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 Note

This ebook contains the contents of the following print volumes:

The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Ninth Edition

Volume C
1865–1914

The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Ninth Edition

Volume D
1914–1945

The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Ninth Edition

Volume E
Literature since 1945
THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF

AMERICAN
LITERATURE
NINTH EDITION
Robert S. Levine, General Editor
professor of english and
distinguished university professor and
distinguished scholar-teacher
University of Maryland, College Park

VOLUME C: 1865–1914

B
W • W • NORTON & COMPANY
NEW YORK • LONDON
 Contents

PREFACE xv
ACKNOW LEDGMENTS xxvii

American Lit er a ture 1865–1914

introduction 1
Timeline 16

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) 19

Song of Myself 23
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry 66
Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking 71
Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night 75
The Wound-Dresser 76
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d 78
From Democratic Vistas 85

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) 88

39 [I never lost as much but twice - ] 92
112 [Success is counted sweetest] 93
124 [Safe in their Alabaster Chambers - ] 93
202 [“Faith” is a fine invention] 94
207 [I taste a liquor never brewed - ] 94
225 [I’m “wife” - I’ve finished that - ] 94
236 [Some keep the Sabbath going to Church - ] 95
269 [Wild Nights - Wild Nights!] 95
320 [There’s a certain Slant of light] 97
There’s a certain slant of light (1890) 97
339 [I like a look of Agony] 98
340 [I felt a Funeral, in my Brain] 98
353 [I’m ceded - I’ve stopped being Their’s - ] 98
359 [A Bird, came down the Walk - ] 99
372 [After great pain, a formal feeling comes - ] 100
409 [The Soul selects her own Society - ] 100
448 [I died for Beauty - but was scarce] 100
vii
viii | CONTENTS

477 [He fumbles at your Soul] 101

479 [Because I could not stop for Death - ] 101
518 [When I was small, a Woman died - ] 102
519 [This is my letter to the World] 103
545 [They dropped like Flakes - ] 103
591 [I heard a Fly buzz - when I died - ] 103
598 [The Brain - is wider than the Sky - ] 104
620 [Much Madness is divinest Sense - ] 104
656 [I started Early - Took my Dog - ] 104
704 [My Portion is Defeat - today - ] 105
706 [I cannot live with You - ] 106
764 [My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun - ] 107
1096 [A narrow Fellow in the Grass] 108
1212 [My Triumph lasted till the Drums] 108
1263 [Tell all the Truth but tell it slant - ] 109
1668 [Apparently with no surprise] 109
1773 [My life closed twice before it’s close] 109
Letters to Thomas Went worth Higginson 110
April 15 and 25, 1862 110

Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) (1835–1910) 111

The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County 115
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 119
CRITICAL CONTROVERSY: RACE AND THE ENDING OF
ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN 303
Leo Marx: From Mr. Eliot, Mr. Trilling, and Huckleberry Finn 304
Julius lester: From Morality and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 307
David l. Smith: From Huck, Jim, and American Racial Discourse 308
Jane Smiley: From Say It Ain’t So, Huck: Second Thoughts on Mark
Twain’s “Masterpiece” 311
Toni Morrison: From Introduction to Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn 312
ALAN Gribben: From Introduction to the NewSouth Edition 314
Michiko Kakutani: Light Out, Huck, They Still Want
to Sivilize You 316
The Private History of a Campaign That Failed 318
Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences 331
The War Prayer 340

Bret Harte (1836–1902) 342

The Luck of Roaring Camp 343

William Dean Howells (1837–1920) 351

Editha 353
 CONTENTS | ix

Henry Adams (1838–1918) 362

The Education of Henry Adams 364
Chapter XXV. The Dynamo and the Virgin 364

Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840–1894) 373

Rodman the Keeper 374

Ambrose Bierce (1842– c. 1914) 394

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge 395
Chickamauga 401

Henry James (1843–1916) 406

Daisy Miller: A Study 410
The Real Thing 450
The Beast in the Jungle 467

Sarah Winnemucca (c. 1844–1891) 497

Life Among the Piutes 498
From Chapter I. First Meeting of Piutes and Whites 498
From Chapter II. Domestic and Social Moralities 503
From Chapter VIII. The Yakima Affair 505

Joel Chandler Harris (1848?–1908) 508

The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story 509
How Mr. Rabbit Was Too Sharp for Mr. Fox 510

Emma Laz arus (1849–1887) 511

In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport 512
1492 514
The New Colossus 514

Sarah Orne Jewet t (1849–1909) 515

A White Heron 516
From The Country of the Pointed Firs 523
Chapter I. The Return 523
Chapter II. Mrs. Todd 524
Chapter III. The Schoolhouse 526
Chapter IV. At the Schoolhouse Window 528
Chapter V. Captain Littlepage 529
Chapter VI. The Waiting Place 533

K ate Chopin (1850–1904) 537

Désirée’s Baby 538
The Story of an Hour 542
The Storm 544
The Awakening 548
x | CONTENTS

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1852–1930) 639

A New England Nun 640
The Revolt of “Mother” 649

Voices from Native America 660

Oratory
Smohalla: Comments to Major MacMurray 661
Charlot: [He has filled graves with our bones] 664
CHIEF joseph: From An Indian’s Views of Indian Affairs 667

Narrative
Francis LaFlesche: From The Middle Five 670
ZITKALA-ŠA: Iktomi and the Fawn 675
The Ghost Dance Songs and the Wounded Knee Massacre 680
[Flat Pipe is telling me] 681
[Father, have pity on me] 681
[The Crow Woman] 681
nicholas Black Elk and John G. Neihardt:
From Black Elk Speaks 682
Charles Alexander Eastman:
From From the Deep Woods to Civilization 687

Jos É Mart Í (1853–1895) 691

Our Amer ica 692

Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) 699

Up from Slavery 701
Chapter I. A Slave among Slaves 701
Chapter II. Boyhood Days 709
Chapter XIV. The Atlanta Exposition Address 716

Charles W. Chesnut t (1858–1932) 724

The Goophered Grapevine 726
Po’ Sandy 733
The Wife of His Youth 740
The Passing of Grandison 749

Pauline Eliz abeth Hopkins (1859–1930) 761

Talma Gordon 762

Hamlin Garland (1860–1940) 774

Under the Lion’s Paw 775
 CONTENTS | xi

Abraham Cahan (1860–1951) 785

Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto 787

Charlot te Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) 842

The Yellow Wall-paper 844
Why I Wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper”? 856

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) 857

The Other Two 859
Roman Fever 872

Ida B. Wells-Barnet t (1862–1931) 881

From Mob Rule in New Orleans 883

Sui Sin Far (Edith Maud Eaton) (1865–1914) 908

Mrs. Spring Fragrance 909

W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) 918

The Souls of Black Folk 920
The Forethought 920
I. Of Our Spiritual Strivings 921
III. Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others 927
XIII. Of the Coming of John 937
XIV. Of the Sorrow Songs 947

realism and naturalism 955

william dean howells: From Editor’s Study 956

henry james: From The Art of Fiction 961

HAMLIN GARLAND: From Local Color in Art 963

William Roscoe Thayer: From The New Story-Tellers

and the Doom of Realism 965

frank norris: A Plea for Romantic Fiction 968

jack london: From What Life Means to Me 971

Charlotte Perkins Gilman: From Masculine Literature 974

Frank Norris (1870–1902) 976

A Deal in Wheat 977

Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945) 985

Sister Carrie 987
Chapter I 987
Chapter III 994
xii | CONTENTS

Stephen Crane (1871–1900) 1002

Maggie: A Girl of the Streets 1004
The Open Boat 1048
From The Black Riders 1064
From War Is Kind 1065

James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) 1067

Lift Every Voice and Sing 1069
Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man 1070
Chapter I 1070
Chapter X 1076

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906) 1093

When Malindy Sings 1094
An Ante-Bellum Sermon 1096
We Wear the Mask 1098
Sympathy 1099
Harriet Beecher Stowe 1099
Frederick Douglass 1100

John M. Oskison (1874–1947) 1101

The Problem of Old Harjo 1102

Jack London (1876–1916) 1107

The Law of Life 1108
To Build a Fire 1113

ZITK ALA-ŠA (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin) (1876–1938) 1124

Impressions of an Indian Childhood 1127
I. My Mother 1127
II. The Legends 1128
VII. The Big Red Apples 1130
The School Days of an Indian Girl 1133
I. The Land of Red Apples 1133
II. The Cutting of My Long Hair 1134
V. Iron Routine 1136
VI. Four Strange Summers 1137
VII. Incurring My Mother’s Displeasure 1139
The Soft-Hearted Sioux 1141
Why I Am a Pagan 1146

Upton Sinclair (1878–1968) 1148

The Jungle 1150
Chapter IX 1150
 CONTENTS | xiii

becoming american in the gilded age 1157

HORATIO ALGER: From Ragged Dick 1158

ANDREW CARNEGIE: From The Gospel of Wealth 1161

frederick jackson turner: From The Significance of the

Frontier in American History 1164

theodore roosevelt 1169

From American Ideals 1169
From The Strenuous Life 1172
CHARLES W. CHESNUTT: From The Future American 1175

jane addams: Twenty Years at Hull-House 1179

From Chapter V. First Days at Hull-House 1180
From Chapter XI. Immigrants and Their Children 1182
Horace Kallen: From Democracy versus the Melting Pot 1185

selected Bibliographies C1
Permissions Acknowledgments C21
Index C23
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 Preface to the Ninth Edition

The Ninth Edition of The Norton Anthology of American Literature is the first
for me as General Editor; for the Eighth Edition, I served as Associate
General Editor under longstanding General Editor Nina Baym. On the
occasion of a new general editorship, we have undertaken one of the most
extensive revisions in our long publishing history. Three new section editors
have joined the team: Sandra M. Gustafson, Professor of English and Con-
current Professor of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame,
who succeeds Wayne Franklin and Philip Gura as editor of “American
Literature, Beginnings to 1820”; Michael A. Elliott, Professor of English at
Emory University, who succeeds Nina Baym, Robert S. Levine, and Jeanne
Campbell Reesman as editor of “American Literature, 1865–1914”; and
Amy Hungerford, Professor of English and American Studies at Yale Uni-
versity, who succeeds Jerome Klinkowitz and Patricia B. Wallace as editor
of “American Literature since 1945.” These editors join Robert S. Levine,
editor of “American Literature, 1820–1865,” and Mary Loeffelholz, editor
of “American Literature, 1914–1945.” Each editor, new or continuing, is a
well-known expert in the relevant field or period and has ultimate responsi-
bility for his or her section of the anthology, but we have worked closely
from first to last to rethink all aspects of this new edition. Volume introduc-
tions, author headnotes, thematic clusters, annotations, illustrations, and
bibliographies have all been updated and revised. We have also added a
number of new authors, selections, and thematic clusters. We are excited
about the outcome of our collaboration and anticipate that, like the previous
eight editions, this edition of The Norton Anthology of American Literature
will continue to lead the field.
From the anthology’s inception in 1979, the editors have had three main
aims: first, to present a rich and substantial enough variety of works to
enable teachers to build courses according to their own vision of American
literary history (thus, teachers are offered more authors and more selections
than they will probably use in any one course); second, to make the anthol-
ogy self-sufficient by featuring many works in their entirety along with
extensive selections for individual authors; third, to balance traditional
interests with developing critical concerns in a way that allows for the com-
plex, rigorous, and capacious study of American literary traditions. As early
as 1979, we anthologized work by Anne Bradstreet, Mary Rowlandson,
Sarah Kemble Knight, Phillis Wheatley, Margaret Fuller, Harriet Beecher
Stowe, Frederick Douglass, Sarah Orne Jewett, Kate Chopin, Mary E. Wilkins
Freeman, Booker T. Washington, Charles W. Chesnutt, Edith Wharton,
xv
xvi | PREFACE TO THE NINTH EDITION

W. E. B. Du Bois, and other writers who were not yet part of a standard canon.
Yet we never shortchanged writers— such as Franklin, Emerson, Whitman,
Hawthorne, Melville, Dickinson, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner—
whose work many students expected to read in their American literature
courses, and whom most teachers then and now would not think of doing
without.
The so-called canon wars of the 1980s and 1990s usefully initiated a
review of our understanding of American literature, a review that has
enlarged the number and diversity of authors now recognized as contributors
to the totality of American literature. The traditional writers look dif ferent
in this expanded context, and they also appear different according to which
of their works are selected. Teachers and students remain committed to the
idea of the literary—that writers strive to produce artifacts that are both
intellectually serious and formally skillful— but believe more than ever that
writers should be understood in relation to their cultural and historical
situations. We address the complex interrelationships between literature
and history in the volume introductions, author headnotes, chronologies,
and some of the footnotes. As in previous editions, we have worked with
detailed suggestions from many teachers on how best to present the authors
and selections. We have gained insights as well from the students who use
the anthology. Thanks to questionnaires, face-to-face and phone discus-
sions, letters, and email, we have been able to listen to those for whom this
book is intended. For the Ninth Edition, we have drawn on the careful
commentary of over 240 reviewers and reworked aspects of the anthology
accordingly.
Our new materials continue the work of broadening the canon by repre-
senting thirteen new writers in depth, without sacrificing widely assigned
writers, many of whose selections have been reconsidered, reselected, and
expanded. Our aim is always to provide extensive enough selections to do
the writers justice, including complete works wherever possible. Our Ninth
Edition offers complete longer works, including Hawthorne’s The Scarlet
Letter and Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, and such new and recently added
works as Margaret Fuller’s The Great Lawsuit, Abraham Cahan’s Yekl: A
Tale of the New York Ghetto, Nella Larsen’s Passing, Katherine Anne Por-
ter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider, Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust, and
August Wilson’s Fences. Two complete works—Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s
Journey into Night and Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire—are
exclusive to The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Charles Brockden
Brown, Louisa May Alcott, Upton Sinclair, and Junot Díaz are among the
writers added to the prior edition, and to this edition we have introduced
John Rollin Ridge, Constance Fenimore Woolson, George Saunders, and
Natasha Tretheway, among others. We have also expanded and in some
cases reconfigured such central figures as Franklin, Hawthorne, Dickin-
son, Twain, and Hemingway, offering new approaches in the headnotes,
along with some new selections. In fact, the headnotes and, in many cases,
selections for such frequently assigned authors as William Bradford, Wash-
ington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, William Cullen Bryant, Lydia
Maria Child, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Har-
riet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Henry James,
Kate Chopin, W. E. B. Du Bois, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and William
 PREFACE TO THE NINTH EDITION | xvii

Faulkner have been revised, updated, and in some cases entirely rewritten
in light of recent scholarship. The Ninth Edition further expands its
selections of women writers and writers from diverse ethnic, racial, and
regional backgrounds—always with attention to the critical acclaim that
recognizes their contributions to the American literary record. New and
recently added writers such as Samson Occom, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft,
John Rollin Ridge, and Sarah Winnemucca, along with the figures repre-
sented in “Voices from Native Amer ica,” enable teachers to bring early
Native American writing and oratory into their syllabi, or should they pre-
fer, to focus on these selections as a freestanding unit leading toward the
moment after 1945 when Native writers fully entered the mainstream of
literary activity.
We are pleased to continue our popular innovation of topical gatherings
of short texts that illuminate the cultural, historical, intellectual, and literary
concerns of their respective periods. Designed to be taught in a class period
or two, or used as background, each of the sixteen clusters consists of brief,
carefully excerpted primary and (in one case) secondary texts, about six
to ten per cluster, and an introduction. Diverse voices—many new to the
anthology—highlight a range of views current when writers of a particular
time period were active, and thus allow students better to understand some
of the large issues that were being debated at par ticular historical moments.
For example, in “Slavery, Race, and the Making of American Literature,”
texts by David Walker, William Lloyd Garrison, Angelina Grimké,
Sojourner Truth, James M. Whitfield, and Martin R. Delany speak to the
great paradox of pre– Civil War Amer ica: the contradictory rupture between
the realities of slavery and the nation’s ideals of freedom.
The Ninth Edition strengthens this feature with eight new and revised
clusters attuned to the requests of teachers. To help students address the
controversy over race and aesthetics in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, we
have revised a cluster in Volume C that shows what some of the leading
critics of the past few decades thought was at stake in reading and interpret-
ing slavery and race in Twain’s canonical novel. New to Volume A is “American
Literature and the Va rieties of Religious Expression,” which includes
selections by Elizabeth Ashbridge, John Woolman, and John Marrant, while
Volume B offers “Science and Technology in the Pre– Civil War Nation.”
Volume C newly features “Becoming American in the Gilded Age,” and
we continue to include the useful “Modernist Manifestos” in Volume D. We
have added to the popular “Creative Nonfiction” in Volume E new selections
by David Foster Wallace and Hunter S. Thompson, who join such writers as
Jamaica Kincaid and Joan Didion.
The Ninth Edition features an expanded illustration program, both of
the black-and-white images, 145 of which are placed throughout the vol-
umes, and of the color plates so popular in the last two editions. In select-
ing color plates—from Elizabeth Graham’s embroidered map of Washington,
D.C., at the start of the nineteenth century to Jeff Wall’s “After ‘Invisible
Man’ ” at the beginning of the twenty-first—the editors aim to provide
images relevant to literary works in the anthology while depicting arts and
artifacts representative of each era. In addition, graphic works—segments
from the colonial children’s classic The New-England Primer and from Art
Spiegelman’s canonical graphic novel, Maus, and a facsimile page of Emily
xviii | PREFACE TO THE NINTH EDITION

Dickinson manuscript, along with the many new illustrations— open possi-
bilities for teaching visual texts.

Period-by-Period Revisions
Volume A, Beginnings to 1820. Sandra M. Gustafson, the new editor of
Volume A, has substantially revised the volume. Prior editions of Volume A
were broken into two historical sections, with two introductions and a
dividing line at the year 1700; Gustafson has dropped that artificial divide
to tell a more coherent and fluid story (in her new introduction) about the
variety of American literatures during this long period. The volume continues
to feature narratives by early European explorers of the North American
continent as they encountered and attempted to make sense of the diverse
cultures they met, and as they sought to justify their aim of claiming the
territory for Europeans. These are precisely the issues foregrounded by
the revised cluster “First Encounters: Early European Accounts of Native
America,” which gathers writings by Hernán Cortés, Samuel de Champlain,
Robert Juet, and others, including the newly added Thomas Harriot. In
addition to the standing material from The Bay Psalm Book, we include
new material by Roger Williams; additional poems by Annis Boudinot
Stockton; Abigail Adams’s famous letter urging her husband to “Remember
the Ladies”; an additional selection from Olaudah Equiano on his post-
emancipation travels; and Charles Brockden Brown’s “Memoirs of Carwin
the Biloquist” (the complete “prequel” to his first novel, Wieland). We con-
tinue to offer the complete texts of Rowlandson’s enormously influential A
Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, Ben-
jamin Franklin’s Autobiography (which remains one of the most compelling
works on the emergence of an “American” self), Royall Tyler’s popular play
The Contrast, and Hannah Foster’s novel The Coquette, which uses a real-
life tragedy to meditate on the proper role of well-bred women in the new
republic and testifies to the existence of a female audience for the popular
novels of the period. New to this volume is Washington Irving, a writer
who looks back to colonial history and forward to Jacksonian Amer ica.
The inclusion of Irving in both Volumes A and B, with one key overlapping
selection, points to continuities and changes between the two volumes.
Five new and revised thematic clusters of texts highlight themes central
to Volume A. In addition to “First Encounters,” we have included “Native
American Oral Literature,” “American Literature and the Varieties of Reli-
gious Expression,” “Ethnographic and Naturalist Writings,” and “Native
American Eloquence: Negotiation and Resistance.” “Native American Oral
Literature” features creation stories, trickster tales, oratory, and poetry from
a spectrum of traditions, while “Native American Eloquence” collects
speeches and accounts by Canassatego and Native American women (both
new to the volume), Pontiac, Chief Logan (as cited by Thomas Jefferson),
and Tecumseh, which, as a group, illustrate the centuries-long pattern of
initial peaceful contact between Native Americans and whites mutating into
bitter and violent conflict. This cluster, which focuses on Native Americans’
points of view, complements “First Encounters,” which focuses on European
colonizers’ points of view. The Native American presence in the volume is
further expanded with increased representation of Samson Occom, which
 PREFACE TO THE NINTH EDITION | xix

includes an excerpt from his sermon at the execution of Moses Paul, and
the inclusion of Sagoyewatha in “American Literature and the Varieties of
Religious Expression.” Strategically located between the Congregationalist
Protestant (or late-Puritan) Jonathan Edwards and the Enlightenment fig-
ure Franklin, this cluster brings together works from the perspectives of
the major religious groups of the early Amer icas, including Quakerism
(poems by Francis Daniel Pastorius, selections from autographical narratives
of Elizabeth Ashbridge and John Woolman), Roman Catholicism (poems by
Sor Juana, two Jesuit Relations, with biographical accounts of Father Isaac
Jogues and Kateri Tekakwitha), dissenting Protestantism (Marrant), Juda-
ism (Rebecca Samuel), and indigenous beliefs (Sagoyewatha). The new
cluster “Ethnographic and Naturalist Writings” includes writings by Sarah
Kemble Knight and William Byrd, along with new selections by Alexander
Hamilton, William Bartram, and Hendrick Aupaumut. With this cluster,
the new cluster on science and technology in Volume B, and a number of
new selections and revisions in Volumes C, D, and E, the Ninth Edition pays
greater attention to the impact of science on American literary traditions.

Volume B, American Lit erature, 1820–1865. Under the editorship of

Robert S. Levine, this volume over the past several editions has become
more diverse. Included here are the complete texts of Emerson’s Nature,
Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, Thoreau’s Walden, Douglass’s Narrative, Whit-
man’s Song of Myself, Melville’s Benito Cereno and Billy Budd, Rebecca
Harding Davis’s Life in the Iron Mills, and Margaret Fuller’s The Great Law-
suit. At the same time, aware of the important role of African American
writers in the period, and the omnipresence of race and slavery as literary
and political themes, we have recently added two major African American
writers, William Wells Brown and Frances E. W. Harper, along with Doug-
lass’s novella The Heroic Slave. Thoreau’s “Plea for Captain John Brown,” a
generous selection from Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and the cluster “Slavery,
Race, and the Making of American Literature” also help remind students of
how central slavery was to the literary and political life of the nation during
this period. “Native Americans: Resistance and Removal” gathers oratory
and writings—by Native Americans such as Black Hawk and whites such as
Ralph Waldo Emerson—protesting Andrew Jackson’s ruthless national pol-
icy of Indian removal. Newly added is a selection from The Life and Adven-
tures of Joaquín Murieta, by the Native American writer John Rollin Ridge.
This potboiler of a novel, set in the new state of California, emerged from
the debates that began during the Indian removal period. Through the fig-
ure of the legendary Mexican bandit Murieta, who fights back against white
expansionists, Ridge responds to the violence encouraged by Jackson and
subsequent white leaders as they laid claim to the continent. Political
themes, far from diluting the literary imagination of American authors,
served to inspire some of the most memorable writing of the pre-Civil War
period.
Women writers recently added to Volume B include Lydia Huntley
Sigourney, the Native American writer Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, and
Louisa May Alcott. Recently added prose fiction includes chapters from
Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans, Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie, and Melville’s
Moby-Dick, along with Poe’s “The Black Cat” and Hawthorne’s “Wakefield.”
xx | PREFACE TO THE NINTH EDITION

For the first time in the print edition, we include Melville’s “Hawthorne
and His Mosses” as it appeared in the 1850 Literary World. Poetry by Emily
Dickinson is now presented in the texts established by R. W. Franklin and
includes a facsimile page from Fascicle 10. For this edition we have added
several poems by Dickinson that were inspired by the Civil War. Other
selections added to this edition include Fanny Fern’s amusing sketch “Writ-
ing ‘Compositions,’ ” the chapter in Frederick Douglass’s My Bondage and
My Freedom on his resistance to the slave-breaker Covey, three poems by
Melville (“Dupont’s Round Fight,” “A Utilitarian View of the Monitor’s
Fight,” and “Art”), and Whitman’s “The Sleepers.”
Perhaps the most significant addition to Volume B is the cluster “Science
and Technology in the Pre– Civil War Nation,” with selections by the canoni-
cal writers Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, and Frederick Douglass, by
the scientists Jacob Bigelow and Alexander Humboldt, and by the editor-
writer Harriet Farley. The cluster calls attention to the strong interest in
science and technology throughout this period and should provide a rich
context for reconsidering works such as Thoreau’s Walden and Melville’s
“The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids.” In an effort to under-
score the importance of science and technology to Poe and Hawthorne in
particular, we have added two stories that directly address these topics: Poe’s
“The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” and Hawthorne’s “The Artist of the
Beautiful” (which reads nicely in relation to his “The Birth-Mark” and
“Rappaccini’s Daughter”). Emerson, Whitman, and Dickinson are among the
many other authors in Volume B who had considerable interest in science.

Volume C, American Literature, 1865–1914. Newly edited by Michael A.

Elliott, the volume includes expanded selections of key works, as well as
new ones that illustrate how many of the struggles of this period prefigure
our own. In addition to complete longer works such as Twain’s Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn, Chopin’s The Awakening, James’s Daisy Miller, and
Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, the Ninth Edition now
includes the complete text of Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto, a highly
influential novella of immigrant life that depicts the pressures facing newly
arrived Jews in the nation’s largest metropolis. Also new is a substantial
selection from Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs, a mas-
terpiece of literary regionalism that portrays a remote seaside community
facing change.
Americans are still reflecting on the legacy of the Civil War, and we have
added two works approaching that subject from dif ferent angles. Constance
Fenimore Woolson’s “Rodman the Keeper” tells the story of a Union vet-
eran who maintains a cemetery in the South. In “The Private History of a
Campaign That Failed,” Mark Twain reflects with wit and insight on his
own brief experience in the war. In the Eighth Edition, we introduced a
section on the critical controversy surrounding race and the conclusion of
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. That section remains as impor tant as ever,
and new additions incorporate a recent debate about the value of an expur-
gated edition of the novel.
We have substantially revised clusters designed to give students a sense
of the cultural context of the period. New selections in “Realism and Natu-
ralism” demonstrate what was at stake in the debate over realism, among
 PREFACE TO THE NINTH EDITION | xxi

them a feminist response from Charlotte Perkins Gilman. “Becoming Ameri-

can in the Gilded Age,” a new cluster, introduces students to writing about
wealth and citizenship at a time when the nation was undergoing transfor-
mation. Selections from one of Horatio Alger’s popular novels of economic
uplift, Andrew Car negie’s “Gospel of Wealth,” and Charles W. Chesnutt’s
“The Future American” together reveal how questions about the composi-
tion of the nation both influenced the literature of this period and prefigured
contemporary debates on immigration, cultural diversity, and the concentra-
tion of wealth.
The turn of the twentieth century was a time of immense literary diver-
sity. “Voices from Native Amer ica” brings together a variety of expressive
forms— oratory, memoir, ethnography— through which Native Americans
sought to represent themselves. It includes new selections by Francis
LaFlesche, Zitkala-Ša, and Chief Joseph. For the first time, we include the
complete text of José Martí’s “Our Amer ica,” in a new translation by Martí
biographer Alfred J. López. By instructor request, we have added fiction and
nonfiction by African American authors: Charles W. Chesnutt’s “Po’
Sandy,” Pauline Hopkins’s “Talma Gordon,” and expanded selections
from W. E. B. Du Bois’s Souls of Black Folk and James Weldon Johnson’s
Autobiography of an Ex- Colored Man.

Volume D, American Literature 1914–1945. Edited by Mary Loeffelholz,

Volume D offers a number of complete longer works—Eugene O’Neill’s
Long Day’s Journey into Night (exclusive to the Norton Anthology), William
Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, and Willa Cather’s My Ántonia. To these we have
added Nella Larsen’s Passing, which replaces Quicksand, and Nathanael
West’s The Day of the Locust. We added Passing in response to numerous
requests from instructors and students who regard it as one of the most
compelling treatments of racial passing in American literature. The novel
also offers rich descriptions of the social and racial geographies of Chicago
and New York City. West’s darkly comic The Day of the Locust similarly
offers rich descriptions of the social and racial geography of Los Angeles.
West’s novel can at times seem bleak and not “politically correct,” but in
many ways it is the first great American novel about the film industry, and
it also has much to say about the growth of California in the early decades
of the twentieth century. New selections by Zora Neale Hurston (“Sweat”)
and John Steinbeck (“The Chrysanthemums”) further contribute to the vol-
ume’s exploration of issues connected with racial and social geographies.
Selections by Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, Hart Crane, and
Langston Hughes encourage students and teachers to contemplate the inter-
relation of modernist aesthetics with ethnic, regional, and popular writing.
In “Modernist Manifestos,” F. T. Marinetti, Mina Loy, Ezra Pound, Willa
Cather, William Carlos Williams, and Langston Hughes show how the man-
ifesto as a form exerted a power ful influence on international modernism
in all the arts. Another illuminating cluster addresses central events of
the modern period. In “World War I and Its Aftermath,” writings by Ernest
Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Jessie Redmon Fauset, and others explore sharply
divided views on the U.S. role in World War I, as well as the radicalizing
effect of modern warfare—with 365,000 American casualties—on con-
temporary writing. We have added to this edition a chapter from Hemingway’s
xxii | PREFACE TO THE NINTH EDITION

first novel, The Sun Also Rises, which speaks to the impact of the war on
sexuality and gender. Other recent and new additions to Volume D include
Faulkner’s popular “A Rose for Emily,” Katherine Anne Porter’s novella Pale
Horse, Pale Rider, Gertrude Stein’s “Objects,” Marianne Moore’s ambitious
longer poem “Marriage,” poems by Edgar Lee Masters and Edwin Arlington
Robinson, and Jean Toomer’s “Blood Burning Moon.”

Volume E, American Literature, 1945 to the Present. Amy Hungerford,

the new editor of Volume E, has revised the volume to present a wider
range of writing in poetry, prose, drama, and nonfiction. As before, the vol-
ume offers the complete texts of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named
Desire (exclusive to this anthology), Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman,
Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, Sam Shepard’s True West, August Wilson’s Fences,
David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, and Louise Glück’s long poem October.
A selection from Art Spiegelman’s prize-winning Maus opens possibilities
for teaching the graphic novel. We also include teachable stand-alone seg-
ments from influential novels by Saul Bellow (The Adventures of Augie
March) and Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse-Five), and, new to this edition,
Jack Kerouac (On the Road) and Don DeLillo (White Noise). The selection
from one of DeLillo’s most celebrated novels tells what feels like a con-
temporary story about a nontraditional family navigating an environmental
disaster in a climate saturated by mass media. Three newly added stories—
Patricia Highsmith’s “The Quest for Blank Claveringi,” Philip K. Dick’s
“Precious Artifact,” and George Saunders’s “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline”—
reveal the impact of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and (especially in the
case of Saunders) mass media on literary fiction. Also appearing for the
first time are Edward P. Jones and Lydia Davis, contemporary masters of
the short story, who join such short fiction writers as Ann Beattie and Junot
Díaz. Recognized literary figures in all genres, ranging from Robert Penn
Warren and Elizabeth Bishop to Leslie Marmon Silko and Toni Morrison,
continue to be richly represented. In response to instructors’ requests, we
now include Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” and James
Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues.”
One of the most distinctive features of twentieth- and twenty-first-century
American literature is a rich vein of African American poetry. This edition
adds two contemporary poets from this living tradition: Natasha Trethewey
and Tracy K. Smith. Trethewey’s selections include personal and historical
elegies; Smith draws on cultural materials as diverse as David Bowie’s
music and the history of the Hubble Space Telescope. These writers join
African American poets whose work has long helped define the anthology—
Rita Dove, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Hayden, Audre Lorde, and others.
This edition gives even greater exposure to literary and social experimen-
tation during the 1960s, 1970s, and beyond. The work of two avant-garde
playwrights joins “Postmodern Manifestos” (which pairs nicely with “Mod-
ernist Manifestos” in Volume D). Introduced to the anthology through their
short, challenging pieces, Charles Ludlam and Richard Foreman cast the
mechanics of per formance in a new light. Reading their thought pieces in
relation to the volume’s complete plays helps raise new questions about how
the seemingly more traditional dramatic works engage structures of time,
plot, feeling, and spectatorship. To our popular cluster “Creative Nonfiction”
 PREFACE TO THE NINTH EDITION | xxiii

we have added a new selection by Joan Didion, from “Slouching Towards

Bethlehem,” which showcases her revolutionary style of journalism as she
comments on experiments with public per formance and communal living
during the 1960s. A new selection from David Foster Wallace in the same
cluster pushes reportage on the Maine Lobster Festival into philosophical
inquiry: how can we fairly assess the pain of other creatures? This edition
also introduces poet Frank Bidart through his most famous work— Ellen
West—in which the poet uses experimental forms of verse he pioneered
during the 1970s to speak in the voice of a woman battling anorexia. Stand-
ing authors in the anthology, notably John Ashbery and Amiri Baraka, fill
out the volume’s survey of radical change in the forms, and social uses, of
literary art.
We are delighted to offer this revised Ninth Edition to teachers and stu-
dents, and we welcome your comments.

Additional Resources from the Publisher

The Ninth Edition retains the paperback splits format, popular for its flex-
ibility and portability. This format accommodates the many instructors
who use the anthology in a two-semester survey, but allows for mixing and
matching the five volumes in a variety of courses organized by period or
topic, at levels from introductory to advanced. We are also pleased to offer
the Ninth Edition in an ebook format. The Digital Anthologies include
all the content of the print volumes, with print-corresponding page and line
numbers for seamless integration into the print-digital mixed classroom.
Annotations are accessible with a click or a tap, encouraging students to
use them with minimal interruption to their reading of the text. The
e-reading platform facilitates active reading with a power ful annotation
tool and allows students to do a full-text search of the anthology and read
online or off. The Digital Editions can be accessed from any computer or
device with an Internet browser and are available to students at a frac-
tion of the print price at digital.wwnorton.com /americanlit9pre1865 and
digital.wwnorton.com /americanlit9post1865. For exam copy access to the
Digital Editions and for information on making the Digital Editions avail-
able through the campus bookstore or packaging the Digital Editions with
the print anthology, instructors should contact their Norton representative.
To give instructors even more flexibility, Norton is making available the full
list of 254 Norton Critical Editions. A Norton Critical Edition can be included
for free with either package (Volumes A and B; Volumes C, D, E) or any indi-
vidual split volume. Each Norton Critical Edition gives students an authorita-
tive, carefully annotated text accompanied by rich contextual and critical
materials prepared by an expert in the subject. The publisher also offers the
much-praised guide Writing about American Literature, by Karen Gocsik
(University of California–San Diego) and Coleman Hutchison (University of
Texas–Austin), free with either package or any individual split volume.
In addition to the Digital Editions, for students using The Norton Anthol-
ogy of American Literature, the publisher provides a wealth of free resources
at digital.wwnorton.com /americanlit9pre1865 and digital.wwnorton.com
/americanlit9post1865. There students will find more than seventy reading-
comprehension quizzes on the period introductions and widely taught works
xxiv | PREFACE TO THE NINTH EDITION

with extensive feedback that points them back to the text. Ideal for self-study
or homework assignments, Norton’s sophisticated quizzing engine allows
instructors to track student results and improvement. For over thirty works
in the anthology, the sites also offer Close Reading Workshops that walk
students step-by-step through analysis of a literary work. Each workshop
prompts students to read, reread, consider contexts, and answer questions
along the way, making these perfect assignments to build close-reading
skills.
The publisher also provides extensive instructor-support materials. New
to the Ninth Edition is an online Interactive Instructor’s Guide at iig.wwnor-
ton.com/americanlit9/full. Invaluable for course preparation, this resource
provides hundreds of teaching notes, discussion questions, and suggested
resources from the much-praised Teaching with The Norton Anthology of
American Literature: A Guide for Instructors by Edward Whitley (Lehigh
University). Also at this searchable and sortable site are quizzes, images, and
lecture PowerPoints for each introduction, topic cluster, and twenty-five
widely taught works. A PDF of Teaching with NAAL is available for download
at wwnorton.com/instructors.
Finally, Norton Coursepacks bring high-quality digital media into a new
or existing online course. The coursepack includes all the reading compre-
hension quizzes (customizable within the coursepack), the Writing about
Literature video series, a bank of essay and exam questions, bulleted sum-
maries of the period introductions, and “Making Connections” discussion
or essay prompts to encourage students to draw connections across the
anthology’s authors and works. Coursepacks are available in a variety of
formats, including Blackboard, Canvas, Desire2Learn, and Moodle, at no
cost to instructors or students.

Editorial Procedures
As in past editions, editorial features—period introductions, headnotes,
annotations, and bibliographies— are designed to be concise yet full and to
give students necessary information without imposing a single interpreta-
tion. The editors have updated all apparatus in response to new scholar-
ship: period introductions have been entirely or substantially rewritten, as
have many headnotes. All selected bibliographies and each period’s general-
resources bibliographies, categorized by Reference Works, Histories, and
Literary Criticism, have been thoroughly updated. The Ninth Edition retains
three editorial features that help students place their reading in historical
and cultural context— a Texts/Contexts timeline following each period
introduction, a map on the front endpaper of each volume, and a chrono-
logical chart, on the back endpaper, showing the lifespans of many of the
writers anthologized.
Whenever possible, our policy has been to reprint texts as they appeared
in their historical moment. There is one exception: we have modernized
most spellings and (very sparingly) the punctuation in Volume A on the
principle that archaic spellings and typography pose unnecessary problems
for beginning students. We have used square brackets to indicate titles sup-
plied by the editors for the convenience of students. Whenever a portion of
a text has been omitted, we have indicated that omission with three asterisks.
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Exploring the Variety of Random
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host of foes, who either dreaded satire or envied genius. The
connoisseurs considering the challenge as too insolent to be
forgiven,—before his picture appeared, determined to decry it. The
painters rejoiced in his attempting what was likely to end in
disgrace; and to satisfy those who had formed their ideas of
Sigismunda upon the inspired page of Dryden, was no easy task.
The bard has consecrated the character, and his heroine glitters
with a brightness that cannot be transferred to the canvas. Mr.
Walpole's description, though equally radiant, is too various for the
utmost powers of the pencil.
Hogarth's Sigismunda, as this gentleman poetically expresses it,
"has none of the sober grief, no dignity of suppressed anguish, no
involuntary tear, no settled meditation on the fate she meant to
meet, no amorous warmth turned holy by despair; in short, all is
wanting that should have been there, all is there that such a story
would have banished from a mind capable of conceiving such
complicated woe; woe so sternly felt, and yet so tenderly." This
glowing picture presents to the mind a being whose contending
passions may be felt, but were not delineated even by Correggio.
Had his tints been aided by the grace and greatness of Raphael,
they must have failed.
The author of the Mysterious Mother sought for sublimity, where
the artist strictly copied nature, which was invariably his archetype,
but which the painter, who soars into fancy's fairy regions, must in a
degree desert. Considered with this reference, though the picture
has faults, Mr. Walpole's satire is surely too severe. It is built upon a
comparison with works painted in a language of which Hogarth knew
not the idiom,—trying him before a tribunal whose authority he did
not acknowledge; and from the picture having been in many
respects altered after the critic saw it, some of the remarks become
unfair. To the frequency of these alterations we may attribute many
of the errors:[28] the man who has not confidence in his own
knowledge of the leading principles on which his work ought to be
built, will not render it perfect by following the advice of his friends.
Though Messrs. Wilkes and Churchill dragged his heroine to the altar
of politics, and mangled her with a barbarity that can hardly be
paralleled, except in the history of her husband,—the artist retained
his partiality, which seems to have increased in exact proportion to
their abuse. The picture being thus contemplated through the
medium of party prejudice, we cannot wonder that all its
imperfections were exaggerated. The painted harlot of Babylon had
not more opprobrious epithets from the first race of reformers, than
the painted Sigismunda of Hogarth from the last race of patriots.[30]
When a favourite child is chastised by his preceptor, a partial
mother redoubles her caresses. Hogarth, estimating this picture by
the labour he had bestowed upon it, was certain that the public
were prejudiced, and requested, if his wife survived him, she would
not sell it for less than five hundred pounds. Mrs. Hogarth acted in
conformity to his wishes; but after her death, the painting was
purchased by Messrs. Boydell, and exhibited in the Shakspeare
Gallery. The colouring, though not brilliant, is harmonious and
natural: the attitude, drawing, etc., may be generally conceived by
the print engraved by Mr. Benjamin Smith. I am much inclined to
think, that if some of those who have been most severe in their
censures, had consulted their own feelings, instead of depending
upon connoisseurs, poor Sigismunda would have been in higher
estimation. It has been said that the first sketch was made from Mrs.
Hogarth, at the time she was weeping over the corse of her mother.
Hogarth once intended to have appealed from the critics' fiat to
the world's opinion, and employed Mr. Basire to make an engraving,
which was begun, but set aside for some other work, and never
completed.[31]

TIME SMOKING A PICTURE.

"To nature and yourself appeal,
Nor learn of others what to feel."—Anon.
 TIME SMOKING A PICTURE.

This animated satire was etched as a receipt-ticket for a print of

Sigismunda. It represents Time, seated upon a mutilated statue, and
smoking a landscape, through which he has driven his scythe, to
give proof of its antiquity,—not only by sober, sombre tints, but by
an injured canvas. Beneath the easel on which it is fixed the artist
has placed a capacious jar, on which is written VARNISH,—to bring
out the beauties of this inestimable assemblage of straight lines. The
frame is dignified with a Greek motto:
Crates,—Ὁ γὰρ χρόνος μ' ἔκαμψε, τέκτων μὲν σοφὸς,
Ἅπαντα δ' ἐργαζόμενος ἀσθενέστερα.
See Spectator, vol. ii. p. 83.
This, though not engraved with precise accuracy, is sufficiently
descriptive of the figure.
Time has bent me double; and Time, though I confess he is a
great artist, weakens all he touches.
"From a contempt" (says Mr. Walpole) "of the ignorant virtuosi of
the age, and from indignation at the impudent tricks of picture-
dealers,[32] whom he saw continually recommending and vending
vile copies to bubble-collectors, and from having never studied,
indeed having seen few good pictures of the great Italian masters,
he persuaded himself that the praises bestowed on those glorious
works were nothing but the effects of prejudice. He talked this
language till he believed it; and having heard it often asserted, as is
true, that Time gives a mellowness to colours, and improves them,
he not only denied the proposition, but maintained that pictures only
grew black and worse by age, not distinguishing between the
degrees in which the proposition might be true or false."
Whether Mr. Walpole's remarks are right or wrong, Hogarth has
admirably illustrated his own doctrine, and added to his burlesque,
by introducing the fragments of a statue, below which is written,
As statues moulder into worth. P. W.
By part of this print being in mezzotinto and the remainder
etched, it has a singularly striking and spirited appearance.
Hogarth, the following year, published that admirable satire, The
Medley, which completely refutes the reproach thrown on his
declining talents by his political opponents, whose violent, and in
some respects vindictive attack, is erroneously said to have hastened
his death. That he was wounded with a barbed spear, hurled by the
hand of a friend, it is reasonable to suppose; but armed with the
mailed coat of conscious superiority, he could not be wounded
mortally. What!—broken-hearted by a rhyme!—pelted to death with
ballads!—He was too proud! I am told by those who knew him best,
that the little mortification he felt, did not arise from the severity of
the satire, but from a recollection of the terms on which he had lived
with the satirist.
To the painter's recriminations in this party jar, Mr. Nichols I
suppose alludes, page 97 of his Anecdotes, where he says, that "in
his political conduct and attachments, Hogarth was at once
unprincipled and variable." These are harsh and heavy charges, but I
am to learn on what they are founded. He never embarked with any
party, nor did he publish a political print before the year 1762; and
the principles he there professes he retained until his death.
In the same page of the Anecdotes, I find, after a complimentary
quotation from one of Mr. Hayley's poems, several severe strictures
to which I cannot assent.[33] The assertion, that all his powers of
delighting were confined to his pencil, is in a degree refuted by the
Analysis. That he was rarely admitted into polite circles, I can readily
believe; but if by polite circles, Mr. Nichols means those persons of
honour who deem dress the grand criterion of distinction, think
making an easy bow the first human acquirement, and Lord
Chesterfield's code the whole duty of man,—the artist had no great
cause to regret the loss of such society. But his sharp corners not
being rubbed off by collision with these polite circles, he was, to the
last, a gross, uncultivated man. Engaged in ascertaining the
principles of his art, he had not leisure to study the principles of
politeness; but by those who lived with him in habits of intimacy, I
am told he was by no means gross.
"To be member of a club consisting of mechanics, or those not
many degrees above them, seems to have been the utmost of his
social ambition."—Yet we find in the list of his social companions,
Fielding, Hoadley, Garrick, Townley, and many other names who
were an honour to their age and country. Though excluded from
polite circles, by these and such men he was received as a friend.
Some of his evenings were probably passed among his neighbours,
and being above dissimulation, I suppose he resented what he
disliked, and was, as Mr. Nichols informs us, often sent to Coventry.
"He is said to have beheld the rising eminence and popularity of Sir
Joshua Reynolds with a degree of envy; and, if I am not
misinformed, spoke with asperity both of him and his performances."
It has been said, and I believe with equal truth, that Rubens envied
the rising eminence and popularity of Vandyke: neither the
Englishman nor the Fleming were capable of so mean a passion. The
walk of William Hogarth was diametrically opposite to that of Sir
Joshua Reynolds. They saw nature through a different medium: one
of them almost invariably dignifies his characters; whilst the other,
from the nature of his subjects, sinks, and in some measure
degrades them. The man whose portrait is painted by the President
feels exalted; whilst he who looks in the mirror displayed by
Hogarth, finds a resemblance better calculated to gratify his good-
natured friends than himself. These circumstances considered, I can
conceive Hogarth might have been pleased if he could have united
the elegance of Sir Joshua to his own humour, and that the knight
might be proud of adding the powers of Hogarth to his own taste,
without either of them possessing a particle of the diabolical passion
alluded to by Mr. Nichols, who thus winds up the character: "Justice,
however, obliges me to add, that our artist was liberal, hospitable,
and the most punctual of paymasters." This is fair and unequivocal
praise,—but justice obliges me to add, seems given upon
compulsion. Why the biographer feels so much reluctance at being
thus obliged to commend the hero of his own history, we are not
told,—though the cause of a lady being most indecently caricatured,
is, in the same book, frankly acknowledged.
"She is still living, and has been loud in abuse of this work, a
circumstance to which she owes a niche in it!"—Nichols' Anecdotes,
p. 114.
 Hogarth, with all the indelicacy of which he is accused, would
have blushed at the perusal of this overcharged character. Though
nothing fastidious, I cannot quote so disgusting a combination of
abominable images. In page 59 we are presented with a series
equally delectable.
Mr. Walpole remarks that the Flemish painters, as writers of farce
and editors of burlesque nature, are the Tom Brownes of the mob;
and in their attempts at humour, when they intend to make us
laugh, make us sick; that Hogarth resembles Butler,—amidst all his
pleasantry, observes the true end of comedy, REFORMATION, and has
always a moral. To prove this truth, is one great object of these
volumes. But Mr. Nichols, thinking it necessary to examine whether
the scenes painted by our countryman are wholly free from Flemish
indelicacies, has with laudable industry culled some sixteen or
eighteen delicious examples, to convince us that they are not. I omit
the catalogue; yet let me be permitted to suggest, that without the
aid of a commentary, these indelicacies are not generally obtrusive. I
once knew a very grave and profound critic, who employed several
years of his life in collecting all Shakspeare's double entendres;
these he intended for publication, to prove that his plays were not fit
for the public eye, but was prevented, by a friend suggesting that it
would be thought he had acted like the birds—pecked at that fruit
which he liked best.
Leaving these and all other indecencies to the contemplation of
those who seek for them, let us return to our narrative.
Finding his health in a declining state, Hogarth had some years
before purchased a small house at Chiswick.[34] To this he retired
during the summer months, but so active a mind could never rust in
idleness;—even there he pursued his profession, and employed the
last years of his life in retouching and superintending some repairs
and alterations in his plates. From this place he, on the 25th October
1764, returned to Leicester Square, and though weak and languid,
retained his usual flow of spirits; but being on the same night taken
suddenly ill, died of an aneurism, in the arms of his friend Mrs.
Lewis, who was called up to his assistance.
"The hand of him here torpid lies,
That drew th' essential form of grace;
Here cloath'd in death th' attentive eyes,
That saw the manners in the face."[35]

His will, which bears date August 16, 1764, has the following
bequests:—

"I do hereby release, and acquit, and discharge my sister

Ann Hogarth, of and from all claims and demands which I
have on her at the time of my decease on any account
whatsoever; and I do hereby give and bequeath unto my said
sister Ann, eighty pounds a year, to be paid her during her
natural life, by my executrix hereinafter named, out of the
profits which shall arise from the sale of the prints taken from
my engraved copperplates; which yearly payment shall
commence within three months after my decease, and be
paid in quarterly payments: and my will is, that the said
copperplates shall not be sold or disposed of without the
consent of my said sister, and my executrix hereinafter
named; but the same shall remain in the custody or
possession of my executrix hereinafter named, for and during
her natural life, if she continues sole and unmarried; and from
and immediately after her marriage, my will is that the three
sets of copperplates, called Marriage à la Mode, the Harlot's
Progress, and the Rake's Progress, shall be delivered to my
said sister, by my said executrix, during her natural life; and
immediately after the decease of my said executrix, the said
copperplates, and the whole profits arising from such prints
as aforesaid, shall be and of right belong to my said sister;
and in case my executrix shall survive my sister, the same
shall in like manner become the sole property, and of right
belong to my said executrix hereinafter named: and I hereby
give and bequeath unto Mary Lewis, for her faithful services,
 one hundred pounds, to be paid her immediately after my
decease by my executrix hereinafter named: and my will is,
that Samuel Martin, Esq., of Abingdon Buildings, be requested
to accept of the portrait which I painted of him for myself.
Item, that a ring, value ten guineas, be presented to Doctor
Isaac Schomberg, in remembrance of me. Item, that Miss
Julian Bence be presented with a ring, value five guineas: and
my will is, that the remainder of my money, securities for
money, and debts due to me, shall of right belong to my said
executrix hereinafter named; and all my other goods,
pictures, chattels, and estates, real or personal whatsoever, I
do give and bequeath the same and every part thereof unto
my dear wife Jane Hogarth, whom I do ordain, constitute,
and appoint my sole executrix of my will. And I do hereby
revoke all the other wills by me made at any time. In witness
thereof, I do hereunto set my hand and seal, this day, August
16th, 1764.
"William Hogarth (L.S.).

"Signed, sealed, and published, and delivered by William

Hogarth, to be his last will and testament, in the presence of
us, who in the presence of each other have subscribed our
names as witness thereto.—Richard Loveday, George Ellsom,
Mary Graham."

His remains were removed to Chiswick, where, on a plain but neat

pyramidical monument, are the following inscriptions:—
On the first side is engraven:
"HERE LIETH THE BODY
OF WILLIAM HOGARTH, ESQ.,
WHO DIED OCTOBER 26, 1764,
AGED 67 YEARS.

MRS. JANE HOGARTH,

WIFE OF WILLIAM HOGARTH, ESQ.
OBIT 13 NOVEMBER 1789,
ÆTAT: 80 YEARS."
 On the second:
"HERE LIETH THE BODY OF
DAME JUDITH THORNHILL,
RELICT OF SIR JAMES THORNHILL, KNIGHT,
OF THORNHILL, IN THE COUNTY OF DORSET:
SHE DIED NOV. 12, 1757,
AGED 84 YEARS."

On a third:
"HERE LIETH THE BODY OF MRS. ANNE HOGARTH,
SISTER TO WILLIAM HOGARTH, ESQ.
SHE DIED AUGUST 13, 1771,
AGED 70 YEARS."

On the front, in basso-relievo, is the comic mask, laurel wreath,

rest-stick, palette, pencils, a book inscribed Analysis of Beauty, and
the following admirable lines by his friend Mr. Garrick:—
"Farewell, great painter of mankind,
Who reached the noblest point of art;
Whose pictured morals charm the mind,
And through the eye correct the heart.
If genius fire thee, reader, stay;
If Nature touch thee, drop a tear:
If neither move thee, turn away,
For Hogarth's honoured dust lies here."[36]

Time will obliterate this inscription, and even the pyramid must
crumble into dust; but his fame is engraven on tablets which shall
have longer duration than monumental marble.
During the twenty-five years which his widow survived, the plates
were neither repaired nor altered,[37] but being necessarily
entrusted to the management of others, were often both negligently
and improperly taken off.[38] On Mrs. Hogarth's demise, in 1789, she
bequeathed her property as follows:—

"Imprimis, I give and devise unto my cousin Mary Lewis,

now living with me, all that my copyhold estate, lying and
being at Chiswick, in the county of Middlesex, to have and to
hold, during the term of her natural life; and after her
 decease, I give and devise the said copyhold estate unto
Richard Loveday, surgeon, of Hammersmith, to have and to
hold during his natural life; and after his decease, to his son
Francis James Loveday, to him and his heirs for ever. Item, I
give and bequeath unto the said Mary Lewis all my personal
estate, of what kind soever, the legacies hereinafter
mentioned excepted. Item, I give unto my god-daughter Jane
Amelia Loveday, the sum of one hundred pounds. And I do
make, constitute, and appoint my said cousin Mary Lewis, my
sole executrix of this my last will and testament, written with
my own hand, this third day of August, in the year of our
Lord, 1770. In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand
and seal.
"Jane Hogarth (L.S.).

"Witnesses—Michael Impey, Jane Sarah Home.

"This stock of £479, 10s. 3d. I give to M. Lewis; and to
Charles Stilewell, if he is with me at the time of my death,
twenty pounds.—May the 17th, 1789.
"Jane Hogarth."

Mrs. Lewis, soon after the death of her friend, on condition of

receiving an annuity for life, transferred to Messrs. Boydell her right
in all the plates; and since in their possession, they have not been
touched upon by a burin. It may be proper to add, that every plate
has been carefully cleaned; and the rolling-presses now in use being
on an improved principle, the paper superior, and the art of printing
better understood, impressions are more clearly and accurately
taken off than they have been at any preceding period.
Thus much may suffice for the state of his plates: their general
intention and execution is the proper basis on which to build his
CHARACTER.
 Were it considered by a connoisseur, he would probably assert
that this man could not be a painter, for he had never travelled to
Rome; could not be a judge of art, for he spoke irreverently of the
ancients; gave his figures neither dignity nor grace; was erroneous
in his distribution of light and shade, and inattentive to the painter's
balance; that his grouping was inartificial, and his engraving coarse.
To traverse continents in search of antique paintings, explore
caverns for mutilated sculpture, and measure the proportions of a
statue with mathematical precision, was not the boast of William
Hogarth. The Temple of Nature was his academy, and his
topography the map of the human mind. Disdaining to copy or
translate, he left the superior class of beings that people the canvas
of Poussin and Michael Angelo to their admirers; selected his images
from his own country, and gave them with a truth, energy, and
variety of character,[39] ever appropriate, and invariably original.
Considering his peculiar powers, it is fortunate for his fame that he
was a native of Britain. In Switzerland, the scenery is romantic,—the
rocks are stupendous; in Italy, the models of art are elevated and
majestic,—the ruins of ancient Greece still continue a school of
architecture and proportion;—but in England, and in England alone,
we have every variety of character that separates man from man. To
these he resorted, and rarely attempted to heighten nature, either
by ideal or elevated beauty; for though he had the eye, he had not
the wing of an eagle; when he attempted to soar, particles of his
native clay clung to his pinions, and retarded his flight.
His engravings, though coarse, are forcible in a degree scarcely to
be paralleled. Every figure is drawn from the quarry of nature; and,
though seldom polished, is always animated.
He has been accused of grossness in some of his single figures:
but the general vein of his wit is better calculated to make the man
of humour smile than the humourist laugh;—has the air of Cervantes
rather than Rabelais,—of Fielding rather than Smollett.
I do not know in what class to place his pictured stories. They are
too much crowded with little incidents for the dignity of history; for
tragedy, are too comic; yet have a termination which forbids us to
call them comedies. Being selected from life, they present to us the
absurdities, crimes, punishments, and vicissitudes of man: to-day,
basking in the bright beams of prosperity; to-morrow, sunk in the
gloom of comfortless despair. Be it recorded to his honour, that their
invariable tendency is the promotion of virtue, and the diffusion of
such a spirit as tends to make men industrious, humane, and happy.
If some of the incidents are thought too ludicrous, and a few of the
scenes rather border on the licentious, let it be remembered, that
since they were engraved the standard of delicacy has been
somewhat altered: that species of wit which this sentimental and
double-refined age deems too much debased for common currency,
was then, with a still larger portion of alloy, the sterling coin of the
kingdom.
On canvas he was not so successful as on copper. Scripture
history, which was one of his first attempts,[40] did not add a leaf to
his laurel. In small portraits of conversations, etc., he was somewhat
more successful; but in a few years the novelty wore off, and the
public grew tired. Though he had great facility[41] and general
success in his resemblances, his eye was too correct and his hand
too faithful for those who wished to be flattered. The fantastic
fluttering robes, given by contemporary painters, were too absurd
for him to imitate; and he painted all his figures in the exact habits
they wore. Compared with the dignified dresses of Vandyke, the
Germanic garb, which then prevailed, gave a mean and
unpicturesque formality to his portraits.
With respect to his person, though hardly to be classed as a little
man, Hogarth was rather below the middle size; he had an eye
peculiarly bright and piercing, and an air of spirit and vivacity. From
an accident in his youth, he had a deep scar on his forehead: the
mark remained; and he frequently wore his hat so as to display it.
His conversation was lively and cheerful,[42] mixed with a quickness
of retort that did not gain him friends. Severe in his satire on those
who were present, but of the absent he was usually the advocate;
[43] and has sometimes boasted that he never uttered a sentence
concerning any man living, that he would not repeat to his face. In
the relations of husband, brother, friend, and master, he was kind,
generous, sincere, and indulgent. In diet abstemious; but in his
hospitalities, though devoid of ostentation, liberal and free-hearted.
Not parsimonious, yet frugal;—but so comparatively small were the
rewards then paid to artists, that, after the labour of a long life, he
left a very inconsiderable sum to his widow, with whom he must
have received a large portion of what was bequeathed to her.[44] His
character, and the illustrations I have attempted, are built upon a
diligent examination of his prints: if in any case it should be thought
that they have biassed my judgment, I can truly say that they have
informed it. From them I have learnt much which I should not
otherwise have known, and to inspecting them I owe many very
happy hours. Considering their originality, variety, and truth, if we
take from the artist all that he is said to have wanted, he will have
more left than has been often the portion of man.
H O G A RT H I L L U S T R AT E D.

T H E H A R LOT ' S P R O G R E SS.

P LAT E I .

"The snares are set, the plot is laid,

Ruin awaits thee, hapless maid!
Seduction sly assails thine ear,
And gloating, foul desire is near;
Baneful and blighting are their smiles,
Destruction waits upon their wiles:
Alas! thy guardian angel sleeps,
Vice clasps her hands, and virtue weeps."—E.
 T H E H A R LOT ' S P R O G R E SS, P LAT E I .

he general aim of historical painters has been to emblazon

some signal exploit of an exalted and distinguished character.
To go through a series of actions, and conduct their hero
from the cradle to the grave, to give a history upon canvas, and tell
a story with the pencil, few of them attempted. Mr. Hogarth saw
with the intuitive eye of genius, that one path to the temple of Fame
was yet untrodden: he took Nature for his guide, and gained the
summit. He was the painter of nature; for he gave not merely the
ground-plan of the countenance, but marked the features with every
impulse of the mind. He may be denominated the biographical
dramatist of domestic life. Leaving those heroic monarchs who have
blazed through their day with the destructive brilliancy of a comet to
their adulatory historians, he, like Lillo, has taken his scenes from
humble life, and rendered them a source of entertainment,
instruction, and morality.
This series of prints gives the history of a Prostitute. The story
commences with her arrival in London, where, initiated in the school
of profligacy, she experiences the miseries consequent to her
situation, and dies in the morning of life. Her variety of
wretchedness forms such a picture of the way in which vice rewards
her votaries, as ought to warn the young and inexperienced from
entering this path of infamy. The first scene of this domestic tragedy
is laid at the Bell Inn, in Wood Street, and the heroine may possibly
be daughter to the poor old clergyman who is reading the direction
of a letter close to the York waggon, from which vehicle she has just
alighted. In attire, neat, plain, unadorned; in demeanour, artless,
modest, diffident; in the bloom of youth, and more distinguished by
native innocence than elegant symmetry; her conscious blush and
downcast eyes attract the attention of a female fiend who panders
to the vices of the opulent and libidinous. Coming out of the door of
the inn we discover two men, one of whom is eagerly gloating on
the devoted victim. This is a portrait, and said to be a strong
resemblance of Colonel Francis Chartres,[45] whose epitaph was
written by Doctor Arbuthnot: in that epitaph his character is most
emphatically described.[46]
The old procuress, immediately after the girl's alighting from the
waggon, addresses her with the familiarity of a friend rather than
the reserve of one who is to be her mistress.
Had her father been versed in even the first rudiments of
physiognomy, he would have prevented her engaging with one of so
decided an aspect; for this also is the portrait of a woman infamous
in her day:[47] but he, good, easy man, unsuspicious as Fielding's
Parson Adams, is wholly engrossed in the contemplation of a
superscription to a letter addressed to the bishop of the diocese. So
important an object prevents his attending to his daughter, or
regarding the devastation occasioned by his gaunt and hungry
Rozinante having snatched at the straw that packs up some
earthenware, and produced
"The wreck of flower-pots, and the crash of pans!"
From the inn she is taken to the house of the procuress, divested
of her home-spun garb, dressed in the gayest style of the day, and
the tender native hue of her complexion encrusted with paint and
disguised by patches. She is then introduced to Colonel Chartres,
and by artful flattery and liberal promises becomes intoxicated with
the dreams of imaginary greatness. A short time convinces her of
how light a breath these promises were composed. Deserted by her
keeper, and terrified by threats of an immediate arrest for the
pompous paraphernalia of prostitution, after being a short time
protected by one of the tribe of Levi, she is reduced to the hard
necessity of wandering the streets for that precarious subsistence
which flows from the drunken rake or profligate debauchee. Here
her situation is truly pitiable! Chilled by nipping frost and midnight
dew, the repentant tear trickling on her heaving bosom, she
endeavours to drown reflection in draughts of destructive poison.
This, added to the contagious company of women of her own
description, vitiates her mind, eradicates the native seeds of virtue,
destroys that elegant and fascinating simplicity which gives
additional charms to beauty, and leaves in its place art, affectation,
and impudence.
Neither the painter of a sublime picture nor the writer of an heroic
poem should introduce any trivial circumstances that are likely to
draw the attention from the principal figures. Such compositions
should form one great whole: minute detail will inevitably weaken
their effect. But in little stories which record the domestic incidents
of familiar life, these accessory accompaniments, though trifling in
themselves, acquire a consequence from their situation; they add to
the interest, and realize the scene. In this, as in almost all that were
delineated by Mr. Hogarth, we see a close regard paid to things as
they then were; by which means his prints become a sort of
historical record of the manners of the age.
The balcony, with linen hanging to dry; the York waggon, which
intimates the county that gave birth to our young adventurer;
parcels lying on the ground, and a goose, directed To my lofen
coosin in Tems Stret London, prove the peculiar attention he paid to
the minutiæ. The initials M. H. on one of the trunks give us the
name of the heroine of this drama,—Hackabout was a character
then well known, and infamous for her licentiousness and
debauchery.[48]
Of elegant beauty Mr. Hogarth had not much idea; but he has
marked his heroine with natural simplicity. To the old procuress he
has given her physiognomical distinction, and to the Colonel his
appropriate stamp.[49]

P LAT E I I .

"Ah! why so vain, though blooming in thy spring;

Thou shining, frail, adorn'd, but wretched thing!
Old age will come; disease may come before,
And twenty prove as fatal as threescore!"
 T H E H A R LOT ' S P R O G R E SS, P LAT E I I .

Entered into the path of infamy, the next scene exhibits our young
heroine the mistress of a rich Jew, attended by a black boy,[50] and
surrounded with the pompous parade of tasteless profusion. Her
mind being now as depraved as her person is decorated, she keeps
up the spirit of her character by extravagance and inconstancy. An
example of the first is exhibited in the monkey being suffered to
drag her rich head-dress round the room, and of the second in the
retiring gallant. The Hebrew is represented at breakfast with his
mistress; but having come earlier than was expected, the favourite
has not departed. To secure his retreat, is an exercise for the
invention of both mistress and maid. This is accomplished by the
lady finding a pretence for quarrelling with the Jew, kicking down
the tea-table, and scalding his legs, which, added to the noise of the
china, so far engrosses his attention, that the paramour, assisted by
the servant, escapes discovery.
The subjects of two pictures with which the room is decorated are,
David dancing before the ark, and Jonah seated under a gourd.[51]
They are placed there, not merely as circumstances which belong to
Jewish story, but as a piece of covert ridicule on the old masters,
who generally painted from the ideas of others, and repeated the
same tale ad infinitum. On the toilet-table we discover a mask,
which well enough intimates where she had passed part of the
preceding night, and that masquerades, then a very fashionable
amusement, were much frequented by women of this description; a
sufficient reason for their being avoided by those of an opposite
character.
Under the protection of this disciple of Moses she could not remain
long. Riches were his only attraction, and though profusely lavished
on this unworthy object, her attachment was not to be obtained, nor
could her constancy be secured; repeated acts of infidelity are
punished by dismission; and her next situation shows that, like most
of the sisterhood, she had lived without apprehension of the
sunshine of life being darkened by the passing cloud, and made no
provision for the hour of adversity.
In this print the characters are marked with a master's hand. The
insolent air of the harlot, the astonishment of the Jew,[52] eagerly
grasping at the falling table, the start of the black boy, the cautious
trip of the ungartered and barefooted retreating gallant, and the
sudden spring of the scalded monkey, are admirably expressed. To
represent an object in its descent has been said to be impossible:
the attempt has seldom succeeded; but in this print, the tea
equipage really appears falling to the floor.[53]

P LAT E I I I .
 "Reproach, scorn, infamy, and hate,
On all thy future steps shall wait;
Thy form be loathed by every eye,
And every foot thy presence fly."

T H E H A R LOT ' S P R O G R E SS, P LAT E I I I .

We here see this child of misfortune fallen from her high estate! Her
magnificent apartment is quitted for a dreary lodging in the purlieus
of Drury Lane: she is at breakfast, and every object exhibits marks
of the most wretched penury; her silver tea-kettle is changed for a
tin-pot, and her highly-decorated toilet gives place to an old leaf-
table, strewed with the relics of the last night's revel, and
ornamented with a broken looking-glass. Around the room are
scattered tobacco-pipes, gin measures, and pewter pots,—emblems
of the habits of life into which she is initiated, and the company
which she now keeps: this is further intimated by the wig-box of
James Dalton, a notorious street-robber, who was afterwards
executed. In her hand she displays a watch, which might be either
presented to her, or stolen from her last night's gallant. By the
nostrums which ornament the broken window, we see that poverty
is not her only evil. The dreary and comfortless appearance of every
object in this wretched receptacle, the bit of butter on a piece of
paper,[54] the candle in a bottle, the basin upon a chair, the punch-
bowl and comb upon the table, and the tobacco-pipes, etc. strewed
upon the unswept floor, give an admirable picture of the style in
which this pride of Drury Lane ate her matin meal. The pictures
which ornament the room are, Abraham offering up Isaac, and a
portrait of the Virgin Mary; Dr. Sacheverell[55] and Macheath the
highwayman are companion prints. There is some whimsicality in
placing the two ladies under a canopy,[56] formed by the unnailed
valance of the bed, and characteristically crowned by the wig-box of
a highwayman.
A magistrate,[57] cautiously entering the room with his attendant
constables, commits her to an house of correction, where our
legislators wisely suppose, that being confined to the improving
conversation of her associates in vice, must have a powerful
tendency towards the reformation of her manners!

P LAT E I V.
 "With pallid cheek and haggard eye,
And loud laments, and heartfelt sigh,
Unpitied, hopeless of relief,
She drinks the bitter cup of grief.
In vain the sigh, in vain the tear,
Compassion never enters here;
But justice clanks her iron chain,
And calls forth shame, remorse, and pain."—E.

T H E H A R LOT ' S P R O G R E SS, P LAT E I V.

The situation in which the last plate exhibited our wretched female
was sufficiently degrading, but in this her misery is greatly
aggravated. We now see her suffering the chastisement due to her
follies; reduced to the wretched alternative of beating hemp, or
receiving the correction of a savage taskmaster.[58] Exposed to the
derision of all around, even her own servant, who is well acquainted
with the rules of the place, appears little disposed to show any
return of gratitude for recent obligations, though even her shoes,
which she displays while tying up her garter, seem by their gaudy
outside to have been a present from her mistress. The civil discipline
of the stern keeper has all the severity of the old school.[59] With
the true spirit of tyranny, he sentences those who will not labour to
the whipping post, to a kind of picketing suspension by the wrists, or
having a heavy log fastened to their leg. With the last of these
punishments he at this moment threatens the heroine of our story;
nor is it likely that his obduracy can be softened except by a well-
applied fee. How dreadful, how mortifying the situation! These
accumulated evils might perhaps produce a momentary remorse, but
a return to the path of virtue is not so easy as a departure from it.
The Magdalen hospital has been since instituted, and the wandering
female sometimes finds it an asylum from wretchedness, and a
refuge from the reproaches of the world.
To show that neither the dread nor endurance of the severest
punishment will deter from the perpetration of crimes, a one-eyed
female, close to the keeper, is picking a pocket. The torn card may
probably be dropped by the well-dressed gamester, who has
exchanged the dice-box for the mallet, and whose laced hat is hung
up as a companion trophy to the hoop-petticoat.
One of the girls appears scarcely in her teens. To the disgrace of
our police, these unfortunate little wanderers are still suffered to
take their nocturnal rambles in the most public streets of the
metropolis. What heart so void of sensibility as not to heave a
pitying sigh at their deplorable situation? Vice is not confined to
colour, for a black woman is ludicrously exhibited as suffering the
penalty of those frailties which are imagined peculiar to the fair.
The figure chalked as dangling upon the wall, with a pipe in his
mouth, is intended as a caricatured portrait of Sir John Gonson, and
probably the production of some wou'd-be artist whom the
magistrate had committed to Bridewell as a proper academy for the
pursuit of his studies. The inscription upon the pillory, BETTER TO
WORK THAN STAND THUS, and that on the whipping-post, near the
laced gambler, THE REWARD OF IDLENESS, are judiciously introduced.
In this print the composition is tolerably good: the figures in the
background, though properly subordinate, sufficiently marked; the
lassitude of the principal character well contrasted by the austerity of
the rigid overseer. There is a fine climax of female debasement, from
the gaudy heroine of our drama to her maid, and from thence to the
still lower object who is represented as destroying[60] one of the
plagues of Egypt.

P LAT E V.

"With keen remorse, deep sighs, and trembling fears,

Repentant groans, and unavailing tears,
This child of misery resigns her breath,
And sinks, despondent, in the arms of death."—E.
 T H E H A R LOT ' S P R O G R E SS, P LAT E V.

Released from Bridewell, we now see this victim to her own

indiscretion breathe her last sad sigh, and expire in all the extremity
of penury and wretchedness. The two quacks, whose injudicious
treatment has probably accelerated her death, are vociferously
supporting the infallibility of their respective medicines, and each
charging the other with having poisoned her.[61] While the maid-
servant is entreating them to cease quarrelling, and assist her dying
mistress, the nurse plunders her trunk of the few poor remains of
former grandeur. Her little boy turning a scanty remnant of meat
hung to roast by a string; the linen hanging to dry; the coals
deposited in a corner; the candles, bellows, and gridiron hung upon
nails; the furniture of the room, and indeed every accompaniment,
exhibit a dreary display of poverty and wretchedness. Over the
candles hangs a cake of Jew's bread, once perhaps the property of
her Levitical lover, and now used as a fly-trap. The initials of her
name, M. H., are smoked upon the ceiling as a kind of memento
mori to the next inhabitant. On the floor lies a paper inscribed
ANODYNE NECKLACE, at that time deemed a sort of CHARM against the
disorders incident to children;[62] and near the fire, a tobacco-pipe
and paper of pills.
A picture of general, and, at this awful moment, indecent
confusion, is admirably represented. The noise of two enraged
quacks disputing in bad English, the harsh vulgar scream of the
maid-servant, the table falling, and the pot boiling over, must
produce a combination of sounds dreadful and dissonant to the ear.
In this pitiable situation, without a friend to close her dying eyes or
soften her sufferings by a tributary tear,—forlorn, destitute, and
deserted,—the heroine of this eventful history expires; her
premature death brought on by a licentious life, seven years of
which had been devoted to debauchery and dissipation, and
attended by consequent infamy, misery, and disease. The whole
story affords a valuable lesson to the young and inexperienced, and
proves this great, this important truth, that A DEVIATION FROM VIRTUE
IS A DEPARTURE FROM HAPPINESS.

The emaciated appearance of the dying figure, the boy's

thoughtless inattention, and the rapacious, unfeeling eagerness of
the old nurse, are naturally and forcibly delineated.
The figures are well grouped; the curtain gives depth, and forms a
good background to the doctor's head; the light is judiciously
distributed, and each accompaniment highly appropriate.

P LAT E V I .
 "No friend's complaint, no kind domestic tear,
Pleas'd thy pale ghost, or grac'd thy mournful bier:
By harlots' hands thy dying eyes were clos'd;
By harlots' hands thy decent limbs compos'd;
By harlots' hands thy humble grave adorn'd;
By harlots honoured, and by harlots mourn'd."

T H E H A R LOT ' S P R O G R E SS, P LAT E V I .

The adventures of our heroine are now concluded. She is no longer

an actor in her own tragedy; and there are those who have
considered this print as a farce at the end of it: but surely such was
not the author's intention.
 The ingenious writer of Tristram Shandy begins the life of his hero
before he is born; the picturesque biographer of Mary Hackabout
has found an opportunity to convey admonition, and enforce his
moral, after her death. A wish usually prevails, even among those
who are most humbled by their own indiscretion, that some respect
should be paid to their remains; that their eyes should be closed by
the tender hand of a surviving friend, and the tear of sympathy and
regret shed upon the sod which covers their grave; that those who
loved them living should attend their last sad obsequies, and a
sacred character read over them the awful service which our religion
ordains with the solemnity it demands. The memory of this votary of
prostitution meets with no such marks of social attention or pious
respect. The preparations for her funeral are as licentious as the
progress of her life, and the contagion of her example seems to
reach all who surround her coffin. One of them is engaged in the
double trade of seduction and thievery; a second is contemplating
her own face in a mirror. The female who is gazing at the corpse
displays some marks of concern, and feels a momentary
compunction at viewing the melancholy scene before her: but if any
other part of the company are in a degree affected, it is a mere
maudlin sorrow, kept up by glasses of strong liquor. The depraved
priest does not seem likely to feel for the dead that hope expressed
in our liturgy.[63] The appearance and employment of almost every
one present at this mockery of woe, is such as must raise disgust in
the breast of any female who has the least tincture of delicacy, and
excite a wish that such an exhibition may not be displayed at her
own funeral.
In this plate there are some local customs which mark the
manners of the times when it was engraved, but are now generally
disused, except in some of the provinces very distant from the
capital; sprigs of rosemary were then given to each of the mourners:
to appear at a funeral without one, was as great an indecorum as to
be without a white handkerchief. This custom might probably
originate at a time when the plague depopulated the metropolis, and
rosemary was deemed an antidote against contagion. It must be
acknowledged that there are also in this print some things which,
though they gave the artist an opportunity of displaying his humour,
are violations of propriety and custom: such is her child, but a few
removes from infancy, being habited as chief mourner, to attend his
parent to the grave; rings presented, and an escutcheon hung up in
a garret at the funeral of a needy prostitute.[64] The whole may be
intended as a burlesque upon ostentatious and expensive funerals,
which were then more customary than they are now. Mr. Pope has
well ridiculed the same folly:
"When Hopkins dies, a thousand lights attend
The wretch who, living, saved a candle's end."
The figures have much characteristic discrimination: the woman
looking into the coffin has more beauty than we generally see in the
works of this artist. The undertaker's gloating stare, his companion's
leer, the internal satisfaction of the parson and his next neighbour,
are contrasted by the Irish howl of the woman at the opposite side,
and evince Mr. Hogarth's thorough knowledge of the operation of the
passions upon the features. The composition forms a good shape,
has a proper depth, and the light is well managed.
Sir James Thornhill's opinion of this series may be inferred from
the following circumstance. Mr. Hogarth had without consent married
his daughter: Sir James, considering him as an obscure artist, was
much displeased with the connection. To give him a better opinion of
his son-in-law, a common friend one morning privately conveyed the
six pictures of the "Harlot's Progress" into his drawing-room. The
veteran painter eagerly inquired who was the artist; and being told,
cried out, "Very well! Very well indeed! The man who can paint such
pictures as these, can maintain a wife without a portion." This was
the remark of the moment; but he afterwards considered the union
of his daughter with a man of such abilities an honour to his family,
was reconciled, and generous.
When the publication was advertised, such was the expectation of
the town, that above twelve hundred names were entered in the
subscription book. When the prints appeared, they were beheld with
astonishment. A subject so novel in the idea, so marked with genius
in the execution, excited the most eager attention of the public. At a
time when England was coldly inattentive to everything which
related to the arts, so desirous were all ranks of people of seeing
how this little domestic story was delineated, that there were eight
piratical imitations,—besides two copies in a smaller size than the
original, published, by permission of the author, for Thomas
Bakewell. The whole series were copied on fan-mounts, representing
the six plates, three on one side, and three on the other. It was
transferred from the copper to the stage, in the form of a
pantomime, by Theophilus Cibber; and again represented in a ballad
opera, entitled, The Jew Decoyed, or the Harlot's Progress.
A Joseph Gay, and several other wretched rhymers, published
what they called poetical illustrations of Mr. Hogarth's six plates: but
these effusions of dulness do not deserve enumeration; nor would
they deserve mention, but as collateral proofs of the great
estimation in which these prints were held, when their popularity
could force the sale of such miserable productions. Happily they are
now consigned to those two high priests of the temple of oblivion,
the trunkmaker and the pastrycook.
The six original pictures were sold on the 25th of January 1744-5,
and produced eighty-eight pounds four shillings. Mr. Beckford, a late
Lord Mayor of London, was, I believe, the purchaser. At a fire which
burnt down his house at Fonthill, Wiltshire, in the year 1755, five of
them were consumed.
When a messenger brought him intelligence of this unfortunate
event, he said nothing, but took out his pocket-book, and wrote
down a number of figures, which he seemed inspecting with the cool
precision of a true disciple of Cocker, when a friend who was
present, expressing some surprise at his being so collected after so
heavy a loss, asked him what was the subject of his meditation? to
which he answered, with the most philosophical indifference, "I am
calculating how much it will cost me to rebuild my house."
T H E R A K E ' S P R O G R E SS.
P LAT E I .

"Oh, vanity of age untoward!

Ever spleeny, ever froward!
Why these bolts and massy chains,
Squint suspicions, jealous pains?
Why, thy toilsome journey o'er,
Lay'st thou up an useless store?
Hope along with Time is flown;
Nor canst thou reap the field thou'st sown.
Had'st thou a son? In time be wise;
He views thy toil with other eyes.
Needs must thy kind paternal care,
Lock'd in thy chests, be buried there?
Whence, then, shall flow that friendly ease,
That social converse, heartfelt peace,
Familiar duty without dread,
Instruction from example bred,
Which youthful minds with freedom mend,
And with the father mix the friend.
Uncircumscrib'd by prudent rules,
Or precepts of expensive schools;
Abus'd at home, abroad despis'd,
Unbred, unletter'd, unadvis'd;
The headstrong course of life begun,
What comfort from thy darling son?"
—Hoadley.[65]
 T H E R A K E ' S P R O G R E SS, P LAT E I .

n the last series of prints Mr. Hogarth delineated, with a

master's hand, the miseries attendant upon a female's
deviation from virtue. In this he presents to us the picture of
a young man, thoughtless, extravagant, and licentious; and, in
colours equally impressive, paints the destructive consequences of
his conduct. The first print most forcibly contrasts two opposite
passions,—the unthinking negligence of youth, and the sordid
avaricious rapacity of age. It brings into one point of view what Mr.
Pope so exquisitely describes in his Epistle to Lord Bathurst:
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