AN EPISTLE TO WILLIAM HOGARTH. PUBLISHED IN JULY 1763. THE HE preceding satires, however severe, were either of such general or national application as not to involve those personal feelings and their painful consequences which gave a deep interest to this Epistle, by the melancholy effect it took on the health of the mortified victim, who never recovered the blow, although he made more than one convulsive but impotent effort to retort it, and died of a broken heart within two years of its infliction. Hogarth, with many wiser and bettter men, had not counted the cost of going to battle with the bold, bad men then engaged, for their own selfish and profligate purposes, in advocating a cause too good to be ultimately damaged by their advocacy, but at the same time rendering them equally dangerous to their allies as to their opponents. Wilkes, originally deserving all condemnation for the obscene work, which first incurred the animadversion of Government, ingeniously availed himself of the irregular but not unprecedented course pursued by a weak and equally profligate administration on the occasion, to raise a great constitutional question, in which he was vindicated on public grounds alone by the Lords Chatham and Temple, and ultimately established the legality of his resistance to a general warrant of apprehension by the able and upright decision of Lord Camden, in opposition to every counteracting effort on the part of Lord Mansfield. The liberty of the press and of the people thus obtained confirmation and increased security. The remaining period of Wilkes's career is well known; very astutely availing himself of a remnant of his early popularity, he, after some unsuccessful contests for the lucrative office of Chamberlain of the city of London, obtained it in 1790, and subsided into privacy, if not obscurity, until his death in 1797, at the advanced age of seventy. Wilkes was a scholar and a gentleman, and too sagacious to be the dupe of his own professed political opinions; and when reproached with the absurdities of his adherents, he very frankly admitted that, although he was Mr. Wilkes, it did not follow that he was a Wilkite. In later life he called himself an extinguished volcano, or, as some of his Irish friends translated it, an exhausted crater. He lived with Miss Wilkes, his only legitimate child, in very elegant style, alternating between his town house and Sandham Cottage his pleasing villa in the Isle of Wight. One illegitimate daughter, Harriet, survived him; she married Mr. Serjeant Rough, and accompanied him to Demarara, and died there. The Serjeant published a very meagre memoir of Wilkes, prefixed to a selection of his letters to Miss Wilkes from 1774 to 1797, consisting chiefly of domestic matters, and some more objectionable observations never intended for publication, and wholly unfit for it. In the very able Biographical Essay on the Genius and Works of Hogarth, written expressly for the large edition of the genuine works of Hogarth, the following notice is taken of this unnatural schism between poetry and painting "This year was marked by an event that contributed, in no small degree, to embitter the declining days of Hogarth, and perhaps to abridge them. In evil hour he turned aside from subjects of universal and permanent interest to become a political caricaturist, and to embroil himself in all the asperities of party contention, attacking his former friends, Wilkes and Churchill. The plate of the Times' was published in September 1762, and immediately produced a very severe paper upon the artist, written by Wilkes, in No. XVII. of the North Briton. Hogarth retorted by publishing a caricature portrait of the writer. This, however, so far from terminating the contest, served only to call an ally into the field. Churchill, eager to chastise the painter for this personal attack upon his friend, produced his Epistle to William Hogarth.' But although this keen invective is said to have been felt by him less than the North Briton was, he was not at all disposed to let it pass with impunity; therefore, as he had before exhibited Wilkes, by merely heightening the natural obliquity of his countenance, he now exposed the poet in the shape of a bear, affixing the following title to the print: The Bruiser, C. Churchill (once the Rev.) in the character of a Russian Hercules, regaling himself after having killed the monster Caricatura, that so severely galled his virtuous friend, the heaven-born Wilkes.' These contentions, which were carried on with so little credit or honour to any party, produced much irritation to Hogarth; his health visibly declined; and towards the end of 1762 he was affected with some internal disorder that brought on a general decay. During the last year of his life he retouched many of his plates, in which he was assisted by several engravers; and but a few months previous to his death, as if conscious of its approach, and desirous of terminating his labours with an appropriate subject, he executed his " Finis,” or an allegorical representation of the end of all things. On the 25th October 1764 he was removed from his villa at Chiswick to his house in Leicester Square, and on the same night expired in the arms of his wife. His remains were interred in Chiswick churchyard, where a monument is erected to his memory. The following epitaph on Hogarth is from the pen of Dr. Johnson, but was not inscribed upon his tomb : "The hand of him here torpid lies That drew the essential form of grace; That saw the manners in the face!" The poet's vindication of his motive will be found in the following statement, written by Mr. Wilkes, being one of the very few notes he had prepared for his intended edition of his friend Churchill's poems; they are only six in number, and were printed in an appendix to the folio edition of the North Briton, 1769, and also in the third volume of the smaller edition, as "Notes on a few passages of the late Mr. Churchill's works." The others will be given in their proper places, "The Scottish minister had been attacked in a variety of political papers; the North Briton in particular waged open war with him. Some of the numbers had been ascribed to Mr. Wilkes, others to Mr. Churchill and Mr. Lloyd. Mr. Hogarth had for several years lived on terms of friendship if not of intimacy with Mr. Wilkes. As the Buckinghamshire regiment of militia, which this gentleman had the honour of commanding, had been for some months at Winchester, guarding the French prisoners, the Colonel was there on that duty. A friend wrote to him, that Mr. Hogarth intended soon to publish a political print of the Times, in which Mr. Pitt, Lord Temple, Mr. Churchill, and himself, were held out to the public as objects of ridicule. Mr. Wilkes, on this notice, remonstrated by two of their common friends to Mr. Hogarth, that such a proceeding would not only be unfriendly in the highest degree, but extremely injudicious; for such a pencil ought to be universal and moral, to speak to all ages and all nations, not to be dipped in the dirt of the faction of a day, of an insignificant part of the country, when it might command the admiration of the whole. An answer was sent, that neither Mr. Wilkes nor Mr. Churchill was attacked in the Times, though Lord Temple and Mr. Pitt were, and that the print would soon appear. A second message soon after told Mr. Hogarth that Mr. Wilkes would never think it worth his while to take notice of any reflexions on himself; but when his friends were attacked, he found himself wounded in the most sensible part, and would as well as he could revenge their cause; adding, that if he thought the North Briton would insert what he should send, he would make an appeal to the public on the very Saturday following the publication of the print. The Times soon after appeared, and on the Saturday following No. XVII. of the North Briton. If Mr. Wilkes did write that paper, he kept his word better with Mr. Hogarth than the painter had done with him. "When Mr. Wilkes was the second time brought from the Tower to Westminster Hall, Mr. Hogarth skulked behind in a corner of the gallery of the court of Common Pleas; and while the Lord Chief Justice Pratt, with the eloquence and courage of old Rome, was enforcing the great principles of Magna Charta and the English constitution; while every breast from his caught the holy flame of liberty, the painter was employed in caricaturing the person of the man, while all the rest of his fellow-citizens were animated in his cause; for they knew it to be their own cause, of their country, and of its laws. It was declared to be so a few hours after by the unanimous sentence of the judges of that court; and they were all present. The print of Mr. Wilkes was soon after published, drawn from the life by William Hogarth. It must be allowed to be an excellent compound caricatura, or a caricatura of what nature had already caricatured. I know but one short apology to be made for this gentleman, or, to speak more properly, for the person of Mr. Wilkes; it is, that he did not make himself, and that he never was solicitous about the case of his soul (as Shakespeare calls it) only so far as to keep it clean and in health. I never heard that he once hung over the glassy stream, like another Narcissus, admiring the image in it, nor that he ever stole an amorous look at his counterfeit in a side mirror. His form, such as it is, ought to give him no pain, while it is capable of giving so much pleasure to others. I believe he finds himself tolerably happy in the clay cottage to which he is tenant for life, because he has learned to keep it in pretty good order; while the share of health and animal spirits which Heaven has given him shall hold out, I can scarcely imagine he will be one moment peevish about the outside of so precarious, so temporary a habitation, or will ever be brought to own, Ingenium Galbæ male habitat:" "Monsieur est mal logé.” Garrick, in a letter to Colman dated 10 July 1763, notices the publication of this poem thus: "Let me know how the town speaks of our friend Churchill's Epistle; it is the most bloody performance that has been published in my time. I am very desirous to know the opinion of people; for I am much, very much hurt at it; his description of his age and infirmities is surely too shocking and barbarous. Is Hogarth really ill, or does he meditate revenge? Every article of news about these matters will be most agreeable to me; pray write me a heap of stuff, for I cannot be easy till I know all about Churchill, Hogarth, &c." The motto to No. XVII. of the North Briton was, Its proper power to hurt each creature feels, |