In his private character this celebrated man is reputed to have been hospitable and liberal, as well as accurately just in his dealings, but his manners were coarse and vul gar, and his powers of delighting seem to have been re strained to his pencil. To be a member of clubs of illite rate' men was the utmost of his social ambition, and even in those assemblies he was oftener sent to Coventry than any other member. The slightest contradiction is said to have transported him to rage. His genius as a comic painter is of that strong description which breaks down the partition between connoisseurship and the popular taste in the enjoyment of it. It is merit, which his satirist yet ablest panegyrist so well expressed, " which we con ceive the moment we, behold." The critic Du Bos often complained that no history painter of his time went through a series of actions. \Vhat Du Bos wished to see done, Hogarth performed, though probably without know ing that he was so obligingly complying with the critic's request. In his Harlot's Progress he launches out his young adventurer, a simple girl upon the town, and con ducts her through all the vicissitudes of wretchedness to a premature death. This was painting to the understanding and to the heart. None had before made the comic pencil subservient to instruction ; nor was the success of this painter confined to his persons. One of his excellencies consisted in what may be termed the furniture of his pieces; for as in sublime historical representations the fewer trivial circumstances are permitted to divide the spectator's attention, the greater is the force of the principal figures ; so in scenes of familiar life, a judicious variety of little in cidents contributes an, air of versimilitude to the whole. The rake's levee room, (NValpole observes,) the noble man's dining room, the apartments of the husband and wife in marriage a la mode, the alderman's parlour, the bed chamber, and many others, are the history of the manners of the age.*
For a scientific view of the works of this great artist, we must refer the reader to \Valpole's Anecdotes of Painters, which we have already quoted.—A complete list of his prints, at least the most complete that has been made out, will be found in the Biographical Anecdotes, by Nichols. Walpole has made one remark upon them, in his eulogy of Hogarth, against the truth of which his works bear ocular demonstration, viz. that his delicacy is superior to that of the Dutch painters, or rather that his indelicacy is less. The illustration of this would be a task more easy than agreeable. Mr Gilpin, in his Essay on Prints, observes, that in design Hogarth was seldom at a loss. His invention was fertile, and his judgment accu rate. An improper incident is rarely introduced. In com position, he continues, we see little in him to admire ; in many of his prints, the deficiency is so great, as 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. Of the distribution of light, according to the same writer, he had as little knowledge as of composition. Neither was Hogarth a master of drawing. But of his expression, in which the force of his genius lay, we cannot speak in too high terms ; 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. (n)