Note 3 — CATALOGUE OF HOGARTH'S PRINTS.[1] (continued 2)

Mr. Walpole's new edition of his "Anecdotes of Painting" having been published whilst the present page was preparing for the second edition, I took the earliest opportunity of letting that admirable writer speak for himself, in answer to a particular in which I had presumed to differ from him. "If Hogarth indulged his spirit of ridicule in personalities," (I now use the words of Mr. Walpole) "it never proceeded beyond sketches and drawings; his prints touched the folly, but spared the person. Early he drew a noted miser, one of the sheriffs, trying a mastiff that had robbed his kitchen, but the magistrate's son went to his house and cut the picture in pieces.[A] I have been reproved for this assertion," continues our agreeable Biographer, "and instances have been pointed out that contradict me. I am far from persevering in an error, and do allow that my position was too positive. Still some of the instances adduced were by no means caricaturas. Sir John Gonson and Dr. Misaubin in the Harlot's Progress were rather examples identified than satires. Others, as Mr. Pine's, were mere portraits, introduced by their own desire, or with their consent."

[A] See above, p. 69.