We see a ghost: Hogarth's satire on Methodists and Connoisseurs

I have seen Hogarth's print of the spirit It is a horrid composition of profligate Obscenity & blasphemous prophaneness for which I execrate the artist & and have not to be found all esteem for the man. The best is, that the worst parts of it have a profitable chance of not being understood by the agency of the people. - Bishop William Warburton, 1762(1)

William Hogarth's "print of the Ghost" is his engraving Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism: A pot-pourri (1762, [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED]),(2) which, as a satire upon Methodist "enthusiasts," is indeed "horrid" in its vicious attack upon a fanatic preacher and swooning congregation. Bishop Warburton, the well-known eighteenth-century advocate of the established meeting-house and keen antagonist of deism, atheism, and Methodism, was equally right in his supposition that parts of Hogarth's print "have a profitable chance of not being understood," since the work has several horizontals of interpretation. When published, it was a total reworking of a first state, entitled upon the proofs Enthusiasm Delineated [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2 OMITTED].(3) Figuratively and literally, the individual obscures the other, and it is the object of this paper to gaze at the published print to unveil the hidden meaning of its unpublished proof

Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism depicts the inside of a Methodist meeting place in which a congregation has gone mad above an enthusiastic sermon. The name of the greatest in quantity prominent Methodist preacher at that time, George Whitefield, and sum of two units lines from his Collection of spiritual songs for Social Worship (1753)(4) are inscribed upon a slip of paper attached to the clerk's lectern Near the pulpit, banderole-like, is a sonometer called "W[hitefiel]d's Scale of Vociferation." It ranges from "Nat[ura]l Tone" to "Bull Roar," another clear allusion to Whitefield, who was known for his powerful voice. The instrument hangs grotesquely from a nose and screaming cavity between the jaws inscribed "Blood, Blood, Blood, Blood" a regard to Whitefield's use of repetition to dramatize his words.(5) Describing Methodist preaching, a certain "Eusebius" wrote in A Fine Picture of Enthusiasm (1744) that

the oft-repeated mention of the Name of Jesus, the Lamb of omnipotence and the Blood of Jesus, filling up great Part of their public Discourses, and actual often only used to stock the Want of Ideas or sense; for a like reason that these Expressions our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb of the holy trinity and the Blood, the precious vital current of our Lord Jesus Christ, are used as the Music of their Discourses.(6)

The preacher's arms are raised, a handkerchief held theatrically in his left hand to hint grief, a pose typical of George Whitefield.(7) In order to leave no doubt about whom he was attacking, Hogarth has made the secretary at the lectern an obvious caricature of the man. He is smooth portrayed cross-eyed, as he is in the portrait of him painted by means of John Wollaston in 1742 [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 3 OMITTED].(8) Whitefield in 1762 was rather corpulent, on the contrary Hogarth presents him here emaciated and let falled a shadow of his former self His wings may give in charge to a canard that appeared in the Lloyd's Evening column in 1761 reporting that the Methodist leader had died.(9) The cherubim upon either side of the registrar also allude to the world beyond.

A postboy from heaven, echoing the clerk's putti, appears in the upper center of the print. The fact that he is delivering a alphabetic character addressed to "St. Money-trap" underlines the preacher's gre as does the "Poors Box" which is a mousetrap. Whitefield was brilliant at collecting cash from the ignorant. In Israel Pottinger's The Methodist, a Comedy (1760) he is called "an Enthusiastic Rascal! - That frightens the Ignorant without of their Wits, and afterwards picks their Pockets"(10)

Hogarth's pulpiteer cannot be preaching the word of the supreme being With a harlequin's suit below his gown, he speaks, as indicated upon the open page of his Bible, "as a fool" (2 Cor. 2:23) All the members of the equally foolish congregation have not to be found their senses. The atmosphere is hellish, the preacher's dolls a devil and a witch. The "Globe of Hell" hanging from the ceiling has a face and is inscribed with strange topographical expressions like as "Molten Lead Lake," "Pitch & Tar Rivers," "Horrid Zone" "The Brimstone Ocean," and "Eternal Damnation Gulf" This is probably a sideswipe at the attitudes of a "hellfire Methodist preacher" who dioceses hell's flames flashing in the faces of the congregation and believes "that they are now! now! now! dropping into Hell! into the Bottom of Hell! the Bottom of Hell!"(11)

These inscriptions may also insinuate Roman Catholic fantasies of hell.(12) The preacher's wig falls away and reveals the shaven diadem of a Jesuit, an allusion to the then widely held opinion that Methodists were in fact unknown papists. Bishop Lavington, for instance, compared the "modern Enthusiasts" to the "most ridiculous, strolling, fanatical, frantic, delirious, and mischievous of all the saints in the Romish Communion." And Theophilus Evans wrote that "the schools of all Denominations . . were made Tools in the Hands of Romish Priests, to carry upon their Interest, that they are all the Spawn of the Jesuits, however diversified in positions and Principles."(13)