Hogarth's Works, with life and anecdotal descriptions of his pictures. Volume 1 (of 3)Ireland, John
General
Hogarth's Works, with life and anecdotal descriptions of his pictures. Volume 1 (of 3)
Ireland, John
Hogarth, William, 1697-1764
That balm of a wounded mind,--the recollection of connubial love,
parental joys, and all the nameless tender sympathies which calm
the troubled soul,--in his blank and blotted memory find no place.
Remorse and self-abhorrence rankle in his bosom! his groans, heaved
from the heart, pierce the air! he is chained! rages! gnashes his
teeth, and tears his quivering flesh! At this dreadful crisis he
sees, or seems to see,
"A fiend, in evil moments ever nigh,
Death in her hand, and frenzy in her eye!
Her eye all red, and sunk! A robe she wore,
With life's calamities embroidered o'er.
From me (she cries), pale wretch, thy comfort claim,
Born of Despair, and Suicide my name."
He attempts to take away that life which is become hateful to him; is
prevented, and removed to a cell more dreadful than even a prison:
"Where Misery and Madness hold their court."
But let us for a moment return to the present scene. The wretched,
squalid inmate who is assisting the fainting female, bears every mark
of being naturalized to the place: out of his pocket hangs a scroll,
on which is inscribed, "A scheme to pay the national debt, by J. L.,
now a prisoner in the Fleet." So attentive was this poor gentleman to
the debts of the nation, that he totally forgot his own. The cries of
the child, and the good-natured attentions of the two women, heighten
the interest, and realize the scene. Over the group are a large pair
of wings, with which some emulator of Dedalus intended to escape from
his confinement; but finding them inadequate to the execution of his
project, has placed them upon the tester of his bed. They would not
exalt him to the regions of air, but they o'er-canopy him on earth.
A chemist in the background, happy in his views, watching the moment
of projection, is not to be disturbed from his dream by anything less
than the fall of the roof or the bursting of his retort; and if his
dream affords him felicity, why should he be awakened? The bed and
gridiron, those poor remnants of our miserable spendthrift's wrecked
property, are brought here as necessary in his degraded situation; on
one he must try to repose his wearied frame, on the other he is to
dress his scanty meal.
The grated gate, secured with tenfold bars of iron, reminds us of
Milton's
"Infernal doors, that on their hinges grate
Harsh thunder!"
The principal figure is wonderfully delineated. Every muscle is
marked, every nerve is unstrung; we see into his very soul. The poor
prisoner who is assisting the fainting woman is ill drawn; the group
of which she is the principal figure is unskilfully contrived: it
forms a round heavy mass. The opposite group, though better, is not
pleasing.
PLATE VIII.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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