Nothing of the detail is softened or abated; the whole is
acted out _coram populo_, with the hard, uncompassionate morality of the
age the painter lived in, while the introduction here and there of one
or two well-known characters such as Colonel Charteris and Justice
Gonson give a vivid reality to the satire. It had an immediate success.
To say nothing of the fact that the talent of the paintings completely
reconciled Sir James Thornhill to the son-in-law he had hitherto refused
to acknowledge, more than twelve hundred names of subscribers to the
engravings were entered in the artist's book. On the appearance of plate
iii. the lords of the treasury trooped to the print shop for Sir John
Gonson's portrait which it contained. The story was made into a
pantomime by Theophilus Cibber, and by some one else into a ballad
opera; and it gave rise to numerous pamphlets and poems. It was painted
on fan-mounts and transferred to cups and saucers. Lastly, it was freely
pirated. There could be no surer testimony to its popularity.
From the MSS. of George Vertue in the British Museum (Add. MSS.
23069-98) it seems that during the progress of the plates, Hogarth was
domiciled with his father-in-law, Sir James Thornhill, in the Middle
Piazza, Covent Garden (the "second house eastward from James Street"),
and it must have been thence that set out the historical expedition from
London to Sheerness of which the original record still exists at the
British Museum. This is an oblong MS. volume entitled _An Account of
what seem'd most Remarkable in the Five Days' Peregrination of the Five
Following Persons, vizt., Messieurs Tothall, Scott, Hogarth, Thornhill
and Forrest. Begun on Saturday May 27th 1732 and Finish'd On the 31st of
the Same Month. Abi tu et fac similiter. Inscription on Dulwich College
Porch_. The journal, which is written by Ebenezer, the father of
Garrick's friend Theodosius Forrest, gives a good idea of what a
"frisk"--as Johnson called it--was in those days, while the
illustrations were by Hogarth and Samuel Scott the landscape painter.
John Thornhill, Sir James's son, made the map. This version (in prose)
was subsequently run into rhyme by one of Hogarth's friends, the Rev.
Wm. Gostling of Canterbury, and after the artist's death both versions
were published. In the absence of other biographical detail, they are of
considerable interest to the student of Hogarth. In 1733 Hogarth moved
into the "Golden Head" in Leicester Fields, which, with occasional
absences at Chiswick, he continued to occupy until his death. By
December of this year he was already engaged upon the engravings of a
second Progress, that of a Rake. It was not as successful as its
predecessor. It was in eight plates in lieu of six. The story is
unequal; but there is nothing finer than the figure of the desperate
hero in the Covent Garden gaming-house, or the admirable scenes in the
Fleet prison and Bedlam, where at last his headlong career comes to its
tragic termination.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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