Nature's high tax on luxury of soul!''," Mr. Horace Walpole styles Hogarth a great and original genius; and remarks, that he considers him rather as a writer of comedy with a pencil, than as a painter. "If catching the manners and follies of an age," says he, "living as they rise, if general satire on vices, and ridicule familiarized by strokes of nature, and heightened by wit, and the whole animated by proper and just exexpressions of the passions, be comedy, Hogarth composed comedies as much as Moliere: in his Marriage a-la-Mode, there is even an intrigue carried on through the whole piece. He is more true to character than Congreve; each personage is distinct from the rest; acts in the sphere, and cannot be confounded with any other of the dramatis persona. The Alderman's Foot-boy,' in the last print of the set I have mentioned, is an ignorant rustic; and if wit is struck out from the characters in which it is not expected, it is from their acting conformably to their situation, and from the mode of their passions, not from their having the wit of fine gentlemen. Thus there is wit in the figure of the alderman, who when his daughter is expiring in the agonies of poison, wears a face of solicitude, but it is to save her gold ring, which he is drawing gently from her finger. The thought is parallel to Moliere's, where the miser puts out one of the candles as he is talking. Moliere, inimitable as he has proved, brought a rude theatre to perfection. Hogarth had no model to follow and improve upon : he created his art, and used colours instead of language. His place is between the Italians, whom we may consider as epic poets` and tragedians, and the Flemish painters, who are as writers of farce, and editors of burlesque nature. They are the Tom Browns of the mob. Hogarth resembles Butler, but his subjects are more universal; and amidst all his pleasantry, he observes the true end of comedy-reformation: there is always a moral to his pictures. Sometimes he rose to tragedy, not in the catastrophe of kings and heroes, but in marking how vice conducts insen sibly and incidentally to misery and shame. He warns against encouraging cruelty and idleness in young minds, and discerns how the different vices of the great and the vulgar lead by various paths to the same unhappiness. The fine lady in " Marriage a-la-Mode," and Tom Nero, in the "Four Stages of Cruelty," terminate their story in blood-she occasions the murder of her husbandhe assasinates his mistress. How delicate and superior too is his satire, when he intimates in the college of physicians and surgeons that preside at a dissection, how the legal habitude of viewing shocking scenes, hardens the human mind, and renders it unfeeling. The president maintains the dignity of insensibility over an executed corpse, and considers it but as the object of a lecture. In the print of the Sleeping Judges, this habitual indifference only excites laughter. "It is seldom that his figures do not express the character he intended to give them. When they wanted an illustration that colours could not bestow, collateral circumstances, full of wit, supply notes. The nobleman in Marriage a-la-Mode has a great air—the coronet on his crutches, and his pedigree issuing out of the bowels of William the Conqueror, add his character. In the breakfast, the old steward reflects for the spectator. Sometimes a short label is an epigram, and is never introduced without improving the subject. 'Unfortunately, some circumstances that were temporary, will be lost to posterity, the fate of all comic authors; and if ever an author wanted a commentary, that none of his beauties might be lost, it is Hogarth not from being obscure, (for he never was that but in two or three of his first prints, where transient national follies, as lotteries, free-masonry, and the South-sea, were his topics, but for the use of foreigners, and from a multiplicity of little incidents, not essential to, but always heightening, the principal action, Such is the spider's web extended over the poors-box in a parish-church; the blunders in architecture in the nobleman's seat seen through the window, in the first print of Marriage a-la-Mode; and a thousand in the Strollers dressing in a Barn; which for wit and imagination, without any other end, I think the best of all his works: as for useful and deep satire, that on the methodists is the most sublime. The scenes of Bedlam and the gaming-house, are inimitable representations of our serious follies, or unavoidable woes; and the concern shewn by the lord-mayor, when the companion of his childhed 1 brought before him as a criminal, is a touching picture, and big with humane admonition and reflection." In his private character Hogarth was liberal and hospitable, and a very punctual pay-master; but his manners were unpolished. He was also fond of flattery, and not sufficently inclined to do justice to the merits of others. For the materials of this ac count of him, we have been indebted to Mr. Nichol's "Biographical Anecdotes of William Hogarth," the second edition of which was published in §vo. in 1782; and to Mr. Horace Wal. pole's "Anecdotes of painting in England." In both those works may be found catalogues of Mr. Hogarth's prints, THIS very learned and excellent divine was born in London, on the 23 of October, 1698. His father, Renatus Jortin, was native of Bretagne in France; he came over to England about the year 1687, when the protestants were obliged to quit France, in consequence of the revocation of the edict of Nantes; and was made a gentleman of the privy chamber in 1691, became af terwards secretary to lord Orford, sir George Rook, and sir Cloudesly Shovel; and was cast away with the last, the 22d of October, 1707. His mother was Martha Rogers, of an ancient and respectable family in Bucks, which had produced some clergymen distinguished by their abilities and learning. He was: trained at the Charter-house school, where he made a good proficiency in Greek and Latin: his French he learned at home, and understood and spoke that language well. In May, 1715, he was admitted of Jesus college in Cambridge: and about two years after, was recommended by his tutor, Dr. Thirlby, who was then fond of him, and always retained a friend. ship for him, to make extracts from Eustathius, for the use of Pope's Homer. In an account of this transaction, written by Jortin himself, are the following passages: "I cannot recollect what Mr. Pope allowed for each book of Homer; I have a notion that it was three or four guineas.""I was in some hopes in those days (for I was young) that Mr. Pope would make enqui ry about his coadjutor, and take some civil notice of him. But he did not; and I had no notion of obtruding myself upon him, I never saw his face." Mr. Jortin took a batchelor of arts degree in January 1718-19 and a master's in 1722; he had been chosen fellow of his college soon after the taking of his first degree. This year he distinguished himself by the publication of a few Latin poems, intitled, "Lusus Poetici," which were well received. September, 1723, he entered in deacon's orders, and into priest's the June following. January, 1726-7, he was presented by his college to Swavesey, near Cambridge; but marrying a daughter of Mr. Chibnall, of Newport-pagnell, Bucks, in 1728, he resigned that living, and soon after settled himself in London. In this town he spent the next two-and-thirty years of his life; for though the earl of Winchelsea gave him the living of Eastwell in Kent, where he resided a little time; yet he very soon quitted it, and returned to London. Here for many years he had employment as a preacher in several chapels; with the emoluments of which, and a decent competency of his own, he supported himself and his family in a respectable, though private manner, dividing his leisure hours between his books and his friends, especially those of the Literati, with whom he always kept up a close and inti mate connection. In 1730 he published « Four Sermons on the Truth of the Christian Religion;" the substance of which was afterwards incorporated in a work of his intitled, "Discourses concerning the Truth of the Christian Religion; printed in 1746, in octavo. This is a very valuable work, and contains much good sense and erudition, and many excellent observations. In 1731, he published" Miscellaneous observations upon authors Ancient and Modern," in two volumes, octavo. This is a collection of critical remarks, of which however he was not the sole though principal, author; Pearce, Mason and others, were contributors to it. In 1751, Archbishop Herring gave him, unasked, the living of St. Dunstan in the east, London. This prelate, with whom he had been long acquainted, had entertained an high and affectionate regard for him; had endeavoured aforetime to serve him in many instances, with others; and afterwards, in 1755, conferred upon him the degree of doctor of divinity. This same year, 1751, came out his first volume of "Remarks upon Ecclesiastical History," octavò. This work was inscribed to the earl of Burlington, by whom, as Trustee for the Boylean Lecture, he had through the application of archbishop Herring and bishop Sherlock, been appointed in 1749 to preach that lecture. There is a preface to this volume, of more. than 40 pages, an admirable one indeed; for, besides much learning and ingenuity displayed throughout, it is full of the spirit of liberty and candour. These " Remarks upon ecclesiastical His tory" were continued, in four succeeding volumes, down to the year 1517, when Luther began the work of reformation; two published by himself, in 1752 and 1754; and two after his death, in 1773. པས་སམ In 1755 he published Six Dissertations' upon different subjects," in octavo. The sixth Dissertation is on the state of the Dead, as described by Homer and Virgil; and the remarks in this tending to establish the great antiquity of the doctrine of a fu ture state, interfered with Dr. Warburton, in his "Divine Legation of Moses." This gave rise to a piece which was published against him, under the title of "A Dissertation on the Delicacy of friendship.". This was a very artful, but a very illiberal attack on Dr. Jortin, because he had too much dignity and independence of mind, to compliment Warburton in the indiscriminate and absurd manner that was then become fashionable among his admirers. Jortin made no reply; but in his Adversaria the following memorandum is found, which shews that he did not oppose the notions of other men, from any spirit of envy or oppo. sition, but from a full persuasion that the real matter of fact was as he had represented it. "I have examined," says he, the State of the Dead as "described by Homer and Virgil, and upon that Dissertation I am willing to stake all the little credit that I |