The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 382, July 25, 1829 by Various
page 19 of 53 (35%)
page 19 of 53 (35%)
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third edition is ready. Mrs. Hogarth, when questioned concerning it,
said, that she remembered the affair well; her husband began the picture--and finished it--one evening in his own house, and sitting by her side. "Captain Coram, the projector of the Foundling Hospital, sat for his portrait to Hogarth, and it is one of the best he ever painted. There is a natural dignity and great benevolence expressed in a face which, in the original, was rough and forbidding. This worthy man, having laid out his fortune and impaired his health in acts of charity and mercy, was reduced to poverty in his old age. An annuity of a hundred pounds was privately purchased, and when it was presented to him, he said, 'I did not waste the wealth which I possessed in self-indulgence or vain expense, and am not ashamed to own that in my old age I am poor.' "The last which I shall notice of this class of productions, is the portrait of the celebrated demagogue John Wilkes. This singular performance originated in a quarrel with that witty libertine, and his associate Churchill the poet: it immediately followed an article, from the pen of Wilkes, in the North Briton, which insulted Hogarth as a man, and traduced him as an artist. It is so little of a caricature, that Wilkes good humouredly observes somewhere in his correspondence, 'I am growing every day more and more like my portrait by Hogarth.' The terrible scourge of the satirist fell bitterly upon the personal and moral deformities of the man. Compared with his chastisement the hangman's whip is but a proverb, and the pillory a post of honour. He might hope oblivion from the infamy of both; but from Hogarth there was no escape. It was little indeed that the artist had to do, to brand and emblazon him with the vices of his nature--but with how much discrimination that little is done! He took up the correct portrait, |
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