Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.'
"Such being my feelings, my great object was to return the compliment, and turn it to some advantage.
"This renowned patriot's portrait drawn, like as I could as to features, and marked with some indications of his mind, fully answered my purpose. The ridiculous was apparent to every eye. A Brutus! a saviour of his country with such an aspect! was so arrant a farce, that, though it gave rise to much laughter in the lookers-on, galled both him and his adherents to the bone. This was proved by the papers being every day crammed with invectives against the artist, till the town grew absolutely sick of thus seeing me always at full length.
"Churchill, Wilkes' toad-eater, put the North Briton into verse in an epistle to Hogarth; but as the abuse was precisely the same, except a little poetical heightening, which goes for nothing, it made no impression, but perhaps in some measure effaced or weakened the black strokes of the North Briton. However, having an old plate by me, with some parts ready, such as the background and a dog, I began to consider how I could turn so much work laid aside to some account; so patched up a print of Master Churchill in the character of a Bear. The pleasure and pecuniary advantage which I derived from these two engravings, together with occasionally riding on horseback, restored me to as much health as can be expected at my time of life.
"Thus have I gone through the principal circumstances of a life which, till lately, passed pretty much to my own satisfaction, and, I hope, in no respect injurious to any other man. This I can safely assert, I have invariably endeavoured to make those about me tolerably happy, and my greatest enemy cannot say I ever did an intentional injury; though, without ostentation, I could produce many instances of men that have been essentially benefited by me. What may follow, God knows.—Finis."
Such is the candid and dispassionate appeal which this unequalled artist and excellent man makes to his contemporaries and to posterity.
In October 1764, he died of an aneurism at his house in Leicester Fields. His remains were removed to his family vault at Chiswick. The epitaph by Dr. Johnson, and that written by Mr. Garrick and inscribed on his monument, are in the [first volume] of Hogarth Illustrated.
In the Public Ledger of November 19, 1764, his friend Doctor Townley paid the following tribute to his talents and virtues:—