In 1725, Hogarth published another caricature-"A just View of the British Stage," more especially levelled at the pantomimes at Drury-lane and Lincoln's Inn Fields, and suggesting a plan for combining in one piece, Dr. Faustus and Jack Sheppard with Scaramouch, Jack Hall's escape from Newgate, &c. Wilkes is dangling the effigy of Punch in exultation, exclaiming, "Poor Rich, I pity thee." Cibber holding up Harlequin Jack Sheppard invokes the Muses, and Booth is "letting down Hall." The Ghost of Ben Jonson rises from a trapdoor, and shows his contempt for the newfangled contrivances of the stage in a manner that cannot be misunderstood.

In 1727, Hogarth published a large Masquerade Ticket, bitterly satirical upon the immoral tendency of masquerades, as well as their manager, Heidegger. Hogarth had previously immortalized the face of this person, when enraged at a masquerade by a person wearing a masque as ugly as himself -indeed, a cast from his own face—

With a hundred deep wrinkles impress'd on thy front,
Like a map with a great many rivers upon 't.

"PRINTS FOR HUDIBRAS."

In 1726, when Hogarth readily got employment as an engraver of "frontispieces to books," he invented and engraved the set of Twelve large Prints for Hudibras, of which Walpole, in his usual strain of depreciation, says: "This was the first of his (Hogarth's) works that marked him as a man above the common; yet in what made him then noticed, it surprises me to find so little humour in an undertaking so congenial to his talents." But Hogarth lamented to his friends that he had parted with these plates without having had an opportunity to improve them. They were purchased by Mr. Philip Overton,* at the Golden Buck, near St. Dunstan's Church, in Fleet-street; thence passed to his successor, Mr. Sayer; and next to Laurie and Whittle. Hogarth's success in these prints lies rather in his departure from the poet, when, by skilful additions, he awakens a similar train of thought and humour, and thus increases the graphic glow of his author. The work was published by subscription;

* Brother to Henry Overton, the well-known publisher of ordinary prints, who lived over against St. Sepulchre's Church, and sold many of Hogarth's early pieces coarsely copied, as was subsequently done by Dicey in Bow-churchyard.

Allan Ramsay, who was a bookseller as well as a poet, subscribed for thirty copies; and the plates were dedicated by the artist "to William Ward, of Great Houghton, Northamptonshire, and Mary Ramsay of Edinburgh." A friendly intercourse sprung up between Ramsay and Hogarth: they possessed a kindred humour, and a few lines were addressed to the painter, by the poet, whose son, Ramsay, the portraitpainter, joined in the feud of his fraternity against Hogarth.

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To these twelve designs were added five, and the seventeen were engraved by Hogarth of smaller size, with Butler's head, copied from White's mezzotinto of Jean Baptist Monnoyer. In 1744, twelve of these designs were engraved for Dr. Zachary Grey's edition of Hudibras, but not until some of their glaring indecencies had been removed by "the ingenious Mr. Wood, painter, of Bloomsbury-square," acknowledged by Dr. Grey, in his Preface. They are engraved by J. Mynde; but are poor and spiritless, with the exception of Butler's head, by Vertue.* Subsequently, many of these Plates were copied, with violent alterations by Ross, for Dr. Nash's edition of Hudibras, 1795. Altogether, Hogarth cannot be considered to have done much in illustration of the graphic form and humour of Butler's poems, which were 66 too elusive and quicksilvery" for the engraver's hand to catch. Voltaire said that Hudibras unites the wit of Don Quixote with that of the Satyre Menippée-a combination beyond the reach of our painting satirist's art.

With respect to the Paintings said to have been the work of Hogarth, the evidence is doubtful. At the sale of John Ireland's collection in 1810, "Twelve pictures of Hudibras" were bought for 52 guineas by Mr. Twining; and these pictures Ireland states in his Will, to be as certainly painted by Hogarth as the Marriage à la Mode pictures were.

Baker, in his History of Northamptonshire, states there to have been in the mansion of W. Sandbridge, Esq. at East Haddon, twelve humorous sketches, said to be by Hogarth, illustrative of Hudibras.

Mr. W. Davies, (Cadell and Davies), the publishers in the * Lowndes, in his Bibliographical Manual, says of these plates: Copies in fine condition are in considerable request. The cuts are beautifully expressed, and Hogarth is much indebted to the designer of them; but who he was does not appear." This is a strange mistake, since each of the plates is inscribed, "W. Hogarth invt." The error is corrected, as above, by. a warm admirer of Hogarth, in a communication to Notes and Queries, First Series, No. 52.

Strand, had, in 1816, twelve small scenes in Hudibras, by Lepipre, a man under whom Hogarth is said to have studied; and the subjects so familiar to all as executed by Hogarth from Hudibras, are so similar to these twelve pictures, that Mr. Davies considered undoubtedly Hogarth had copied them. This opinion invalidates his claim to originality, which his admirers need not be very anxious, in this case, to prove.

The late John Britton possessed a series of twelve designs on panel, illustrative of Hudibras, which he bought at Southgate's, in Fleet-street, as painted by Hogarth; but Sir Thomas Lawrence pronounced them to be by Vandergucht. Failing to establish the authenticity of these paintings, however, Mr. Britton, in his Autobiography, Part 2, describes them as in drawing, colouring, and expression, to "surpass the wellknown illustrations by Hogarth." Of one of Vandergucht's paintings, as a specimen, Mr. Britton caused a small lithograph to be executed in 1842.

HOGARTH AND THE UPHOLSTERER.

For some time after Hogarth began to paint, he was little known, except as an engraver-a mere etcher of copper-a remarkable instance of which occurred in the year 1727. It appears that one Morris, an upholsterer, engaged Hogarth to make a design for tapestry—the subject, the Element of the Earth. The task was performed, when Morris, having discovered that he had commissioned an engraver instead of a painter, refused to pay for the work, and was sued for the price -207. for workmanship, and 107. for materials. At the trial before the Lord Chief Justice Eyre, Morris stated that he was informed by Hogarth that he was skilled in painting, and could execute the design of the Element of the Earth in a workmanlike manner. On hearing, however, afterwards that he was an engraver and not a painter, Morris became uneasy, and sent a servant to tell Mr. Hogarth, who replied that it was certainly a bold undertaking for him, but if Mr. Morris did not like it when it was finished, he should not be asked to pay for it. The work was completed and sent home, when Morris's tapestry-workers, mostly foreigners, and some of the finest hands in Europe, condemned the design, and insisted that it was impossible to execute tapestry from it. Accordingly, the verdict was given in Morris's favour, and Hogarth lost his labour and had to pay the entire expense of the trial.

HOGARTH'S MARRIAGE.

We have seen how Hogarth's attention was first drawn to painting by Thornhill's works at Greenwich Hospital and St. Paul's Cathedral; and how the young painter frequented the great man's academy in Peter's-court. To what their previous intimacy amounted is not known; but, in 1729, Hogarth, then in his thirty-second year, married Jane, the only daughter of Sir James Thornhill, aged twenty. The match was without the consent of the parents, and we can imagine the couple stealing away across the fields to the little church of Paddington, then a village of some 300 houses, with its green and rural churchyard. The marriage register contains the following entry: "William Hogarth, Esq., and Jane Thornhill, of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, married March 23d, 1729." Hogarth is called an eminent designer and engraver; and his father-in-law, serjeant painter and history painter to the King. Thornhill had now acquired wealth and honours, had been knighted, and sat in parliament for his native town, Weymouth. He was much offended at his daughter's unequal match, and kept his heart and his purse-strings close. He could not foresee his unwelcome son-in-law's future eminence: indeed, he was as yet acknowledged by few even as a painter. Sir James' wrath lasted for two years; but the entreaties of his wife, the submissiveness of his daughter, and above all, the rising reputation of Hogarth, prevailed, and Thornhill forgave the young painter.

During the interval, Hogarth designed and etched the first portion of "The Harlot's Progress," so much to the gratification of Lady Thornhill, that she advised her daughter to place it in her father's way. "Accordingly, one morning, Mrs. Hogarth conveyed it secretly into his dining-room. When he rose, he inquired whence it came, and by whom it was brought? When he was told, he cried out, Very well, very well! The man who can make works like this can maintain a wife without a portion.' He designed this remark as an excuse for keeping his purse-strings close; but soon after became both reconciled and generous to the young people."

Hogarth now set to work in the hope of being able to maintain his wife in such fashion as became her. He laid aside his satiric designs, and commenced portrait-painter; and Walpole tells us that the young artist's facility in catching a likeness, and his method of painting conversation pieces,

drew him a prodigious business for some time. Hogarth's own account of this start in life is as follows: "I married, (he says,) and commenced painter of small conversation-pieces, from twelve to fifteen inches high. This, having novelty, succeeded for a few years. But though it gave somewhat more scope for the fancy, it was still but a less kind of drudgery; and as I could not bring myself to act like some of my brethren, and make it a sort of manufactory to be carried on by the help of backgrounds and drapery painters, it was not sufficiently profitable to pay the expenses my family required. I therefore turned my thoughts to a still more novel mode, to painting and engraving modern moral subjects, a field not broken up in any country or any age."

About this time Hogarth painted a very spirited representation of "Folly:" the subject was composed of twelve figures six males, and a like number of females; the landscape gorgeous.

HOGARTH'S HOUSE IN LEICESTER-SQUARE.

It may be interesting to take a glance at the Leicester Fields of Hogarth's time. Mr. J. T. Smith had, in the year 1825, a conversation with a gentleman named Packer, then in his eighty-seventh year, and who remembered Leicester Fields long before the accession of George III. He said, it was a dirty place, where ragged boys assembled to play at chuck. In the King's Mews adjoining was a cistern where the horses were watered, behind which was a horse-pond, in which pickpockets, when caught, were ducked. In 1677, when Leicester House, on the north side, stood almost alone, there were rows of elm-trees in the court before it, extending nearly half the width of the present square. It was not inclosed until sixty years later; for, in the Country Journal, or Craftsman, of April 16, 1737, we read, "Leicester Fields is going to be fitted up in a very elegant manner: a new wall and rails to be erected all round, and a basin in the middle, after the manner of Lincoln's Inn Fields." Some years after, the streets were so thinly built in the neighbourhood, that when the heads of the Scottish rebels of 1745 were placed on Temple Bar, a man stood in Leicester Fields with a telescope, to give persons a sight of them for a halfpenny a-piece.

It appears by the rate-books of St. Martin's parish, that Hogarth came to live there in 1733, on the east side of the square, in what is now the northern half of the Sabloniere