With this view, however, I find it, as I have said above, impossible to concur. If, as he suggests, the figures were beaten out one by one, their substitutes would occupy practically identical spaces on the plate; but a little measurement demonstrates the fact that, with the exception of the figure of the preacher, which has been left where it was, and of the mental thermometer, which has been raised, almost the whole of the design has been shifted downwards.

I am therefore inclined to think that from the first Hogarth, from one cause or another, made up his mind to change the direction of his satire, and at once beat out all the figures on the plate save one. That the arrangement of the new design should coincide generally with that of the first is, I think, no more than one would naturally expect, and does not in any way weaken the argument.

In conclusion, it should be pointed out, for the sake of those who would study the matter further, that the accounts of the impressions of the several plates in the Catalogue of Prints and Drawings {98} in the British Museum are not easily found, being somewhat arbitrarily placed at pages 301–307, vol. iii., part i., and pages 644–648, vol. ii., respectively.

So far we have seen Hogarth in his character of general iconoclast and antipapist. It is now our business to deal with him in what was a more personal polemic.

In the year 1731 Pope first published his notorious attack upon the Duke of Chandos in his satire Of Taste: An Epistle to the Right Hon. Richard, Earl of Burlington.

Hogarth forthwith entered the lists, and designed and published a well-deserved pictorial counterblast, allusively entitled “The Man of Taste,” or “Burlington Gate.” This was immediately “suppressed” on a prosecution being threatened because of what was deemed its scurrilous and defamatory character.

Not­with­stand­ing this prompt sup­pres­sion, however, the design reappeared the following year, reduced in size, as frontispiece to a pirated edition of Pope’s “Epistle,” which was included in a pamphlet entitled A Miscellany on Taste; by {99} Mr. Pope, etc., published by Lawton and others. Its contents were (1) Of Taste in Architecture, an Epistle to the Earl of Burlington, with Notes Variorum, and a complete Key; (2) Of Mr. Pope’s Taste in Divinity: viz., the Fall of Man, and the First Psalm, translated for the use of a Young Lady; (3) Of Mr. Pope’s Taste of Shakespeare; (4) His Satire on Mr. P——y; and (5) Mr. Congreve’s fine Epistle on Retirement and Taste, addressed to Lord Cobham. In this copy of the plate Pope, who is shown in the original by means of the back of his head and figure, and as wearing a full-bottomed wig, is more distinctly satirised, his face being displayed in profile, and his head enclosed by a linen cap instead of a wig. Amongst a few other minor alterations, it may be noticed that the palette held by Kent is transferred from one hand to the other.

Referring to the repub­li­ca­tion of Hogarth’s cartoon in this form, Mr. Dobson seems somewhat inclined to argue against the story of its “sup­pres­sion,” or, at any rate, its effectual sup­pres­sion; but he does not allude to the important fact that the publisher of this pamphlet {100} was also promptly prosecuted, and the sale strictly prohibited. From which it is clear that the sup­pres­sion was as unqualified and as prompt as could reasonably be expected.

Steevens indeed mentions a copy upon which the following inscription had been made:—