The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings | Page 7

various professions, supposed to be here
offering their interested services. The foremost figure is readily known
to be a dancing-master; behind him are two men, who at the time when
these prints were first published, were noted for teaching the arts of
defence by different weapons, and who are here drawn from the life;
one of whom is a Frenchman, teacher of the small-sword, making a
thrust with his foil; the other an Englishman, master of the quarter-staff;
the vivacity of the first, and the cold contempt visible in the face of the
second, beautifully describe the natural disposition of the two nations.
On the left of the latter stands an improver of gardens, drawn also from

the life, offering a plan for that purpose. A taste for gardening, carried
to excess, must be acknowledged to have been the ruin of numbers, it
being a passion that is seldom, if ever, satisfied, and attended with the
greatest expense. In the chair sits a professor of music, at the
harpsichord, running over the keys, waiting to give his pupil a lesson;
behind whose chair hangs a list of the presents, one Farinelli, an Italian
singer, received the next day after his first performance at the Opera
House; amongst which, there is notice taken of one, which he received
from the hero of our piece, thus: "A gold snuff-box, chased, with the
story of Orpheus charming the brutes, by J. Rakewell, esq." By these
mementos of extravagance and pride, (for gifts of this kind proceed
oftener from ostentation than generosity,) and by the engraved
frontispiece to a poem, dedicated to our fashionable spendthrift, lying
on the floor, which represents the ladies of Britain sacrificing their
hearts to the idol Farinelli, crying out, with the greatest earnestness,
"one G--d, one Farinelli," we are given to understand the prevailing
dissipation and luxury of the times. Near the principal figure in this
plate is that of him, with one hand on his breast, the other on his sword,
whom we may easily discover to be a bravo; he is represented as
having brought a letter of recommendation, as one disposed to
undertake all sorts of service. This character is rather Italian than
English; but is here introduced to fill up the list of persons at that time
too often engaged in the service of the votaries of extravagance and
fashion. Our author would have it imagined in the interval between the
first scene and this, that the young man whose history he is painting,
had now given himself up to every fashionable extravagance; and
among others, he had imbibed a taste for cock-fighting and
horse-racing; two amusements, which, at that time, the man of fashion
could not dispense with. This is evident, from his rider bringing in a
silver punch-bowl, which one of his horses is supposed to have won,
and his saloon being ridiculously ornamented with the portraits of
celebrated cocks. The figures in the back part of this plate represent
tailors, peruke-makers, milliners, and such other persons as generally
fill the antichamber of a man of quality, except one, who is supposed to
be a poet, and has written some panegyric on the person whose levee he
attends, and who waits for that approbation he already vainly
anticipates. Upon the whole, the general tenor of this scene is to teach

us, that the man of fashion is too often exposed to the rapacity of his
fellow creatures, and is commonly a dupe to the more knowing part of
the world.
"How exactly," says Mr. Ireland, "does Bramston describe the character
in his Man of Taste:--
'Without Italian, and without an ear, To Bononcini's music I adhere.----
To boon companions I my time would give, With players, pimps, and
parasites I'd live; I would with jockeys from Newmarket dine, And to
rough riders give my choicest wine. My evenings all I would with
sharpers spend, And make the thief-taker my bosom friend; In Figg, the
prize-fighter, by day delight, And sup with Colley Cibber every night.'
"Of the expression in this print, we cannot speak more highly than it
deserves. Every character is marked with its proper and discriminative
stamp. It has been said by a very judicious critic (the Rev. Mr. Gilpin)
from whom it is not easy to differ without being wrong, that the hero of
this history, in the first plate of the series, is unmeaning, and in the
second ungraceful. The fact is admitted; but, for so delineating him, the
author is entitled to our praise, rather than our censure. Rakewell's
whole conduct proves he was a fool, and at that time he had not learned
how to perform an artificial character; he therefore looks as he is,
unmeaning, and uninformed. But in the second plate he is
ungraceful.--Granted. The ill-educated son