HUDIBRAS, PLATE XI.
HUDIBRAS, PLATE XII.
This well-imagined series of plates was designed by Hogarth, and engraved by himself, for the matchless poem of Butler. Each plate is illustrated by an appropriate quotation from the facetious satirist; and as our ingenious artist formed his designs from an attentive perusal of the poem, his engravings, and the extracts selected under each of them, reciprocally explain each other. "His 'Hudibras,'" says Mr. Walpole, "was the first of his works that marked him as a man above the common; yet," adds the critic, somewhat too fastidiously, "what made him then noticed now surprises us, to find so little humour in an undertaking so congenial to his talents."
The original title ran thus: "Twelve excellent and most diverting Prints, taken from the celebrated Poem of Hudibras, wrote by Samuel Butler; exposing the villany and hypocrisy of the times. Invented and engraved on twelve copperplates by William Hogarth; and are humbly dedicated to William Ware, Esq., of Great Houghton, in Northamptonshire, and Mr. Allan Ramsay, of Edinburgh."
"What excellence can brass or marble claim?
These papers better do secure thy fame;
Thy verse all monuments does far surpass,
No mausoleum's like thy 'Hudibras.'"