Leaving Ellis Gamble's shop—his engraved shop-card is treasured by collectors—he soon came to engrave arms and bills for shopkeepers and plates for booksellers. His illustrations to "Hudibras" first made him generally known. After that success was assured.
A queer London this London of Hogarth, bounded on one side by the country seats of city men at Islington, at Hackney, at Stepney, and at Bow, and studded with villas of the fashionable world at "Marybone" and at "Chelsey." When duels were fought "in the fields behind the British Museum," and when the nearest windmill was at the bottom of Rathbone Place. When heads of malefactors grew shrivelled and sooty on the spikes at Temple Bar, when Westminster was another city, when the Thames swarmed with watermen to ferry passengers across the river, and when Fleet Street had more chairmen than there are hansom cabs to-day. When Southwark had its Fair, and when lotteries were in full swing. To take a walk down Fleet Street in those days with Dr. Johnson was to be in touch with all the forces of English life. For even much more than Paris used to spell France, so London in eighteenth-century days governed all else.
One need not be a Crœsus to collect Hogarth and his engravers. In 1892 the celebrated collection of Dr. Joly, of Dublin, was sold by auction in London. There were no fewer than six thousand prints, comprising nearly all that was engraved by Hogarth or after him with every variation. These brought £500, the price of a single mezzotint. Of such are
