Swift. Grub Street is forthwith laid desolate. Down go Observators, Examiners, Medleys, Flying Posts, and other diurnals, and the under-*takers of the Spectator are compelled to raise the price of their entertaining miscellany.
One of the last head Assay Masters at Goldsmith Hall told one of Hogarth's biographers, when a very—very old man, that he himself had been 'prentice in Cranbourn Street, and that he remembered very well William serving his time to Mr. Gamble. The register of the boy's indenture should also surely be among the archives of that sumptuous structure behind the Post Office, where the worthy goldsmiths have such a sideboard of massy plate, and give such jovial banquets to ministers and city magnates. And, doubt it not, Ellis Gamble was a freeman, albeit, ultimately, a dweller at the West-end, and dined with his Company when the goldsmiths entertained the ministers and magnates of those days. Yes, gentles; ministers, magnates, kings, czars, and princes were their guests, and King Charles the Second did not disdain to get tipsy with Sir Robert Viner, Lord Mayor and Alderman, at Guildhall. The monarch's boon companion got so fond of him as to lend him, dit-on, enormous sums of money. More than that, he set up a brazen statue of the royal toper in the Stocks flower-market at the meeting of Lombard Street and the Poultry. Although it must be confessed that the effigy had originally been cast for John Sobieski trampling on the Turk. The Polish hero had a Carlovingian periwig given to him, and the prostrate and miscreant Moslem was "improved" into Oliver Cromwell. [Mem.:—A pair of correctional stocks having given their name to the flower-market; on the other hand, may not the market have given its name to the pretty, pale, red flowers, very dear to Cockneys, and called "stocks?"]
How was William's premium paid when he was bound 'prentice? Be it remembered that silver-plate engraving, albeit Mr. Walpole of Strawberry Hill calls it "mean," was a great and cunning art and mystery. These engravers claimed to descend in right line from the old ciseleurs and workers in niello of the middle ages. Benvenuto, as I have hinted, graved as well as modelled. Marc Antonio flourished many a cardinal's hat and tassels on a bicchiére before he began to cut from Rafaelle and Giulio Romano's pictures. The engraver of arms on plate was the same artist who executed delightful arabesques and damascenings on suits of armour of silver and Milan steel. They had cabalistic secrets, these workers of the precious, these producers of the beautiful. With the smiths, "back-*hammering" and "boss-beating" were secrets;—parcel-gilding an especial mystery; the bluish-black composition for niello a recipe only to be imparted to adepts. With the engravers, the "cross-hatch" and the "double cypher," as I cursorily mentioned at the end of the last chapter, were secrets. A certain kind of cross-hatching went out with Albert Durer, and had since been as undiscoverable as the art of making the real ruby tint in glass. No beggar's brat, no parish protégé, could be apprenticed to this delicate, artistic, and responsible calling. For in graving deep,
