The Satirical Painter

(HOGARTH, 1698-1764.)

The satirist is often, to his contemporaries, only a humorist. Few care to inquire what kind of face lies behind the comic mask, or what sort of heart prompts the indignant tongue. Hogarth's truly humorous faculty, which set our forefathers laughing more than a hundred years ago, is still enjoyed; but this enjoyment is tempered by a graver respect than they felt for him. Time shows another and a truer portrait of the man behind the mask, his depth of feeling, depth of thought, the tragic power of his genius, his insight into the follies of his age, his earnest efforts so to present the picture that men may avoid a likeness of it in their own lives.

And to the man himself, Time, in his usual kindly way, has given a tinge of that nameless something which makes almost picturesque his homely figure. In fact, Hogarth has taken his proper place among the great humorists, satirists, and moralists of the world, or among those who have combined the three in one.

Hogarth said of himself: "I have endeavored to treat my subject as a dramatic writer; my picture as my stage; and men and women as my players." He is classed with Swift, Pope, and Fielding, who were his contemporaries. Hogarth wore the costumes of these men, and had, therefore, that general resemblance which marks the character of each age. Fifty years earlier or later he might have given to posterity a something very unlike the Hogarth that his age made him. Satire belongs to every age. When the eighteenth century perfected it, in a literary point of view, it was because men had then come to believe in satire as the strongest weapon against existing evils in Church, Society, and State. The names Horace, Juvenal, Aristophanes, Rabelais, Cervantes, Erasmus, Swift, and Hogarth, in these days, recall those serious men who saw the existing evils of their day and took this most efficient of ways to correct them, by making them the subject of public laughter and ridicule.

As a social satirist Hogarth stands unrivalled. No artist is more popular with English people; all classes enjoy his humor and admire his genius. He was educated as a mechanic, but found employment with a silver-smith, who recognized his talent and made him engraver of arms and cyphers. He soon developed a decided talent for caricature, and rose rapidly to the rank of "Book Illustrator." Samuel Butler's "Hudibras," a satire upon Puritans and Republicans, was the first and the finest of his work in this line. In the meantime he acquired the use of the brush, and added "portrait painter" to that of "pen engraver."

Hogarth's talent for original comic designs gradually unfolded itself, and various public occasions drew forth a display of his power as a caricaturist. In 1729 he clandestinely married the daughter of Sir James Thorn-hill, the painter. His series, six in all, "The Harlot's Progress," first brought him fame.

A pantomime from it was presented at the theatre. This performance, together with subsequent similar ones, placed Hogarth in the rare list of original geniuses and inventors. He may be said to have invented a new species of painting, the moral-comic. He was in truth a writer of comedy with the brush instead of the pen; as great a satirist on vice as Moliere. Two years after "The Harlot's Progress," appeared "The Rake's Progress."

The curtain was now drawn aside, and Hogarth stood before the world as a great satirical reformer. He was a disciple of Swift, he was a friend of Fielding, he was, for the time, England's national painter. Hogarth's lessons bore fruit. His series, "Marriage a la Mode," a satire upon high life, is considered his masterpiece.

As a teacher, through satire and comedy, traces of his influence, as of other great men of his class, are still seen and felt. To give pleasure and to set people to thinking is the aim of art; to do this with a kindly feeling towards mankind and in the interest of Christian morality is something more. Both may be claimed for Hogarth.

On the 25th of October, 1764, Hogarth died suddenly, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. A plain slab over his grave at Cheswick contains the following elegant inscription by his friend Garrick, the actor: