1763. admirer could not under better circumstances have seen Æt. 35. William Hogarth. He might see, in that little incident, his interest in homely life, his preference of the real in art, and his quick apprehension of character; his love of hard hitting, and his indomitable English spirit. The admirer, who, at the close of his own chequered life, thus remembered and related it, was James Barry of Cork; who had followed Mr. Edmund Burke to London with letters from Doctor Sleigh, and whose birth, genius, and poverty soon made him known to Goldsmith. Between Goldsmith and Hogarth existed many reasons for sympathy. Few so sure as the great, self-taught, philosophic artist, to penetrate at once, through any outer husk of disadvantage, to discernment of an honest and loving soul. Genius, in both, took side with the homely and the poor; and they had personal foibles in common. No man can be supposed to have read the letters in the Public Ledger with heartier agreement than Hogarth; no man so little likely as Goldsmith to suffer a sky-blue coat, or conceited, strutting, consequential airs, to weigh against the claims of the painter of Mariage à-la-Mode. How they first met has not been related, but they met frequently. In these last two years of Hogarth's life, admiration had become precious to him; and Goldsmith was ready with his tribute. Besides, there was Wilkes to rail against, and Churchill to condemn, as well as Johnson to praise and love. "I'll tell you what," would Hogarth say: "Sam Johnson's conversation is to the talk of "other men like Titian's painting compared to Hudson's : "but don't you tell people, now, that I say so; for the "connoisseurs and I are at war, you know; and because I "hate them, they think I hate Titian-and let them!"* * Mrs. Piozzi's Anecdotes, 136. "Many were the lectures," adds the lively little lady, "I used to have in my very early days from dear Mr. Hogarth, whose regard 1763. Goldsmith and the connoisseurs were at war, too; and this would help to make more agreeable that frequent intercourse Æt. 35. of which Hogarth has himself left the only memorial. A portrait in oil, representing an elderly lady in satin with an open book before her, known by the name of "Goldsmith's Hostess," and so exhibited in London several years back,* is the work of his pencil. It involves no great stretch of fancy to suppose it painted in the Islington lodgings, at some crisis of domestic pressure. Newbery's accounts reveal to us how often it was needful to mitigate Mrs. Fleming's impatience, to moderate her wrath, and, when money was not immediately at hand, to minister to her vanities. For Newbery was a strict accountant, and kept sharply within the terms of his bargains; exacting notes of hand at each quarterly settlement for whatever the balance might be, and objecting to add to it by new payments when it happened to be large. It is but to imagine a visit from Hogarth at such time. If his good nature wanted any stimulus, the thought of Newbery would give it. He had himself an old grudge against the booksellers. He charges them in his autobiography with "cruel treatment" of his father, and dilates on the bitterness they add to the necessity of earning bread by the pen. But, though the copyrights of his prints were a source of certain and not inconsiderable income, his money at command was scanty; and it would better suit his generous good-humour, as well as better serve "for my father induced him perhaps to take notice of his little girl, and give her some odd particular directions about dress, dancing, and many other matters, "interesting now only because they were his. As he made all his talents, however, subservient to the great purposes of morality, and the earnest desire he "had to mend mankind, his discourse commonly ended in an ethical dissertation, "and a serious charge to me never to forget his picture of the Lady's last Stake." * In the 1832 exhibition of the works of deceased British artists. It then belonged to Mr. Graves, in whose family it had been for many years, always bearing the name of Goldsmith's hostess. Prior, i. 461. 1763. his friend, to bring his easel in his coach some day, and Et. 35. enthrone Mrs. Fleming by the side of it. So may the portrait have been painted; and much laughter there would be in its progress, I do not doubt, at the very different sort of sitters and subjects whose coronetted-coaches were crowding the west side of Leicester-square. The good-humour of Reynolds was a different thing from that of Hogarth. It had no antagonism about it. Ill-humour with any other part of the world had nothing to do with it. It was gracious and diffused; singling out some, it might be, for special warmth, but smiling blandly upon all. He was eminently the gentleman of his time; and if there is a hidden charm in his portraits, it is that. His own nature pervades them, and shines out from them still. He was now forty years old, being younger than Hogarth by a quarter of a century; was already in the receipt of nearly six thousand pounds a year; and had known nothing but uninterrupted prosperity. He had moved from St. Martin's-lane into Newport-street, and from Newport-street into Leicestersquare; he had raised his prices from five, ten, and twenty guineas (his earliest charge for the three sizes of portraits), successively to ten, twenty, and forty, to twelve, twenty-four and forty-eight, to fifteen, thirty, and sixty, to twenty, forty, and eighty, and to twenty-five, fifty, and a hundred, the sums he now charged; he had lately built a gallery for his works; and he had set up a gay gilt coach, with the four seasons painted on its panels.* Yet, of those to whom the * See Farington's Memoirs in the Works, i. clxii, and the Life by Beechey, i. 124-5, 139-40. He greatly advanced his prices in later days. Mr. Croker states, in a note to his last edition of Boswell (113): "I have been informed by Sir "Thomas Lawrence, his admirer and rival, that in 1787 his prices were two "hundred guineas for the whole-length, one hundred for the half-length, seventy "for the kit-cat, and fifty for what is called the three-quarters. But even on "these prices some increase must have been made, as Horace Walpole said, 'Sir 'Joshua, in his old age, becomes avaricious. He had one thousand guineas man was really known, it may be doubted if there was one who grudged him a good fortune, which was worn with worn with generosity and grace, and justified by noble qualities; while few indeed should have been the exceptions, whether among those who knew or those who knew him not, to the feeling of pride that an Englishman had at last arisen, who could measure himself successfully with the Dutch and the Italian.* This was what Reynolds had striven for; and what common men might suppose to be his envy or self-sufficiency. Not with any sense of triumph over living competitors, did he listen to the praise he loved; not of being better than Hogarth, or than Gainsborough, or than his old master Hudson, was he thinking continually, but of the glory of being one day placed by the side of Vandyke and of Rubens. Undoubtedly he must be said to have overrated the effects of education, study, and the practice of schools; and it is matter of much regret that he should never have thought of Hogarth but as a moral satirist and man of wit, or sought for his favourite art the dignity of a closer alliance with such philosophy and genius. But the difficult temper of Hogarth himself cannot be kept out of view. His very virtues had a stubbornness and a dogmatism that repelled. What Reynolds most desired,―to bring men of their common calling together, and, by consent and union, by study and co-operation, establish claims to respect and continuance,-Hogarth had been all his life opposing; and was now, at the close of "for my picture of the three ladies Waldegrave.' Walpoliana." This latter picture contained half-lengths of the three ladies on one canvas. For curious lists of his prices, see Malone's Account of Reynolds, in the Works, i. lxii-lxxi, and Northcote, ii. 347-56. * "I remember once going through a suite of rooms where they were showing me "several fine Vandykes; and we came to one where there were some children, by "Sir Joshua, seen through a door: it was like looking at the reality, they were "so full of life; the branches of the trees waved over their heads, and the fresh "air seemed to play on their cheeks-I soon forgot Vandyke!" Conversations of Northcote, 163, 164. 1763. Et. 35. 1763. life, standing of his own free choice apart and alone. Study Et. 35. the great works of the great masters for ever, said Reynolds: There is only one school, cried Hogarth, and that is kept by Nature. What was uttered on the one side of Leicestersquare, was pretty sure to be contradicted on the other; and neither would make the advance which might have reconciled the views of both. Be it remembered, at the same time, that Hogarth, in the daring confidence of his more astonishing genius, kept himself at the farthest extreme. “Talk of sense, and study, and all that," he said to Walpole, “why, "it is owing to the good sense of the English that they have "not painted better. The people who have studied painting "least are the best judges of it. There's Reynolds, who "certainly has genius; why but t'other day he offered a "hundred pounds for a picture that I would not hang in 66 66 my cellar."* Reynolds might have some excuse if he turned from this with a smile, and a supposed confirmation of his error that the critic was himself no painter. Thus these great men lived separate to the last. The only feeling they shared in common may have been that kindness to Oliver Goldsmith, which, after their respective fashion, each manifested well. The one, with his ready help and robust example, would have strengthened him for life, as for a solitary warfare which awaited every man of genius; the other, more gently, would have drawn him from contests and solitude, from discontents and low esteem, to the sense that worldly consideration and social respect might gladden even literary toil. While Hogarth was propitiating and painting Mrs. Fleming, Reynolds was founding the Literary Club. *The whole dialogue from which these expressions are taken will be found in the Coll. Lett. iv, 141. |