To enter into the spirit of the last article, the reader must be informed that Hogarth never played at cards; and that while his wife and a party of friends were so employed, he occasionally took the quadrille fish, and cut upon them scales, fins, heads, etc., so as to give them some degree of character. Three of these little aquatic curiosities which remained in the possession of Mrs. Lewis, she presented to me, and I have ventured to insert them as
A Tail-piece.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The Dedication, of which I have prefixed a fac-simile, was written for that work.
[2] I am authorized to say that during her life Mrs. Hogarth never parted with any of his papers, except a loose leaf or some such trifle, which in one or two instances she gave to such as wished to possess a little specimen of Hogarth's handwriting.
[3] The printed sheets were occasionally corrected by his friend Townley, etc. The Editor will have great pleasure in showing the MSS. to any gentleman who will do him the honour of inspecting them.
[4] Rouquet's book was written in French, and describes the "Harlot's" and "Rake's Progress," "Marriage à la Mode," and "March to Finchley."
[5] When I wrote the [two former] [volumes] of Hogarth Illustrated, I had not seen the MSS. which I now lay before the reader, nor did I know that there were any such papers. His own declaration corroborates the following conjecture relative to his early bias to the arts:—"Young Hogarth had an early predilection for the arts, and his future acquirements give us a right to suppose he must have studied the curious sculptures which adorned his father's spelling-books, though he neglected the letterpress; and when he ought to have been storing his memory with the eight parts of speech, was examining the allegorical apple-tree which decorates the grammar."—Hogarth Illustrated, [vol. i. p. 27.]