pirit as well as in the letter of the fashion, or he
will only look like a dressed-up greengrocer. Hogarth was too sturdy and
too wilful to put on court clothes. If he had to, he struggled with
them.

Hogarth's father was a man of literary tastes, and a scholar. He had
written a supplement to Littleton's Latin Dictionary, but was unable to
get it published. "I saw the difficulties," writes the artist, "under
which my father laboured; the many inconveniences he endured from his
dependence, living chiefly on his pen, and the cruel treatment he met
with from booksellers and printers. I had before my eyes the precarious
situation of men of classical education; it was therefore conformable to
my wishes that I was taken from school and served a long apprenticeship
to a silver-plate engraver." This is printed in Allan Cunningham's _Life
of Hogarth_, together with many more extracts from autobiographical
memoranda, from which we may learn at first hand a great deal of
information bearing on the state of painting at this period, and the
circumstances under which it received such a stimulus from Hogarth,
before the sun had fully risen (in the person of Reynolds) to illumine
the whole period of British art.

"As I had naturally a good eye and fondness for drawing," Hogarth
continues, "_shows_ of all sorts gave me uncommon pleasure when young,
and mimicry, common to all children, was remarkable in me. An early
access to a neighbouring painter drew my attention from play, and I was
at every possible opportunity engaged in making drawings.... My
exercises at school were more remarkable for the ornaments which adorned
them than for the exercise itself. In the former I soon found that
blockheads with better memories would soon surpass me, but for the
latter I was particularly distinguished.

"The painting of 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. To
attain that it was necessary that I should learn to draw objects
something like nature, instead of the monsters of heraldry, and the
common methods of study were much too tedious for one who loved his
pleasure and came so late to it.... This led me to consider whether a
shorter road than that usually travelled was not to be found.... I had
learned by practice to copy wi