Fur an account of Hogarth's contests with Wilkes, the celebrated politician, we must refer to his biographers. After his sixty-sixth year Ilogarth's health began to decline, and he died on the 26th of October 1764. He was buried in the churchyard at Chiswick, where his wife was also interred in 1789. They had no children. A monu ment inscribed with some verses by Garrick marks the site of the great painter's grave : having become somewhat dilapidated it was restored in 1856 by a namesake of the painter.
Hogarth is the first English painter who can be said to have acquired any name among foreigners : he is also ono of the earliest English painters who can be considered an original genius. His style of painting may be characterised as tho 'satirical;' tho satire being sometimes humorous and comic, sometimes grave, bitter, and tragic. his subjects aro chosen from common life, among all classes of society, in his own country and in his own time. His comico-satirical vein may be seen In the ' Enraged Musician,' the ' March to Finchley,' 'Beer Lane,' a:c.: his tragico-satirical vein is exemplified in the Harlot's Progress,' the ' Rake's Progress," Gin Lane,' &c. The series of ' Marriage h la Mode' contains pictures in both these veins. In the latter style his works are analogous to those of Swift. He also resembles Juvenal, in unmercifully chastising and laying bare the vices and weaknesees of mankind. The exaggeration of salient pecu liarities, and the accumulation of characteristic) incidents, which are conspicuous in the works of Hogarth, properly place him in the rank of caricaturists. At the same time, he never departs so widely from naturo as to mar the effect of his compositloo. To such an extent is he a caricaturist, that he has been said to write rather than paint with the brush. Although caricature, as ita name imports, originated among the Italians, Hogarth must ho considered as the great master of this style. But the great merit of Hogarth's pictures is that they have a serious purpose, and that every part, and every object almost, in each picture, whether the picture be an independent one, or ono of a series, subserves that purpose. Further it must be remarked—
what is too often overlooked in regarding the genius of Hogarth that his pictures are in the strictest sense original. For neither subject nor suggestion is he indebted to any other writer or painter. Story, character, and treatment are alike entirely his own. His invention is unbounded, and every part of his picture, whatever bo the subject, teems with meaning; and, what is a prime virtue in a moral satirist, the meaning is always perfectly clear.
Concerning the merits of Hogarth's technical execution, there has been some difference of opinion. As to the excellency of his drawing and composition there can, we presume, be no doubt in the mind of those who have seen his original pictures. On this subject generally, we quote the opinion of Dr. Waagen respecting the series of Marriage h Is Mode,' whose high authority we consider altogether decisive. " What surprises me," he says, "is the eminent merit of these works as paintings, since Hogarth's own countryman Horace Walpole says he had but little merit as a painter. All the most delicate shades of his humour are bore marked in his heads with consummate skill and freedom, and every other part executed with the same decision, and for tho most part with care. Though the colouring on the whole is weak, and tho pictures, being painted in dead colours with hardly any glazing, have more the look of water-colour than of oil-paintings, yet the colouring of the flesh is often powerful, and the other colours aro disposed with so much refined feeling fur harmonious effect, that in this respect these pictures stand in a far higher rank than many of the productions of the modern English school, with its glaring inhar monious colours." (Waage°, Arts and Artists in England,' German edit., vol. i., p. 230.) Hogarth appears to have avoided high colouring, lest the attention of the spectator should be distracted from the subject of the picture. In the National Gallery there are seven of his pictures, consisting of his own portrait and the series of the 'Marriage 31a Mode.'