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Animal Rights History Timeline » [1660-1785] Enlightenment: » William Hogarth

William Hogarth

Four Stages of Cruelty

First Stage of Cruelty

[1751] Hogarth's engravings of the Four Stages of Cruelty are published in the London Evening Post with the lesson moralized below the print by the Rev. James Townley.

First Stage of Cruelty

"While various scenes of sportive woe
The infant race employ;
And tortur'd victims bleeding, show
The tyrant in the boy.

"Behold a youth of gentler hear!
To spare the creature's pain,
O take, he cries—take all my tart,
But tears and tart ar vain.

"Learn from this fair example, you
Who savage sports delight,
How cruelly disgusts the view,
While pity charms the sight.

—Rev. James Townley

John Ireland: "The delineation of such scenes must shock every feeling heart, and their enumeration disgust every humane mind. I hope, for the honour of our nature and our nation, that they are not so frequently practised as when these prints were published. (John Ireland, Hogarth Illustrated [1791] "First Stage of Cruelty" 53-4)