DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61480#0110
102
HOGARTH'S WORKS.
two watches, a snuff-box, and some other trinkets. In the midst of this wickedness, he
is betrayed by his strumpet (a proof of the treachery of such wretches) into the hands
of the high constable and his attendants, who had, with better success tlian heretofore,
traced him to this wretched haunt. The back ground of this print serves rather as a re-
presentation of night-cellars in general, those infamous receptacles for the dissolute and
abandoned of both sexes, than a further illustration of our artist's chief design; however,
as it was Mr. Hogarth's intention, in the history before us, to encourage virtue and expose
vice, by placing the one in an amiable light, and exhibiting the other in its most height-
ened scenes of wickedness and impiety, in hopes of deterring the half-depraved youth of
this metropolis, from even the possibility of the commission of such actions, by frighten-
ing them from these abodes of wretchedness; as this was manifestly his intention, it
cannot be deemed a deviation from the subject. By the skirmish behind, the woman
without a nose, the scattered cards upon the floor, &c. we are shown that drunkenness
and riot, disease, prostitution, and ruin are the dreadful attendants of sloth, and the
general fore-runners of crimes of the deepest die ; and by the halter suspended from the
ceiling, over the head of the sleeper, we are to learn two things—the indifference of
mankind, even in a state of danger, and the insecurity of guilt in every situation.
HOGARTH'S WORKS.
two watches, a snuff-box, and some other trinkets. In the midst of this wickedness, he
is betrayed by his strumpet (a proof of the treachery of such wretches) into the hands
of the high constable and his attendants, who had, with better success tlian heretofore,
traced him to this wretched haunt. The back ground of this print serves rather as a re-
presentation of night-cellars in general, those infamous receptacles for the dissolute and
abandoned of both sexes, than a further illustration of our artist's chief design; however,
as it was Mr. Hogarth's intention, in the history before us, to encourage virtue and expose
vice, by placing the one in an amiable light, and exhibiting the other in its most height-
ened scenes of wickedness and impiety, in hopes of deterring the half-depraved youth of
this metropolis, from even the possibility of the commission of such actions, by frighten-
ing them from these abodes of wretchedness; as this was manifestly his intention, it
cannot be deemed a deviation from the subject. By the skirmish behind, the woman
without a nose, the scattered cards upon the floor, &c. we are shown that drunkenness
and riot, disease, prostitution, and ruin are the dreadful attendants of sloth, and the
general fore-runners of crimes of the deepest die ; and by the halter suspended from the
ceiling, over the head of the sleeper, we are to learn two things—the indifference of
mankind, even in a state of danger, and the insecurity of guilt in every situation.