Enlargements of the Henry Massy dial and of another by John Bushman show the character of engraving and the position of the maker's name (illustrated p. [163]).

In regard to the engraving put on the dials of these old clocks, it is not impossible that William Hogarth, when he was an apprentice at Master Ellis Gamble's shop, at the sign of the "Golden Angel" in Cranbourn Street, Leicester Fields, did some of this work. We know that Thomas Bewick engraved clock dials when an apprentice at Newcastle-upon-Tyne (see p. [215]).

The last form of the long-case dial is circular, an unusual type in vogue during the closing decades of the eighteenth century, belonging to the classic and French styles and in no way diverting the fashion of the main stream of case-makers.

Concerning the use of glass for the protection of the dial in the long-case clock, it was in use in coaches for the first time in 1667. According to Pepys' Diary we learn: "Another pretty thing was my Lady Ashly's speaking of the bad qualities of the glass coaches, among others the flying open of the doors upon any great shake; but another, my Lady Peterborough, being in her glass coach with the glass up, and seeing a lady pass by in a coach whom she would salute, the glass was so clear that she thought it had been open, and so ran her head through the glass."

At first the hood of the clock lifted off and the glass was fixed; later the glass was framed in a door, and subsequently the hood slid off, which fashion is found in all but the earliest examples.

The term "dial" is a survival of the word "sundial." Like all innovations, there may have been those who preferred the old character, or it may have been left to Charles Lamb, lover of past and faded memories, to ruminate on garden gods in the Temple: "What an antique air had the now almost effaced sundials, with their moral inscriptions, seeming coevals with that Time which they measured, and to take their revelations of its flight immediately from heaven, holding correspondence with the fountain of light.... The shepherd, 'carved it out quaintly in the sun,' and turning philosopher by the very occupation, provided it with mottoes more touching than tombstones." Elia, Shakespearean scholar that he was, could not have forgotten the melancholy Jaques with his:—

I met a fool i' the forest,

A motley fool; a miserable world!

As I do live by food, I met a fool;

Who laid him down and bask'd him in the sun,