Note 5 — Chapter I

When I wrote the two former volumes of Hogarth Illustrated, I had not seen the MSS. which I now lay before the reader, nor did I know that there were any such papers. His own declaration corroborates the following conjecture relative to his early bias to the arts:—"Young Hogarth had an early predilection for the arts, and his future acquirements give us a right to suppose he must have studied the curious sculptures which adorned his father's spelling-books, though he neglected the letterpress; and when he ought to have been storing his memory with the eight parts of speech, was examining the allegorical apple-tree which decorates the grammar."—Hogarth Illustrated, vol. i. p. 27.