which induced me to adopt this mode of designing were, that I thought both critics and painters had, in the historical style, quite overlooked that intermediate species of subjects which may be placed between the sublime and the grotesque. I therefore wished to compose pictures on canvass similar to representations on the stage; and farther hope that they will be tried by the same test and criticised by the same criterion. Let it be observed, that I mean to speak only of those scenes where the human species are actors, and these I think have not often been delineated in a way of which they are worthy and capable.

"In these compositions, those subjects that will