Hogarth: His Life, Art, and Times

for subscribers on 3 January. The appearance of the print was closely followed,
on 17—19 January, by a translation (without acknowledgement) of Rouquet's
commentary in The Midwife; or, The Old Woman's Magazine; and on 7-9
March an original explication by Bonnell Thornton or one of his colleagues
appeared in The Student; or, Oxford and Cambridge Miscellany. 50
Perhaps the best grasp of the direction Hogarth was taking in this monumen-
tal composition, however, was shown by James Moor in an "Essay on the Com-
position of the Picture described in the Dialogue of Cebes," read before a
literary society in Glasgow on 1 March 1754. "There are two ways," writes Moor,
for a painter, to represent a variety of actions, which are supposed to have,
all, one tendency; concurring to produce one event, and uniting in one
final issue, the first is, by a Series, to be seen successively; the latter, still,
connecting with the former; each representing some one of these actions;
and, the whole, together, as ONE set, exhibiting the ONE final tendency
of all. such kind of united sets of pictures are, Hogarth's Progress of a Rake;
and, of a Harlot; and, of Industry, and Idleness.
The other way, Moor explains, is to include a variety or spectrum of actions in
a single plate:
this way is, likewise, practiced by Hogarth; in his March to Finchly-com-
mon, and his Bartholomew [sic]-Fair; in which last, all the various scenes,
of clamorous riot, dissolute diversions, and ludicrous accidents; which, at
one time or other, commonly, happen, in the course of that fair; he exhibits,
in one piece, together; as going on, all, at one time; but, among different
persons; and, in the different booths, and quarters, of Smithfield, this, tho'
just EXACTLY according to nature; yet, is a liberty universally allowed,
in all the imitative arts; wherever, the effect of the whole will be stronger,
by having all the parts, together, at once; than, by introducing them,
severally, in succession. 61
This, he argues, is the method of Cebes, except that the tabula is an allegoriza-
tion of life in general. The point, however, would seem to be that in Southwark
Fair and The March to Finchley, as opposed to the progresses, the fair or the
march could represent life in general; a protagonist, divided into two alterna-
tives in Industry and Idleness, could be fragmented into a great range of possi-
bilities.
Moor's paper, published in his Essays of 1759, shows one rationale behind the
diminution of the protagonist and the increasing crowd-orientation of the
monumental compositions of the 1750s culminating in the four great Election
plates, each an independent "life" in the sense meant by Moor. It is also useful
to note that by the third plate of the Election, if not sooner, the direct allegoriza-
tion of experience of the Tabula Cebetis has begun to reemerge with the popu-
95