1709-1742.] MARRIAGE A-LA-MODE. 471 gathering of eagles to the slaughter." Amidst projectors, and gamesters, and others of "the sordid train,"-who "stimulate the wild wishes of lavish and wasteful extravagance," are the poet, the architect, the musician-" all. genuine descendants of the daughter of the horse-leech, whose cry is, Give, give." Turn to the fourth plate of "Marriage à-la-mode." The lady Squander is at her public toilette. As her hair is dressed-the most important labour of the day-Farinelli is singing to a flute accompaniment. A fashionable lady is in ecstacy; a country gentleman is asleep. The coxcomb sips his coffee with the vacant indifference that belongs to an exquisite with his hair in papers. The mistress of the mansion, whose plebeian wealth has been wedded to titled poverty, is receiving from a gentleman who is lolling upon a sofa a ticket for the masquerade. The barrister who drew the settlement for the marriage of the lady is thus making arrangements for a very prompt dissolution of the tie. The citizen's daughter is the victim of the lawyer's profligacy. The lawyer passes his sword through the noble husband, and is hanged. The lady takes poison. There are various scenes of this drama before we reach the catastrophe. One scene has been painted with matchless skill. The lady has passed the night in her splendid mansion, amidst a crowd of visitors. She has snatched an hour or two of broken and feverish sleep, and has risen unrefreshed to a late breakfast. The servants have been unable to repair the disorder of the previous night. It is noon, but the candles are still burning; the furniture is disarranged; the floor is strewed with music, and books of games, and overturned chairs. The husband has spent his night from home. The jaded debauchee-his dress disordered, his features pale and fallen, his whole attitude expressive of that * "Peveril of the Peak." 472 THE ELECTION PRINTS. [1709-1742. withering satiety which has drunk the dregs of what is called pleasure, and found nothing but poison in the cup-tells a tale of the ruin which has overwhelmed thousands. Neither the besotted husband nor the careless wife can listen to the silent remonstrances of the old steward, who comes to them with a bundle of unpaid bills, and a file with only one receipt upon it. The uplifted hand and careworn face of the old servant distinctly paint the ruin which he sees approaching in debt and dishonour. The catastrophe, indeed, is more sudden than he expects. If this be the life of fashionable England, we can scarcely be surprised at its "Gin Lane," where the drunken wife lets her infant fall from her arms down an area; and the tumble-down house reveals the spectral sight of a wretch hanging to a beam. The moral is here written in Capital letters, which those who run may read. The moral is not quite so legible, when we look upon that print in which Francis Goodchild, esquire, sheriff of London, is represented as feasting the liverymen of his company. The eager clamour for fresh supplies; the gloating satisfaction of the healthful feeder; the exhausted appetite of the apoplectic gorger-these triumphs of civilisation may yet attest that Hogarth was "not for an age, but for all time" in some of these note-books. The satire of his "election" is of course only local and temporary. There is now no treating allowed. The odious attempt to seduce the incorruptible British patriot by a vulgar feast is proscribed by statute and by custom. No candidate at the head of the table, with "Liberty and Loyalty" for his banner, submits to be whispered to by a fat old hag, whilst a facetious elector knocks their heads together. No haberdasher brings an assortment of ribbons and gloves, and is paid by a promissory note. The wife threatening her husband with vengeance if he refuses the proffered bribe, is necessarily extinct. The attorney knocked off his chair by a brickbat that comes through the window, can no longer apply to the gentle people that some libellers in our day call "roughs." The banner of "no Jews" has gone, with every other proclamation of intolerance. Ignorance is banished 1709-1742.] THE SLEEPING CONGREGATION. 473 and no longer shouts "Give us our eleven days." The print of the Canvass, again, must be quite obsolete in its allusions. The yeoman no longer stands between two rival agents, with his palm open to each. This sturdy Englishman is not Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy. He is not Hercules between Virtue and Pleasure. He is an honest elector, who then did what he thought best for his family. He was tempted, and he yielded. All such temptations are at an end. No man takes guineas in the open street; and we may therefore presume that bribery has ceased to exist. Then, again, no such scenes can take place as in Hogarth's Election-booth, for a registration has been established, and all is fairness and tranquillity. No dying freeholder is brought from his bed to the poll; no idiotic cripple has the name of the Blue candidate shouted in his one ear, and of the Yellow in the other. No counsel are now vociferating for or against the legality of the voter who has lost his hands, taking hold of the Testament with his iron hook. No group of voters now chuckle over a squib which, in addition to its subtle wit, has the picture of one of the candidates on a gallows. Lastly, the solemnity of Chairing has gone out; and perhaps the accompanying generosity of setting free and enlightened non-electors to scramble for sixpences. Hogarth has painted a scene of riot, broken heads, blind fiddlers and dancing bears, which have no exact parallel in our age, and the evils of an Election may therefore be supposed, by some believers in social perfectibility, to have died out with many other political evils, in our more decent times. Hogarth lived at a period when some very signal changes in morals and manners were slowly developing themselves, under influences which were either ridiculed, or regarded as unworthy of notice. The chaotic state of society which he has so truthfully set forth in its most striking examples, must not be received as the whole truth. The essayists, the dramatists, the novelists, the painters, have furnished almost the only materials we possess for estimating the peculiar characteristics of a modern age. But we must not attempt to believe that many of their representations of vice and folly were any other than exceptions to the average amount of decorum and good sense which regulated the intercourse of the higher and middle classes, and of respect for the laws and for public order which, taken as a whole, the labouring class manifested. When we look at the defective state of the municipal administration of the country-the total absence of means for the prevention of crime, except the terror of the barbarous code for its punishment we may almost be surprised that there were not more Gin Lanes, and more Blood-bowl houses. When we regard the comparatively small influence which the Church then exercised upon social evils, we may wonder how the upper classes passed from the corrupt atmosphere of Hogarth's saloons into the more healthful air of the court-life of eighty years ago. A great change had then come over all classes. Hogarth has two prints which he produced out of his keen observation of passing things,— manifestations which he could scarcely be expected to regard with a prophetic or philosophic spirit. "The Sleeping Congregation" of 1736 speaks of the time when the be-wigged preacher droned through his tedious hour, without the slightest attempt to touch the vicious or to rouse the indifferent. The "Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism, a Medley," of 1762, tells that a 474 FANATICISM. [1709-1742 new power had arisen. The chief object is the ridicule of Methodism. Whitefield's Journal and Wesley's Sermons figure by name amongst the accessories of the piece, where the ranting preacher is holding forth to the howling congregation. Pope had described the "harmonic twang" of the donkey's bray "There, Webster, pealed thy voice, and Whitefield thine."* Bishop Lavington had written "The Enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists compared." Hogarth followed the precedent, in all ages, of despising reformers. The followers of George Whitefield and of John Wesley might be ignorant, superstitious, fanatical. They themselves might have indirectly encouraged the delusions of a few of their disciples. But they eventually changed the face of English society. * Dunciad, book ii. |