Yet hold me not for ever in thine East: How can my nature longer mix with thine? Coldly thy rosy shadows bathe me, cold Are all thy lights, and cold my wrinkled feet Upon thy glimmering thresholds, when the steam Floats up from those dim fields about the homes Of happy men that have the power to die, And grassy barrows of the happier dead. Release me, and restore me to the ground; Thou seëst all things, thou wilt see my grave: Thou wilt renew thy beauty morn by morn; I earth in earth forget these empty courts, And thee returning on thy silver wheels. ALFRED TENNYSON. William Hogarth: PAINTER, ENGRAVER, AND PHILOSOPHER. _Essays on the Man, the Work, and the Time._ I.--LITTLE BOY HOGARTH. “The Life and Adventures of William Hogarth,”--that would be a taking title, indeed! To do for the great painter of manners that which Mr. Forster has done for their great describer, would be a captivating task; and, successfully accomplished, might entitle a man to wear some little sprig of laurel in his cap, and rest, thenceforth, on his oars. It is not my fortune to have the means of writing such a book; and, for many reasons, this performance must be limited to a series of Essays upon the genius and character of the MAN Hogarth; upon the WORK he was permitted, by a healthful, sanguine constitution and by great powers of will and self-reliance backboning an unflagging industry, to get through in his appointed span here below; and upon the curious quaint TIME in which he lived and did his work. Hogarth’s life, away from his works and times, would be but a barren theme. Those old Italian painting men had strange adventures and vicissitudes. Rafaelle’s life was one brief glorious romance. Leonardo had a king’s arms to die in. Buonarotti lived amidst battles and sieges, and held flouting matches with popes. Titian’s pencil was picked up by an emperor. The Germans and Dutchmen, even, were picturesque and eventful in their careers. Was not Rubens an ambassador? Are there not mysterious dealings between Rembrandt and the Jews that have not yet been fathomed? Did not Peter de Laar kill a monk? But in what manner is the historian to extract exciting elements from the history of a chubby little man in a cocked hat and scarlet roque-laure, who lived at the sign of the “Painter’s Head” in Leicester Fields, and died in his bed there in competence and honour; who was the son of a schoolmaster in the Old Bailey, and the descendant of a long line of north country yeomen, of whom the prime progenitor is presumed to have kept pigs and to have gone by the rude name of “Hogherd”--whence Hogard and Hogart, at last liquefied into Hogarth? Benvenuto Cellini worked for the silversmiths, but at least he had poniarded his man and lain for his sins in the dungeons of St. Angelo; our Hogarth was a plain silversmith’s apprentice, in Cranbourn Alley.