and brave look with which William Hogarth regarded the world. No man was ever less of a hero; you
was from a set of miscreants, with whom I am proud of having been ever at war, I mean the expounders of the mysteries of old pictures, I have been sometimes told they were beneath my notice. This is true of them individually, but as they have access to people of rank, who seem as happy in being cheated as these merchants are in cheating them, they have a power of doing much mischief to a modern artist. However mean the vendor of poisons the mineral is destructive:—to me its operation was troublesome enough. Ill nature spread so fast that now was the time for every little dog in the profession to bark!"
Next comes a characteristic account of his controversy with Wilkes and Churchill.
"The stagnation rendered it necessary that I should do some timed thing, to recover my lost time, and stop a gap in my income. This drew forth my print of 'The Times,' a subject which tended to the restoration of peace and unanimity, and put the opposers of these humane objects in a light which gave great offence to those who were trying to foment disaffection in the minds of the populace. One of the most notorious of them, till now my friend and flatterer, attacked me in a 'North Briton,' in so infamous and malign a style, that he himself, when pushed even by his best friends, was driven to so poor an excuse as to say he was drunk when he wrote it. . . .
"This renowned patriot's portrait, drawn like as I could as to features, and marked with some indications of his mind, fully answered my purpose. The ridiculous was apparent to every eye! A Brutus! A saviour of his country with such an aspect—was so arrant a farce, that though it gave rise to much laughter in the lookers-on, galled both him and his adherents to the bone. . . .
"Churchill, Wilkes's toad-echo, put the 'North Briton' into verse, in an Epistle to Hogarth; but as the abuse was precisely the same, except a little poetical heightening, which goes for nothing, it made no impression. . . . However, having an old plate by me, with some parts ready, such as the back-ground and a dog, I began to consider how I could turn so much work laid aside to some account, and so patched up a print of Master Churchill in the character of a Bear. The pleasure and pecuniary advantage which I derived from these two engravings, together with occasionally riding on horseback, restored me to as much health as can be expected at my time of life."
