HOGARTH, WILLIAM, was born in the parish of St. Bartholomew the Great, London, in 1697, and baptised in the parish church on tho 28th of November. His father Richard lfogarth (or Hogart, as the name seems originally to have been written and pronounced) died in 1721, leaving two daughters and one sou, Williatn. Of William Hogarth's education nothing has been recorded; but we may conclude that it was slight from the frequency of his errors in grammar and orthography. "My father's pen," writes llogarth himself, "like that of many 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, and mimiekry, 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 makiog drawings. 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 would soon surpass me, but for the latter I was particularly distinguished." It was at his own wish that ho was apprenticed to Ellis Gamble, a silversmith in Cranbourno-strect ; but ho soon found this business too limited, and its scope insufficient for his fancy. "The painting of St. Paul's Cathedral and Greenwich Hospital," he writes, "at this time going on, ran in my head, and I determined that silver-plate engraving should be followed by me no longer thau necessity obliged me to it. Engraving on copper was at twenty years of age my utmost ambition." In 1718 Hogarth ceased to be an apprentice, being twenty-one years old; and, according to Walpole, he attended Sir James Thornhill's academy in St. Martin's-lane, where he "studied drawing from the life, in which he never attained great excellence." His livelihood was earned by engraving arms, crests, ciphers, shop-bills, and other similar works, until 1724, when he published his first original engraving, now called the 'Small Masquerade Ticket, or Burlington Gate.' Illustra tions to DIortraye's ' Travels,"Hudibras,' and other books, were supplied by him in 1725 and the following year, which, with the help of some small etchings of scenes of town life and folly, replenished his purse, and gained him a moderate reputation. He now paid his addresses to Jane, daughter of Sir James Thornhill, to whom he was united in 1730, without the consent of her parents. Her father resented the marriage as a degradation to his daughter, and was not reconciled to ber until two years after it had taken place. The facility which Hogarth had gained in the use of the brush now induced him to attempt portrait-painting ; but although he was not unsuccessful in the treatment of many of his subjects, the style did not satisfy his mind: there was too much copying, as it were, and too little room for ingenuity and invention, to compensate for the drudgery. He accord
ingly abandoned portrait-painting, and entered upon that original style on which his fame rests. "The reasons," he says, "which induced me to adopt this mode of designing were, that I thought both writers and painters had, iu the historical style, totally overlooked that intermediate species of subjects which may be placed between the sublime and grotesque." Before be had done anything of much consequence in this walk he entertained some hopes of succeeding in the higher branch of historical painting. "He was not," says Sir Joehua Reynolds ('Discourses,' vol. ii., p. 363), "blessed with the knowledge of his own deficiency, or of the bounds which were set to the extent of his own powers." "After he had invented a new species of dramatic painting, in which probably he will never be equalled, and had stored his mind with infinite materials to explain and illustrate the domestic) and familiar scenes of comic life, which were generally and ought always to have been the subject of his pencil, ho very imprudently, or rather pre sumptuously, attempted the great historical style, for which his previous habits had by no means prepared him." After this failure as an historical painter, he resumed his former manner, engraving, as bad been his custom, the pictures which he had painted. The eager demand for these engravings induced the print sellers to pirate them; and tho piracies so diminished the profits of the author that lie applied to parliament for redress : in consequence of his application a bill was passed in 1735, granting a copyright of a print for fourteen years after its publication. The reputation of Ilogarth was now established, and he continued to paint with undiminished ability. At tho age of forty-eight he was in easy ch. and rich enough to keep a carriage. .The sale of his prints was his principal source of income : the price of his pictures kept pace neither with his fame nor with his expectations. We find that in 1745 be sold by auction nineteen pictures, including the 'Harlot's and Rake's Progresses,' for 4271. 7a, a sum most unequal to their merits. Some conditions which be had very whimsically annexed to the rale appear to have diminished his profits. In 1753 ho pub lished Analysis of Beauty,' in which he attempted to prove that the foundation of beauty and grace consists in a flowing serpentine line : lie cites numerous examples ; and though his conclusion is unsound, his arguments are both amusing and ingenious. They were attacked and ridiculed by a host of his envious contemporaries; but the work was translated into French, Italian, and German.