Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 8.djvu/89

WILLIAM HOGARTH 249 rough as it is, won for them an extensive popularity and a rapid and continued sale. The " Harlot's Progress" was the most eminently successful, from its nov- elty rather than from its superior excellence. Twelve hundred subscribers' names were entered for it ; it was dramatized in several forms ; and we may note, in illustration of the difference of past and present manners, that fan- mounts were engraved containing miniature copies of the six plates. The mer- its of the pictures were less obvious to the few who could afford to spend large sums on works of art, and Hogarth, too proud to let them go for prices much below the value which he put upon them, waited for a long time, and waited in vain, for a purchaser. At last he determined to commit them to public sale; hut instead of the common method of auction, he devised a new and complex plan with the intention of excluding picture-dealers, and obliging men of rank and wealth who wished to purchase to judge and bid for themselves. The scheme failed, as might have been expected. Nineteen of Hogarth's best pict- ures, the " Harlot's Progress," the " Rake's Progress," the " Four Times of the Day," and "Strolling Actresses Dressing in a Barn" produced only £427 7s., not averaging £22 10s. each. The "Harlot's Progress" was purchased by Mr. Beckford at the rate of fourteen guineas a picture ; five of the series perished in the fire at Fonthill. The " Rake's Progress" averaged twenty-two guineas a pict- ure ; it has passed into the possession of Sir John Soane, at the advanced price of five hundred and seventy guineas. The same eminent architect became the proprietor of the four pictures of an "Election" for the sum of ,£1,732. " Mar- riage a la Mode " was disposed of in a similar way in 1 750 ; and on the day of the sale one bidder appeared, who became master of the six pictures, together with their frames, for £115 10s. Mr. Angerstein purchased them, in 1797, for £1,381, and they now form a striking feature in the National Gallery. The satire of Hogarth was not often of a personal nature ; but he knew his own power, and he sometimes exercised it. Two of his prints, "The Times," pro- duced a memorable quarrel between himself, on one side, and Wilkes and Church- hill, on the other. The satire of the prints of " The Times," which were published in 1 762, was directed, not against Wilkes himself, but his political friends, Pitt and Temple ; nor is it so biting as to have required Wilkes, in defence of his party, to retaliate upon one with whom he had lived in familiar and friendly in- tercourse. He did so, however, in a number of the North Briton, containing not only abuse of the artist, but unjust and injurious mention of his wife. Ho- garth was deeply wounded by this attack ; he retorted by the well-known por- trait of Wilkes with the cap of liberty, and he afterward represented Churchill as a bear. The quarrel was unworthy the talents either of the painter or poet. It is more to be regretted because its effects, as he himself intimates, were injurious to Hogarth's declining health. The summer of 1764 he spent at Chiswick, and the free air and exercise worked a partial renovation of his strength. The amend- ment, however, was but temporary, and he died suddenly, October 26th, the day after his return to his London residence in Leicester .Square.