but he, at least will admit no doubt of the ultimate
conclusion. "In all his delineation," says Mr. Austin Dobson,[3] with
fine insight, "as in that famous design of Prudhon, we see Justice and
Vengeance following hard upon the criminal. He knew, no doubt, as well
as we, that not seldom (humanly speaking) the innocent are punished and
the guilty go at large. What matter! that message should not be preached
by him at any rate. So he drew his 'Bogey' bigger ... and drove his
graver deeper in the copper."

Yet it is to be noted that from the first his genius is attracted to
social satire. The _Masquerades and Operas, Burlington Gate_, 1724
(which he calls in his own notes _The Taste of the Times_)--the first
plate which he published on his own account,--was popular enough to be
freely pirated. "The Wanstead Assembly" brings him close to the later
caricaturists; "The Burning of Rumps" shows us a London crowd beside old
Temple Bar, with its ghastly trophies of Jacobite relics; and all these
lead up to his later success in the two Progresses and the Marriage
Series. In 1733 he had settled in his house in Leicester Fields, with
its gilt sign of the Golden Head--the sign which he had fashioned and
gilded himself, in the similitude of the painter Van Dyck; and here the
most of his life was to be spent, varied by visits in later years to the
villa which he then acquired at Chiswick. He is now fairly facing his
life work, and a brief survey of this is all we can hope to attempt in
the limits of this chapter.

I have already mentioned "The Harlot's Progress," and its immediate
successor, "The Rake's Progress," the subjects of which speak for
themselves. The country maiden's arrival in London, the breakfast scene
with her Jewish admirer, and the scene in Bridewell are to be noted
among the prints of the first Series; but all are full of character and
interest. In "The Rake's Progress" the second plate introduces us to a
side of Hogarth's talent which he was to develop later on more fully in
his "Marriage a la Mode"--namely, his satire of eighteenth-century life
of fashion.

The awkward youth who in the plate before had come into his fortune is
now in the full of its enjoyment: become a fine gentleman, he holds his
morning _levee_ of those numerous parasites who minister to his vanity
or pleasure. The foreign element (which Hogarth in his heart detested)
is here to the front in the figure of the French dancing-master, trying
a new