WILLIAM HOGARTH. 38T 
antagonist, and the tigures in caricature of the principal persons 
gathered round him. 
liow long he continued in obscurity we cannot exactly learn ; but 
the first thing in which he distinguished himself as a painter, is sup- 
posed to have been a representation ofWanstead Assembly. The 
figures in it, we are told, are drawn from the life, and without any 
circumstances of burlesque. The faces are said to have been extremely 
like, and the colouring rather better than some of his later and more 
highly finished performances. From the date of the first plate that 
can be ascertained to be the work of Hogarth, it maybe presumed 
that he began business, on his own account, at least as early as 1720. 
His first employment seems to have been the engraving of arms 
and shop-bills. The next step was to design and furnish plates for 
booksellers, and here we are fortunately supplied with dates. Thir- 
teen folio prints, with his name to each, appeared in Aubry de la Mo- 
braye’s Golden Ass, in 1725; fifteen head pieces to Beaver’s Military 
Punishments of the Ancients; five frontispieces for the translation 
of Cassandra, in five volumes, 12mo. 1725 ; seventeen cuts for a duo- 
decimo edition of Hudibras, with Butler’s head, in 1726 ; two for 
Perseus and Andromeda, in 1730 ; two for Milton, the date uncer- 
tain ; and a variety of others, between 1726 and 1733. Mr. Bowles, at 
the Black Horse in Cornhill, vras one of his earliest patrons, but paid 
hirn very low prices. His next friend, in the same business, was Mr. 
Philip Overton, who rewarded him somewhat better for his labour and 
ingenuity. 
There are still many family pictures by Hogarth existing, in the 
style of serious conversation-pieces. What the prices of his portraits 
were, Mr. Nichols strove in vain to discover ; but he suspected that 
they were originally very low, as the persons who were best acquainted 
with them chose to be silent on the subject. At Rivenhall, in Essex, 
the seat of Mr. Western, is a family picture by Hogarth, of Mr. Wes- 
tern and his mother, chancellor Hoadley, archdeacon Charles Plumptre, 
the Rev. Mr. Cole of Milton near Cambridge, and Mr. Henry Tay- 
lor, curate there, 1736. In the gallery of Mr Cole, of Milton, was 
also a whole length picture of Mr. Western by Hogarth, a striking 
resemblance. He is drawn sitting in his fellow-commoner’s habit, 
and square cap with a gold tassel, in his chamber at Clare-hall, over 
the arch towards the river; and the artist, as the chimney could not 
be expressed, has drawn a cat sitting near it, agreeable to his hu- 
mour, to shew the situation. Mr. Western’s mother, whose portrait 
is in the conversation-piece at Rivenhall, was a daughter of Sir 
Anthony Shirley. 
It was Hogarth’s custom to sketch out on the spot any remarkable 
face which particularly st ruck him, and of which he wished to pre- 
serve the remembrance. A gentleman informed his biographer, that 
being once with him at the Bedford coffee-house, he observed him 
drawing something with a pencil on his nail. Inquiring what had 
been his employment, he was shewn a whimsical countenance of a 
person who was then at a small distance. 
It happened in the early part of Hogarth’s life, that a n- Idemao, 
who was uncommonly ugly and deformed, came to sit to him for. his 
