Note 14 — HOGARTH ILLUSTRATED.

A short time before the publication of these prints, the greatest part of our nobility acted as if they had been bitten by a tarantula. The sums lavished upon exotic warblers would have supported an army; the applause bestowed upon some of them would have turned the brain of a saint. It was little short of adoration. Persons of inferior rank caught this jingling contagion, and all orders of the people were infected with a musical mania, totally foreign to our national taste, and highly dishonourable to our national character. In one of Hogarth's former prints is a list of the rich presents Signior Farinelli, the Italian singer, condescended to accept from the English nobility and gentry for one night's performance in the opera of Artaxerxes! comprising gold snuff-boxes, diamond rings, diamond buckles, etc. That such presents were actually made is ascertained by the newspapers of the day.