Under another impression:
"Long has the stage productive been
Of offsprings it could brag on,
But never till this age was seen
A windmill and a dragon.
"O Congreve! lay thy pen aside,
Shakspeare, thy works disown,
Since monsters grim, and nought beside,
Can please this senseless town."
I have been the more particular in describing this plate, as it appears to have been the first which Hogarth published on his own account, and respecting which he pathetically says: "I had to encounter a monopoly of printsellers, equally mean and destructive to the ingenious; for the first plate I published, called 'The Taste of the Town,' in which the reigning follies were lashed, had no sooner begun to take a run, than I found copies of it in the print-shops vending at half price, while the original prints were returned to me again; and I was thus obliged to sell the plate for whatever these pirates pleased to give me, as there was no place of sale but their shops. Owing to this and other circumstances, by engraving, until I was near thirty, I could do little more than maintain myself; but even then I was a punctual paymaster."