Note 57 — HOGARTH ILLUSTRATED.
Reading edition
These prints were promised to the subscribers sooner than they could be completed; and in consequence of their being delayed, the following advertisement was inserted in the Public Advertiser of February 28, 1757:—
"Mr. Hogarth is obliged to inform the subscribers to his Election prints that the three last cannot be published till about Christmas next, which delay is entirely owing to the difficulties he has met with to procure able hands to engrave the plates: but that he neither may have any more apologies to make on such an account, nor trespass any further on the indulgence of the public by increasing a collection already sufficiently large, he intends to employ the rest of his time in portrait-painting; chiefly this notice seems more necessary, as several spurious and scandalous prints have lately been published in his name," etc.
This fretful appeal must have been written under the influence of momentary spleen, which might possibly originate in his coadjutor's disappointing, and by that means forcing him to violate his engagements with the public. There is no other apology for his indulging a thought of quitting that walk in which he indisputably led, for another in which he must not only follow, but be far behind some of his contemporaries.