notable show of the period is the execution of a pirate, and his hanging in chains at Execution dock. All which notwithstanding, it is a consolation to learn that "Captain Hunt, of the Delight," is tried at Justice Hall for piracy, and "honourably acquitted." I know not why, but I rejoice at the captain's escape. He seems a bold, dashing spirit; and, when captured, was "drinking orvietan with a horse-officer." But when I come to reperuse the evidence adduced on the trial, I confess that the weight of testimony bears strongly against Captain Hunt, and that in reality it would seem that he did scuttle the "Protestant Betsey," cause the boatswain and "one Skeggs, a chaplain, transporting himself to the plantations"—at the request of a judge and jury, I wonder?—to walk the plank, and did also carbonado the captain with lighted matches and Burgundy pitch, prior to blowing his (the captain's) brains out. Hunt goes free, but pirates are cast, and sometimes swing. Hogarth notes, comments on; remembers them. The gibbeted corsairs by the river's side shall find a place in the third chapter of the history of Thomas Idle.
So wags the world in 1720. Hogarth practising on copper in the intervals of arms and crest engraving, and hearing of Thornhill and Laguerre's staircase-and-ceiling-painting renown, inwardly longing to be a Painter. Sir George Thorold is lord mayor. Comet Halley is astronomer royal, vice Flamsteed, deceased the preceding year. Clement XI. is dying, and the Jews of Ferrara deny that they have sacrificed a child at Easter, à la Hugh of Lincoln. The great King Louis is dead, and a child reigns in his stead. The Regent and the Abbé Dubois are making history one long scandal in Paris. Bernard Lens is miniature painter to the king, in lieu of Benjamin Acland, dead. Mr. Colley Cibber's works are printed on royal paper. Sheffield, Duke of Bucks, erects a plain tablet to the memory of John Dryden in Westminster Abbey: his own name in very large letters, Dryden's in more moderately-sized capitals. Madam Crisp sets a lieutenant to kill a black man, who has stolen her lapdog. Captain Dawson bullies half the world, and half the world bullies Captain Dawson: and bullies or is so bullied still to this day.
In disjointed language, but with a very earnest purpose, I have endeavoured to trace our painter's Prelude,—the growth of his artistic mind, the ripening of his perceptive faculties under the influence of the life he saw. Now, for the operation of observation, distilled in the retort of his quaint humour. I record the work he did; and first, in 1720, mention "four drawings in Indian ink" of the characters at Button's coffee-house.[*]
- Daniel Button's well-known coffee-house was on the south side of Russell Street,
Covent Garden, nearly opposite Tom's. Button had been a servant of the Countess of Warwick, and so was patronized by her spouse, the Right Hon. Joseph Addison. Sir Robert Walpole's creature, Giles Earl, a trading justice of the peace (compare Fielding and "300l. a year of the dirtiest money in the world") used to examine criminals, for the amusement of the company, in the public room at Button's. Here, too, was a lion's head letter-box, into which communications for the Guardian were dropped. At Button's, Pope is reported to have said of Patrick, the lexicographer, who made pretensions to criticism, that "a dictionary-maker might know the meaning of one word, but not of two put together."
