Great English painters Author:Allan Cunningham Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: WILLIAM HOGARTH. William Hogarth was born in the parish of St. Bartholomew the Great, London, on the 10th of December 1697. That lie was baptised on the 28th ... more »of the same month we have the authority of his own manuscripts—the parish registers have been examined for confirmation with fruitless solicitude. He was a descendant of the family of Hogard, Hogart, or Hogarth, of Kirkby-Thore, in the county of Westmoreland ; his father being the youngest of three brothers—the eldest of whom lived and died in the condition of yeoman, on a small hereditary freehold in the vale Nichols says, in his earlier years he wrote himself Hogart or Hogard, but in this he is certainly incorrect. His father to his books and his letters added Kichard Hogarth, and there is no reason to believe that the son, even for a time, refused to adopt an improvement so graceful. That the name, in London pronunciation, would have the concluding th hardened into t, there can be little doubt; such is the fate of all northern names with similar terminations. Thus in conversation he was called Hogart, which the following lines, from Swift's "Legion Club," sufficiently prove :— " How I want thee, humorous Hogart I Thou, I hear, a pleasant rogue art I Were but you and I acquainted, Every monster should be painted ; You should try your graving tools On this odious group of fools ; Draw the beasts as I describe them From their features while I gibe them. Draw them like, for I assure-a You'll need no caricature ; Draw them so that we may trace All the soul in every face." of Bampton. The second held the plough at Troutbeck, in the same district; and Richard, the youngest, having been educated at the school of St. Bees, carried thence his learning and his health to the market of the great metropolis. For his sma...« less