Hogarth: His Life, Art, and Times

"new kind of drunkenness . .. which, if not put a stop to, will infallibly destroy
a great part of the inferior people"—that is, gin-drinking, which he has "great
reason to think is the principal sustenance (if it may be so called) of more than
a hundred thousand people in this metropolis." Giving examples of the conse-
quences of this "diabolical liquor," he sounds as if he is recalling the gin-seller's
baby in The March to Finchley, emaciated and evidently nourished only on its
mother's wares: "What must become of the infant who is conceived in gin?
with the poisonous distillations of which it is nourished both in the womb and at
the breast." 57 In Gin Lane Hogarth has one mother pouring gin into her baby's
mouth and another (the central figure) with exposed breasts that suggest she
has been feeding her child, who is now falling to its death (in a later state Ho-
garth gave the child a gin-ravaged face).
As The March to Finchley was being engraved by Sullivan, Hogarth must
have been working on his equivalent to Fielding's Enquiry. In the London
Evening Post of 14-16 February he announced:
This Day are publish'd, Price I s. each.
Two large Prints, design'd and etch'd by Mr. Hogarth, call'd
BEER-STREET and GIN-LANE
A Number will be printed in a better Manner for the Curious, at 1s. 6d.
each.
And on Thursday following will be publish'd four Prints on the Subject
of Cruelty, Price and Size the same.
N.B. As the Subjects of these Prints are calculated to reform some reign-
ing Vices peculiar to the lower Class of People, in hopes to render them of
more extensive use, the Author has publish'd them in the cheapest Manner
possible.
To be had at the Golden Head in Leicester-Fields, Where may be had
all his other Works.
It is well to remember that Hogarth (like Fielding) is portraying vices "peculiar
to the lower Class of People," but that while he has "publish'd them in the
cheapest Manner possible," he has also had a number "printed in a better Man-
ner for the Curious" at 6d more. The "cheapest Manner" must have referred to
the light paper and the broad execution: relatively few lines were used. He had
gone so far as to employ John Bell to make woodcuts of two of the Stages of
Cruelty, but the project had to be abandoned because it proved more expensive
than copper engraving. The impressions "printed in a better Manner" make one
suspect that the aesthetic effect—which was striking—was as important to Ho-
garth as the need to reach the "lower Class of People."
The advertisement was repeated frequently, and in the London Evening Post
for 23-26 February the third paragraph was revised to read: "This Day were
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