from some foreign frontispiece. The engraving, however, as an example of pure line, is excellent. We are left to wonder whether it was by accident or by design of quaint conceit that the right hand of the angel has a finger too many.
Of Hogarth's adventures during his apprenticeship, with the single exception of his holiday excursion to Highgate, when there was a battle-*royal in a suburban public-house, and when he drew a capital portrait of one of the enraged combatants, the Muse is dumb. He led, very probably, the life of nineteen-twentieths of the London 'prentices of that period: only he must have worked harder and more zealously than the majority of his fellows. Concerning the next epoch of his life the Muse deigns to be far more explicit, and, I trust, will prove more eloquent on your worships' behalf. I have done with the mists and fogs that envelop the early part of my hero's career, and shall be able to trace it now year by year until his death.
Mabel.
I.
In the sunlight:—
Little Mab, the keeper's daughter, singing by the brooklet's side,
With her playmates singing carols of the gracious Easter-tide;
And the violet and the primrose make sweet incense for the quire,
In the springlight, when the rosebuds hide the thorns upon the briar.
II.
In the lamplight:—
With a proud defiant beauty, Mab, the fallen, flaunts along,
Speaking sin's words, wildly laughing, she who sang that Paschal song,
And a mother lies a-dying in the cottage far away,
And a father cries to Heaven, "Thou hast said, 'I will repay.'"
III.
In the moonlight:—
By the gravestone in the churchyard, Mabel, where her mother sleeps,
Like the tearful saint of Magdala, an Easter vigil keeps:—
There, trailing cruel thorns, storm-drenched, plaining with piteous bleat,
The lost lamb (so her mother prayed) and the Good Shepherd meet.
S. R. H.
