th tolerable correctness in the ordinary
way, but it occurred to me that there were many disadvantages attending
this method of study, as having faulty originals, etc.; and even when
the prints or pictures to be imitated were by the best masters, it was
little more than pouring water out of one vessel into another. Many
reasons led me to wish that I could find a shorter path--fix forms and
characters in my mind--and, instead of copying the lines, try to read
the language, and if possible find the grammar of the art, by bringing
into one focus the various observations I had made, and then trying by
my power on the canvas how far my plan enabled me to combine and apply
them to practice....

"I had one material advantage over my competitors, viz., the early habit
I acquired of retaining in my mind's eye, without coldly copying on the
spot, whatever I intended to imitate.... Instead of burdening the memory
with musty rules, or tiring the eye with copying dry or damaged
pictures, I have ever found studying from nature the shortest and safest
way of obtaining knowledge in my art...."

"I entertained some thoughts," he writes again, "of succeeding in what
the puffers in books call the great style of history painting, so that,
without having had a stroke of this grand business before, I quitted
small portraits and familiar conversations, and with a smile at my own
temerity commenced history painter, and on a great staircase at St.
Bartholomew's Hospital painted two Scripture stories, _The Pool of
Bethesda_ and _The Good Samaritan_, with figures seven feet high. These
I presented to the charity, and thought that they might serve as a
specimen to show that, were there an inclination in England for
encouraging historical pictures, such a first essay might prove the
painting them more easily attainable than is generally imagined. But as
Religion, the great promoter of this style in other countries, rejected
it in England, and I was unwilling to sink into a
portrait-manufacturer--and still ambitious of being singular, I soon
dropped all expectations of advantage from that source, and returned to
the pursuit of my former dealings with the public at large."

Few seemed disposed to recognise, in any of Hogarth's works, a higher
aim than that of raising a laugh. Somerville, the poet, dedicated his
_Rural Games_ to Hogarth in these words--"Permit me, Sir, to make choice
of you for my patron, being the greatest master in the burlesque w