1723.
1. Fifteen plates to Aubry de la Motraye's "Travels through Europe, Asia, and Part of Africa." W. Hogarth sculp. on fourteen of them; viz. plates V. IX. X.[1] XI. XV. XVII. b. XVIII. XXVI. XXX.[2] XXXII. XXXIII. 1. XXXIII. 2. XXXV. XXXVIII. One of these (viz. XXX.) contains a portrait of Charles the XIIth of Sweden. Several of the pictures, from which the Seraglio, &c. were engraved, are still in being, and are undoubtedly authentic, being painted in Turkey, and brought home by De la Motraye, at his return from his travels. They were sold about twenty-five years ago at Hackney, for a mere trifle, together with the plates to the present work. The latter, in all probability, are destroyed. This book was originally published in English at London, 1723; afterwards in French at The Hague, in 1727; and again in English[3] at London, revised by the author; with the addition of two new cuts, in 1730. In the French edition, Plate V. Tom. I. is engraved by R. Smith, instead of Hogarth, so that this intermediate copy contains only fourteen plates by him. It is probable also, that some other anonymous ones, in all the editions, were by the same engraver. His reputation, indeed, will save more than it loses by the want of his signature to establish their authenticity.
[1] At the bottom of this plate, in one copy of the English edition, the name of Hogarth, though erased, is sufficiently legible.
[2] In some of the English copies of this work, instead of Plate XXX. by Hogarth, we only find a very small and imperfect copy of it by another hand.
[3] This, strictly speaking, was not a re-publication; it is the identical edition of 1723, with the addition of a Preface and an Appendix. New title-pages were again printed to it, and a third volume added, in 1732.
2. Five Muscovites. This small print appears at the corner of one of the maps to the second volume of the foregoing work. It has no intelligible reference; but, in the English copy now before me, is the last plate but one, and is marked. C—T. II. In a former edition of the present catalogue, it was enumerated as a separate article, but must now be reckoned as one of the fifteen plates to Motraye's Travels.
To these I might add three plates more. If Hogarth engraved the Muscovites at the corner of the map already mentioned, he likewise furnished the figures in the corner of another, marked T. I.—B. And Plate T. I.—XVI. and T. I.—XXXVII. I have likewise reason to suppose were the works of our artist; eighteen plates in all; though the three latter being only conjectural, I have not ventured to set them down as indisputed performances. Of the Muscovites there is a modern copy.[1]
I have just been assured by a gentleman of undoubted veracity, that he was once possessed of a set of plates engraved by Hogarth for some treatise on mathematicks; but, considering them of little value, disposed of them at the price of the copper. As our artist could have displayed no marks of genius in representations of cycloids, diagrams, and equilateral triangles, the loss of these plates is not heavily to be lamented.
[1] Mr. Walpole enumerates only 12 plates.