2. Southwark Fair. The show-cloth, representing the Stage Mutiny, is copied from an etching by John Laguerre. The paint-pot and brushes, which Hogarth has added to the figure with a cudgel in his hand, has been said to allude to John Ellis the painter; is it not quite as probable that it alludes to Jack Laguerre?
3. Judith and Holofernes. Engraved by Vandergucht. Frontispiece to the Oratorio of Judith, by William Huggins, Esq.
4. Boys Peeping at Nature. Subscription-ticket to the Harlot's Progress. The receipt was afterwards erased, and the following receipt, very neatly engraved, supplied its place:
"Received ——, 1737, half a guinea, being the first payment for five large prints—one representing a Strolling Company of Actresses dressing themselves in a barn; and the other four—Morning, Noon, Evening, and Night; which I promise to deliver on Lady-day next, on receiving half a guinea more."
"N.B.—They will be twenty-five shillings after the subscription is over."
A modern copy of this receipt in aquatinta was published in 1781.
2. Another print on the same subject, with considerable variations, designed as a receipt for Moses brought to Pharaoh's Daughter, and St. Paul before Felix, for which he afterwards substituted the burlesque Paul.
In one of Hogarth's MSS., introductory to his intended description of his prints, I find the following notices of the pictures of the Harlot's and Rake's Progresses:
"Mr. Rouquet's account of my prints finishes with a description of the March to Finchley. The picture was disposed of by lottery (the only way a living painter has any chance of being paid for his time) for three hundred pounds; by the like means most of my former pictures were sold. Those of the Harlot's and Rake's Progress have, it seems, been since destroyed by fire,[122] with many other fine pictures, at the country house of the gentleman who bought them.[123] It is reported, and very remarkable if true, that a most magnificent clock-work organ, being left exposed to the conflagration, was heard in the midst of the flames to play several pleasing airs."
1733 and 1734.