(William), a truly great and original genius, is said by Dr Burn to have been the descendant of a family originally from Kirkby Thore, in Westmorland. His father, who had been a schoolmaster in the same county, went early to London, where he was employed as a corrector of the press; and appears to have been a man of some learning, a dictionary in Latin and English, which he composed for the use of schools, being still existing in MS. He married in London; and kept a school in Ship-Court, in the Old-Bailey. Our hero was born in 1697 or 1698, in the parish of St Martin Ludgate. The outset of his life, however, was unpromising. "He was bound," says Mr Walpole, "to a mean engraver of arms on plate." Hogarth probably chose this occupation, as it required some skill in drawing; to which his genius was particularly turned, and which he contrived assiduously to cultivate. His master, it since appears, was Mr Ellis Gamble, a silversmith of eminence, who resided in Cranbourn-street, Leicester-fields. In this profession it is not unusual to bind apprentices to the single branch of engraving arms and cyphers on every species of metal; and in that particular department of the business young Hogarth was placed; "but, before his time was expired, he felt the impulse of genius, and that it directed him to painting." During his apprenticeship, he set out one Sunday, with two or three companions, on an excursion to Highgate. The weather being hot, they went into a public-house, where they had not been long before a quarrel arose between some persons in the same room. One of the disputants struck the other on the head with a quart pot, and cut him very much. The blood running down the man's face, together with the agony of the wound, which had distorted his features into a most hideous grim, presented Hogarth, who showed himself thus early "apprised of the mode Nature had intended he should pursue," with too laughable a subject to be overlooked. He drew out his pencil, and produced on the spot one of the most ludicrous figures that ever was seen. What rendered this piece the more valuable was, that it exhibited... Hogarth exhibited an exact likeness of the man, with the portrait of his antagonist, and the figures in caricature of the principal persons gathered round him.

How long he continued in obscurity we cannot exactly learn; but the first piece in which he distinguished himself as a painter is supposed to have been a representation of Wandlead Assembly. The figures in it, we are told, were drawn from the life, and without any circumstances of burlesque. The faces were said to be extremely like, and the colouring rather better than in some of his late and more highly finished performances. From the date of the earliest plate that can be ascertained to be the work of Hogarth, it may be presumed that he began business on his own account at least as early as 1720.

His first employment seems to have been the engraving of arms and shop bills. The next was to design and furnish plates for bookellers. Mr Bowles, at the Black Horse in Cornhill, was one of his earliest patrons, whose prices were very low. His next friend in that line was Mr Philip Overton, who paid him somewhat better for his labour and ingenuity.

There are still many family pictures by Hogarth existing, in the style of serious conversation-pieces. What the prices of his portraits were, Mr Nichols strove in vain to discover; but he supposes they were originally very low, as the people who are best acquainted with them choose to be silent on that subject.

It happened, in the early part of Hogarth's life, that a nobleman who was uncommonly ugly and deformed came to sit to him for his picture. It was executed with a skill that did honour to the artist's abilities; but the likeness was rigidly observed, without even the necessary attention to compliment or flattery. The peer, disgusted at this counterpart of his dear self, never once thought of paying for a reflector that would only insult him with his deformities. Some time was suffered to elapse before the artist applied for his money; but afterwards many applications were made by him (who had then no need of a banker) for payment, without success. The painter, however, at last hit upon an expedient, which he knew must alarm the nobleman's pride, and by that means answer his purpose. It was couched in the following card: "Mr Hogarth's dutiful respects to lord ——; finding that he does not mean to have the picture which was drawn for him, is informed again of Mr H.'s necessity for the money: if, therefore, his lordship does not send for it in three days, it will be disposed of, with the addition of a tail, and some other little appendages, to Mr Hare, the famous wild-beast man; Mr H. having given that gentleman a conditional promise of it for an exhibition-picture on his lordship's refusal." This intimation had the desired effect. The picture was sent home, and committed to the flames.

Mr Walpole has remarked, that if our artist "indulged his spirit of ridicule in personalities, it never proceeded beyond sketches and drawings;" and wonders "that he never, without intention, delivered the very features of any identical person." Mr Nichols assures us, from unquestionable authority, that almost all the personages who attend the levee of the Rake were undoubted portraits; and that in "Southwark Fair," and the "Modern Midnight Conversation," as many more were discoverable. While Hogarth was painting Hogarth, the "Rake's Progress," he had a summer residence at Isleworth; and never failed to question the company who came to see these pictures, if they knew for whom one or another figure was designed. When they guessed wrong, he set them right.

The Duke of Leeds has an original scene in the "Beggar's Opera," painted by Hogarth. It is that in which Lucy and Polly are on their knees, before their respective fathers, to intercede for the life of the hero of the piece. All the figures are either known or supposed to be portraits. If we are not misinformed, the late Sir Thomas Robinson (perhaps better known by the name of Long Sir Thomas) is standing in one of the side-boxes. Macheath, unlike his spruce representative on our present stage, is a flouncing bully; and Polly appears happily disencumbered of such a hoop as the daughter of Peachum within our younger memories has worn. Mr Walpole has a picture of a scene in the same piece, where Macheath is going to execution. In this also the likenesses of Walker and Miss Fenton, afterwards duchess of Bolton (the first and original Macheath and Polly) are preserved. In the year 1726, when the affair of Mary Tofts, the rabbit-breeder of Godalming, engaged the public attention, a few of our principal surgeons subscribed their guinea a piece to Hogarth, for an engraving from a ludicrous sketch he had made on that very popular subject. This plate, amongst other portraits, contains that of the St André, then anatomist to the royal household, and in high credit as a surgeon. In 1727, Hogarth agreed with Morris, an upholsterer, to furnish him with a design on canvas, representing the element of earth, as a pattern for tapestry. The work not being performed to the satisfaction of Morris, he refused to pay for it; and our artist, by a suit at law, recovered the money.

In 1730, Mr Hogarth married the only daughter of Sir James Thornhill, by whom he had no child. This union, indeed, was a stolen one, and consequently without the approbation of Sir James, who, considering the youth of his daughter, then barely 18, and the slender finances of her husband, as yet an obscure artist, was not easily reconciled to the match. Soon after this period, however, he began his "Harlot's Progress" (the coffin in the last place is inscribed Sept. 2, 1731); and was advised by Lady Thornhill to have some of the scenes in it placed in the way of his father-in-law. Accordingly, one morning early, Mrs Hogarth undertook to convey several of them into his dining-room. When he arose, he inquired from whence they came; and being told by whom they were introduced, he cried out, "Very well; the man who can furnish representations like these can also 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. An allegorical ceiling by Sir James Thornhill is at the house of the late Mr Huggins, at Headley Park, Hants. The subject of it is the story of Zephyrus and Flora; and the figure of a satyr and some others were painted by Hogarth.

In 1732, Hogarth ventured to attack Mr Pope, in a plate called "The Man of Taste," containing a view Hogarth, view of the Gate of Burlington-house, with Pope whitewashing it and bespattering the duke of Chandos's coach. This plate was intended as a satire on the translator of Homer, Mr Kent the architect, and the earl of Burlington. It was fortunate for Hogarth that he escaped the lash of the former. Either Hogarth's obscurity at that time was his protection, or the bard was too prudent to exasperate a painter who had already given such proof of his abilities for satire.

Soon after his marriage, Hogarth had summer lodgings at South-Lambeth; and being intimate with Mr Tyers, contributed to the improvement of the Spring Gardens at Vauxhall, by the hint of embellishing them with paintings, some of which were the suggestions of his own truly comic pencil. For his affluence, Mr Tyers gratefully presented him with a gold ticket of admission for himself and his friends.

In 1733, his genius became conspicuously known. The third scene of his "Harlot's Progress" introduced him to the notice of the great. At a board of treasury which was held a day or two after the appearance of that print, a copy of it was shown by one of the lords, as containing, among other excellencies, a striking likeness of Sir John Gonson. It gave universal satisfaction: from the treasury each lord repaired to the print-shop for a copy of it, and Hogarth rose completely into fame.

The ingenious Abbé Du Bos has often complained that no history-painter of his time went through a series of actions, and thus, like an historian, painted the successive fortune of an hero from the cradle to the grave. What Du Bos wished to see done, Hogarth performed. He launches out his young adventurer a simple girl upon the town, and conducts her through all the vicissitudes of wretchedness to a premature death. This was painting to the understanding and to the heart; none had ever before made the pencil subservient to the purposes of morality and instruction: a book like this is fitted to every soil and every observer; and he that runs may read. Nor was the success of Hogarth confined to his persons. One of his excellencies consisted in what may be termed the furniture of his pieces; for as, in sublime and historical representations, the fewer trivial circumstances are permitted to divide the spectator's attention from the principal figures, the greater is their force; so, in scenes copied from familiar life, a proper variety of little domestic images contributes to throw a degree of verisimilitude on the whole. "The Rake's levee-room," says Mr Walpole, "the nobleman's dining-room, the apartments of the husband and wife in Marriage à la Mode, the alderman's parlour, the bed-chamber, and many others, are the history of the manners of the age."

In 1745, Hogarth sold about 20 of his capital pictures by auction; and in the same year acquired additional reputation by the six prints of "Marriage à la Mode," which may be regarded as the groundwork of a novel called "The Marriage Act," by Dr Shebbeare, and of "The Clandestine Marriage."

Soon after the peace of Aix la Chapelle, he went over to France, and was taken into custody at Calais while he was drawing the gate of that town; a circumstance which he has recorded in his picture, intitled, "O the Roast Beef of Old England!" published March 26, 1749. He was actually carried before the governor as a spy, and after a very strict examination committed a prisoner to Granfire, his landlord, on his promising that Hogarth should not go out of his house till he was to embark for England.

In 1753, he appeared to the world in the character of an author, and published a quarto volume, intitled, "The Analysis of Beauty, written with a view of fixing the fluctuating ideas of taste." In this performance he shows, by a variety of examples, that a curve is the line of beauty, and that round swelling figures are most pleasing to the eye; and the truth of his opinion has been countenanced by subsequent writers on the subject. In this work, the leading idea of which was hieroglyphically thrown out in a frontispiece to his works in 1745, he acknowledges himself indebted to his friends for assistance, and particularly to one gentleman for his corrections and amendments of at least a third part of the wording. This friend was Dr Benjamin Hoadley the physician, who carried on the work to about the third part, Chap. IX. And then, through indisposition, declined the friendly office with regret. Mr Hogarth applied to his neighbour Mr Ralph; but it was impossible for two such persons to agree, both alike vain and positive. He proceeded no farther than about a sheet, and they then parted friends, and seem to have continued such. The kind office of finishing the work, and superintending the publication, was lastly taken up by Dr Morcell, who went through the remainder of the book. The preface was in like manner corrected by the Rev. Mr Townley. The family of Hogarth rejoiced when the last sheet of the "Analysis" was printed off; as the frequent disputes he had with his coadjutors, in the progress of the work, did not much harmonize his disposition. This work was translated into German by Mr Mylins, when in England, under the author's inspection; and the translation was printed in London, price five dollars. A new and correct edition was in 1754 proposed for publication at Berlin, by Ch. Fr. Vok, with an explanation of Mr Hogarth's satirical prints, translated from the French; and an Italian translation was published at Leghorn in 1761.

Hogarth had one failing in common with most people who attain wealth and eminence without the aid of liberal education.—He affected to despise every kind of knowledge which he did not possess. Having established his fame with little or no obligation to literature, he either conceived it to be needless, or decried it because it lay out of his reach. His sentiments, in short, resembled those of Jack Cade, who pronounced sentence on the clerk of Chatham because he could write and read. Till, in evil hour, this celebrated artist commenced author, and was obliged to employ the friends already mentioned to correct his "Analysis of Beauty;" he did not seem to have discovered that even spelling was a necessary qualification; and yet he had ventured to ridicule the late Mr Rich's deficiency as to this particular, in a note which lies before the Rake whose play is refused while he remains in confinement for debt. Previous to the time of which we are now speaking, one of our artists' common topics of declamation was the uselessness of books to a man of his profession. In "Beer-Street," among other volumes, configned by him to the pastry-cook, we find Turn- bull "on Ancient Painting;" a treatise which Hogarth should have been able to understand before he ventured to condemn. Garrick himself, however, was not more ductile to flattery. A word in praise of "Sigismunda," his favourite work, might have commanded a proof print, or forced an original sketch out of our artist's hands. The following authenticated story of our artist will also serve to show how much more easy it is to detect ill placed or hyperbolical adulation respecting others than when applied to ourselves. Hogarth being at dinner with the great Chesterfield and some other company, was told that Mr John Freke, surgeon of St Bartholomew's hospital, a few evenings before, at Dick's Coffee-house, had asserted that Greene was as eminent in composition as Handel. "That fellow Freke," replied Hogarth, "is always shooting his bolt absurdly one way or another! Handle is a giant in music; Greene only a light Florimel kind of a composer."—"Aye," says our artist's informant; "but at the same time Mr Freke declared you were as good a portrait-painter as Van Dyck."—"There he was in the right," adds Hogarth; "and so by G—I am, give me my time, and let me choose my subject!"

A specimen of Hogarth's propensity to merriment, on the most trivial occasions, is observable in one of his cards requesting the company of Dr Arnold King to dine with him at the Mitre. Within a circle, to which a knife and fork are the supporters, the written part is contained. In the centre is drawn a pye, with a mitre on the top of it; and the invitation of our artist concludes with the following sport on the Greek letters—to Ela Beta Pi. The rest of the inscription is not very accurately spelt. A quibble by Hogarth is surely as respectable as a conundrum by Swift.

In one of the early exhibitions at Spring-Gardens, a very pleasing small picture by Hogarth made its first appearance. It was painted for the Earl of Charlemont, in whose collection it remains, and was intitled "Picquet, or Virtue in Danger;" and shows us a young lady who during a tête-à-tête had just lost all her money to a handsome officer of her own age. He is represented in the act of returning her a handful of bank bills, with the hope of exchanging them for a softer acquisition and more delicate plunder. On the chimney-piece a watch-case and a figure of Time over it, with this motto—NUNC. Hogarth has caught his heroine during this moment of hesitation, this struggle with herself, and has marked her feelings with uncommon success.

In the "Miser's Feast," Mr Hogarth thought proper to pillory Sir Isaac Shard, a gentleman proverbially avaricious. Hearing this, the son of Sir Isaac, the late Isaac Pacatus Shard, Esq.; a young man of spirit, just returned from his travels, called at the painter's to see the picture; and, among the rest, asking the Cicerone "whether that odd figure was intended for any particular person?" on his replying "that it was thought to be very like Sir Isaac Shard," he immediately drew his sword and flashed the canvas. Hogarth appeared instantly in great wrath: to whom Mr Shard calmly justified what he had done, saying "that this was a very unwarrantable licence; that he was the injured party's son, and that he was ready to defend any suit at law;" which, however, was never instituted.

About 1757, his brother-in-law, Mr Thornhill, resigned the place of king's serjeant-painter in favour of Mr Hogarth.

The last remarkable circumstance of his life was his contest with Mr Churchill. It is said that both met at Westminster-hall; Hogarth to take by his eye a ridiculous likeness of the poet, and Churchill to furnish a description of the painter. But Hogarth's print of the poet was not much esteemed, and the poet's letter to him was but little admired. Some pretend, indeed, to say that it broke the painter's heart; but this we can from good authority say is not true. Indeed the report falls of itself; for we may as well say, that Hogarth's pencil was as efficacious as the poet's pen, since neither long survived the contest.

It may be truly observed of Hogarth, that all his powers of delighting were restrained to his pencil. Having rarely been admitted into polite circles, none of his sharp corners had been rubbed off, so that he continued to be a gross uncultivated man. The slightest contradiction transported him into rage. To some confidence in himself he was certainly intitled: for, as a comic painter, he could have claimed no honour that would not most readily have been allowed him; but he was at once unprincipled and variable in his political conduct and attachments. He is also said to have beheld the rising eminence and popularity of Sir Joshua Reynolds with a degree of envy; and, if we are not misinformed, frequently spoke with asperity both of him and his performances. Justice, however, obliges us to add, that our artist was liberal, hospitable, and the most punctual of paymasters; so that, in spite of the emoluments his works had procured to him, he left but an inconsiderable fortune to his widow. His plates indeed are such resources to her as may not speedily be exhausted. Some of his domestics had lived many years in his service; a circumstance that always reflects credit on a master. Of most of these he painted strong likenesses on a canvas still in Mrs Hogarth's possession.

Of Hogarth's lesser plates many were destroyed. When he wanted a piece of copper on a sudden, he would take any from which he had already worked off such a number of impressions as he supposed he should sell. He then sent it to be effaced, beat out, or otherwise altered to his present purpose. The plates which remained in his possession were secured to Mrs Hogarth by his will dated, Aug. 12, 1764, chargeable with an annuity of £80 to his sister Anne, who survived him. When, on the death of his other sister, she left off the business in which she was engaged, he kindly took her home, and generously supported her, making her at the same time, useful in the disposal of his prints. Want of tenderness and liberality to his relations was not among the failings of Hogarth.

The following character of Hogarth as an artist is given by Mr Gilpin in his Essay on Prints. "The works of this master abound in true humour; and satire, which is generally well directed: they are admirable moral lessons, and a fund of entertainment suited to every taste; a circumstance which shows them to be just copies of nature. We may consider them too as valuable repositories of the manners, customs, and dresses of the present age. What a fund of entertainment would a collection of this kind afford, drawn from every period of the history of Britain?—How far Hogarth, far the works of Hogarth will bear a critical examination, may be the subject of a little more enquiry.

"In design, Hogarth was seldom at a loss. His invention was fertile, and his judgment accurate. An improper incident is rarely introduced, a proper one rarely omitted. No one could tell a story better, or make it in all its circumstances more intelligible. His genius, however, it must be owned, was suited only to low or familiar subjects; it never soared above common life: to subjects naturally sublime, or which from antiquity or other accidents borrowed dignity, he could not rise. In composition we see little in him to admire. In many of his prints the deficiency is so great as plainly to imply a want of all principle; which makes us ready to believe, that when we do meet with a beautiful group, it is the effect of chance. In one of his minor works, the Idle Prentice, we seldom see a crowd more beautifully managed than in the last print. If the sheriff's officers had not been placed in a line, and had been brought a little lower in the picture, so as to have formed a pyramid with the cart, the composition had been unexceptionable; and yet the first print of this work is such a striking instance of disagreeable composition, that it is amazing how an artist who had any idea of beautiful forms could suffer so unmasterly a performance to leave his hands. Of the distribution of light Hogarth had as little knowledge as of composition. In some of his pieces we see a good effect, as in the Execution just mentioned; in which, if the figures at the right and left corners had been kept down a little, the light would have been beautifully distributed on the fore-ground, and a fine secondary light spread over part of the crowd. But at the same time there is so obvious a deficiency in point of effect in most of his prints, that it is very evident he had no principles. Neither was Hogarth a master in drawing. Of the muscles and anatomy of the head and hands he had perfect knowledge; but his trunks are often badly moulded, and his limbs ill set on: yet his figures, upon the whole, are inspired with so much life and meaning, that the eye is kept in good-humour in spite of its inclination to find fault. The author of the Analysis of Beauty, it might be supposed, would have given us more instances of grace than we find in the works of Hogarth; which shows strongly that theory and practice are not always united. Many opportunities his subjects naturally afford of introducing graceful attitudes, and yet we have very few examples of them. With instances of picturesque grace his works abound. Of his expression, in which the force of his genius lay, we cannot speak in terms too high. In every mode of it he was truly excellent. The passions he thoroughly understood, and all the effects which they produce in every part of the human frame. He had the happy art also of conveying his ideas with the same precision with which he conceived them. He was excellent too in expressing any humorous oddity which we often see stamped upon the human face. All his heads are cast in the very mould of nature. Hence that endless variety which is displayed through his works; and hence it is that the difference arises between his heads and the affected caricatures of those matters who have sometimes amused themselves with patching together an assemblage of features from their own ideas. Such are Spanioletti; which, though admirably executed, appear plainly to have no archetypes in nature. Hogarth's, on the other hand, are collections of natural curiosities. The Oxford heads, the Physician's arms, and some of his other pieces, are expressly of this humorous kind. They are truly comic, though ill-natured effusions of mirth: more entertaining than Spanioletti, as they are pure nature; but less innocent, as they contain ill-directed ridicule.—But the species of expression in which this matter perhaps most excels, is that happy art of catching those peculiarities of art and gesture which the ridiculous part of every profession contract, and which for that reason become characteristic of the whole. His counsellors, his undertakers, his lawyers, his usurers, are all conspicuous at sight. In a word, almost every profession may see in his works that particular species of affectation which they should most endeavour to avoid. The execution of this matter is well suited to his subjects and manner of treating them. He etches with great spirit, and never gives one unnecessary stroke."