CAPTAIN THOMAS CORAM

was born in the year 1668, bred to the sea, and passed the first part of his life as master of a vessel trading to the colonies. While he resided in the vicinity of Rotherhithe, his avocations obliging him to go early into the city and return late, he frequently saw deserted infants exposed to the inclemencies of the seasons, and through the indigence or cruelty of their parents left to casual relief or untimely death. This naturally excited his compassion, and led him to project the establishment of an hospital for the reception of exposed and deserted young children; in which humane design he laboured more than seventeen years, and at last, by his unwearied application, obtained the Royal Charter, bearing date the 17th of October 1739, for its incorporation.

He was highly instrumental in promoting another good design, viz. the procuring a bounty upon naval stores imported from the colonies to Georgia and Nova Scotia. But the charitable plan which he lived to make some progress in, though not to complete, was a scheme for uniting the Indians in North America more closely with the British Government,

seems to think peered too closely into his prints, though he acknowledges that, in a book entitled The Investigator, Ramsay has treated him with more candour than any of his other opponents.

by an establishment for the education of Indian girls. Indeed, he spent a great part of his life in serving the public, and with so total a disregard to his private interest, that in his old age he was himself supported by a pension of somewhat more than an hundred pounds a year,' raised for him at the solicitation of Sir Sampson Gideon and Dr. Brocklesby, by the voluntary subscriptions of public-spirited persons, at the head of whom was the late Frederick Prince of Wales. On application being made to this venerable and good old man to know whether a subscription being opened for his benefit would not offend him, he gave this noble answer: "I have not wasted the little wealth of which I was formerly possessed in self-indulgence or vain expenses, and am not ashamed to confess that in this my old age I am poor."

This singularly humane, persevering, and memorable man died at his lodgings near Leicester Square, March 29, 1751, and was interred, pursuant to his own desire, in the vault under the chapel of the Foundling Hospital, where an historic epitaph records his virtues, as Hogarth's portrait has preserved his honest countenance.

Hogarth thus resumes his narrative :—

1 Upon the death of Coram this pension was continued to poor old Leveridge, for whose volume of songs Hogarth had, in 1727, engraved a title-page and frontispiece, and who at the age of ninety had scarcely any other prospect than that of a parish subsistence.

"For the portrait of Mr. Garrick in Richard III. I was paid two hundred pounds' (which was more than any English artist ever received for a single portrait), and that, too, by the sanction of several painters who had been previously consulted about the price, which was not given without mature consideration.

"Notwithstanding all this, the current remark was, that portraits were not my province, and I was tempted to abandon the only lucrative branch of my art, for the practice brought the whole nest of phizmongers on my back, where they buzzed like so many hornets. All these people have their friends, whom they incessantly teach to call my women harlots, my Essay on Beauty' borrowed, and my composition and engraving contemptible.

"This so much disgusted me, that I sometimes declared I would never paint another portrait, and frequently refused when applied to; for I found by mortifying experience, that whoever would succeed

1 How very inferior was this to the portrait of Coram! But the genuine benevolence and simplicity which beams in the countenance of the friend and protector of helpless infancy is not calculated to strike the million so forcibly as the dramatic perturbation of a guilty tyrant. In this, as in some other cases, the purchaser seems to have paid for the player rather than the picture. It was painted for the late Mr. Duncombe, of Duncombe Park, Yorkshire.

2 By both the artists and connoisseurs of his own day he was accused of having stolen the ideas contained in his "Essay" from Lomazzo. Several prints which were published in support of this opinion will be noticed.

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in this branch must adopt the mode recommended in one of Gay's fables, and make divinities of all who sit to him.' Whether or not this childish affectation will ever be done away, is a doubtful question: none of those who have attempted to reform it have yet succeeded; nor, unless portrait-painters in general become more honest, and their customers less vain, is there much reason to expect they ever will."

Though thus in a state of warfare with his brother artists, he was occasionally gratified by the praise of men whose judgment was universally acknowledged, and whose sanction became an higher honour, from its being neither lightly nor indiscriminately given.

1 The fable here alluded to is entitled, A Painter who pleased everybody and nobody:

"So very like a painter drew,

That every eye the picture knew.-
His honest pencil touch'd with truth,
And mark'd the date of age and youth;"

But see the consequence :

"In dusty piles his pictures lay,

For no one sent the second pay."

Finding the result of truth so unpropitious to his fame and fortune, he changed his practice:

"Two bustos fraught with every grace,

A Venus, and Apollo's, face

He placed in view;-resolved to please,
Whoever sat, he drew from these."

This succeeded to a tittle:

"Through all the town his art they prais'd,
His custom grew, his price was rais'd."

The following letter from the facetious Mr. George Faulkner notices the estimation in which the author of The Battle of the Books held the painter of "The Battle of the Pictures: "

To Mr. William Hogarth, at his house in Leicester Fields, London.

"SIR,-I was favoured with a letter from Mr. Delany, who tells me that you are going to publish three prints. Your reputation here is sufficiently known to recommend anything of yours, and I shall be glad to serve you. The duty on prints is ten per cent. in Ireland. You may send me fifty sets, provided you will take back what I cannot sell. I desire no other profit than what you allow in London to those who sell them again. I have often the favour of drinking your health with Doctor Swift, who is a great admirer of yours, and hath made mention of you in his poems with great honour, and desired me

1 The "Distressed Poet," "Enraged Musician," and a companion print on painting which, though advertised, was never published, are the three here alluded to.

2 In his description of the Legion Club, after portraying many of the characters with most pointed severity, Swift thus exclaims:

"How I want thee, humorous Hogarth!
Thou, I hear, a pleasant rogue art!
Were but you and I acquainted,
Every monster should be painted.
You should try your graving tools
On this odious group of fools;