Textile And Clothing Design Technology 1st

Edition Tom Cassidy download

https://ebookbell.com/product/textile-and-clothing-design-
technology-1st-edition-tom-cassidy-6838896

Explore and download more ebooks at ebookbell.com

Here are some recommended products that we believe you will be
interested in. You can click the link to download.

Sustainability In The Textile And Apparel Industries Sustainable

Textiles Clothing Design And Repurposing Subramanian Senthilkannan
Muthu Editor

https://ebookbell.com/product/sustainability-in-the-textile-and-
apparel-industries-sustainable-textiles-clothing-design-and-
repurposing-subramanian-senthilkannan-muthu-editor-33699876

Electronics In Textiles And Clothing Design Products And Applications

Kumar

https://ebookbell.com/product/electronics-in-textiles-and-clothing-
design-products-and-applications-kumar-5266540

The Global Textile And Clothing Industry Technological Advances And

Future Challenges Roshan Shishoo

https://ebookbell.com/product/the-global-textile-and-clothing-
industry-technological-advances-and-future-challenges-roshan-
shishoo-4674330

The Indian Textile And Clothing Industry An Economic Analysis 1st

Edition Mausumi Kar Auth

https://ebookbell.com/product/the-indian-textile-and-clothing-
industry-an-economic-analysis-1st-edition-mausumi-kar-auth-5143336
Institutional Change And The Development Of Industrial Clusters In
China Case Studies From The Textile And Clothing Industry Jinmin Wang

https://ebookbell.com/product/institutional-change-and-the-
development-of-industrial-clusters-in-china-case-studies-from-the-
textile-and-clothing-industry-jinmin-wang-51282952

Thailands Clothing And Textile Exports Suphat Suphachalasai

https://ebookbell.com/product/thailands-clothing-and-textile-exports-
suphat-suphachalasai-51782996

Waterproof And Water Repellent Textiles And Clothing The Textile

Institute Book Series 1st Edition John T Williams Editor

https://ebookbell.com/product/waterproof-and-water-repellent-textiles-
and-clothing-the-textile-institute-book-series-1st-edition-john-t-
williams-editor-32736154

A New World Map In Textiles And Clothing Adjusting To Change Textile

Et Vetement Faire Face Aux Mutations Oecd

https://ebookbell.com/product/a-new-world-map-in-textiles-and-
clothing-adjusting-to-change-textile-et-vetement-faire-face-aux-
mutations-oecd-6777132

The Art Of Prehistoric Textile Making The Development Of Craft

Traditions And Clothing In Central Europe Karina Grmer

https://ebookbell.com/product/the-art-of-prehistoric-textile-making-
the-development-of-craft-traditions-and-clothing-in-central-europe-
karina-grmer-51147430
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
Old Law.—There is an exquisiteness of moral sensibility, making
one's eyes to gush out tears of delight, and a poetical strangeness in
the circumstances of this sweet tragi-comedy, which are unlike any
thing in the dramas which Massinger wrote alone. The pathos is of a
subtler edge. Middleton and Rowley, who assisted in it, had both of
them finer geniuses than their associate.

James Shirley
Claims a place amongst the worthies of this period, not so much for
any transcendant talent in himself, as that he was the last of a great
race, all of whom spoke nearly the same language, and had a set of
moral feelings and notions in common. A new language, and quite a
new turn of tragic and comic interest, came in with the Restoration.
 ON THE INCONVENIENCES
RESULTING FROM BEING HANGED
(1810. Text of 1818)
To the Editor of the Reflector
Sir,—I am one of those unhappy persons whose misfortunes, it
seems, do not entitle them to the benefit of pure pity. All that is
bestowed upon me of that kindest alleviator of human miseries,
comes dashed with a double portion of contempt. My griefs have
nothing in them that is felt as sacred by the bystanders. Yet is my
affliction in truth of the deepest grain. The heaviest task that was
ever given to mortal patience to sustain. Time, that wears out all
other sorrows, can never modify or soften mine. Here they must
continue to gnaw, as long as that fatal mark——
Why was I ever born? Why was innocence in my person suffered to
be branded with a stain which was appointed only for the blackest
guilt? What had I done, or my parents, that a disgrace of mine
should involve a whole posterity in infamy? I am almost tempted to
believe, that, in some pre-existent state, crimes to which this
sublunary life of mine hath been as much a stranger as the babe
that is newly born into it, have drawn down upon me this
vengeance, so disproportionate to my actions on this globe.
My brain sickens, and my bosom labours to be delivered of the
weight that presses upon it, yet my conscious pen shrinks from the
avowal. But out it must——
O, Mr. Reflector! guess at the wretch's misery who now writes this to
you, when, with tears and burning blushes, he is obliged to confess,
that he has been————————HANGED——
Methinks I hear an involuntary exclamation burst from you, as your
imagination presents to you fearful images of your correspondent
unknown,—hanged!
Fear not, Mr. Editor. No disembodied spirit has the honour of
addressing you. I am flesh and blood, an unfortunate system of
bones, muscles, sinews, arteries, like yourself.
Then, I presume, you mean to be pleasant—That expression of
yours, Mr. Correspondent, must be taken somehow in a metaphorical
sense——
In the plainest sense, without trope or figure—Yes, Mr. Editor! this
neck of mine has felt the fatal noose,—these hands have tremblingly
held up the corroborative prayer-book,—these lips have sucked the
moisture of the last consolatory orange,—this tongue has chaunted
the doleful cantata which no performer was ever called upon to
repeat,—this face has had the veiling nightcap drawn over it———
But for no crime of mine.—Far be it from me to arraign the justice of
my country, which, though tardy, did at length recognise my
innocence. It is not for me to reflect upon judge or jury, now that
eleven years have elapsed since the erroneous sentence was
pronounced. Men will always be fallible, and perhaps circumstances
did appear at the time a little strong——
Suffice it to say, that after hanging four minutes, (as the spectators
were pleased to compute it,—a man that is being strangled, I know
from experience, has altogether a different measure of time from his
friends who are breathing leisurely about him,—I suppose the
minutes lengthen as time approaches eternity, in the same manner
as the miles get longer as you travel northward—), after hanging
four minutes, according to the best calculation of the bystanders, a
reprieve came, and I was cut DOWN——
Really I am ashamed of deforming your pages with these technical
phrases—if I knew how to express my meaning shorter——
But to proceed.—My first care after I had been brought to myself by
the usual methods, (those methods that are so interesting to the
operator and his assistants, who are pretty numerous on such
occasions,—but which no patient was ever desirous of undergoing a
second time for the benefit of science), my first care was to provide
myself with an enormous stock or cravat to hide the place—you
understand me;—my next care was to procure a residence as distant
as possible from that part of the country where I had suffered. For
that reason I chose the metropolis, as the place where wounded
honour (I had been told) could lurk with the least danger of exciting
enquiry, and stigmatised innocence had the best chance of hiding
her disgrace in a crowd. I sought out a new circle of acquaintance,
and my circumstances happily enabling me to pursue my fancy in
that respect, I endeavoured, by mingling in all the pleasures which
the town affords, to efface the memory of what I had undergone.
But alas! such is the portentous and all-pervading chain of
connection which links together the head and members of this great
community, my scheme of lying perdu was defeated almost at the
outset. A countryman of mine, whom a foolish law-suit had brought
to town, by chance met me, and the secret was soon blazoned
about.
In a short time, I found myself deserted by most of those who had
been my intimate friends. Not that any guilt was supposed to attach
to my character. My officious countryman, to do him justice, had
been candid enough to explain my perfect innocence. But, somehow
or other, there is a want of strong virtue in mankind. We have plenty
of the softer instincts, but the heroic character is gone. How else can
I account for it, that of all my numerous acquaintance, among whom
I had the honour of ranking sundry persons of education, talents,
and worth, scarcely here and there one or two could be found, who
had the courage to associate with a man that had been hanged.
Those few who did not desert me altogether, were persons of strong
but coarse minds; and from the absence of all delicacy in them I
suffered almost as much as from the superabundance of a false
species of it in the others. Those who stuck by me were the jokers,
who thought themselves entitled by the fidelity which they had
shewn towards me to use me with what familiarity they pleased.
Many and unfeeling are the jests that I have suffered from these
rude (because faithful) Achateses. As they past me in the streets,
one would nod significantly to his companion and say, pointing to
me, smoke his cravat, and ask me if I had got a wen, that I was so
solicitous to cover my neck. Another would enquire, What news from
* * * Assizes? (which you may guess, Mr. Editor, was the scene of
my shame), and whether the sessions was like to prove a maiden
one? A third would offer to ensure me from drowning. A fourth
would teaze me with enquiries how I felt when I was swinging,
whether I had not something like a blue flame dancing before my
eyes? A fifth took a fancy never to call me anything but Lazarus. And
an eminent bookseller and publisher,—who, in his zeal to present the
public with new facts, had he lived in those days, I am confident,
would not have scrupled waiting upon the person himself last
mentioned, at the most critical period of his existence, to solicit a
few facts relative to resuscitation,—had the modesty to offer me ——
guineas per sheet, if I would write, in his Magazine, a physiological
account of my feelings upon coming to myself.
But these were evils which a moderate fortitude might have enabled
me to struggle with. Alas! Mr. Editor, the women,—whose good
graces I had always most assiduously cultivated, from whose softer
minds I had hoped a more delicate and generous sympathy than I
found in the men,—the women begun to shun me—this was the
unkindest blow of all.
But is it to be wondered at? How couldst thou imagine, wretchedest
of beings, that that tender creature Seraphina would fling her pretty
arms about that neck which previous circumstances had rendered
infamous? That she would put up with the refuse of the rope, the
leavings of the cord? Or that any analogy could subsist between the
knot which binds true lovers, and the knot which ties malefactors?
I can forgive that pert baggage Flirtilla, who, when I complimented
her one day on the execution which her eyes had done, replied,
that, to be sure, Mr. * * was a judge of those things. But from thy
more exalted mind, Celestina, I expected a more unprejudiced
decision.
The person whose true name I conceal under this appellation, of all
the women that I was ever acquainted with, had the most manly
turn of mind, which she had improved by reading and the best
conversation. Her understanding was not more masculine than her
manners and whole disposition were delicately and truly feminine.
She was the daughter of an officer who had fallen in the service of
his country, leaving his widow and Celestina, an only child, with a
fortune sufficient to set them above want, but not to enable them to
live in splendour. I had the mother's permission to pay my addresses
to the young lady, and Celestina seemed to approve of my suit.
Often and often have I poured out my overcharged soul in the
presence of Celestina, complaining of the hard and unfeeling
prejudices of the world, and the sweet maid has again and again
declared, that no irrational prejudice should hinder her from
esteeming every man according to his intrinsic worth. Often has she
repeated the consolatory assurance, that she could never consider
as essentially ignominious an accident, which was indeed to be
deprecated, but which might have happened to the most innocent of
mankind. Then would she set forth some illustrious example, which
her reading easily furnished, of a Phocion or a Socrates unjustly
condemned; of a Raleigh or a Sir Thomas More, to whom late
posterity had done justice; and by soothing my fancy with some
such agreeable parallel, she would make me almost to triumph in my
disgrace, and convert my shame into glory.
In such entertaining and instructive conversations the time passed
on, till I importunately urged the mistress of my affections to name a
day for our union. To this she obligingly consented, and I thought
myself the happiest of mankind. But how was I surprised one
morning on the receipt of the following billet from my charmer:—
Sir,—You must not impute it to levity, or to a worse failing,
ingratitude, if, with anguish of heart, I feel myself compelled by
irresistible arguments to recall a vow which I fear I made with too
little consideration. I never can be yours. The reasons of my
decision, which is final, are in my own breast, and you must
everlastingly remain a stranger to them. Assure yourself that I can
never cease to esteem you as I ought.
Celestina.
At the sight of this paper, I ran in frantic haste to Celestina's
lodgings, where I learned, to my infinite mortification, that the
mother and daughter were set off on a journey to a distant part of
the country, to visit a relation, and were not expected to return in
less than four months.
Stunned by this blow, which left me without the courage to solicit an
explanation by letter, even if I had known where they were, (for the
particular address was industriously concealed from me), I waited
with impatience the termination of the period, in the vain hope that I
might be permitted to have a chance of softening the harsh decision
by a personal interview with Celestina after her return. But before
three months were at an end, I learned from the newspapers, that
my beloved had—given her hand to another!
Heart-broken as I was, I was totally at a loss to account for the
strange step which she had taken; and it was not till some years
after that I learned the true reason from a female relation of hers, to
whom it seems Celestina had confessed in confidence, that it was no
demerit of mine that had caused her to break off the match so
abruptly, nor any preference which she might feel for any other
person, for she preferred me (she was pleased to say) to all
mankind; but when she came to lay the matter closer to her heart,
she found that she never should be able to bear the sight (I give you
her very words as they were detailed to me by her relation) the sight
of a man in a nightcap, who had appeared on a public platform, it
would lead to such a disagreeable association of ideas! And to this
punctilio I was sacrificed.
To pass over an infinite series of minor mortifications, to which this
last and heaviest might well render me callous, behold me here, Mr.
Editor! in the thirty-seventh year of my existence, (the twelfth,
reckoning from my re-animation), cut off from all respectable
connections, rejected by the fairer half of the community,—who in
my case alone seem to have laid aside the characteristic pity of their
sex; punished because I was once punished unjustly; suffering for
no other reason than because I once had the misfortune to suffer
without any cause at all. In no other country, I think, but this, could
a man have been subject to such a life-long persecution, when once
his innocence had been clearly established.
Had I crawled forth a rescued victim from the rack in the horrible
dungeons of the Inquisition,—had I heaved myself up from a half
bastinado in China, or been torn from the just-entering, ghastly
impaling stake in Barbary,—had I dropt alive from the knout in
Russia, or come off with a gashed neck from the half-mortal, scarce-
in-time-retracted scymeter of an executioneering slave in Turkey,—I
might have borne about the remnant of this frame (the mangled
trophy of reprieved innocence) with credit to myself, in any of those
barbarous countries. No scorn, at least, would have mingled with the
pity (small as it might be) with which what was left of me would
have been surveyed.
The singularity of my case has often led me to enquire into the
reasons of the general levity with which the subject of hanging is
treated as a topic in this country. I say as a topic: for let the very
persons who speak so lightly of the thing at a distance be brought to
view the real scene,—let the platform be bona fide exhibited, and
the trembling culprit brought forth,—the case is changed; but as a
topic of conversation, I appeal to the vulgar jokes which pass
current in every street. But why mention them, when the politest
authors have agreed in making use of this subject as a source of the
ridiculous? Swift, and Pope, and Prior, are fond of recurring to it. Gay
has built an entire drama upon this single foundation. The whole
interest of the Beggar's Opera may be said to hang upon it. To such
writers as Fielding and Smollet it is a perfect bon[ne]bouche.—Hear
the facetious Tom Brown, in his Comical View of London and
Westminster, describe the Order of the Show at one of the Tyburn
Executions in his time:—"Mr. Ordinary visits his melancholy flock in
Newgate by eight. Doleful procession up Holborn-hill about eleven.
Men handsome and proper that were never thought so before, which
is some comfort however. Arrive at the fatal place by twelve. Burnt
brandy, women, and sabbath-breaking, repented of. Some few
penitential drops fall under the gallows. Sheriffs men, parson,
pickpockets, criminals, all very busy. The last concluding peremptory
psalm struck up. Show over by one."—In this sportive strain does
this misguided wit think proper to play with a subject so serious,
which yet he would hardly have done, if he had not known that
there existed a predisposition in the habits of his unaccountable
countrymen to consider the subject as a jest. But what shall we say
to Shakspeare, who, (not to mention the solution which the
Gravedigger in Hamlet gives of his fellow workman's problem), in
that scene in Measure for Measure, where the Clown calls upon
Master Barnardine to get up and be hanged, which he declines on
the score of being sleepy, has actually gone out of his way to gratify
this amiable propensity in his countrymen; for it is plain, from the
use that was to be made of his head, and from Abhorson's asking,
"is the axe upon the block, sirrah?" that beheading, and not
hanging, was the punishment to which Barnardine was destined. But
Shakspeare knew that the axe and block were pregnant with no
ludicrous images, and therefore falsified the historic truth of his own
drama (if I may so speak) rather than he would leave out such
excellent matter for a jest as the suspending of a fellow-creature in
mid air has been ever esteemed to be by Englishmen.
One reason why the ludicrous never fails to intrude itself into our
contemplations upon this mode of death, I suppose to be, the
absurd posture into which a man is thrown who is condemned to
dance, as the vulgar delight to express it, upon nothing. To see him
whisking and wavering in the air,

As the wind you know will wave a man;[6]

[6] Hieronimo in the Spanish tragedy.

to behold the vacant carcase, from which the life is newly dislodged,
shifting between earth and heaven, the sport of every gust; like a
weather-cock, serving to shew from which point the wind blows; like
a maukin, fit only to scare away birds; like a nest left to swing upon
a bough when the bird is flown: these are uses to which we cannot
without a mixture of spleen and contempt behold the human carcase
reduced. We string up dogs, foxes, bats, moles, weasels. Man surely
deserves a steadier death.
Another reason why the ludicrous associates more forcibly with this
than with any other mode of punishment, I cannot help thinking to
be, the senseless costume with which old prescription has thought fit
to clothe the exit of malefactors in this country. Let a man do what
he will to abstract from his imagination all idea of the whimsical,
something of it will come across him when he contemplates the
figure of a fellow-creature in the day-time (in however distressing a
situation) in a night cap. Whether it be that this nocturnal addition
has something discordant with day-light, or that it is the dress which
we are seen in at those times when we are "seen," as the Angel in
Milton expresses it, "least wise;" this I am afraid will always be the
case; unless indeed, as in my instance, some strong personal feeling
overpower the ludicrous altogether. To me, when I reflect upon the
train of misfortunes which have pursued me through life, owing to
that accursed drapery, the cap presents as purely frightful an object
as the sleeveless yellow coat and devil-painted mitre of the San
Benitos.—An ancestor of mine, who suffered for his loyalty in the
time of the civil wars, was so sensible of the truth of what I am here
advancing, that on the morning of execution, no intreaties could
prevail upon him to submit to the odious dishabille, as he called it,
but he insisted upon wearing, and actually suffered in, the identical
flowing periwig which he is painted in, in the gallery belonging to my
uncle's seat in ——shire.
Suffer me, Mr. Editor, before I quit the subject, to say a word or two
respecting the minister of justice in this country; in plain words, I
mean the hangman. It has always appeared to me that, in the mode
of inflicting capital punishments with us, there is too much of the
ministry of the human hand. The guillotine, as performing its
functions more of itself and sparing human agency, though a cruel
and disgusting exhibition, in my mind, has many ways the advantage
over our way. In beheading, indeed, as it was formerly practised in
England, and in whipping to death, as is sometimes practised now,
the hand of man is no doubt sufficiently busy; but there is
something less repugnant in these downright blows than in the
officious barber-like ministerings of the other. To have a fellow with
his hangman's hands fumbling about your collar, adjusting the thing
as your valet would regulate your cravat, valuing himself on his
menial dexterity——
I never shall forget meeting my rascal,—I mean the fellow who
officiated for me,—in London last winter. I think I see him now,—in a
waistcoat that had been mine,—smirking along as if he knew me——
In some parts of Germany, that fellow's office is by law declared
infamous, and his posterity incapable of being ennobled. They have
hereditary hangmen, or had at least, in the same manner as they
had hereditary other great officers of state; and the hangmen's
families of two adjoining parishes intermarried with each other, to
keep the breed entire. I wish something of the same kind were
established in England.
But it is time to quit a subject which teems with disagreeable images
—
Permit me to subscribe myself, Mr. Editor,

Your unfortunate friend,

Pensilis.
ON THE DANGER OF CONFOUNDING
MORAL WITH PERSONAL
DEFORMITY; WITH A HINT TO
THOSE WHO HAVE THE
FRAMING OF ADVERTISEMENTS
FOR APPREHENDING
OFFENDERS
(1810. Text of 1818)
To the Editor of the Reflector
Mr. Reflector,—There is no science in their pretensions to which
mankind are more apt to commit grievous mistakes, than in the
supposed very obvious one of physiognomy. I quarrel not with the
principles of this science, as they are laid down by learned
professors; much less am I disposed, with some people, to deny its
existence altogether as any inlet of knowledge that can be depended
upon. I believe that there is, or may be, an art to "read the mind's
construction in the face." But, then, in every species of reading, so
much depends upon the eyes of the reader; if they are blear, or apt
to dazzle, or inattentive, or strained with too much attention, the
optic power will infallibly bring home false reports of what it reads.
How often do we say, upon a cursory glance at a stranger, what a
fine open countenance he has, who, upon second inspection, proves
to have the exact features of a knave. Nay, in much more intimate
acquaintances, how a delusion of this kind shall continue for months,
years, and then break up all at once.
Ask the married man, who has been so but for a short space of time,
if those blue eyes where, during so many years of anxious courtship,
truth, sweetness, serenity, seemed to be written in characters which
could not be misunderstood—ask him if the characters which they
now convey be exactly the same?—if for truth he does not read a
dull virtue (the mimic of constancy) which changes not, only
because it wants the judgment to make a preference?—if for
sweetness he does not read a stupid habit of looking pleased at
every thing;—if for serenity he does not read animal tranquillity, the
dead pool of the heart, which no breeze of passion can stir into
health? Alas! what is this book of the countenance good for, which
when we have read so long, and thought that we understood its
contents, there comes a countless list of heart-breaking errata at the
end!
But these are the pitiable mistakes to which love alone is subject. I
have inadvertently wandered from my purpose, which was to expose
quite an opposite blunder, into which we are no less apt to fall,
through hate. How ugly a person looks upon whose reputation some
awkward aspersion hangs, and how suddenly his countenance clears
up with his character. I remember being persuaded of a man whom I
had conceived an ill opinion of, that he had a very bad set of teeth;
which, since I have had better opportunities of being acquainted
with his face and facts, I find to have been the very reverse of the
truth. That crooked old woman, I once said, speaking of an ancient
gentlewoman, whose actions did not square altogether with my
notions of the rule of right. The unanimous surprise of the company
before whom I uttered these words, soon convinced me that I had
confounded mental with bodily obliquity, and that there was nothing
tortuous about the old lady but her deeds.
This humour of mankind to deny personal comeliness to those with
whose moral attributes they are dissatisfied, is very strongly shewn
in those advertisements, which stare us in the face from the walls of
every street, and, with the tempting bait which they hang forth,
stimulate at once cupidity and an abstract love of justice in the
breast of every passing peruser; I mean, the advertisements offering
rewards for the apprehension of absconded culprits, strayed
apprentices, bankrupts who have conveyed away their effects,
debtors that have run away from their bail. I observe, that in exact
proportion to the indignity with which the prosecutor, who is
commonly the framer of the advertisement, conceives he has been
treated, the personal pretensions of the fugitive are denied, and his
defects exaggerated.
A fellow, whose misdeeds have been directed against the public in
general, and in whose delinquency no individual shall feel himself
particularly interested, generally meets with fair usage. A coiner or a
smuggler shall get off tolerably well. His beauty, if he has any, is not
much underrated, his deformities are not much magnified. A run-
away apprentice, who excites perhaps the next least degree of
spleen in his prosecutor, generally escapes with a pair of bandy legs;
if he has taken any thing with him in his flight, a hitch in his gait is
generally superadded. A bankrupt, who has been guilty of
withdrawing his effects, if his case be not very atrocious, commonly
meets with mild usage. But a debtor who has left his bail in
jeopardy, is sure to be described in characters of unmingled
deformity. Here the personal feelings of the bail, which may be
allowed to be somewhat poignant, are admitted to interfere; and, as
wrath and revenge commonly strike in the dark, the colours are laid
on with a grossness which I am convinced must often defeat its own
purpose. The fish that casts an inky cloud about him that his
enemies may not find him, cannot more obscure himself by that
device than the blackening representations of these angry
advertisers must inevitably serve to cloak and screen the persons of
those who have injured them from detection. I have before me at
this moment one of these bills, which runs thus:—

"FIFTY POUNDS REWARD.

"Run away from his bail, John Tomkins, formerly resident in Princes-street, Soho,
but lately of Clerkenwell. Whoever shall apprehend, or cause to be apprehended
and lodged in one of his Majesty's jails, the said John Tomkins, shall receive the
above reward. He is a thickset, sturdy man, about five foot six inches high, halts in
his left leg, with a stoop in his gait, with coarse red hair, nose short and cocked
up, with little grey eyes, one of them bears the effect of a blow which he has
lately received, with a pot belly, speaks with a thick and disagreeable voice, goes
shabbily drest, had on when he went away a greasy shag great coat with rusty
yellow buttons."

Now, although it is not out of the compass of possibility that John

Tomkins aforesaid may comprehend in his agreeable person all the
above-mentioned aggregate of charms; yet, from my observation of
the manner in which these advertisements are usually drawn up,
though I have not the pleasure of knowing the gentleman, yet would
I lay a wager, that an advertisement to the following effect would
have a much better chance of apprehending and laying by the heels
this John Tomkins than the above description, although penned by
one who, from the good services which he appears to have done for
him, has not improbably been blessed with some years of previous
intercourse with the said John. Taking, then, the above
advertisement to be true, or nearly so, down to the words "left leg"
inclusive (though I have some doubt if the blemish there implied
amount to a positive lameness, or be perceivable by any but the
nearest friends of John) I would proceed thus:—
—"Leans a little forward in his walk, his hair thick and inclining to
auburn, his nose of the middle size, a little turned up at the end,
lively hazel eyes (the contusion, as its effects are probably gone off
by this time, I judge better omitted) inclines to be corpulent, his
voice thick but pleasing, especially when he sings, had on a decent
shag great coat with yellow buttons."
Now, I would stake a considerable wager (though by no means a
positive man) that some such mitigated description would lead the
beagles of the law into a much surer track for finding this ungracious
varlet, than to set them upon a false scent after fictitious ugliness
and fictitious shabbiness; though, to do those gentlemen justice, I
have no doubt their experience has taught them in all such cases to
abate a great deal of the deformity which they are instructed to
expect; and has discovered to them, that the Devil's agents upon
this earth, like their master, are far less ugly in reality than they are
painted.
I am afraid, Mr. Reflector, that I shall be thought to have gone wide
of my subject, which was to detect the practical errors of
physiognomy, properly so called; whereas I have introduced physical
defects, such as lameness, the effects of accidents upon a man's
person, his wearing apparel, &c. as circumstances on which the eye
of dislike, looking ascance, may report erroneous conclusions to the
understanding. But if we are liable, through a kind, or an unkind
passion, to mistake so grossly concerning things so exterior and
palpable, how much more are we likely to err respecting those nicer
and less perceptible hints of character in a face, whose detection
constitutes the triumph of the physiognomist.
To revert to those bestowers of unmerited deformity, the framers of
advertisements for the apprehension of delinquents, a sincere desire
of promoting the ends of public justice induces me to address a
word to them on the best means of attaining those ends. I will
endeavour to lay down a few practical, or rather negative, rules for
their use, for my ambition extends no further than to arm them with
cautions against the self-defeating of their own purposes:—
1. Imprimis, then, Mr. Advertiser! If the culprit whom you are willing
to recover be one to whom in times past you have shewn kindness,
and been disposed to think kindly of him yourself, but he has
deceived your trust, and has run away, and left you with a load of
debt to answer for him,—sit down calmly, and endeavour to behold
him through the spectacles of memory rather than of present
conceit. Image to yourself, before you pen a tittle of his description,
the same plausible, good-looking man who took you in; and try to
put away from your mind every intrusion of that deceitful spectre
which perpetually obtrudes itself in the room of your former friend's
known visage. It will do you more credit to have been deceived by
such a one; and depend upon it, the traitor will convey to the eyes
of the world in general much more of that first idea which you
formed (perhaps in part erroneous) of his physiognomy, than of that
frightful substitute which you have suffered to creep in upon your
mind and usurp upon it; a creature which has no archetype except in
your own brain.
2. If you be a master that have to advertise a runaway apprentice,
though the young dog's faults are known only to you, and no doubt
his conduct has been aggravating enough, do not presently set him
down as having crooked ancles. He may have a good pair of legs,
and run away notwithstanding. Indeed, the latter does rather seem
to imply the former.
3. If the unhappy person against whom your laudable vengeance is
directed be a thief, think that a thief may have a good nose, good
eyes, good ears. It is indispensable to his profession that he be
possessed of sagacity, foresight, vigilance; it is more than probable,
then, that he is endued with the bodily types or instruments of these
qualities to some tolerable degree of perfectness.
4. If petty larceny be his offence, I exhort you, do not confound
meanness of crime with diminutiveness of stature. These things
have no connection. I have known a tall man stoop to the basest
action, a short man aspire to the height of crime, a fair man be
guilty of the foulest actions, &c.
5. Perhaps the offender has been guilty of some atrocious and
aggravated murder. Here is the most difficult case of all. It is above
all requisite, that such a daring violator of the peace and safety of
society should meet with his reward, a violent and ignominious
death. But how shall we get at him? Who is there among us, that
has known him before he committed the offence, that shall take
upon him to say he can sit down coolly and pen a dispassionate
description of a murderer? The tales of our nursery,—the reading of
our youth,—the ill-looking man that was hired by the Uncle to
dispatch the Children in the Wood,—the grim ruffians who
smothered the babes in the Tower,—the black and beetle-browed
assassin of Mrs. Ratcliffe,—the shag-haired villain of Mr. Monk Lewis,
—the Tarquin tread, and mill-stone dropping eyes, of Murder in
Shakspeare,—the exaggerations of picture and of poetry,—what we
have read and what we have dreamed of,—rise up and crowd in
upon us such eye-scaring portraits of the man of blood, that our pen
is absolutely forestalled; we commence poets when we should play
the part of strictest historians, and the very blackness of horror
which the deed calls up, serves as a cloud to screen the doer. The
fiction is blameless, it is accordant with those wise prejudices with
which nature has guarded our innocence, as with impassable
barriers, against the commission of such appalling crimes; but
meantime, the criminal escapes; or if,—owing to that wise
abatement in their expectation of deformity, which, as I hinted at
before, the officers of pursuit never fail to make, and no doubt in
cases of this sort they make a more than ordinary allowance,—if,
owing to this or any accident, the offender is caught and brought to
his trial, who that has been led out of curiosity to witness such a
scene, has not with astonishment reflected on the difference
between a real committer of a murder, and the idea of one which he
has been collecting and heightening all his life out of books, dreams,
&c. The fellow, perhaps, is a sleek, smug-looking man, with light hair
and eye-brows,—the latter by no means jutting out or like a crag,—
and with none of those marks which our fancy had pre-bestowed
upon him.
I find I am getting unawares too serious; the best way on such
occasions is, to leave off, which I shall do by generally
recommending to all prosecuting advertisers not to confound crimes
with ugliness; or rather, to distinguish between that physiognomical
deformity, which I am willing to grant always accompanies crime,
and mere physical ugliness,—which signifies nothing, is the exponent
of nothing, and may exist in a good or bad person indifferently.
Crito.
 ON THE AMBIGUITIES ARISING
FROM PROPER NAMES
(1811)
Mr. Reflector,—How oddly it happens that the same sound shall
suggest to the minds of two persons hearing it ideas the most
opposite! I was conversing a few years since with a young friend
upon the subject of poetry, and particularly that species of it which is
known by the name of the Epithalamium. I ventured to assert, that
the most perfect specimen of it in our language was the
Epithalamium of Spenser upon his own marriage.
My young gentleman, who has a smattering of taste, and would not
willingly be thought ignorant of any thing remotely connected with
the belles lettres, expressed a degree of surprise, mixed with
mortification, that he should never have heard of this poem, Spenser
being an author with whose writings he thought himself peculiarly
conversant.
I offered to show him the poem in the fine folio copy of the poet's
works, which I have at home. He seemed pleased with the offer,
though the mention of the folio seemed again to puzzle him. But
presently after, assuming a grave look, he compassionately muttered
to himself "poor Spencer."
There was something in the tone with which he spoke these words
that struck me not a little. It was more like the accent with which a
man bemoans some recent calamity that has happened to a friend,
than that tone of sober grief with which we lament the sorrows of a
person, however excellent, and however grievous his afflictions may
have been, who has been dead more than two centuries. I had the
curiosity to enquire into the reasons of so uncommon an ejaculation.
My young gentleman, with a more solemn tone of pathos than
before, repeated "poor Spencer," and added, "he has lost his wife."
My astonishment at this assertion rose to such a height, that I began
to think the brain of my young friend must be cracked, or some
unaccountable reverie had gotten possession of it. But upon further
explanation it appeared that the word "Spenser,"—which to you or
me, Reader, in a conversation upon poetry too, would naturally have
called up the idea of an old poet in a ruff, one Edmund Spenser, that
flourished in the days of Queen Elizabeth, and wrote a poem called
the Fairy Queen, with the Shepherd's Calender, and many more
verses besides,—did in the mind of my young friend excite a very
different and quite modern idea, namely, that of the Honourable
William Spencer, one of the living ornaments, if I am not
misinformed, of this present poetical era, A.D. 1811.
X. Y. Z.
ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER
OF HOGARTH; WITH SOME
REMARKS ON A PASSAGE IN
THE WRITINGS OF THE LATE
MR. BARRY
(1811. Text of 1818)
One of the earliest and noblest enjoyments I had when a boy was in
the contemplation of those capital prints by Hogarth, the Harlot's
and Rake's Progresses, which, along with some others, hung upon
the walls of a great hall in an old-fashioned house in ——shire, and
seemed the solitary tenants (with myself) of that antiquated and
life-deserted apartment.
Recollection of the manner in which those prints used to affect me,
has often made me wonder, when I have heard Hogarth described
as a mere comic painter, as one whose chief ambition was to raise a
laugh. To deny that there are throughout the prints which I have
mentioned circumstances introduced of a laughable tendency, would
be to run counter to the common notions of mankind; but to
suppose that in their ruling character they appeal chiefly to the
risible faculty, and not first and foremost to the very heart of man,
its best and most serious feelings, would be to mistake no less
grossly their aim and purpose. A set of severer Satires (for they are
not so much Comedies, which they have been likened to, as they are
strong and masculine Satires) less mingled with any thing of mere
fun, were never written upon paper, or graven upon copper. They
resemble Juvenal, or the satiric touches in Timon of Athens.
I was pleased with the reply of a gentleman, who being asked which
book he esteemed most in his library, answered,—"Shakspeare:"
being asked which he esteemed next best, replied,—"Hogarth." His
graphic representations are indeed books: they have the teeming,
fruitful, suggestive meaning of words. Other pictures we look at,—
his prints we read.
In pursuance of this parallel, I have sometimes entertained myself
with comparing the Timon of Athens of Shakspeare (which I have
just mentioned) and Hogarth's Rake's Progress together. The story,
the moral, in both is nearly the same. The wild course of riot and
extravagance, ending in the one with driving the Prodigal from the
society of men into the solitude of the deserts, and in the other with
conducting the Rake through his several stages of dissipation into
the still more complete desolations of the mad-house, in the play
and in the picture are described with almost equal force and nature.
The levee of the Rake, which forms the subject of the second plate
in the series, is almost a transcript of Timon's levee in the opening
scene of that play. We find a dedicating poet, and other similar
characters, in both.
The concluding scene in the Rake's Progress is perhaps superior to
the last scenes of Timon. If we seek for something of kindred
excellence in poetry, it must be in the scenes of Lear's beginning
madness, where the King and the Fool and the Tom-o'-Bedlam
conspire to produce such a medley of mirth checked by misery, and
misery rebuked by mirth; where the society of those "strange bed-
fellows" which misfortunes have brought Lear acquainted with, so
finely sets forth the destitute state of the monarch, while the lunatic
bans of the one, and the disjointed sayings and wild but pregnant
allusions of the other, so wonderfully sympathize with that confusion,
which they seem to assist in the production of, in the senses of that
"child-changed father."
In the scene in Bedlam, which terminates the Rake's Progress, we
find the same assortment of the ludicrous with the terrible. Here is
desperate madness, the overturning of originally strong thinking
faculties, at which we shudder, as we contemplate the duration and
pressure of affliction which it must have asked to destroy such a
building;—and here is the gradual hurtless lapse into idiocy, of
faculties, which at their best of times never having been strong, we
look upon the consummation of their decay with no more of pity
than is consistent with a smile. The mad taylor, the poor driveller
that has gone out of his wits (and truly he appears to have had no
great journey to go to get past their confines) for the love of
Charming Betty Careless,—these half-laughable, scarce-pitiable
objects take off from the horror which the principal figure would of
itself raise, at the same time that they assist the feeling of the scene
by contributing to the general notion of its subject:—
Madness, thou chaos of the brain,
What art, that pleasure giv'st, and pain?
Tyranny of Fancy's reign!
Mechanic Fancy, that can build
Vast labyrinths and mazes wild,
With rule disjointed, shapeless measure,
Fill'd with horror, fill'd with pleasure!
Shapes of horror, that would even
Cast doubts of mercy upon heaven.
Shapes of pleasure, that, but seen,
Would split the shaking sides of spleen.[7]

[7] Lines inscribed under the plate.

Is it carrying the spirit of comparison to excess to remark, that in the
poor kneeling weeping female, who accompanies her seducer in his
sad decay, there is something analogous to Kent, or Caius, as he
delights rather to be called, in Lear,—the noblest pattern of virtue
which even Shakspeare has conceived,—who follows his royal
master in banishment, that had pronounced his banishment, and
forgetful at once of his wrongs and dignities, taking on himself the
disguise of a menial, retains his fidelity to the figure, his loyalty to
the carcass, the shadow, the shell and empty husk of Lear?
In the perusal of a book, or of a picture, much of the impression
which we receive depends upon the habit of mind which we bring
with us to such perusal. The same circumstance may make one
person laugh, which shall render another very serious; or in the
same person the first impression may be corrected by after-thought.
The misemployed incongruous characters at the Harlot's Funeral, on
a superficial inspection, provoke to laughter; but when we have
sacrificed the first emotion to levity, a very different frame of mind
succeeds, or the painter has lost half his purpose. I never look at
that wonderful assemblage of depraved beings, who, without a grain
of reverence or pity in their perverted minds, are performing the
sacred exteriors of duty to the relics of their departed partner in
folly, but I am as much moved to sympathy from the very want of it
in them, as I should be by the finest representation of a virtuous
death-bed surrounded by real mourners, pious children, weeping
friends,—perhaps more by the very contrast. What reflexions does it
not awake, of the dreadful heartless state in which the creature (a
female too) must have lived, who in death wants the
accompaniment of one genuine tear. That wretch who is removing
the lid of the coffin to gaze upon the corpse with a face which
indicates a perfect negation of all goodness or womanhood—the
hypocrite parson and his demure partner—all the fiendish group—to
a thoughtful mind present a moral emblem more affecting than if the
poor friendless carcass had been depicted as thrown out to the
woods, where wolves had assisted at its obsequies, itself furnishing
forth its own funeral banquet.
It is easy to laugh at such incongruities as are met together in this
picture,—incongruous objects being of the very essence of laughter,
—but surely the laugh is far different in its kind from that
thoughtless species to which we are moved by mere farce and
grotesque. We laugh when Ferdinand Count Fathom, at the first
sight of the white cliffs of Britain, feels his heart yearn with filial
fondness towards the land of his progenitors, which he is coming to
fleece and plunder,—we smile at the exquisite irony of the passage,
—but if we are not led on by such passages to some more salutary
feeling than laughter, we are very negligent perusers of them in
book or picture.
It is the fashion with those who cry up the great Historical School in
this country, at the head of which Sir Joshua Reynolds is placed, to
exclude Hogarth from that school, as an artist of an inferior and
vulgar class. Those persons seem to me to confound the painting of
subjects in common or vulgar life with the being a vulgar artist. The
quantity of thought which Hogarth crowds into every picture, would
alone unvulgarize every subject which he might choose. Let us take
the lowest of his subjects, the print called Gin Lane. Here is plenty of
poverty and low stuff to disgust upon a superficial view; and
accordingly, a cold spectator feels himself immediately disgusted and
repelled. I have seen many turn away from it, not being able to bear
it. The same persons would perhaps have looked with great
complacency upon Poussin's celebrated picture of the Plague of
Athens.[8] Disease and Death and bewildering Terror in Athenian
garments are endurable, and come, as the delicate critics express it,
within the "limits of pleasurable sensation." But the scenes of their
own St. Giles's, delineated by their own countryman, are too
shocking to think of. Yet if we could abstract our minds from the
fascinating colours of the picture, and forget the coarse execution (in
some respects) of the print, intended as it was to be a cheap plate,
accessible to the poorer sort of people, for whose instruction it was
done, I think we could have no hesitation in conferring the palm of
superior genius upon Hogarth, comparing this work of his with
Poussin's picture. There is more of imagination in it—that power
which draws all things to one,—which makes things animate and
inanimate, beings with their attributes, subjects and their
accessories, take one colour, and serve to one effect. Every thing in
the print, to use a vulgar expression, tells. Every part is full of
"strange images of death." It is perfectly amazing and astounding to
look at. Not only the two prominent figures, the woman and the
half-dead man, which are as terrible as any thing which Michael
Angelo ever drew, but every thing else in the print contributes to
bewilder and stupefy,—the very houses, as I heard a friend of mine
express it, tumbling all about in various directions, seem drunk—
seem absolutely reeling from the effect of that diabolical spirit of
phrenzy which goes forth over the whole composition.—To shew the
poetical and almost prophetical conception in the artist, one little
circumstance may serve. Not content with the dying and dead
figures, which he has strewed in profusion over the proper scene of
the action, he shews you what (of a kindred nature) is passing
beyond it. Close by the shell, in which, by direction of the parish
beadle, a man is depositing his wife, is an old wall, which, partaking
of the universal decay around it, is tumbling to pieces. Through a
gap in this wall are seen three figures, which appear to make a part
in some funeral procession which is passing by on the other side of
the wall, out of the sphere of the composition. This extending of the
interest beyond the bounds of the subject could only have been
conceived by a great genius. Shakspeare, in his description of the
painting of the Trojan War, in his Tarquin and Lucrece, has
introduced a similar device, where the painter made a part stand for
the whole:—
For much imaginary work was there,
Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind,
That for Achilles' image stood his spear,
Grip'd in an armed hand; himself behind
Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind;
A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head,
Stood for the whole to be imagined.

[8] At the late Mr. Hope's, in Cavendish-square.

This he well calls imaginary work, where the spectator must meet
the artist in his conceptions half way; and it is peculiar to the
confidence of high genius alone to trust so much to spectators or
readers. Lesser artists shew every thing distinct and full, as they
require an object to be made out to themselves before they can
comprehend it.
When I think of the power displayed in this (I will not hesitate to
say) sublime print, it seems to me the extreme narrowness of
system alone, and of that rage for classification, by which, in matters
of taste at least, we are perpetually perplexing instead of arranging
our ideas, that would make us concede to the work of Poussin
above-mentioned, and deny to this of Hogarth, the name of a grand
serious composition.
We are for ever deceiving ourselves with names and theories. We
call one man a great historical painter, because he has taken for his
subjects kings or great men, or transactions over which time has
thrown a grandeur. We term another the painter of common life, and
set him down in our minds for an artist of an inferior class, without
reflecting whether the quantity of thought shewn by the latter may
not much more than level the distinction which their mere choice of
subjects may seem to place between them; or whether, in fact, from
that very common life a great artist may not extract as deep an
interest as another man from that which we are pleased to call
history.
I entertain the highest respect for the talents and virtues of
Reynolds, but I do not like that his reputation should overshadow
and stifle the merits of such a man as Hogarth, nor that to mere
names and classifications we should be content to sacrifice one of
the greatest ornaments of England.
I would ask the most enthusiastic admirer of Reynolds, whether in
the countenances of his Staring and Grinning Despair, which he has
given us for the faces of Ugolino and dying Beaufort, there be any
thing comparable to the expression which Hogarth has put into the
face of his broken-down rake in the last plate but one of the Rake's
Progress,[9] where a letter from the manager is brought to him to
say that his play "will not do?" Here all is easy, natural, undistorted,
but withal what a mass of woe is here accumulated!—the long
history of a mis-spent life is compressed into the countenance as
plainly as the series of plates before had told it; here is no attempt
at Gorgonian looks which are to freeze the beholder, no grinning at
the antique bedposts, no face-making, or consciousness of the
presence of spectators in or out of the picture, but grief kept to a
man's self, a face retiring from notice with the shame which great
anguish sometimes brings with it,—a final leave taken of hope,—the
coming on of vacancy and stupefaction,—a beginning alienation of
mind looking like tranquillity. Here is matter for the mind of the
beholder to feed on for the hour together,—matter to feed and
fertilize the mind. It is too real to admit one thought about the
power of the artist who did it.—When we compare the expression in
subjects which so fairly admit of comparison, and find the superiority
so clearly to remain with Hogarth, shall the mere contemptible
difference of the scene of it being laid in the one case in our Fleet or
King's Bench Prison, and in the other in the State Prison of Pisa, or
the bed-room of a cardinal,—or that the subject of the one has
never been authenticated, and the other is matter of history,—so
weigh down the real points of the comparison, as to induce us to
rank the artist who has chosen the one scene or subject (though
confessedly inferior in that which constitutes the soul of his art) in a
class from which we exclude the better genius (who has happened
to make choice of the other) with something like disgrace?[10]
[9] The first perhaps in all Hogarth for serious expression. That
which comes next to it, I think, is the jaded morning countenance
of the debauchee in the second plate of the Marriage Alamode,
which lectures on the vanity of pleasure as audibly as any thing in
Ecclesiastes.
[10] Sir Joshua Reynolds, somewhere in his lectures, speaks of
the presumption of Hogarth in attempting the grand style in
painting, by which he means his choice of certain Scripture
subjects. Hogarth's excursions into Holy Land were not very
numerous, but what he has left us in this kind have at least this
merit, that they have expression of some sort or other in them,—
the Child Moses before Pharaoh's Daughter, for instance: which is
more than can be said of Sir Joshua Reynolds's Repose in Egypt,
painted for Macklin's Bible, where for a Madona he has
substituted a sleepy, insensible, unmotherly girl, one so little
worthy to have been selected as the Mother of the Saviour, that
she seems to have neither heart nor feeling to entitle her to
become a mother at all. But indeed the race of Virgin Mary
painters seems to have been cut up, root and branch, at the
Reformation. Our artists are too good Protestants to give life to
that admirable commixture of maternal tenderness with
reverential awe and wonder approaching to worship, with which
the Virgin Mothers of L. da Vinci and Raphael (themselves by their
divine countenances inviting men to worship) contemplate the
 union of the two natures in the person of their Heaven-born
Infant.
The Boys under Demoniacal Possession of Raphael and Dominichino,
by what law of classification are we bound to assign them to belong
to the great style in painting, and to degrade into an inferior class
the Rake of Hogarth when he is the Madman in the Bedlam scene? I
am sure he is far more impressive than either. It is a face which no
one that has seen can easily forget. There is the stretch of human
suffering to the utmost endurance, severe bodily pain brought on by
strong mental agony, the frightful obstinate laugh of madness,—yet
all so unforced and natural, that those who never were witness to
madness in real life, think they see nothing but what is familiar to
them in this face. Here are no tricks of distortion, nothing but the
natural face of agony. This is high tragic painting, and we might as
well deny to Shakspeare the honours of a great tragedian, because
he has interwoven scenes of mirth with the serious business of his
plays, as refuse to Hogarth the same praise for the two concluding
scenes of the Rake's Progress, because of the Comic Lunatics[11]
which he has thrown into the one, or the Alchymist that he has
introduced in the other, who is paddling in the coals of his furnace,
keeping alive the flames of vain hope within the very walls of the
prison to which the vanity has conducted him, which have taught the
darker lesson of extinguished hope to the desponding figure who is
the principal person of the scene.
[11]

There are of madmen, as there are of tame,

All humour'd not alike. We have here some
So apish and fantastic, play with a feather;
And though 'twould grieve a soul to see God's image
So blemish'd and defac'd, yet do they act
Such antick and such pretty lunacies,
That, spite of sorrow, they will make you smile.
Others again we have, like angry lions,
Fierce as wild bulls, untameable as flies.
"Honest Whore."
It is the force of these kindly admixtures, which assimilates the
scenes of Hogarth and of Shakspeare to the drama of real life,
where no such thing as pure tragedy is to be found; but merriment
and infelicity, ponderous crime and feather-light vanity, like
twiformed births, disagreeing complexions of one intertexture,
perpetually unite to shew forth motley spectacles to the world. Then
it is that the poet or painter shews his art, when in the selection of
these comic adjuncts he chooses such circumstances as shall relieve,
contrast with, or fall into, without forming a violent opposition to, his
principal object. Who sees not that the Grave-digger in Hamlet, the
Fool in Lear, have a kind of correspondency to, and fall in with, the
subjects which they seem to interrupt, while the comic stuff in
Venice Preserved, and the doggrel nonsense of the Cook and his
poisoning associates in the Rollo of Beaumont and Fletcher, are pure,
irrelevant, impertinent discords,—as bad as the quarrelling dog and
cat under the table of the Lord and the Disciples at Emmaus of
Titian?
Not to tire the reader with perpetual reference to prints which he
may not be fortunate enough to possess, it may be sufficient to
remark, that the same tragic cast of expression and incident,
blended in some instances with a greater alloy of comedy,
characterizes his other great work, the Marriage Alamode, as well as
those less elaborate exertions of his genius, the prints called
Industry and Idleness, the Distrest Poet, &c. forming, with the
Harlot's and Rake's Progresses, the most considerable if not the
largest class of his productions,—enough surely to rescue Hogarth
from the imputation of being a mere buffoon, or one whose general
aim was only to shake the sides.
There remains a very numerous class of his performances, the
object of which must be confessed to be principally comic. But in all
of them will be found something to distinguish them from the droll
productions of Bunbury and others. They have this difference, that
we do not merely laugh at, we are led into long trains of reflection
by them. In this respect they resemble the characters of Chaucer's
Pilgrims, which have strokes of humour in them enough to designate
them for the most part as comic, but our strongest feeling still is
wonder at the comprehensiveness of genius which could crowd, as
poet and painter have done, into one small canvas so many diverse
yet co-operating materials.
The faces of Hogarth have not a mere momentary interest, as in
caricatures, or those grotesque physiognomies which we sometimes
catch a glance of in the street, and, struck with their whimsicality,
wish for a pencil and the power to sketch them down; and forget
them again as rapidly,—but they are permanent abiding ideas. Not
the sports of nature, but her necessary eternal classes. We feel that
we cannot part with any of them, lest a link should be broken.
It is worthy of observation, that he has seldom drawn a mean or
insignificant countenance.[12] Hogarth's mind was eminently
reflective; and, as it has been well observed of Shakspeare, that he
has transfused his own poetical character into the persons of his
drama (they are all more or less poets) Hogarth has impressed a
thinking character upon the persons of his canvas. This remark must
not be taken universally. The exquisite idiotism of the little
gentleman in the bag and sword beating his drum in the print of the
Enraged Musician, would of itself rise up against so sweeping an
assertion. But I think it will be found to be true of the generality of
his countenances. The knife-grinder and Jew flute-player in the plate
just mentioned may serve as instances instead of a thousand. They
have intense thinking faces, though the purpose to which they are
subservient by no means required it; but indeed it seems as if it was
painful to Hogarth to contemplate mere vacancy or insignificance.
[12] If there are any of that description, they are in his Strolling
Players, a print which has been cried up by Lord Orford as the
richest of his productions, and it may be, for what I know, in the
mere lumber, the properties, and dead furniture of the scene, but
in living character and expression it is (for Hogarth) lamentably
poor and wanting; it is perhaps the only one of his performances
at which we have a right to feel disgusted.
This reflection of the artist's own intellect from the faces of his
characters, is one reason why the works of Hogarth, so much more
than those of any other artist are objects of meditation. Our
intellectual natures love the mirror which gives them back their own
likenesses. The mental eye will not bend long with delight upon
vacancy.
Another line of eternal separation between Hogarth and the common
painters of droll or burlesque subjects, with whom he is often
confounded, is the sense of beauty, which in the most unpromising
subjects seems never wholly to have deserted him. "Hogarth
himself," says Mr. Coleridge,[13] from whom I have borrowed this
observation, speaking of a scene which took place at Ratzeburg,
"never drew a more ludicrous distortion, both of attitude and
physiognomy, than this effect occasioned: nor was there wanting
beside it one of those beautiful female faces which the same
Hogarth, in whom the satirist never extinguished that love of beauty
which belonged to him as a poet, so often and so gladly introduces
as the central figure in a crowd of humorous deformities, which
figure (such is the power of true genius) neither acts nor is meant to
act as a contrast; but diffuses through all, and over each of the
group, a spirit of reconciliation and human kindness; and even when
the attention is no longer consciously directed to the cause of this
feeling, still blends its tenderness with our laughter: and thus
prevents the instructive merriment at the whims of nature, or the
foibles or humours of our fellow-men, from degenerating into the
heart-poison of contempt or hatred." To the beautiful females in
Hogarth, which Mr. C. has pointed out, might be added, the frequent
introduction of children (which Hogarth seems to have taken a
particular delight in) into his pieces. They have a singular effect in
giving tranquillity and a portion of their own innocence to the
subject. The baby riding in its mother's lap in the March to Finchley,
(its careless innocent face placed directly behind the intriguing time-
furrowed countenance of the treason-plotting French priest)
perfectly sobers the whole of that tumultuous scene. The boy
mourner winding up his top with so much unpretended insensibility
in the plate of the Harlot's Funeral, (the only thing in that assembly
Welcome to our website – the perfect destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. We believe that every book holds a new world,
offering opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth.
That’s why we are dedicated to bringing you a diverse collection of
books, ranging from classic literature and specialized publications to
self-development guides and children's books.

More than just a book-buying platform, we strive to be a bridge

connecting you with timeless cultural and intellectual values. With an
elegant, user-friendly interface and a smart search system, you can
quickly find the books that best suit your interests. Additionally,
our special promotions and home delivery services help you save time
and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Join us on a journey of knowledge exploration, passion nurturing, and

personal growth every day!

ebookbell.com