WILLIAM HOG ARTH. 
3a6.: 
of gentleniasilike manners and accomplishments, and much regretted 
hy those who knew him intimatelv. He was interred in the church- 
vard of St; Anne’s, Soho, by the side of his father. He published, in 
1768, Memoirs pour servir a I’Histoire de Corse, 12m(), of which 
there is an English translation; and A Description of, Corsica, with 
an account of its temporary union to the crown of Great Britain, 
&c. 8vo. 
William Hogarth. 
This truly great and original genius, is said by Dr. Burn to have 
been the descendant of a family originally from Kirby Thore, in 
Westmorland. His grandfather, a plain yeoman, possessed a small 
tenement in the vale of Bampton, a village about lifteen miles north 
ofKendal in that county, and had three sons, the eldest of whom assisted 
his father in farming, and succeeded to his little freehold. The 
second settled in Troutbecks, a village eight miKs north-west of Ken- 
dal, and was remarkable for bis talent at provincial poetry. The 
third, Richard, educated at St. Bees, and who had been a schoolmaster 
in the same county, went early to London, where he was employed 
as corrector of the press, and appears to have been a man of some 
learning ; a dictionary in Latin and English, which he composed 
for the use of schools, being still extant in manuscript. He married 
in London, and kept a school in Ship-court in the Old Bailey : the sub- 
ject of the present article, and his sisters Mary and Anne, are believed 
to have been the only product of the marriage. 
William Hogarth was born in 1697, or 1698, in the parish of St. 
Martin, Ludgate. The outset of his life, however, was unpromising. 
“ He was bound,” says Mr. Walpole, “ to a mean engraver of arms on 
plate.” Hogarth probably chose this occupation, as it required some 
skill in drawing, to which bis genius w'as particularly turned, and which 
he contrived assiduously to cultivate. His master, it since appears, was 
Mr. Ellis Gamble, asilversmith ofeminence, who resided in Cranbourn- 
street, Leicester fields. In this profession it is not unusal to bind appren- 
tices to the single branch of engraving arms and ciphers on every 
species of metal, and in that particular department of the business 
young Hogarth was placed ; but before his time expired, he felt 
the impulse of genius, and that directed him to painting.” 
During his apprenticeship, he set out one Sunday, with two or 
three companions, on an excursion to Highgate : the weather being 
hot, they went into a public-house, where they had not be-^n long, 
before a quarrel arose between some persons in the same room. One 
of the disputants struck the other on the head with a quart pot, and 
cut him very much. The blood running down the man’s face, toge- 
ther with the agony of the wound, which had distorted his features 
into a most hideous grin, presented Hogarth, who shewed himself 
thus early apprised of the mode nature intended he should pursue,” 
with too laughable a subject to be overlooked. He drew out his 
pencil, and produced on the spot one of the most ludicrous figures 
that ever was seen. What rendered this piece the more valuable was, 
that it exhibited an exact likeness of the man, with the portrait of his 
