William, the greatest of all satirical painters, was born, according to the most probable conjecture, in 1698, in the parish of St Martin, London. His father (whose name, as written and pronounced in these days, was Hogart) was the son of a Westmoreland yeoman, and had removed to London, where he supported himself by teaching and writing. His circumstances were anything but prosperous. In the words of his son (Hogarth's Anecdotes of Himself, ed. 1833)—"My father's pen, like that of many other authors, did not enable him to do more for me than put me in a way of shifting for myself. As I had naturally a good eye and a fondness for drawing, shows of all sorts gave me uncommon pleasure when an infant; and mimicry, common to all children, was remarkable in me. An early access to a neighbouring painter drew my attention from play, and I was at every possible opportunity employed in making drawings. I picked up an acquaintance of the same turn, and soon learned to draw the alphabet with great correctness. My exercises when at school were more remarkable for the ornaments which adorned them than for the exercise itself. In the former I soon found that blockheads with better memories could much surpass me; but for the latter I was particularly distinguished."

At the proper age Hogarth was apprenticed to a silversmith, Ellis Gamble by name; but long before he had served out his time he was heartily tired of carving crests and heraldic devices on silver, and longed to begin engraving on copper. To obtain the requisite knowledge of drawing, he began, immediately on the expiry of his apprenticeship, to attend the lectures of Sir James Thornhill, sergeant-painter to the king; but, if the testimony of Horace Walpole may be believed, without attaining any great excellence in drawing from the life. He says himself, however, that frontispieces to books, such as prints to Hudibras, &c., soon brought him into the way; but he complains grievously that he was robbed of the legitimate reward of his labours by the Hogarth printsellers. "The first plate which I published," he says, called *The Taste of the Town*, in which the reigning follies were lashed, "no sooner began to take a run, than I found copies of it in the print-shops, vending at half-price, while the original prints were returned to me again, and I was thus obliged to sell the plate for whatever these pirates pleased to give me, as there was no place of sale but at their shops." Amid these difficulties he struggled on to his thirtieth year, when he made "a stolen union" with the daughter of Sir James Thornhill, his former teacher. Sir James, a man high in station, refused at first to open his eyes to the genius of his son-in-law, and for two years believed that his daughter had disgraced herself and degraded her family by her marriage. At the end of that period, however, he "became both reconciled and generous to the young couple." Up to the time of his marriage, Hogarth had been, in his own phrase, "a punctual paymaster;" and now, to meet his increased expenditure, he "commenced painter of small Conversation Pieces, from 12 to 15 inches high; which, being a novelty, succeeded for a few years." He eked out his income by painting portraits; and though he always spoke with vehement contempt of this branch of art, his extant pieces show that he might easily have attained eminence in it. Before fairly committing himself to these new walks, he had entertained great hopes of succeeding as a historical painter, and, as he himself says, "painted two Scripture stories—*The Pool of Bethesda* and *The Good Samaritan*, with features 7 feet high." Like Molière, who believed to the day of his death that his true calling was the acting and writing of tragedy, Hogarth persisted to the last in declaring high art as his real vocation. His attempts in that walk were never, in his opinion, appreciated as they deserved; and among his friends his delight was to thump the table and snap his fingers, and say—"Historical painters, be hanged! here's the man that will paint against any of them for a hundred pounds. Correggio's *Sigismundus!* look at Bill Hogarth's *Sigismundus*! look at my altar-piece of St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol; look at my *Paul before Felix*, and see whether I'm not as good as the best of them." On one occasion a Mr Freke had asserted that Greene, the composer, was as great a musician as Handel. "That fellow Freke," remarked Hogarth, "is always shooting his bolt absurdly one way or another. Handel is a giant in music; Greene only a light Florimel kind of composer." "Aye," said the artist's companion, "but Mr Freke declared that you were as good a portrait painter as Vandyke." "There he was right," said Hogarth; "and so, by G—, I am; give me my time, and let me choose my subject." So overweeningly confident was Hogarth of his own powers, and so little did he know of the conditions of historical painting, that he did not even deem a special training at all necessary for success in it. But, whatever his genius for high art, he soon found that, if he devoted himself to it alone, he would starve. Necessity compelled him to revert to that style which he had already begun to strike out for himself, and which, as afterwards perfected by him, led him on to fortune and immortal fame. His oil paintings themselves never sold very well; but he made a point of engraving them all, and from the sale of these engravings he realized a handsome fortune. Here, again, his old enemies, the printsellers, interposed between him and the public, and for a time pirated each plate as it appeared, and intercepted the artist's profits. In 1735 Hogarth sent in a petition to parliament, drawing attention to this flagrant outrage upon justice, and the result was a law securing to the artist a copyright of fourteen years in every plate from the date of publication. In 1753 Hogarth published his *Analysis of Beauty*, in which he endeavours to prove that the foundation of all beauty is a waving line curved somewhat like an S; while a less pronounced curve is the line of grace. This idea, and the curious illustrations brought forward in support of it, drew down upon its propounder's head a perfect shower of pamphlets and criticisms, all hostile, and nearly all sarcastic in their tone. One of the most amusing quarrels that resulted out of this publication was that with Wilkes and Churchill. Both of these persons, formerly Hogarth's friends, joined in the outcry against him—the first in his newspaper (the *North Briton*), the other in his poetical epistle. Hogarth had his revenge. Churchill descends to posterity as a bear hugging a post inscribed with an ascending scale of lies. Of Wilkes' famous portrait, Hogarth himself says—"This renowned patriot's portrait, drawn like as I could as to features, and marked with some indications of his mind, fully 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 drew much laughter from the lookers on, galled both him and his adherents to the bone." As Hogarth advanced in years his health began rapidly to give way, but his powers of mind remained unimpaired to the end. He died October 26, 1764, and was buried in the churchyard of Chiswick, near London. His wife, who never bore him any children, survived him for fifteen years, and on her death, in 1789, was buried by his side.

Johnson's famous lines on Hogarth are equally true and pleasing:—

"The hand of him here torpid lies, That drew the essential forms of grace; Here closed in death the attentive eyes, That saw the manners in the face."

As a man, Hogarth is one of the most interesting and characteristic types of the true English race. Under a somewhat rough exterior lay one of the most generous, open, and honest souls that England had to boast of in all the eighteenth century. Born and brought up in London, from the shadow of whose smoke he hardly ever emerged except for an occasional holiday, he imbibed many of the prejudices and little narrownesses incident to such a mode of life. But in his case, as in Dr Johnson's, the knots and excrescences that disfigured the oak also marked its strength. No man of that century, not the great lexicographer himself, fought a nobler battle against great odds, or gained in the end a nobler victory. As a satirist, Hogarth, like all satirists, had foes numerous and malignant. But, though these often assailed him ungenerously and unjustly, he scowled to take a mean advantage over them, or to glory in his triumph when the scale turned in his favour. The very last sentence in his memorial of himself runs thus:—"This I may safely assert, that in the course of my life I have done my best to make those about me tolerably happy, and my greatest enemy cannot say that I ever did an intentional injury."

To assign Hogarth his rank among painters, is no difficult task. In the class to which he belongs he has had few imitators and no rivals, either in our own or in any other country. Of all English painters, Hogarth's chances of immortality are the best; and it has been well said that our chances of another Hogarth are as precarious as our chances of another Shakspeare. To the student of history his works are invaluable for their complete and sternly truthful pictures of the manners and even the thoughts of the eighteenth century. In the words of Thackeray—"We look, and we see pass before us the England of a hundred years ago. The peer in his drawing-room, the lady of fashion in her apartment, foreign singers surrounding her, and the chamber filled with gew-gaws in the mode of that day; the church, with its quaint florid architecture and singing congregation; the parson with his great wig, and the beadle with his cane; all these are represented before us, and we are sure of the truth of the portrait. We see how the lord mayor dines in state; how the prodigal drinks and sports at the bagnio; how the poor girl beats hemp in Bridewell; how the thief divides his booty and drinks his punch at the night-cellars." Hogarth and how he finishes his career at the gibbet. We may depend upon the perfect accuracy of these strange and varied portraits of the bye-gone generation. We see one of Walpole's members of parliament chaired after his election, and the lieges celebrating the event; and drinking confusion to the Pretender; we see the grenadiers and bandboxes of the city marching out to meet the enemy; and have before us, with sword and firelock, and white Hanoverian horse embroidered on the cap, the very figures of the men who ran away with Johnny Cope, and who conquered at Culloden. The Yorkshire waggon rolls into the inn-yard; the country parson, in his jack-boots and his bands and short cassock, comes trotting into town, and we fancy it is Parson Adams with his sermons in his pocket. The Salisbury fly sets forth from the old Angel; you see the passengers entering the great heavy vehicle up the wooden steps, their hats tied down with handkerchiefs over their faces, and under their arms, sword, hanger, and case-bottle; the landlady, apoplectic with the liquors in her own bar, is tugging at the bell; the hunch-backed postilion (he may have ridden the leaders to Humphrey Clinker) is begging a gratuity; the miser is grumbling at the bill; Jack of the Centurion lies on the top of the clumsy vehicle, with a soldier by his side—it may be Smollet's Jack Hatchway—it has a likeness to Lesmahagow. You see the suburban fair, and the strolling company of actors; the pretty milk-maid singing under the windows of the enraged French musician—it is such a girl as Steele charmingly described in the Guardian, a few years before this date, singing under Mr Ironside's window in Shire Lane her pleasant carol of a 'May Morning.' You see noblemen and blacklegs hawling and betting in the Cock-pit; you see Garrick as he was arrayed in King Richard; Macheath and Polly in the dresses which they wore when they charmed our ancestors, and when noblemen in blue ribbons sat on the stage and heard their delightful singing. You see the ragged French soldiery in their white coats and cockades at Calais gate; they are of the regiment, very likely, which friend Roderick Random joined before he was rescued by his preserver, Monsieur de Strap, and with whom he fought on the famous day of Dettingen. You see the judges on the bench; the audience laughing in the pit; the student in the Oxford theatre; the citizen in his country walk. You see Broughton, the boxer; Sarah Malcolm, the murderess; Simon Lovat, the traitor; John Wilkes, the demagogue, leering at you with that squat of his which has become historical, and with that face which, ugly as it was, he said he could make as captivating to woman as the face of the handsomest beau in town." These subjects are treated for the most part in the satirical vein; but Hogarth's satire is never an end to itself; it is generally a means towards the teaching of some valuable lesson of practical morality. Sometimes, like Juvenal, the painter dissects with a hideous minuteness the follies and vices of his day, which in various guises are the follies and vices of all time. Like Swift, reveling in the morbid anatomy of the human heart, he sometimes (as in his Four Stages of Cruelty) depicts scenes that in themselves shock and repel the observer, but are yet made interesting by their wonderful power and truth to nature; while, on the other hand, he is not surpassed by De Poe himself in the number, homeliness, and graphic force of his details. So great, indeed, is Hogarth in these respects, that the criticism of Charles Lamb becomes literally true when he says that "his graphic representations are indeed books; they have the teeming, fruitful, suggestive meaning of words. Other pictures we look at; his prints we read." It was fashionable among some of Hogarth's contemporary critics to settle his claims to posthumous fame by describing him as a caricaturist, and by ridiculing the technical execution of his works. On the first head it is only necessary to repeat what has been already said, that "the quantity of thought which he crowds into every picture would almost unvulgarize every subject which he might choose," and that consequently he can scarcely be classed among caricaturists at all, as that term is now understood. On the second head, small wits of the last century were misled by the verdict of Horace Walpole, who said that Hogarth had but little merit as a painter. Posterity, however, has reversed this sentence of the captious critic; and indeed it must be plain to all who have seen Hogarth's pictures that, except in the matter of colouring, their technical merits are not only great, but remarkable. As a draughtsman, indeed, he has been surpassed by many of his countrymen; but his power of composition is such as few English painters have ever shown at all. Even his colouring, which is confessedly his weak point, may be defended to some extent, as having been laid on in dead tints chiefly that the eye of the spectator might not be distracted by gaudy hues from the action and moral of the various pieces; yet there are many individual pieces of painting in Hogarth's pictures which show that, if he had not had special reasons for persevering in the style he originally adopted, he might have ranked high among English colourists. This much, however, is certain, that, whatever Hogarth's technical merits or defects may be, so long as man shall continue to be man's proper study, so long will Hogarth's pictures, in virtue of the human interest they possess, continue to find students and admirers.

(Hogarth's Memoirs of Himself; Allan Cunningham's Life; Ireland's Life; Hogarth's Works, by Nichols and Steeves; Charles Lamb's Essay on Hogarth; Thackeray's Lectures on the English Humorists; Walpole's Anecdotes; and Waagen's Arts and Artists of England, where an able and elaborate defence and analysis of Hogarth will be found.)