GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



cussing the taste of the town in the latest modes, comparing 

 embroidery, and the samplers they were working, and maybe talking 

 a little scandal too, to give flavour to the tea. Below, in the oak- 

 panelled parlour, seated on either side of the wide fireplace in 

 chairs that may be seen at Hogarth House to-day, Hogarth and 

 " Little David " talked and joked, and at intervals puffed at their 

 long clay pipes. Fielding, even then in failing health, might 

 sometimes have been present, and possibly Wilkes, for as yet there 

 was no quarrel. 



The affection between Hogarth and Garrick was very real, and 

 we know how the actor wrote to Churchill the poet, when the 

 latter was meditating the slashing attack, that, associated with 

 Wilkes' s, he delighted to think helped largely to bring Hogarth to 

 his grave. He entreated him to refrain, for he said, speaking of 

 the painter, " He is a great and original genius ; I love him as 

 a man, and reverence him as an artist," which I take to be 

 as fine a panegyric as that afterwards written upon his friend's 

 tombstone. 



Hogarth, it will be remembered, some twenty years earlier, had 

 run away with Sir James Thornhill's only daughter. The knight 

 had contrived to make a considerable fortune, even although, 

 according to Walpole, he received only forty shillings a square 

 yard for painting the cupola of St. Paul's, and twenty-five shillings 

 a yard, for the hall at Blenheim. Angry at first, he rather quickly 

 forgave the young couple, for Hogarth, at the time of his marriage, 

 had just made his mark with " The Harlot's Progress ; " and, with 

 his conversation- groups of small family portraits, was making a 

 competency. Thornhill lived long enough to rejoice in the begin- 

 nings of his son-in-law's fame, to recognize his genius, and to 

 acknowledge that his pretty daughter had not made a bad match, 

 after all. The union proved a very happy one ; Jane made the 

 painter an excellent wife. But her father died fifteen years before 

 they came to Chiswick, where Mrs. Hogarth continued mostly to 

 live after her famous husband's death. He left her his house at 

 Chiswick, and all his other property, consisting chiefly of his 

 engraved copper-plates. One is glad to know that, by a special 

 Act of Parliament, the copyright of these was secured to her for a 

 considerable number of years, and that, when the sale of the prints 

 gradually decreased, the Royal Academy, at the instance of the 



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