The first collected edition of Hoffmann’s works appeared in ten volumes (Ausgewählte Schriften, 1827-1828); to these his widow added five volumes in 1839 (including the 3rd edition of J. E. Hitzig’sAus Hoffmanns Leben und Nachlass, 1823). Other editions of his works appeared in 1844-1845, 1871-1873, 1879-1883, and, most complete of all,Sämtliche Werke, edited by E. Grisebach, in 15 vols. (1900). There are many editions of selections, as well as cheap reprints of the more popular stories. All Hoffmann’s important works—exceptKlein ZachesandKater Murr—have been translated into English:The Devil’s Elixir(1824),The Golden Potby Carlyle (inGerman Romance, 1827),The Serapion Brethrenby A. Ewing (1886-1892), &c. In France Hoffmann was even more popular than in England. Cp. G. Thurau,Hoffmanns Erzählungen in Frankreich(1896). An edition of hisŒuvres complètesappeared in 12 vols. in Paris in 1830. The best monograph on Hoffmann is by G. Ellinger,E. T. A. Hoffmann(1894); see also O. Klinke,Hoffmanns Leben und Werke vom Standpunkte eines Irrenarztes(1903); and the exhaustive bibliography in Goedeke’sGrundriss zur Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung, 2nd ed., vol. viii. pp. 468 ff. (1905).
The first collected edition of Hoffmann’s works appeared in ten volumes (Ausgewählte Schriften, 1827-1828); to these his widow added five volumes in 1839 (including the 3rd edition of J. E. Hitzig’sAus Hoffmanns Leben und Nachlass, 1823). Other editions of his works appeared in 1844-1845, 1871-1873, 1879-1883, and, most complete of all,Sämtliche Werke, edited by E. Grisebach, in 15 vols. (1900). There are many editions of selections, as well as cheap reprints of the more popular stories. All Hoffmann’s important works—exceptKlein ZachesandKater Murr—have been translated into English:The Devil’s Elixir(1824),The Golden Potby Carlyle (inGerman Romance, 1827),The Serapion Brethrenby A. Ewing (1886-1892), &c. In France Hoffmann was even more popular than in England. Cp. G. Thurau,Hoffmanns Erzählungen in Frankreich(1896). An edition of hisŒuvres complètesappeared in 12 vols. in Paris in 1830. The best monograph on Hoffmann is by G. Ellinger,E. T. A. Hoffmann(1894); see also O. Klinke,Hoffmanns Leben und Werke vom Standpunkte eines Irrenarztes(1903); and the exhaustive bibliography in Goedeke’sGrundriss zur Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung, 2nd ed., vol. viii. pp. 468 ff. (1905).
(J. G. R.)
HOFFMANN, FRANÇOIS BENOÎT(1760-1828), French dramatist and critic, was born at Nancy on the 11th of July 1760. He studied law at the university of Strassburg, but a slight hesitation in his speech precluded success at the bar, and he entered a regiment on service in Corsica. He served, however, for a very short time, and, returning to Nancy, he wrote some poems which brought him into notice at the little court of Lunéville over which the marquise de Boufflers then presided. In 1784 he went to Paris, and two years later produced the operaPhèdre. His operaAdrien(1792) was objected to by the government on political grounds, and Hoffmann, who refused to make the changes proposed to him, ran considerable risk under the revolutionary government. His later operas, which were numerous, were produced at the Opéra Comique. In 1807 he was invited by Étienne to contribute to theJournal de l’Empire(afterwards theJournal des débats). Hoffmann’s wide reading qualified him to write on all sorts of subjects, and he turned, apparently with no difficulty, from reviewing books on medicine to violent attacks on the Jesuits. His severe criticism of Chateaubriand’sMartyrsled the author to make some changes in a later edition. He had the reputation of being an absolutely conscientious and incorruptible critic and thus exercised wide influence. Hoffmann died in Paris on the 25th of April 1828. Among his numerous plays should be mentioned an excellent one-act comedy,Le Roman d’une heure(1803), and an amusing one-act operaLes Rendez-vous bourgeois.
See Sainte-Beuve, “M. de Feletz et la critique littéraire sous l’Empire” inCauseries du lundi, vol. i.
See Sainte-Beuve, “M. de Feletz et la critique littéraire sous l’Empire” inCauseries du lundi, vol. i.
HOFFMANN, FRIEDRICH(1660-1742), German physician, a member of a family that had been connected with medicine for 200 years before him, was born at Halle on the 19th of February 1660. At the gymnasium of his native town he acquired that taste for and skill in mathematics to which he attributed much of his after success. At the age of eighteen he went to study medicine at Jena, whence in 1680 he passed to Erfurt, in order to attend Kasper Cramer’s lectures on chemistry. Next year, returning to Jena, he received his doctor’s diploma, and, after publishing a thesis, was permitted toteach. Constant study then began to tell on his health, and in 1682, leaving his already numerous pupils, he proceeded to Minden in Westphalia to recruit himself, at the request of a relative who held a high position in that town. After practising at Minden for two years, Hoffmann made a journey to Holland and England, where he formed the acquaintance of many illustrious chemists and physicians. Towards the end of 1684 he returned to Minden, and during the next three years he received many flattering appointments. In 1688 he removed to the more promising sphere of Halberstadt, with the title of physician to the principality of Halberstadt; and on the founding of Halle university in 1693, his reputation, which had been steadily increasing, procured for him the primarius chair of medicine, while at the same time he was charged with the responsible duty of framing the statutes for the new medical faculty. He filled also the chair of natural philosophy. With the exception of four years (1708-1712), which he passed at Berlin in the capacity of royal physician, Hoffmann spent the rest of his life at Halle in instruction, practice and study, interrupted now and again by visits to different courts of Germany, where his services procured him honours and rewards. His fame became European. He was enrolled a member of many learned societies in different foreign countries, while in his own he became privy councillor. He died at Halle on the 12th of November 1742.
Of his numerous writings a catalogue is to be found in Haller’sBibliotheca medicinae practicae. The chief isMedicina rationalis systematica, undertaken at the age of sixty, and published in 1730. It was translated into French in 1739, under the title ofMédecine raisonnée d’Hoffmann. A complete edition of Hoffmann’s works, with a life of the author, was published at Geneva in 1740, to which supplements were added in 1753 and 1760. Editions appeared also at Venice in 1745 and at Naples in 1753 and 1793. (See alsoMedicine.)
Of his numerous writings a catalogue is to be found in Haller’sBibliotheca medicinae practicae. The chief isMedicina rationalis systematica, undertaken at the age of sixty, and published in 1730. It was translated into French in 1739, under the title ofMédecine raisonnée d’Hoffmann. A complete edition of Hoffmann’s works, with a life of the author, was published at Geneva in 1740, to which supplements were added in 1753 and 1760. Editions appeared also at Venice in 1745 and at Naples in 1753 and 1793. (See alsoMedicine.)
HOFFMANN, JOHANN JOSEPH(1805-1878), German scholar, was born at Würzburg on the 16th of February 1805. After studying at Würzburg he went on the stage in 1825; but owing to an accidental meeting with the German traveller, Dr Philipp Franz von Siebold (1796-1866), in July 1830, his interest was diverted to Oriental philology. From Siebold he acquired the rudiments of Japanese, and in order to take advantage of the instructions of Ko-ching-chang, a Chinese teacher whom Siebold had brought home with him, he made himself acquainted with Malay, the only language except Chinese which the Chinaman could understand. In a few years he was able to supply the translations for Siebold’sNippon; and the high character of his work soon attracted the attention of older scholars. Stanislas Julien invited him to Paris; and he would probably have accepted the invitation, as a disagreement had broken out between him and Siebold, had not M. Baud, the Dutch colonial minister, appointed him Japanese translator with a salary of 1800 florins (£150). The Dutch authorities were slow in giving him further recognition; and he was too modest a man successfully to urge his claims. It was not till after he had received the offer of the professorship of Chinese in King’s College, London, that the authorities made him professor at Leiden and the king allowed him a yearly pension. In 1875 he was decorated with the order of the Netherlands Lion, and in 1877 he was elected corresponding member of the Berlin Academy. He died at the Hague on the 23rd of January 1878.
Hoffmann’s chief work was his unfinished Japanese Dictionary, begun in 1839 and afterwards continued by L. Serrurier. Unable at first to procure the necessary type, he set himself to the cutting of punches, and even when the proper founts were obtained he had to act as his own compositor as far as Chinese and Japanese were concerned. His Japanese grammar (JapanischeSprachlehre) was published in Dutch and English in 1867, and in English and German in 1876. Of his miscellaneous productions it is enough to mention “Japans Bezüge mit der koraischen Halbinsel und mit Schina” inNippon, vii.;Yo-San-fi-Rok,L’Art d’élever les vers à soie au Japon, par Ouckaki Mourikouni(Paris, 1848); “Die Heilkunde in Japan” inMittheil. d. deutsch. Gesellsch. für Natur- und Völkerk. Ost-Asiens(1873-1874); andJapanische Studien(1878).
Hoffmann’s chief work was his unfinished Japanese Dictionary, begun in 1839 and afterwards continued by L. Serrurier. Unable at first to procure the necessary type, he set himself to the cutting of punches, and even when the proper founts were obtained he had to act as his own compositor as far as Chinese and Japanese were concerned. His Japanese grammar (JapanischeSprachlehre) was published in Dutch and English in 1867, and in English and German in 1876. Of his miscellaneous productions it is enough to mention “Japans Bezüge mit der koraischen Halbinsel und mit Schina” inNippon, vii.;Yo-San-fi-Rok,L’Art d’élever les vers à soie au Japon, par Ouckaki Mourikouni(Paris, 1848); “Die Heilkunde in Japan” inMittheil. d. deutsch. Gesellsch. für Natur- und Völkerk. Ost-Asiens(1873-1874); andJapanische Studien(1878).
HOFMANN, AUGUST WILHELM VON(1818-1892), German chemist, was born at Giessen on the 8th of April 1818. Not intending originally to devote himself to physical science, he first took up the study of law and philology at Göttingen, and the general culture he thus gained stood him in good stead when he turned to chemistry, the study of which he began under Liebig. When, in 1845, a school of practical chemistry was started in London, under the style of the Royal College of Chemistry, Hofmann, largely through the influence of the Prince Consort, was appointed its first director. It was with some natural hesitation that he, then aPrivatdozentat Bonn, accepted the position, which may well have seemed rather a precarious one; but the difficulty was removed by his appointment as extraordinary professor at Bonn, with leave of absence for two years, so that he could resume his career in Germany if his English one proved unsatisfactory. Fortunately the college was more or less successful, owing largely to his enthusiasm and energy, and many of the men who were trained there subsequently made their mark in chemical history. But in 1864 he returned to Bonn, and in the succeeding year he was selected to succeed E. Mitscherlich as professor of chemistry and director of the laboratory in Berlin University. In leaving England, of which he used to speak as his adopted country, Hofmann was probably influenced by a combination of causes. The public support extended to the college of chemistry had been dwindling for some years, and before he left it had ceased to have an independent existence and had been absorbed into the School of Mines. This event he must have looked upon as a curtailment of its possibilities of usefulness. But, in addition, there is only too much reason to suppose that he was disappointed at the general apathy with which his science was regarded in England. No man ever realized more fully than he how entirely dependent on the advance of scientific knowledge is the continuation of a country’s material prosperity, and no single chemist ever exercised a greater or more direct influence upon industrial development. In England, however, people cared for none of these things, and were blind to the commercial potentialities of scientific research. The college to which Hofmann devoted nearly twenty of the best years of his life was starved; the coal-tar industry, which was really brought into existence by his work and that of his pupils under his direction at that college, and which with a little intelligent forethought might have been retained in England, was allowed to slip into the hands of Germany, where it is now worth millions of pounds annually; and Hofmann himself was compelled to return to his native land to find due appreciation as one of the foremost chemists of his time. The rest of his life was spent in Berlin, and there he died on the 5th of May 1892. That city possesses a permanent memorial to his name in Hofmann House, the home of the German Chemical Society (of which he was the founder), which was formally opened in 1900, appropriately enough with an account of that great triumph of German chemical enterprise, the industrial manufacture of synthetical indigo.
Hofmann’s work covered a wide range of organic chemistry, though with inorganic bodies he did but little. His first research, carried out in Liebig’s laboratory at Giessen, was on coal-tar, and his investigation of the organic bases in coal-gas naphtha established the nature of aniline. This substance he used to refer to as his first love, and it was a love to which he remained faithful throughout his life. His perception of the analogy between it and ammonia led to his famous work on the amines and ammonium bases and the allied organic phosphorus compounds, while his researches on rosaniline, which he first prepared in 1858, formed the first of a series of investigations on colouring matters which only ended with quinoline red in 1887. But in addition to these and numberless other investigations for which he was responsible the influence he exercised through his pupils must also be taken into account. As a teacher, besides the power of accurately gauging the character and capabilities of those who studied under him, he had the faculty of infecting them with his own enthusiasm, and thus of stimulating them to put forward their best efforts. In the lecture-room he laid great stress on the importance of experimental demonstrations, paying particular attention to their selection and arrangement, though, since hehimself was a somewhat clumsy manipulator, their actual exhibition was generally entrusted to his assistants. He was the possessor of a clear and graceful, if somewhat florid, style, which showed to special advantage in his numerous obituary notices or encomiums (collected and published in three volumesZur Erinnerung an vorangegangene Freunde, 1888). He also excelled as a speaker, particularly at gatherings of an international character, for in addition to his native German he could speak English, French and Italian with fluency.
SeeMemorial Lectures delivered before the Chemical Society, 1893-1900(London, 1901).
SeeMemorial Lectures delivered before the Chemical Society, 1893-1900(London, 1901).
HOFMANN, JOHANN CHRISTIAN KONRAD VON(1810-1877), Lutheran theologian and historian, was born on the 21st of December 1810 at Nuremberg, and studied theology and history at the university of Erlangen. In 1829 he went to Berlin, where Schleiermacher, Hengstenberg, Neander, Ranke and Raumer were among his teachers. In 1833 he received an appointment to teach Hebrew and history in the gymnasium of Erlangen. In 1835 he becameRepetent, in 1838Privatdozentand in 1841professor extraordinariusin the theological faculty at Erlangen. In 1842 he becameprofessor ordinariusat Rostock, but in 1845 returned once more to Erlangen as the successor of Gottlieb Christoph Adolf von Harless (1806-1879), founder of theZeitschrift für Protestantismus und Kirche, of which Hofmann became one of the editors in 1846, J. F. Höfling (1802-1853) and Gottfried Thomasius (1802-1875) being his collaborators. He was a conservative in theology, but an enthusiastic adherent of the progressive party in politics, and sat as member for Erlangen and Fürth in the Bavarian second chamber from 1863 to 1868. He died on the 20th of December 1877.
He wroteDie siebzig Jahre des Jeremias u. die siebzig Jahrwochen des Daniel(1836);Geschichte des Aufruhrs in den Cevennen(1837);Lehrbuch der Weltgeschichte für Gymnasien(1839), which became a text-book in the Protestant gymnasia of Bavaria;Weissagung u. Erfüllung im alten u. neuen Testamente(1841-1844; 2nd ed., 1857-1860);Der Schriftbeweis(1852-1856; 2nd ed., 1857-1860);Die heilige Schrift des neuen Testaments zusammenhängend untersucht(1862-1875);Schutzschriften(1856-1859), in which he defends himself against the charge of denying the Atonement; andTheologische Ethik(1878). His most important works are the five last named. In theology, as in ecclesiastical polity, Hofmann was a Lutheran of an extreme type, although the strongly marked individuality of some of his opinions laid him open to repeated accusations of heterodoxy. He was the head of what has been called the Erlangen School, and “in his day he was unquestionably the chief glory of the University of Erlangen” (Lichtenberger).
See the articles in Herzog-Hauck’sRealencyklopädieand theAllgemeine deutsche Biographie; and cf. F. Lichtenberger,History of German Theology in the Nineteenth Century(1889) pp. 446-458.
See the articles in Herzog-Hauck’sRealencyklopädieand theAllgemeine deutsche Biographie; and cf. F. Lichtenberger,History of German Theology in the Nineteenth Century(1889) pp. 446-458.
HOFMANN, MELCHIOR(c.1498-1543-4), anabaptist, was born at Hall, in Swabia, before 1500 (Zur Linden suggests 1498). His biographers usually give his surname as above; in his printed works it is Hoffman, in his manuscripts Hoffmann. He was without scholarly training, and first appears as a furrier at Livland. Attracted by Luther’s doctrine, he came forward as a lay preacher, combining business travels with a religious mission. Accompanied by Melchior Rinck, also a skinner or furrier, and a religious enthusiast, he made his way to Sweden. Joined by Bernard Knipperdolling, the party reached Stockholm in the autumn of 1524. Their fervid attacks on image worship led to their expulsion. By way of Livonia, Hofmann arrived at Dorpat in November 1524, but was driven thence in the following January. Making his way to Riga, and thence to Wittenberg, he found favour with Luther; his letter of the 22nd of June 1525 appears in a tract by Luther of that year. He was again at Dorpat in May 1526; later at Magdeburg. Returning to Wittenberg, he was coldly received; he wrote there his exposition of Daniel xii. (1527). Repairing to Holstein, he got into the good graces of Frederick I. of Denmark, and was appointed by royal ordinance to preach the Gospel at Kiel. He was extravagant in denunciation, and developed a Zwinglian view of the Eucharist. Luther was alarmed. At a colloquy of preachers in Flensburg (8th April 1529) Hofmann, John Campanus and others were put on their defence. Hofmann maintained (against the “magic” of the Lutherans) that the function of the Eucharist, like that of preaching, is an appeal for spiritual union with Christ. Refusing to retract, he was banished. At Strassburg to which he now turned, he was well received (1529) till his anabaptist development became apparent. He was in relations with Schwenkfeld and with Carlstadt, but assumed a prophetic rôle of his own. Journeying to East Friesland, (1530) he founded a community at Emden (1532), securing a large following of artisans. Despite the warning of John Trypmaker, who prophesied for him “six months” in prison, he returned in the spring of 1533 to Strassburg, where we hear of his wife and child. He gathered from the Apocalypse a vision of “resurrections” of apostolic Christianity, first under John Hus, and now under himself. The year 1533 was to inaugurate the new era; Strassburg was to be the seat of the New Jerusalem. In May 1533 he and others were arrested. Under examination, he denied that he had made common cause with the anabaptists and claimed to be no prophet, a mere witness of the Most High, but refused the articles of faith proposed to him by the provincial synod. Hofmann and Claus Frey, an anabaptist, were detained in prison, a measure due to the terror excited by the Münster episode of 1533-1534. The synod, in 1539, made further effort to reclaim him. The last notice of his imprisonment is on the 19th of November 1543; he probably died soon after.
Two of his publications, with similar titles, in 1530, are noteworthy as having influenced Menno Simons and David Joris (Weissagung vsz heiliger götlicher geschrifft, andProphecey oder Weissagung vsz warer heiliger götlicher schrifft). Bock treats him as an antitrinitarian, on grounds which Wallace rightly deems inconclusive. With better reason Trechsel includes him among pioneers of some of the positions of Servetus. His Christology was Valentinian. While all are elected to salvation, only the regenerate may receive baptism, and those who sin after regeneration sin against the Holy Ghost, and cannot be saved. His followers were known as Hofmannites or Melchiorites.
See G. Herrmann,Essai sur la vie et les écrits de M. Hofmann(1852); F. O. zur Linden,M. Hofmann, ein Prophet der Wiedertäufer(1885); H. Holtzmann, inAllgemeine deutsche Biographie(1880); Hegler in Hauck’sRealencyklopädie(1900); Bock,Hist. Antitrin.(1776), ii.; Wallace,Antitrin. Biography(1850) iii., app. iii.; Trechsel,Prot. Antitrin. vor F. Socin(1839) i.; Barclay,Inner Life of Rel. Societies(1876). An alleged portrait, from an engraving of 1608, is reproduced in the appendix to A. Ross,Pansebeia(1655).
See G. Herrmann,Essai sur la vie et les écrits de M. Hofmann(1852); F. O. zur Linden,M. Hofmann, ein Prophet der Wiedertäufer(1885); H. Holtzmann, inAllgemeine deutsche Biographie(1880); Hegler in Hauck’sRealencyklopädie(1900); Bock,Hist. Antitrin.(1776), ii.; Wallace,Antitrin. Biography(1850) iii., app. iii.; Trechsel,Prot. Antitrin. vor F. Socin(1839) i.; Barclay,Inner Life of Rel. Societies(1876). An alleged portrait, from an engraving of 1608, is reproduced in the appendix to A. Ross,Pansebeia(1655).
(A. Go.*)
HOFMEISTER, WILHELM FRIEDRICH BENEDICT(1824-1877), German botanist, was born at Leipzig on the 18th of May 1824. He came of a family engaged in trade, and after being educated at theRealschuleof Leipzig he entered business as a music-dealer. Much of his botanical work was done while he was so employed, till in 1863 he was nominated, without intermediate academic steps, to the chair in Heidelberg; thence he was transferred in 1872 to Tübingen, in succession to H. von Mohl. His first work was on the distribution of the Coniferae in the Himalaya, but his attention was very soon devoted to studying the sexuality and origin of the embryo of Phanerogams. His contributions on this subject extended from 1847 till 1860, and they finally settled the question of the origin of the embryo from an ovum, as against the prevalent pollen-tube theory of M. J. Schleiden, for he showed that the pollen-tube does not itself produce the embryo, but only stimulates the ovum already present in the ovule. He soon turned his attention to the embryology of Bryophytes and Pteridophytes, and gave continuous accounts of the germination of the spores and fertilization inPilularia,Salvinia,Selaginella. Some of the main facts of the life of ferns and mosses were already known; these, together with his own wider observations, were worked into that great general pronouncement published in 1851 under the title,Vergleichende Untersuchungen der Keimung, Entfaltung und Fruchtbildung köherer Kryptogamen und der Samenbildung der Coniferen.This work will always stand in the first rank of botanical books. It antedated theOrigin of Speciesby eight years, but contained facts and comparisons which could only become intelligible on some theory of descent. The plan of life-story common to them all, involving two alternating generations, was demonstrated for Liverworts, Mosses, Ferns, Equiseta, Rhizocarps, Lycopodiaceae, and even Gymnosperms, with a completeness and certainty which must still surprise those who know the botanical literature of the author’s time. The conclusions of Hofmeister remain in their broad outlines unshaken, but rather strengthened by later-acquired details. In the light of the theory of descent the common plan of life-history in plants apparently so diverse as those named acquires a special significance; but it is one of the remarkable features of this great work that the writer himself does not theorize—with an unerring insight he points out his comparisons and states his homologies, but does not indulge in explanatory surmises. It is the typical work of an heroic age of plant-morphology. From 1857 till 1862 Hofmeister wrote occasionally on physiological subjects, such as the ascent of sap, and curvatures of growing parts, but it was in morphology that he found his natural sphere. In 1861, in conjunction with other botanists, a plan was drawn up of a handbook of physiological botany, of which Hofmeister was to be editor. Though the original scheme was never completed, the editor himself contributed two notable parts,Die Lehre von der Pflanzenzelle(1867) andAllgemeine Morphologie der Gewächse(1868). The former gives an excellent summary of the structure and relations of the vegetable cell as then known, but it did not greatly modify current views. The latter was notable for its refutation of the spiral theory of leaf arrangement in plants, founded by C. F. Schimper and A. Braun. Hofmeister transferred the discussion from the mere study of mature form to the observation of the development of the parts, and substituted for the “spiral tendency” a mechanical theory based upon the observed fact that new branchings appear over the widest gaps which exist between next older branchings of like nature. With this important work Hofmeister’s period of active production closed; he fell into ill-health, and retired from his academic duties some time before his death at Lindenau, near Leipzig, on the 12th of January 1877.
(F. O. B.)
HOFMEYR, JAN HENDRIK(1845-1909), South African politician, was born at Cape Town on the 4th of July 1845. He was educated at the South African College, and at an early age turned his attention to politics, first as a journalist. He was editor of theZuid Afrikaantill its incorporation withOns Land, and of theZuid AfrikaanscheTijdschrift. By birth, education and sympathies a typical Dutch Afrikander, he set himself to organize the political power of his fellow-countrymen. This he did very effectively, and when in 1879 he entered the Cape parliament as member for Stellenbosch, he became the real leader of the Dutch party. Yet he only held office for six months—as minister without portfolio in the Scanlen ministry from May to November 1881. He held no subsequent official post in the colony, though he shared with Sir Thomas Upington and Sir Charles Mills the honour of representing the Cape at the intercolonial conference of 1887. Here he supported the proposal for entrusting the defence of Simon’s Town to Cape Colony, leaving only the armament to be provided by the imperial government, opposed trans-oceanic penny postage, and moved a resolution in favour of an imperial customs union. At the colonial conference of 1894 at Ottawa he was again one of the Cape representatives. In 1888 and in 1889 he was a member of the South African customs conference.
His chief importance as a public man was, however, derived from his power over the Dutch in Cape Colony, and his control of the Afrikander Bond. In 1878 he had himself founded the “Farmers’ Association,” and as the Cape farmers were almost entirely Dutch the Association became a centre of Dutch influence. When the Bond was formed in 1882, with purely political aims, Hofmeyr made haste to obtain control of it, and in 1883 amalgamated the Farmers’ Association with it. Under his direction the constitution of the Bond was modified by the elimination of the provisions inconsistent with loyalty to the British crown. But it remained an organization for obtaining the political supremacy of the Cape Dutch. (SeeCape Colony:History.) His control over the Bond enabled him for many years, while free from the responsibilities of office, to make and unmake ministers at his will, and earned for him the name of “Cabinet-maker of South Africa.” Although officially the term “Afrikander” was explained by Hofmeyr to include white men of whatever race, yet in practice the influence of the Bond was always exerted in favour of the Dutch, and its power was drawn from the Dutch districts of Cape Colony. The sympathies of the Bond were thus always strongly with the Transvaal, as the chief centre of Dutch influence in South Africa; and Hofmeyr’s position might in many respects be compared with that of Parnell at the head of the Irish Nationalist party in Great Britain. In the Bechuanaland difficulty of 1884 Hofmeyr threw all the influence of the Bond into the scale in favour of the Transvaal. But in the course of the next few years he began to drift away from President Kruger. He resented the reckless disregard of Cape interests involved in Kruger’s fiscal policy; he feared that the Transvaal, after its sudden leap into prosperity upon the gold discoveries of 1886, might overshadow all other Dutch influences in South Africa; above all he was convinced, as he showed by his action at the London conference, that the protection of the British navy was indispensable to South Africa, and he set his face against Kruger’s intrigues with Germany, and his avowed intention of acquiring an outlet to the sea in order to get into touch with foreign powers.
In 1890 Hofmeyr joined forces with Cecil Rhodes, who became premier of Cape Colony with the support of the Bond. Hofmeyr’s influence was a powerful factor in the conclusion of the Swaziland convention of 1890, as well as in stopping the “trek” to Banyailand (Rhodesia) in 1891—a notable reversal of the policy he had pursued seven years before. But the reactionary elements in the Bond grew alarmed at Rhodes’s imperialism, and in 1895 Hofmeyr resigned his seat in parliament and the presidency of the Bond. Then came the Jameson Raid, and in its wake there rolled over South Africa a wave of Dutch and anti-British feeling such as had not been known since the days of Majuba. (The proclamation issued by Sir Hercules Robinson disavowing Jameson was suggested by Hofmeyr, who helped to draw up its terms.) Once more Hofmeyr became president of the Bond. By an alteration of the provincial constitution, all power in the Cape branch of the Bond was vested in the hands of a vigilance committee of three, of whom Hofmeyr and his brother were two. As the recognized leader of the Cape Dutch, he protested against such abuses as the dynamite monopoly in the Transvaal, and urged Kruger even at the eleventh hour to grant reasonable concessions rather than plunge into a war that might involve Cape Afrikanderdom and the Transvaal in a common ruin. In July 1899 he journeyed to Pretoria, and vainly supported the proposal of a satisfactory franchise law, combined with a limited representation of the Uitlanders in the Volksraad, and in September urged the Transvaal to accede to the proposed joint inquiry. During the negotiations of 1899, and after the outbreak of war, the official organ of the Bond,Ons Land, was conspicuous for its anti-British attitude, and its violence forced Lord Roberts to suppress it in the Cape Colony district under martial law. Hofmeyr never associated himself publicly with the opinions expressed byOns Land, but neither did he repudiate them. The tide of race sympathy among his Dutch supporters made his position one of great difficulty, and shortly after the outbreak of war he withdrew to Europe, and refused to act as a member of the “Conciliation Committee” which came to England in 1901 in the interests of the Boer republics.
Towards the close of the war Hofmeyr returned to South Africa and organized the Bond forces for the general election held in Cape Colony at the beginning of 1904, which resulted in the defeat of the Bond party. Hofmeyr retained his ascendancy over the Cape Dutch, but now began to find himself somewhat out of sympathy with the larger outlook on South Africanaffairs taken by the younger leaders of the Boers in the Transvaal. During 1906 he gave offence to the extreme section of the Bond by some criticisms of thetaaland his use of English in public speeches. At the general election in 1908 the Bond, still largely under his direction, gained a victory at the polls, but Hofmeyr himself was not a candidate. In the renewed movement for the closer union of the South African colonies he advocated federation as opposed to unification. When, however, the unification proposals were ratified by the Cape parliament, Hofmeyr procured his nomination as one of the Cape delegates to England in the summer of 1909 to submit the draft act of union to the imperial government. He attended the conferences with the officials of the Colonial Office for the preparation of the draft act, and after the bill had become law went to Germany for a “cure.” He returned to London in October 1909, where he died on the 16th of that month. His body was taken to Cape Town for burial.
HOFSTEDE DE GROOT, PETRUS(1802-1886), Dutch theologian, was born at Leer in East Friesland, Prussia, on the 8th of October 1802, and was educated at the Gymnasium and university of Groningen. For three years (1826-1829) he was pastor of the Reformed Church at Ulrum, and then entered upon his lifelong duties as professor of theology at Groningen. With his colleagues L. G. Pareau, J. F. van Vordt, and W. Muurling he edited from 1837 to 1872 theWaarheid in Liefde. In this review and in his numerous books he vigorously upheld the orthodox faith against the Dutch “modern theology” movement. Many of his works were written in Latin, includingDisputatio, qua ep. ad Hebraeos cum Paulin. epistolis comparatur(1826),Institutiones historiae ecclesiae(1835),Institutio theologiae naturalis(1842),Encyclopaedia theologi christiani(1844). Others, in Dutch, were:The Divine Education of Humanity up to the Coming of Jesus Christ(3 vols., 1846),The Nature of the Gospel Ministry(1858),The “Modern Theology” of the Netherlands(1869),The Old Catholic Movement(1877). He became professor emeritus in 1872, and died at Groningen on the 5th of December 1886.
HOGARTH, WILLIAM(1697-1764), the great English painter and pictorial satirist, was born at Bartholomew Close in London on the 10th of November 1697, and baptized on the 28th in the church of St Bartholomew the Great. He had two younger sisters, Mary, born in 1699, and Ann, born in 1701. His father, Richard Hogarth, who died in 1718, was a schoolmaster and literary hack, who had come to the metropolis to seek that fortune which had been denied to him in his native Westmorland. The son seems to have been early distinguished by a talent for drawing and an active perceptive faculty rather than by any close attention to the learning which he was soon shrewd enough to see had not made his parent prosper. “Shows of all sorts gave me uncommon pleasure when an infant,” he says, “and mimicry, common to all children, was remarkable in me.... My exercises when at school were more remarkable for the ornaments which adorned them than for the exercise itself.” This being the case, it is no wonder that, by his own desire, he was apprenticed to a silver-plate engraver, Mr Ellis Gamble, at the sign of the “Golden Angel” in Cranbourne Street or Alley, Leicester Fields. For this master he engraved a shop-card which is still extant. When his apprenticeship began is not recorded; but it must have been concluded before the beginning of 1720, for in April of that year he appears to have set up as engraver on his own account. His desires, however, were not limited to silver-plate engraving. “Engraving on copper was, at twenty years of age, my utmost ambition.” For this he lacked the needful skill as a draughtsman; and his account of the means which he took to supply this want, without too much interfering with his pleasure, is thoroughly characteristic, though it can scarcely be recommended as an example. “Laying it down,” he says, “first as an axiom, that he who could by any means acquire and retain in his memory, perfect ideas of the subjects he meant to draw, would have as clear a knowledge of the figure as a man who can write freely hath of the twenty-four letters of the alphabet and their infinite combinations (each of these being composed of lines), and would consequently be an accurate designer, ... I therefore endeavoured to habituate myself to the exercise of a sort of technical memory, and by repeating in my own mind, the parts of which objects were composed, I could by degrees combine and put them down with my pencil.” This account, it is possible, has something of the complacency of the old age in which it was written; but there is little doubt that his marvellous power of seizing expression owed less to patient academical study than to his unexampled eye-memory and tenacity of minor detail. But he was not entirely without technical training, since, by his own showing, he occasionally “took the life” to correct his memories, and is known to have studied at Sir James Thornhill’s then recently opened art school.
“His first employment” (i.e.after he set up for himself) “seems,” says John Nichols, in hisAnecdotes, “to have been the engraving of arms and shop bills.” After this he was employed in designing “plates for booksellers.” Of these early and mostly insignificant works we may pass over “The Lottery, an Emblematic Print on the South Sea Scheme,” and some book illustrations, to pause at “Masquerades and Operas” (1724), the first plate he published on his own account. This is a clever little satire on contemporary follies, such as the masquerades of the Swiss adventurer Heidegger, the popular Italian opera-singers, Rich’s pantomimes at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and last, but by no means least, the exaggerated popularity of Lord Burlington’s protégé, the architect painter William Kent, who is here represented on the summit of Burlington Gate, with Raphael and Michelangelo for supporters. This worthy, Hogarth had doubtless not learned to despise less in the school of his rival Sir James Thornhill. Indeed almost the next of Hogarth’s important prints was aimed at Kent alone, being that memorable burlesque of the unfortunate altarpiece designed by the latter for St Clement Danes, which, in deference to the ridicule of the parishioners, Bishop Gibson took down in 1725. Hogarth’s squib, which appeared subsequently, exhibits it as a very masterpiece of confusion and bad drawing. In 1726 he prepared twelve large engravings for Butler’sHudibras. These he himself valued highly, and they are the best of his book illustrations. But he was far too individual to be the patient interpreter of other men’s thoughts, and it is not in this direction that his successes are to be sought.
To 1727-1728 belongs one of those rare occurrences which have survived as contributions to his biography. He was engaged by Joshua Morris, a tapestry worker, to prepare a design for the “Element of Earth.” Morris, however, having heard that he was “an engraver, and no painter,” declined the work when completed, and Hogarth accordingly sued him for the money in the Westminster Court, where, on the 28th of May 1728, the case was decided in his (Hogarth’s) favour. It may have been the aspersion thus early cast on his skill as a painter (coupled perhaps with the unsatisfactory state of print-selling, owing to the uncontrolled circulation of piratical copies) that induced him about this time to turn his attention to the production of “small conversation pieces” (i.e.groups in oil of full-length portraits from 12 to 15 in. high), many of which are still preserved in different collections. “This,” he says, “having novelty, succeeded for a few years.” Among his other efforts in oil between 1728 and 1732 were “The Wanstead Conversation,” “The House of Commons examining Bambridge,” an infamous warden of the Fleet, and several pictures of the chief actors in Gay’s popularBeggar’s Opera.
On the 23rd of March 1729 he was married at old Paddington church to Jane Thornhill, the only daughter of Kent’s rival above mentioned. The match was a clandestine one, although Lady Thornhill appears to have favoured it. We next hear of him in “lodgings at South Lambeth,” where he rendered some assistance to the then well-known Jonathan Tyers, who opened Vauxhall in 1732 with an entertainment styled aridotto al fresco. For these gardens Hogarth painted a poor picture of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn, and he also permitted Hayman to make copies of the later series of the “Four Times of the Day.”In return, the grateful Tyers presented him with a gold pass ticket “In perpetuam Beneficii Memoriam.” It was long thought that Hogarth designed this himself. Mr Warwick Wroth (Numismatic Chronicle, vol. xviii.) doubts this, although he thinks it probable that Hogarth designed some of the silver Vauxhall passes which are figured in Wilkinson’sLondina illustrata. The only engravings between 1726 and 1732 which need be referred to are the “Large Masquerade Ticket” (1727), another satire on masquerades, and the print of “Burlington Gate” (1731), evoked by Pope’sEpistle to Lord Burlington, and defending Lord Chandos, who is therein satirized. This print gave great offence, and was, it is said, suppressed.
By 1731 Hogarth must have completed the earliest of the series of moral works which first gave him his position as a great and original genius. This was “A Harlot’s Progress,” the paintings for which, if we may trust the date in the last of the pictures, were finished in that year. Almost immediately afterwards he must have begun to engrave them—a task he had at first intended to leave to others. From an advertisement in theCountry Journal; or, the Craftsman, 29th of January 1732, the pictures were then being engraved, and from later announcements it seems clear that they were delivered to the subscribers early in the following April, on the 21st of which month an unauthorized prose description of them was published. We have no record of the particular train of thought which prompted these story-pictures; but it may perhaps be fairly assumed that the necessity for creating some link of interest between the personages of the little “conversation pieces” above referred to, led to the further idea of connecting several groups or scenes so as to form a sequent narrative. “I wished,” says Hogarth, “to compose pictures on canvas, similar to representations on the stage.” “I have endeavoured,” he says again, “to treat my subject as a dramatic writer; my picture is my stage, and men and women my players, who by means of certain actions and gestures are to exhibita dumb show.” There was never a more eloquent dumb show than this of the “Harlot’s Progress.” In six scenes the miserable career of a woman of the town is traced out remorselessly from its first facile beginning to its shameful and degraded end. Nothing of the detail is softened or abated; the whole is acted outcoram populo, with the hard, uncompassionate morality of the age the painter lived in, while the introduction here and there of one or two well-known characters such as Colonel Charteris and Justice Gonson give a vivid reality to the satire. It had an immediate success. To say nothing of the fact that the talent of the paintings completely reconciled Sir James Thornhill to the son-in-law he had hitherto refused to acknowledge, more than twelve hundred names of subscribers to the engravings were entered in the artist’s book. On the appearance of plate iii. the lords of the treasury trooped to the print shop for Sir John Gonson’s portrait which it contained. The story was made into a pantomime by Theophilus Cibber, and by some one else into a ballad opera; and it gave rise to numerous pamphlets and poems. It was painted on fan-mounts and transferred to cups and saucers. Lastly, it was freely pirated. There could be no surer testimony to its popularity.
From the MSS. of George Vertue in the British Museum (Add. MSS. 23069-98) it seems that during the progress of the plates, Hogarth was domiciled with his father-in-law, Sir James Thornhill, in the Middle Piazza, Covent Garden (the “second house eastward from James Street”), and it must have been thence that set out the historical expedition from London to Sheerness of which the original record still exists at the British Museum. This is an oblong MS. volume entitledAn Account of what seem’d most Remarkable in the Five Days’ Peregrination of the Five Following Persons, vizt., Messieurs Tothall, Scott, Hogarth, Thornhill and Forrest. Begun on Saturday May 27th 1732 and Finish’d On the 31st of the Same Month. Abi tu et fac similiter. Inscription on Dulwich College Porch. The journal, which is written by Ebenezer, the father of Garrick’s friend Theodosius Forrest, gives a good idea of what a “frisk”—as Johnson called it—was in those days, while the illustrations were by Hogarth and Samuel Scott the landscape painter. John Thornhill, Sir James’s son, made the map. This version (in prose) was subsequently run into rhyme by one of Hogarth’s friends, the Rev. Wm. Gostling of Canterbury, and after the artist’s death both versions were published. In the absence of other biographical detail, they are of considerable interest to the student of Hogarth. In 1733 Hogarth moved into the “Golden Head” in Leicester Fields, which, with occasional absences at Chiswick, he continued to occupy until his death. By December of this year he was already engaged upon the engravings of a second Progress, that of a Rake. It was not as successful as its predecessor. It was in eight plates in lieu of six. The story is unequal; but there is nothing finer than the figure of the desperate hero in the Covent Garden gaming-house, or the admirable scenes in the Fleet prison and Bedlam, where at last his headlong career comes to its tragic termination. The plates abound with allusive suggestion and covert humour; but it is impossible to attempt any detailed description of them here.
“A Rake’s Progress” was dated June 25, 1735, and the engravings bear the words “according to Act of Parliament.” This was an act (8 Geo. II. cap. 13) which Hogarth had been instrumental in obtaining from the legislature, being stirred thereto by the shameless piracies of rival printsellers. Although loosely drawn, it served its purpose; and the painter commemorated his success by a long inscription on the plate entitled “Crowns, Mitres, &c.,” afterwards used as a subscription ticket to the Election series. These subscription tickets to his engravings, let us add, are among the brightest and most vivacious of the artist’s productions. That to the “Harlot’s Progress” was entitled “Boys peeping at Nature,” while the Rake’s Progress was heralded by the delightful etching known as “A Pleased Audience at a Play, or The Laughing Audience.”
We must pass more briefly over the prints which followed the two Progresses, noting first “A Modern Midnight Conversation,” an admirable drinking scene which comes between them in 1733, and the bright little plate of “Southwark Fair,” which, although dated 1733, was published with “A Rake’s Progress” in 1735. Between these and “Marriageà la mode,” upon the pictures of which the painter must have been not long after at work, come the small prints of the “Consultation of Physicians” and “Sleeping Congregation” (1736), the “Scholars at a Lecture” (1737); the “Four Times of the Day” (1738), a series of pictures of 18th century life, the earlier designs for which have been already referred to; the “Strolling Actresses dressing in a Barn” (1738), which Walpole held to be, “for wit and imagination, without any other end, the best of all the painter’s works”; and finally the admirable plates of the Distrest Poet painfully composing a poem on “Riches” in a garret, and the Enraged Musician fulminating from his parlour window upon a discordant orchestra of knife-grinders, milk-girls, ballad-singers and the rest upon the pavement outside. These are dated respectively 1736 and 1741. To this period also (i.e.the period preceding the production of the plates of “Marriageà la mode”) belong two of those history pictures to which, in emulation of the Haymans and Thornhills, the artist was continually attracted. “The Pool of Bethesda” and the “Good Samaritan,” “with figures seven feet high,” were paintedcirca1736, and presented by the artist to St Bartholomew’s Hospital, where they remain. They were not masterpieces; and it is pleasanter to think of his connexion with Captain Coram’s recently established Foundling Hospital (1739), which he aided with his money, his graver and his brush, and for which he painted that admirable portrait of the good old philanthropist which is still, and deservedly, one of its chief ornaments.
In “A Harlot’s Progress” Hogarth had not strayed much beyond the lower walks of society, and although, in “A Rake’s Progress,” his hero was taken from the middle classes, he can scarcely be said to have quitted those fields of observation which are common to every spectator. It is therefore more remarkable, looking to his education and antecedents, that his masterpiece, “Marriageà la mode,” should successfully depict, as the advertisement has it, “a variety of modern occurrences in high life.”Yet, as an accurate delineation of upper class 18th century society, his “Marriageà la mode” has never, we believe, been seriously assailed. The countess’s bedroom, the earl’s apartment with its lavish coronets and old masters, the grand saloon with its marble pillars and grotesque ornaments, are fully as true to nature as the frowsy chamber in the “Turk’s Head Bagnio,” the quack-doctor’s museum in St Martin’s Lane, or the mean opulence of the merchant’s house in the city. And what story could be more vividly, more perspicuously, more powerfully told than this godless alliance ofsacs et parchemins—this miserable tragedy of an ill-assorted marriage? There is no defect of invention, no superfluity of detail, no purposeless stroke. It has the merit of a work by a great master of fiction, with the additional advantages which result from the pictorial fashion of the narrative; and it is matter for congratulation that it is still to be seen by all the world in the National Gallery in London, where it can tell its own tale better than pages of commentary. The engravings of “Marriageà la mode” were dated April 1745. Although by this time the painter found a ready market for his engravings, he does not appear to have been equally successful in selling his pictures. The people bought his prints; but the richer and not numerous connoisseurs who purchased pictures were wholly in the hands of the importers and manufacturers of “old masters.” In February 1745 the original oil paintings of the two Progresses, the “Four Times of the Day” and the “Strolling Actresses” were still unsold. On the last day of that month Hogarth disposed of them by an ill-devised kind of auction, the details of which may be read in Nichols’sAnecdotes, for the paltry sum of £427, 7s. No better fate attended “Marriageà la mode,” which six years later became the property of Mr Lane of Hillingdon for 120 guineas, being then in Carlo Maratti frames which had cost the artist four guineas a piece. Something of this was no doubt due to Hogarth’s impracticable arrangements, but the fact shows conclusively how completely blind his contemporaries were to his merits as a painter, and how hopelessly in bondage to the all-powerful picture-dealers. Of these latter the painter himself gave a graphic picture in a letter addressed by him under the pseudonym of “Britophil” to theSt James’s Evening Post, in June 1737.
But if Hogarth was not successful with his dramas on canvas, he occasionally shared with his contemporaries in the popularity of portrait painting. For a picture, executed in 1746, of Garrick as Richard III. he was paid £200, “which was more,” says he, “than any English artist ever received for a single portrait.” In the same year a sketch of Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, afterwards beheaded on Tower Hill, had an exceptional success.
We must content ourselves with a brief enumeration of the most important of his remaining works. These are “The Stage Coach or Country Inn Yard” (1747); the series of twelve plates entitled “Industry and Idleness” (1747), depicting the career of two London apprentices; the “Gate of Calais” (1749), which had its origin in a rather unfortunate visit paid to France by the painter after the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle; the “March to Finchley” (1750); “Beer Street,” “Gin Lane” and the “Four Stages of Cruelty” (1751); the admirable representations of election humours in the days of Sir Robert Walpole, entitled “Four Prints of an Election” (1755-1758); and the plate of “Credulity, Superstition and Fanaticism, a Medley” (1762), adapted from an earlier unpublished design called “Enthusiasm Delineated.” Besides these must be chronicled three more essays in the “great style of history painting,” viz. “Paul before Felix,” “Moses brought to Pharaoh’s Daughter” and the Altarpiece for St Mary Redcliffe at Bristol. The first two were engraved in 1751-1752, the last in 1794. A subscription ticket to the earlier pictures, entitled “Paul before Felix Burlesqued,” had a popularity far greater than that of the prints themselves.
In 1745 Hogarth painted that admirable portrait of himself with his dog Trump, which is now in the National Gallery. In a corner of this he had drawn on a palette a serpentine curve with the words “The Line of Beauty.” Much inquiry ensued as to the meaning of this hieroglyphic; and in an unpropitious hour the painter resolved to explain himself in writing. The result was the well-knownAnalysis of Beauty(1753), a treatise to fix “the fluctuating ideas of Taste,” otherwise a desultory essay having for pretext the precept attributed to Michelangelo that a figure should be always “Pyramidall, Serpent like and multiplied by one two and three.” The fate of the book was what might have been expected. By the painter’s adherents it was praised as a final deliverance upon aesthetics; by his enemies and professional rivals, its obscurities, and the minor errors which, notwithstanding the benevolent efforts of literary friends, the work had not escaped, were made the subject of endless ridicule and caricature. It added little to its author’s fame, and it is perhaps to be regretted that he ever undertook it. Moreover, there were further humiliations in store for him. In 1759 the success of a little picture called “The Lady’s Last Stake,” painted for Lord Charlemont, procured him a commission from Sir Richard Grosvenor to paint another picture “upon the same terms.” Unhappily on this occasion he deserted his own field of genre and social satire, to select the story from Boccaccio (or rather Dryden) of Sigismunda weeping over the heart of her murdered lover Guiscardo, being the subject of a picture in Sir Luke Schaub’s collection by Furini which had recently been sold for £400. The picture, over which he spent much time and patience, was not regarded as a success; and Sir Richard rather meanly shuffled out of his bargain upon the plea that “the constantly having it before one’s eyes, would be too often occasioning melancholy ideas to arise in one’s mind.” Sigismunda, therefore, much to the artist’s mortification, and the delight of the malicious, remained upon his hands. As, by her husband’s desire, his widow valued it at £500, it found no purchaser until after her death, when the Boydells bought it for 56 guineas. It was exhibited, with others of Hogarth’s pictures, at the Spring Gardens exhibition of 1761, for the catalogue of which Hogarth engraved a Head-piece and a Tail-piece which are still the delight of collectors; and finally, by the bequest of Mr J. H. Anderdon, it passed in 1879 to the National Gallery, where, in spite of theatrical treatment and a repulsive theme, it still commands admiration for its colour, drawing and expression.
In 1761 Hogarth was sixty-five years of age, and he had but three years more to live. These three years were embittered by an unhappy quarrel with his quondam friends, John Wilkes and Churchill the poet, over which most of his biographers are contented to pass rapidly. Having succeeded John Thornhill in 1757 as serjeant painter (to which post he was reappointed at the accession of George III.), an evil genius prompted him in 1762 to do some “timed” thing in the ministerial interest, and he accordingly published the indifferent satire of “The Times, plate i.” This at once brought him into collision with Wilkes and Churchill, and the immediate result was a violent attack upon him, both as a man and an artist, in the oppositionNorth Briton, No. 17. The alleged decay of his powers, the miscarriage of Sigismunda, the cobbled composition of theAnalysis, were all discussed with scurrilous malignity by those who had known his domestic life and learned his weaknesses. The old artist was deeply wounded, and his health was failing. Early in the next year, however, he replied by that portrait of Wilkes which will for ever carry his squinting features to posterity. Churchill retaliated in July by a savageEpistle to William Hogarth, to which the artist rejoined by a print of Churchill as a bear, in torn bands and ruffles, not the most successful of his works. “The pleasure, and pecuniary advantage,” writes Hogarth manfully, “which I derived from these two engravings” (of Wilkes and Churchill), “together with occasionally riding on horseback, restored me to as much health as can be expected at my time of life.” He produced but one more print, that of “Finis, or The Bathos,” March 1764, a strange jumble of “fag ends,” intended as a tail-piece to his collected prints; and on the 26th October of the same year he died of an aneurism at his house in Leicester Square. His wife, to whom he left his plates as a chief source of income, survived him until 1789. He was buried in Chiswick churchyard, where a tomb was erected to him by his friends in 1771, with an epitaph by Garrick. Not far off, on the roadto Chiswick Gardens, still stands the little red-brick Georgian villa in which from September 1749 until his death he spent the summer seasons. After many vicissitudes and changes of ownership it was purchased in 1902 by Lieut.-Colonel Shipway of Chiswick, who turned it into a Hogarth museum and preserved it to the nation.
From such records of him as survive, Hogarth appears to have been much what from his portrait one might suppose him to have been—a blue-eyed, honest, combative little man, thoroughly insular in his prejudices and antipathies, fond of flattery, sensitive like most satirists, a good friend, an intractable enemy, ambitious, as he somewhere says, in all things to be singular, and not always accurately estimating the extent of his powers. With the art connoisseurship of his day he was wholly at war, because, as he believed, it favoured foreign mediocrity at the expense of native talent; and in the heat of argument he would probably, as he admits, often come “to utter blasphemous expressions against the divinity even of Raphael Urbino, Correggio and Michelangelo.” But it was rather against the third-rate copies of third-rate artists—the “ship-loads of dead Christs, Holy Families and Madonnas”—that his indignation was directed; and in speaking of his attitude with regard to the great masters of art, it is well to remember his words to Mrs Piozzi:—“The connoisseurs and I are at war, you know; and because I hatethem, they think I hateTitian—and let them!”
But no doubt it was in a measure owing to this hostile attitude of his towards the all-powerful picture-brokers that his contemporaries failed to recognize adequately his merits as a painter, and persisted in regarding him as an ingenious humorist alone. Time has reversed that unjust sentence. He is now held to have been a splendid painter, pure and harmonious in his colouring, wonderfully dexterous and direct in his handling, and in his composition leaving little or nothing to be desired. As an engraver his work is more conspicuous for its vigour, spirit and intelligibility than for finish and beauty of line. He desired that it should tell its own tale plainly, and bear the distinct impress of his individuality, and in this he thoroughly succeeded. As a draughtsman his skill has sometimes been debated, and his work at times undoubtedly bears marks of haste, and even carelessness. If, however, he is judged by his best instead of his worst, he will not be found wanting in this respect. But it is not after all as a draughtsman, an engraver or a painter that he claims his unique position among English artists—it is as a humorist and a satirist upon canvas. Regarded in this light he has never been equalled, whether for his vigour of realism and dramatic power, his fancy and invention in the decoration of his story, or his merciless anatomy and exposure of folly and wickedness. If we regard him—as he loved to regard himself—as “author” rather than “artist,” his place is with the great masters of literature—with the Thackerays and Fieldings, the Cervantes and Molières.