Note 16 — William Hogarth: PAINTER, ENGRAVER, AND PHILOSOPHER. Essays on the Man, the Work, and the Time.

The Modern Midnight Conversation had a great vogue abroad, and is still, perhaps, one of the best known of Hogarth’s works. Copies, adaptations, paraphrases of it have been multiplied to a vast extent in Germany. There is a well-known French version, Société nocturne, nommée communément Cotterie de Débauche en Punch; and a collection of heads from the Conversation, catalogued as Têtes des onze membres, gravées par M. Riepenhausen. One ingenious artist even formed a gallery of small wax models of the principal figures. And finally, I have seen the French Cotterie enamelled on a porcelain at Leipsic, and on a golden snuffbox in the museum of the Hermitage at St. Petersburg. There is a humorous modern lithograph, representing a party of sapient-looking bibbers, assembled in solemn conclave over a hogshead of Rhine wine in a cellar; and the hint for this—albeit, the grossness is softened down—is evidently taken from the M. M. C.