border, it was found necessary to take the upper part of the box entirely to pieces; and while minutely inspecting the landscape and figures, the jeweller perceived, at the edge of the plate, which had been concealed by its frame, the name of William Hogarth." Upon the suggestion of a collector of works of art, some twenty impressions were taken on India paper, and the plate restored to its original destination; but so soldered and riveted to the exterior embossing as to prevent the possibility of its ever again being submitted to the printing-press. The twenty copies were then sold, for five pounds, to Mr. W a great Hogarthian collector, who selected the best impression, and threw the remaining nineteen into the fire, exclaiming, "Now, I have in my possession a unique work of my idol's. No man can boast that he has a copy of this fête champetre but myself, and I would not part with it for fifty pounds." His feelings, however, were less enviable than those of the person who had enabled him to possess this treasure; for he handed over the five pounds to the workingsilversmith, whose gratitude was equal to his surprise at such a God-send.

JOE MILLER'S BENEFIT TICKET.

Joe Miller, of Jest-book fame, was also a comedian of some repute, who played upon the boards of Drury-lane Theatre, from 1715 to 1738. In the former year, Joe took his first sole benefit, when he selected Congreve's play of the Old Bachelor, in which Miller performed Sir Joseph Whittol, his best hit that season. Now, "a sole benefit" led the way either to the Fleet or Fortune. These were the stakes Joe had to play for on the 25th of April, 1717; but the odds were dead in his favour. The very cards he had provided to play the game were charmed-genius had traced every line of them: the designer was no less a person than William Hogarth.

"The scene is in the third act of the Old Bachelor, where Noll, the companion and bully of Sir Joseph, gets a severe kicking from Sharper. "The original of the print," say Nichols and Steevens, "is extremely scarce; and there is no doubt of its being from a design by Hogarth, probably executed by the same hand who etched 'Modern Military Punishments,' though it is in somewhat of a better style." An impression has been sold for eight guineas, &c.

Samuel Ireland has engraved Miller's Ticket in his Graphic Illustrations, but, upon the authority of Richardson, the print

seller, in the Strand, he condemns this Ticket as one of the forgeries by Rowell, "who, being a needy man, probably held it as a matter of little importance, provided it procured him the means of supplying the wants of craving hunger, penury, and sorrow." Yet, we agree with Mr. W. H. Wills, the author of the ingenious Biography, prefixed to the Family Joe Miller, 1848, that Nichols's and Steevens's opinion as to the genuineness of this print is admissible, notwithstanding Ireland's denunciation of it. At this date, Hogarth was not out of his apprenticeship, but he was an early boon companion of Joe Miller, at the Bull's Head, in Clare Market, and "the Shepherd and his Flock" Club. Mr. Wills asks: "Were this a spurious pasteboard, why did Jane Ireland re-engrave it ; and why is her etching kept in the British Museum print-room, side by side with the original?" Lastly, it was precisely this kind of jobs-shop-cards, bill-heads, &c.-that Hogarth lived by as soon as he had served out his apprenticeship. Nevertheless, Nichols, in his Anecdotes, latest edition, 1833, "in a Catalogue of the Tickets said to have been engraved by Hogarth, commences with Spiller, the player's, a proof of which, before the writing, was sold, in 1832, for 12l. 15s. : for the original print, in the Royal Collection, Ireland was offered 201. "This," says Nichols, "is immeasurably superior to all the other Tickets both in design and execution. It makes one suspect all the rest to be not by Hogarth." In Nichols's Anecdotes, edit. 1783, the earliest print named is of the date 1720, three years subsequent to that of Miller's Ticket.

PRINT OF "THE RAPE OF THE LOCK."

One of Hogarth's earliest works, executed about 1717, (in his apprenticeship,) was a small oval illustration of Pope's Kape of the Lock. It is thus described by Ireland:

Though slight, and not intended to be impressed on paper, the air of the figures is easy, and the faces, especially of Sir Plume and the heroine of the story, extremely characteristic. It is said to have been engraven on the lid of a snuff-box, "probably for Lord Petre, who is here represented as holding the lock of hair in his hand. Sir Plumethe round-faced and insignificant Sir Plume,

Of amber snuff-box justly vain,

And the nice conduct of a clouded cane,"

for Sir George Brown; he was angry that the Poet should make him talk nothing but nonsense; and, in truth, (as Warburton adds,) one could not well blame him.

As this little story was intended to be viewed on gold, the figures in the copy are not reversed, but left as they were originally engraven on the box; from which, it is believed, there are only three impressions extant; one of which was sold by Greenwood, at Mr. Gulston's sale, February 7, 1786, for thirty-three pounds!

HOGARTH PUBLISHES HIS FIRST PLATE.

In 1718, (according to Ireland,) Hogarth ceased to be an apprentice, being twenty-one years old; and according to Walpole, he entered into the Academy in St. Martin's-lane, (Sir James Thornhill's,) and studied drawing from the life, in which he never attained to great excellence. It was the character, the passions, the soul, that his genius was given him to copy. In colouring he proved no great a master: his force lay in expression, not in tints and chiaro scuro.

"The instant I became master of my own time (Hogarth tells us,) I determined to qualify myself for engraving on copper." In this he readily got employment by engraving arms, crests, ciphers, shop-bills, &c.

He thus describes the hardships he had to endure in business: "The tribe of booksellers remained as my father had left them, when he died, (about 1721,) which was of an illness occasioned partly by the treatment he met with from this set of people, and partly by disappointment from great men's promises; so that I doubly felt this usage, which put me upon publishing on my own account. But here, again, I had to encounter a monopoly of printsellers, equally mean and obstructive to the ingenious; for the first plate I published, called the Taste of the Town, in which the reigning follies were lashed, had no sooner begun to take a run, than I found copies of it in the print-shops, vending at half-price, while the original prints were returned to me again; and I was thus obliged to sell the plate for whatever these pirates pleased to give me, as there was no place of sale but at their shops.

66

Owing to this and other circumstances, by engraving, until I was near thirty, I could do little more than maintain myself; but even then I was a punctual paymaster."

Hogarth now engraved much for the booksellers: among his illustrations are thirteen folio prints for Mortraye's Travels, 1723; seven smaller prints for the Golden Ass of Apuleius, 1724; fifteen head-pieces for Beaver's Military Punishments of the Ancients; and five frontispieces for the translation of

Cassandra, five vols. 1725. He likewise designed and engraved two cuts for Perseus and Andromeda, 1730; and two for

Milton (date uncertain). Walpole says: "No symptoms of genius dawned in those early plates ;" and there is, certainly, but little of that spirit which distinguished Hogarth's after works.

HOGARTH'S SHOP-CARD.

This design consists of ornamental framework, in the centre of which is inscribed, "W. Hogarth, Engraver;" beneath which, in a lozenge, surrounded with foliage and scroll-work, is the date, "April ye 29, 1720." In the upper centre of the frame are two flying children, with a festoon of fruit and flowers on each side, and a head and console at each angle of the frame; which, at the base, is flanked with a female figure looking up to one of the children-Design or Invention, the companion figure, on the opposite side being that of an old man writing-or History: of this card there is a modern copy. An impression of the original shop-card, (of the date, 1720, when Hogarth is supposed to have begun business,) has been sold for 251. !

HOGARTH COMMENCES SATIRE.

Before his apprenticeship expired, Hogarth had gone far beyond drawing and engraving shields, crests, supporters, coronets, and cyphers; for his sketch of the Highgate brawl, though rough, was a satiric sitting in a new and happy style of art. "I soon found," he observes, "this (engraving) business in every respect too limited." Sir James Thornhill had already acquired Court favour, if not wealth, by painting our palaces and public buildings, and his fame had a powerful effect upon the fortunes of young Hogarth in more phases than one. He says: "The paintings in St. Paul's and Greenwich Hospital, which were at that time going on, ran in my head, and I determined that silver-plate engraving should be followed no longer than necessity obliged me to it. Engraving on copper was at twenty years of age my utmost ambition."

He tells us, also, that he saw little probability of acquiring the full command of the graver, sufficiently to distinguish himself in that walk; "nor was I," he adds, "at twenty years of age, (in 1717,) much disposed to enter upon as barren and unprofitable a study as that of merely making

fine lines. I thought it still more unlikely, that by pursuing the common method, and copying old drawings, I could ever attain the power of making new designs, which was my first and greatest ambition. I therefore, endeavoured to habituate myself to the exercise of a sort of technical memory; and by repeating in my own mind, the parts of which objects were composed, I could by degrees combine and put them down with my pencil."

Though averse, as he himself expresses it, to coldly copying on the spot any objects that struck him, it was usual with him, when he saw a singular character, either in the street or elsewhere, to pencil the leading features and prominent markings upon his nail, and when he came home, to copy the sketch on paper, and afterwards introduce it into a print. Several of these sketches have been preserved, and in them may be traced the first thoughts of many of the characters which Hogarth afterwards introduced into his works.

66

My pleasures and my studies," says Hogarth, "thus going hand in hand, the most striking objects that presented themselves, either comic or tragic, made the strongest impression on my mind; but had I not sedulously practised what I had thus acquired, I should very soon have lost the power of performing it."

HOGARTH SATIRISES THE STAGE.

Ir was the degeneracy of the Stage in 1723 which thus early exercised the satirical talents of Hogarth, then a young man. Immediately after the appearance of the pantomime of Dr. Faustus at Lincoln's Inn Fields, he published his plate of Masquerades and Operas, with the gate of Burlington House in the background, as a lampoon upon the bad taste of the age in every branch of art. On one side Satan is represented as dragging a multitude of people through a gateway to the masquerade and opera, while Heidegger is looking down upon them from a window with an air of satisfaction. A large signboard above has a representation of Cuzzoni on the stage, to whom the Earl of Peterborough is offering 8,000l. On the opposite side of the picture a crowd rushes into a theatre to witness the pantomime; and over this gateway appears the sign of Dr. Faustus with a dragon and a windmill. In front of the picture a barrow-woman is wheeling away as "waste paper for shops," the dramatic works of Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Dryden, Congreve, and Otway.