Note 71 — HOGARTH.

The pyramid, &c. This stroke of satire was retorted on Hogarth, and employed to express his advanced age and declining abilities; while the Cheshire cheese, with 3000 l. on it, seemed to imply that he himself merited an annual pension.

I received this explanation from an ingenious friend.—The late Mr. Rogers explained it thus: "Mr. Pitt is represented in it sitting at his ease [in the position of the great Sir Isaac Newton in Westminster-Abbey], with a mill-stone hanging over his head, on which is written 3000 l. in allusion to his saying, that Hanover was a mill-stone round the neck of England, on account of the expences attending it; and his afterwards adding himself to the public expences by accepting a pension of 3000 l. a year. He is firing a mortar-piece levelled at a Dove bearing an olive-branch (the symbol of peace) perched on the standard of England; and is supported by the City of London, denoted by the two Giants in Guildhall. Hogarth is flogging Wilkes and Churchill, and making them dance to the scrapings of a fidler; designed to represent a Nobleman [Earl Temple], who patronized them in 1763, and who, for his unmeaning face, has ever been described without a feature. See Trusler's Preface, p. vii."