life was to be spent, varied by visits in later years to the villa which he then acquired at Chiswick. He is now fairly facing his life work, and a brief survey of this is all we can hope to attempt in the limits of this chapter.

   I have already mentioned "The Harlot's Progress," and its immediate successor, "The Rake's Progress," the subjects of which speak for themselves. The country maiden's arrival in London, the breakfast scene with her Jewish admirer, and the scene in Bridewell are to be noted among the prints of the first Series; but all are full of character and interest. In "The Rake's Progress" the second plate introduces us to a side of Hogarth's

   talent which he was to develop later on more fully in his

    "Marriage à la Mode"

   —namely, his satire of eighteenth-century life of fashion.

   The awkward youth who in the plate before had come into his fortune is now in the full of its enjoyment: become a fine gentleman, he holds his morning

    levée

   of those numerous parasites who minister to his vanity or pleasure. The foreign element (which Hogarth in his heart detested) is here to the front in the figure of the French dancing-master, trying a new step, with the fiddle in his hand; behind him the

    maître d'armes

   , Dubois, is making a lunge with his

    epée de combat

   , while Figg, a noted English prize-fighter, watches his movements with an expression of contempt. Another portrait is Bridgman, a well-known landscape gardener of the time, who is proposing to our young hero some scheme for his estate; while the seated and periwigged figure who runs his fingers over the harpsichord has been suggested as that of the great composer Handel. But when we start forth to knock down the watch, "beat the rounds," intrigue with the fair, and generally keep up the character of a young blood or "macaroni," a little timely assistance is often welcome; and is

   here proffered (with hope of due remuneration) by the 

 Prev. P 12/51 next