FOOTNOTES

“Till six o’clock we quiet layAnd then got out for the whole day;To fetch a barber out we send;Stripp’d and in boots he doth attend,For he’s a fisherman by trade;Tann’d was his face, and shock his head;He flours our heads and trims our faces,And the top barber of the place is;A bowl of milk and toasted breadAre brought, of which, while Forrest eats,To draw our pictures Hogarth sits;Thornhill is in the barber’s hands;Shaving himself, Will Tothall stands;While Scott is in a corner sitting,And an unfinished sketch completing.”

“Till six o’clock we quiet lay

And then got out for the whole day;

To fetch a barber out we send;

Stripp’d and in boots he doth attend,

For he’s a fisherman by trade;

Tann’d was his face, and shock his head;

He flours our heads and trims our faces,

And the top barber of the place is;

A bowl of milk and toasted bread

Are brought, of which, while Forrest eats,

To draw our pictures Hogarth sits;

Thornhill is in the barber’s hands;

Shaving himself, Will Tothall stands;

While Scott is in a corner sitting,

And an unfinished sketch completing.”

There is also a very droll tailpiece of Hogarth’s design, and freely, vigorously and racily touched.

The “Hudibrastics,” when the accounts were duly audited—and a rare chronicle these accounts are of pots of ale, cans of flip, bowls of punch, lobsters and tobacco—were handsomely bound to be preserved as a perpetual memorial of this famous expedition. By way of motto, Forrest prefixed to his poem a quotation of the inscription over Dulwich college porch,Abi tu, et fac similiter.

The great success of theHarlot’s Progresshad naturally incited William Hogarth with a strong and almost fierce desire to accomplish some other work of the same satirical force, of the same breadth of morality with that excellent performance. He determined that there should be on record a sequel, or at least a pendant to the drama whose lamentable action his pencil had just so poignantly narrated. He felt that it was in him, that it was his vocation, his duty to follow step by step the career of human vice, to point, with unerring finger whither tend the crooked roads, to demonstrate as clearly as ever did mathematician—much more explicitly than ever did logician—that as surely as the wheels of the cart follow thehoofs of the horse, so surely will punishment follow sin. He was as yet but at the commencement of his trilogy: Clytemnestra might begin; Orestes might succeed; but the Eumenides had to come at last. He saw before him a whole ocean, seething, weltering, bubbling of pravities and impostures, and deadly lies, and evil passions. He heard the thorns crackling under the pot. He saw vice, not only stalking about with hungered looks, ragged garb and brandished bludgeon; now robbing Dr. Mead’s chariot in Holborn; now stopping the Bristol mail; now cutting Jonathan Wild’s throat on the leads before the Sessions House, and being pressed to death for it; now with sooty face and wild disguise of skins, stealing deer in the king’s forests, and rioting in caves on surreptitious venison and smuggled Nantz;[18]now being ducked for pocket-picking in the horse-pond behind the King’s Mews, Charing Cross; now cutting throats in night-cellars; now going filibustering, and suffering death for piracy, to be afterwards gibbeted at Halfway Creek and the Triptoptrees; but Vice in embroidery and Mechlin lace, with a silver-hilted sword, and a snuff-box enamelled by Rouquet, at its side; vice, painted and patched, whispering over fans, painted with Hogarth’s own “Progress” at Heidegger’s masquerade; vice punting at the “Young Man’s,” stock-jobbing in the Alley, brawling with porters and common bullies at the Rose, chaffering with horse-jockeys at Newmarket, clustered round the Cock-pit, applauding Broughton the ex-yeoman of the guard, pugilist, and lending its fine Holland shirt to Mr. Figg the prize-fighter after a bout at back or broadsword,[19]dancing attendance on the impudent and ugly German women, for whom the kings of England forsook their lawful wives, duelling in Hyde Park, and taking bribes in the very lobby of the Parliament House. William Hogarth knew that he was enjoined to mark this duplex vice, to burn it in the hand, to force it into the pillory, to pile the hundredweights of his indignation upon it in his own pressyard, to scathe and strangle it, and hang it as high as Haman, to be the loathing and the scorn of better-minded men. Between the summer lodgings at South Lambeth and other lodgings he took at Isleworth, between the portraits and conversations, and the book-plates and the benefit-tickets; odds and ends of artists’ work, done in the way of business for the lords and gentlemen who were good enough to employ him; shop-bills, “illustrating the commerce of Florence;” “breaking-up” tickets for Tiverton School; scenes fromParadise Lost; busts of Hesiod; tickets for Figg the prize-fighter, for Milward, Jemmy Spiller, Joe Miller, and other comedians; coats of arms for his friend George Lambert; caricatures of Orator Henley; benefit cards even for Harry Fielding, illustrating scenes fromPasquinand theMock Doctor; between high jinks and suburban jaunts, and pleasant evening strolls in Vauxhall Gardens; between 1733 and 1735, he was planning, and maturing, and brooding over theRake’s Progress. The experiment was a dangerous one. The public are averse from toleratingParadise RegainedafterParadise Lost, theDrunkard’s Childrenafter theBottle, theMarriage of Figaroafter theBarber of Seville. And who has not yawned and rubbed his eyes over the secondFaust? But William Hogarth saw his way clearly before him, and was determined to pursue it. The pictures, eight in number, were painted by the end of 1733. In 1734, the proposals of subscription to the plates were issued. The subscription ticket was the well-known etching of theLaughing Audience. The sums were one guinea and a half for nine plates; the ninth promised beingThe Humours of a Fair—no other than the far-famedSouthwark.

Thus I sweep the stage, and sound the whistle for the curtain to draw up on the drama ofThe Rake’s Progress, closing this paper with the form of receipt given by Hogarth to his subscribers:

“Recd. Decr. 18th, of the Rt. Honble. Lord Biron, half a guinea, being the first payment for nine plates, eight of which represent aRake’s Progress, and the ninth aFair, which I promise to deliver at Michaelmas next, on receiving one guinea more.Note.—TheFairwill be delivered at Christmas next, at sight of this receipt. The prints of theRake’s Progresswill be two guineas, after the subscription is over.”“WILLIAM HOGARTH.”

“WILLIAM HOGARTH.”

FOOTNOTES[9]I was at Bristol in the summer of 1858; but the fine old church was then in process of restoration, and the Hogarths, I heard, had been temporarily removed. Have those curious altar-pieces been since restored?[10]There is a mania just now for giving excessive prices for steel and copper engravings. There is a millennium for artists’ proofs. The auctioneers only know what a genuine Marc Antonio Raimondi is worth; but I am told that a “Sunday” proof of theMarch to Finchley—the original plate was dated on a Sunday, but thedies nonwas subsequently erased by Hogarth—will fetch thirty guineas in the market. The price seems as exorbitant as those sometimes given for a “breeches” or a “vinegar” Bible.[11]Dr. Misaubin lived at 96, St. Martin’s lane. Of his staircase, painted by Clermont, the Frenchman, I have already spoken. Those were the days when “Mrs. Powell, the colourman’s mother, used to make a pipe of wine every year from the vines that grew in the garden in St Martin’s Lane.” Traces of its old rurality may also be found in the name of one of its noisomest offshoots—the “Hop Gardens.” Dr. Misaubin “flourished” in 1732. He was not a Frenchman born, but of French Huguenot extraction. He was an arrant and impudent quack, but a good-natured man, and dispensed the huge fortune he amassed liberally enough. More anent him when he grows older and more wrinkled, in theMarriage à la Mode. All this man’s gold, however, turned in the end to dry leaves. His grandson, Angiband, dissipated the pill and nostrum fortune, and died of Geneva-on-the-brain in St. Martin’s Workhouse. Engraver Smith (J. T.) says that Misaunbin’s father was a Protestant clergyman, and mentions a “family picture” representing the Doctor in all his glory, with his son on his knees, and his reverend papa at a table behind, and arrayed in full canonicals.[12]Everybody seems to have had Latin verses, eulogistic or abusive, addressed to him in those days. Thus the “Sapphics” of Mr. Loveling, a young gentleman of the university, to the rigorous Middlesex Justice:—“Pellicum, Gonsone, animosus hostis,Per minus castus Druriæ tabernasLenis incedens, abeas DionesÆquus Alumnis!”And so forth.[13]He sat for Melcombe Regis in the two last parliaments of George the First. The borough was then a mere pocket one, in the gift of the backstairs. Thornhill’s “employments” were continued to him for some time by George the Second; but, like his predecessor, Sir Christopher Wren, he was removed to make way for place-men who, without any very high attainments, could be useful to the Ministry. Thenceforth, the “goodman” amused himself by painting easel-pictures. He was taken for death in an access of gout, and died in his chair on the 4th of May, and was buried at Stalbridge on the 13th. He had greatly beautified the ancestral mansion and estate, and had erected, on an adjacent hill, an obelisk to the memory of George the First, which was visible to all the country side. Hogarth himself records the death of his father-in-law, in Sylvanus Urban’s obituary in theGentleman’s Magazine—then a very young publication, indeed. He says that he was “the greatest history painter this age has seen;” and states, that as king’s sergeant painter he had to decorate all his majesty’s coaches, barges, and “the royal navy.” Are we to understand from this that Thornhill was expected to carve and gild the figure heads of three-deckers![14]Thomas Coram was born in 1668. He had amassed a competence in following the sea, and lived at Rotherhithe, like Captain Lemuel Gulliver, and that greater mariner, Captain Cuttle. In his way to and from the maritime districts of the town, his honest heart was frequently afflicted by the sight of destitute and abandoned children. Probably he had never heard of St. Vincent de Paul—this rough tarry-breeks of the Benbow and Cloudesley Shovel era—but he set about doing the selfsame work as that for which the foreign philanthropist was canonized. Coram had already effected much good by procuring an Act granting a bounty on naval stores imported to Georgia—where the colonists were frequently left destitute—and by devising an admirable scheme for the education of Indian girls. The Foundling Hospital was, however, his great work. He obtained the charter of incorporation for it,A.D.1739. These were the words, of which I have given the sense above:—“I have not wasted the little wealth of which I was formerly possessed in self-indulgence or vain expense; and am not ashamed to confess, that in this, my old age, I am poor.” They raised a pension of a hundred a year for the benevolent veteran; Sir Sampson Gideon and Dr. Brocklesby being chief managers of the fund. Captain Coram did not live long to enjoy the pension; and at his death, it was continued to poor old Leveridge, to whose volume of songs William Hogarth contributed a frontispiece.[15]One moment ere I leave the male and female naughtinesses in this drama for good. Charteris, Hackabout, brother and sister, James Dalton, the highwayman, whose “wig-box” you see in plate iii. of theH. P., and Mother Needham, who continued the traditions of Dryden’sMother Dulake(“Wild Gallant”), to Foote’sMother Cole, all faded into space before 1733. The colonel “Don Francisco”—as people with a snigger called Charteris—was very nearly being hanged. He was cast for death; but being immensely rich, and having, moreover, and luckily, a lord of the land, the Earl of Wemyss, for his son-in-law, he managed to escape. Not, indeed, Scot-free. He was compelled to make a handsome settlement on his victim, one Ann Bond, prosecutrix in the case for which Don Francisco had so close a riddance of “sus per coll” being written against his name. The sheriffs of London, and the high bailiff of Westminster, had, moreover, made a seizure of his rich goods and chattels, immediately after his conviction. He had to compound with them for the restitution of his effects, and this cost him nearly nine thousand pounds. The profligate old miser had to sell his South Sea stock, to raise the amount; a fact which the newspapers of the day record with much exultation. But Nemesis was not yet satisfied. The colonel’s wife came back from Scotland on purpose to reproach her lord. The wretched man on his part fledtoScotland, and died in Edinburgh soon afterwards. Dalton, of the “wig-box,” having been “boned,” “habbled,” or “snabbled,” and confined for some time in the “Rumbo,” or “Whid,” finished his career at the “nubbing cheat,” at the top of the Edgware Road. In other words—the first are the elegant terms used by the City marshal in his controversial pamphlet theRegulator, written in disparagement of Mr. Jonathan Wild the great—Mr. James Dalton was arrested, and after lying some time in Newgate, was duly tried, sentenced, and hanged. “He was a thief from his cradle, and imbibed the principles of his art with his mother’s milk.” He went between his father’s legs in the cart to his fatal exit at Tyburn.Sic itur ad astra; and thus Plutarch in the shape of the ordinary of Newgate. As for Mother Needham, she was sentenced to stand twice in the pillory. The first ordeal she underwent close to her own house, in Park Place, St. James’. She was very ill, and lay “all along” under these Caudine forks, “thus evading the law, which required that her face should be exposed.” Two days afterwards, “complaining of the ingratitude of the publick”—the mob had pelted her pitilessly—“and dreading the second pillorying to which, in Old Palace Yard, she was doomed, she gave up the ghost.”[16]TheModern Midnight Conversationhad a great vogue abroad, and is still, perhaps, one of the best known of Hogarth’s works. Copies, adaptations, paraphrases of it have been multiplied to a vast extent in Germany. There is a well-known French version,Société nocturne, nommée communément Cotterie de Débauche en Punch; and a collection of heads from theConversation, catalogued asTêtes des onze membres, gravées par M. Riepenhausen. One ingenious artist even formed a gallery of small wax models of the principal figures. And finally, I have seen the FrenchCotterieenamelled on a porcelain at Leipsic, and on a golden snuffbox in the museum of the Hermitage at St. Petersburg. There is a humorous modern lithograph, representing a party of sapient-looking bibbers, assembled in solemn conclave over a hogshead of Rhine wine in a cellar; and the hint for this—albeit, the grossness is softened down—is evidently taken from theM. M. C.[17]Tothall’s career was a most curious one. He was the son of an apothecary, was left an orphan, taken care of by an uncle. He ran away to sea; went to the West Indies, Newfoundland, and Honduras; was on one occasion captured by hostile Spaniards, and marched “up the country,” with no other clothing but a woollen cap and a brown waistcoat—a costume almost as primitive as that of an unhappy French governess taken prisoner by some followers of Schamyl, in a raid on the Russians, and driven before them to their mountain home, the poor lady having nothing on but a pair of blue satin corsets. Tothall had his picture painted in the brown waistcoat. Coming afterwards to England, he entered the service of a woollen draper, in Tavistock Court; who, after some time, told him he was a very honest fellow, and that as he the draper only sold cloth, Tothall might have half the shop to sell shalloons and trimmings. He lent him money to buy stock, and recommended him to his chapmen. By and bye, a relative of Tothall in the West Indies sent him a puncheon of rum as a present. The recipient was about to sell the alcohol for what it would fetch—perhaps to the landlord of the Bedford Head—when his master interposed. “I have no use for my cellar,” quoth this benevolent woollen draper. “Do you open the door to the street; tap your puncheon, and draw it off in twopennyworths.” Spirit licences were not yet known. Tothall followed the draper’s advice, speedily sold all his rum at a good profit; sent to the West Indies for more, and drove a merry trade in rum, shalloons, and trimmings, till it occurred to the woollen draper to inform him one morning that he intended to retire, that he might have all his stock at prime cost, and pay him as he could. Why are there no such woollen-drapers now-a-days? Between the shop and the cellar Tothall contrived to realize a very considerable fortune. All this time, this odd man had been assiduously collecting fossils, minerals, and shells, of which he had, at last, a handsome museum. He retired to Dover, and, true to his old adventurous habits, entered into large speculations, in what his biographer modestly calls the “smuggling branch of business.” But a “byeboat,” laden with horses, in which he was interested, having been lost between Flushing and Ostend, and some other speculations turning out disastrously, Tothall became in his later days somewhat straitened in his circumstances. Hogarth used frequently to visit him at a little village near Dover, whither he retired, and where he died four years after our painter. He left 1,500l.in cash, and his collection of shells, &c. sold for a handsome sum.[18]Videthe statutes at largo for the “Black Act,” by which poaching in disguise was made a felony, punishment death; and the curious relation of the gentleman who fell among a gang of “Blacks,” and was courteously entreated by them, and regaled at a rich supper, at which the solids were composed exclusively of venison, on condition, only, of never revealing the place of these sooty poachers’ retreat.[19]Figg fought much more with the sword than with his fists.

[9]I was at Bristol in the summer of 1858; but the fine old church was then in process of restoration, and the Hogarths, I heard, had been temporarily removed. Have those curious altar-pieces been since restored?

[10]There is a mania just now for giving excessive prices for steel and copper engravings. There is a millennium for artists’ proofs. The auctioneers only know what a genuine Marc Antonio Raimondi is worth; but I am told that a “Sunday” proof of theMarch to Finchley—the original plate was dated on a Sunday, but thedies nonwas subsequently erased by Hogarth—will fetch thirty guineas in the market. The price seems as exorbitant as those sometimes given for a “breeches” or a “vinegar” Bible.

[11]Dr. Misaubin lived at 96, St. Martin’s lane. Of his staircase, painted by Clermont, the Frenchman, I have already spoken. Those were the days when “Mrs. Powell, the colourman’s mother, used to make a pipe of wine every year from the vines that grew in the garden in St Martin’s Lane.” Traces of its old rurality may also be found in the name of one of its noisomest offshoots—the “Hop Gardens.” Dr. Misaubin “flourished” in 1732. He was not a Frenchman born, but of French Huguenot extraction. He was an arrant and impudent quack, but a good-natured man, and dispensed the huge fortune he amassed liberally enough. More anent him when he grows older and more wrinkled, in theMarriage à la Mode. All this man’s gold, however, turned in the end to dry leaves. His grandson, Angiband, dissipated the pill and nostrum fortune, and died of Geneva-on-the-brain in St. Martin’s Workhouse. Engraver Smith (J. T.) says that Misaunbin’s father was a Protestant clergyman, and mentions a “family picture” representing the Doctor in all his glory, with his son on his knees, and his reverend papa at a table behind, and arrayed in full canonicals.

[12]Everybody seems to have had Latin verses, eulogistic or abusive, addressed to him in those days. Thus the “Sapphics” of Mr. Loveling, a young gentleman of the university, to the rigorous Middlesex Justice:—“Pellicum, Gonsone, animosus hostis,Per minus castus Druriæ tabernasLenis incedens, abeas DionesÆquus Alumnis!”And so forth.

“Pellicum, Gonsone, animosus hostis,Per minus castus Druriæ tabernasLenis incedens, abeas DionesÆquus Alumnis!”

“Pellicum, Gonsone, animosus hostis,

Per minus castus Druriæ tabernas

Lenis incedens, abeas Diones

Æquus Alumnis!”

And so forth.

[13]He sat for Melcombe Regis in the two last parliaments of George the First. The borough was then a mere pocket one, in the gift of the backstairs. Thornhill’s “employments” were continued to him for some time by George the Second; but, like his predecessor, Sir Christopher Wren, he was removed to make way for place-men who, without any very high attainments, could be useful to the Ministry. Thenceforth, the “goodman” amused himself by painting easel-pictures. He was taken for death in an access of gout, and died in his chair on the 4th of May, and was buried at Stalbridge on the 13th. He had greatly beautified the ancestral mansion and estate, and had erected, on an adjacent hill, an obelisk to the memory of George the First, which was visible to all the country side. Hogarth himself records the death of his father-in-law, in Sylvanus Urban’s obituary in theGentleman’s Magazine—then a very young publication, indeed. He says that he was “the greatest history painter this age has seen;” and states, that as king’s sergeant painter he had to decorate all his majesty’s coaches, barges, and “the royal navy.” Are we to understand from this that Thornhill was expected to carve and gild the figure heads of three-deckers!

[14]Thomas Coram was born in 1668. He had amassed a competence in following the sea, and lived at Rotherhithe, like Captain Lemuel Gulliver, and that greater mariner, Captain Cuttle. In his way to and from the maritime districts of the town, his honest heart was frequently afflicted by the sight of destitute and abandoned children. Probably he had never heard of St. Vincent de Paul—this rough tarry-breeks of the Benbow and Cloudesley Shovel era—but he set about doing the selfsame work as that for which the foreign philanthropist was canonized. Coram had already effected much good by procuring an Act granting a bounty on naval stores imported to Georgia—where the colonists were frequently left destitute—and by devising an admirable scheme for the education of Indian girls. The Foundling Hospital was, however, his great work. He obtained the charter of incorporation for it,A.D.1739. These were the words, of which I have given the sense above:—“I have not wasted the little wealth of which I was formerly possessed in self-indulgence or vain expense; and am not ashamed to confess, that in this, my old age, I am poor.” They raised a pension of a hundred a year for the benevolent veteran; Sir Sampson Gideon and Dr. Brocklesby being chief managers of the fund. Captain Coram did not live long to enjoy the pension; and at his death, it was continued to poor old Leveridge, to whose volume of songs William Hogarth contributed a frontispiece.

[15]One moment ere I leave the male and female naughtinesses in this drama for good. Charteris, Hackabout, brother and sister, James Dalton, the highwayman, whose “wig-box” you see in plate iii. of theH. P., and Mother Needham, who continued the traditions of Dryden’sMother Dulake(“Wild Gallant”), to Foote’sMother Cole, all faded into space before 1733. The colonel “Don Francisco”—as people with a snigger called Charteris—was very nearly being hanged. He was cast for death; but being immensely rich, and having, moreover, and luckily, a lord of the land, the Earl of Wemyss, for his son-in-law, he managed to escape. Not, indeed, Scot-free. He was compelled to make a handsome settlement on his victim, one Ann Bond, prosecutrix in the case for which Don Francisco had so close a riddance of “sus per coll” being written against his name. The sheriffs of London, and the high bailiff of Westminster, had, moreover, made a seizure of his rich goods and chattels, immediately after his conviction. He had to compound with them for the restitution of his effects, and this cost him nearly nine thousand pounds. The profligate old miser had to sell his South Sea stock, to raise the amount; a fact which the newspapers of the day record with much exultation. But Nemesis was not yet satisfied. The colonel’s wife came back from Scotland on purpose to reproach her lord. The wretched man on his part fledtoScotland, and died in Edinburgh soon afterwards. Dalton, of the “wig-box,” having been “boned,” “habbled,” or “snabbled,” and confined for some time in the “Rumbo,” or “Whid,” finished his career at the “nubbing cheat,” at the top of the Edgware Road. In other words—the first are the elegant terms used by the City marshal in his controversial pamphlet theRegulator, written in disparagement of Mr. Jonathan Wild the great—Mr. James Dalton was arrested, and after lying some time in Newgate, was duly tried, sentenced, and hanged. “He was a thief from his cradle, and imbibed the principles of his art with his mother’s milk.” He went between his father’s legs in the cart to his fatal exit at Tyburn.Sic itur ad astra; and thus Plutarch in the shape of the ordinary of Newgate. As for Mother Needham, she was sentenced to stand twice in the pillory. The first ordeal she underwent close to her own house, in Park Place, St. James’. She was very ill, and lay “all along” under these Caudine forks, “thus evading the law, which required that her face should be exposed.” Two days afterwards, “complaining of the ingratitude of the publick”—the mob had pelted her pitilessly—“and dreading the second pillorying to which, in Old Palace Yard, she was doomed, she gave up the ghost.”

[16]TheModern Midnight Conversationhad a great vogue abroad, and is still, perhaps, one of the best known of Hogarth’s works. Copies, adaptations, paraphrases of it have been multiplied to a vast extent in Germany. There is a well-known French version,Société nocturne, nommée communément Cotterie de Débauche en Punch; and a collection of heads from theConversation, catalogued asTêtes des onze membres, gravées par M. Riepenhausen. One ingenious artist even formed a gallery of small wax models of the principal figures. And finally, I have seen the FrenchCotterieenamelled on a porcelain at Leipsic, and on a golden snuffbox in the museum of the Hermitage at St. Petersburg. There is a humorous modern lithograph, representing a party of sapient-looking bibbers, assembled in solemn conclave over a hogshead of Rhine wine in a cellar; and the hint for this—albeit, the grossness is softened down—is evidently taken from theM. M. C.

[17]Tothall’s career was a most curious one. He was the son of an apothecary, was left an orphan, taken care of by an uncle. He ran away to sea; went to the West Indies, Newfoundland, and Honduras; was on one occasion captured by hostile Spaniards, and marched “up the country,” with no other clothing but a woollen cap and a brown waistcoat—a costume almost as primitive as that of an unhappy French governess taken prisoner by some followers of Schamyl, in a raid on the Russians, and driven before them to their mountain home, the poor lady having nothing on but a pair of blue satin corsets. Tothall had his picture painted in the brown waistcoat. Coming afterwards to England, he entered the service of a woollen draper, in Tavistock Court; who, after some time, told him he was a very honest fellow, and that as he the draper only sold cloth, Tothall might have half the shop to sell shalloons and trimmings. He lent him money to buy stock, and recommended him to his chapmen. By and bye, a relative of Tothall in the West Indies sent him a puncheon of rum as a present. The recipient was about to sell the alcohol for what it would fetch—perhaps to the landlord of the Bedford Head—when his master interposed. “I have no use for my cellar,” quoth this benevolent woollen draper. “Do you open the door to the street; tap your puncheon, and draw it off in twopennyworths.” Spirit licences were not yet known. Tothall followed the draper’s advice, speedily sold all his rum at a good profit; sent to the West Indies for more, and drove a merry trade in rum, shalloons, and trimmings, till it occurred to the woollen draper to inform him one morning that he intended to retire, that he might have all his stock at prime cost, and pay him as he could. Why are there no such woollen-drapers now-a-days? Between the shop and the cellar Tothall contrived to realize a very considerable fortune. All this time, this odd man had been assiduously collecting fossils, minerals, and shells, of which he had, at last, a handsome museum. He retired to Dover, and, true to his old adventurous habits, entered into large speculations, in what his biographer modestly calls the “smuggling branch of business.” But a “byeboat,” laden with horses, in which he was interested, having been lost between Flushing and Ostend, and some other speculations turning out disastrously, Tothall became in his later days somewhat straitened in his circumstances. Hogarth used frequently to visit him at a little village near Dover, whither he retired, and where he died four years after our painter. He left 1,500l.in cash, and his collection of shells, &c. sold for a handsome sum.

[18]Videthe statutes at largo for the “Black Act,” by which poaching in disguise was made a felony, punishment death; and the curious relation of the gentleman who fell among a gang of “Blacks,” and was courteously entreated by them, and regaled at a rich supper, at which the solids were composed exclusively of venison, on condition, only, of never revealing the place of these sooty poachers’ retreat.

[19]Figg fought much more with the sword than with his fists.

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