Note 5 — HOGARTH ILLUSTRATED.
Reading edition
By the loose negligence of her habit, and some circumstances, I am inclined to think the artist intended to represent her as pregnant. It has been said that after Baron had finished the plate, Mr. Hogarth added a lock of hair with Indian ink, but after a few impressions were taken off, inserted this supplemental ornament with the graver. In his Analysis of Beauty, he makes a remark which in some degree accounts for the introduction of this fascinating attraction:—
"It was once the fashion to have two curls of equal size, stuck at the same height close upon the forehead, which probably took its rise from seeing the pretty effect of curls falling loosely over the face.
"A lock of hair falling thus across the temples, and by that means breaking the regularity of the oval, has an effect too alluring to be strictly decent, as is very well known to the loose and lowest classes of women; but being paired in so stiff a manner as they formerly were, they lost the desired effect, and ill deserved the name of ornaments."
Moralists of different nations have considered hair as calculated to entangle hearts, and one of our pious writers of the last century wrote a furious treatise on the unloveliness of love-locks.