e of no
distinguished merit. About 1728 he began to seek employment as a
portrait-painter. Most of his performances were small family pictures,
containing several figures, which he calls "Conversation Pieces," from
twelve to fifteen inches high. These for a time were very popular, and
his practice was considerable, as his price was low. His life-size
portraits are few; the most remarkable are that of Captain Coram, in
the "Foundling Hospital," and that of Garrick as King Richard III.,
which is reproduced in the present volume. But his practice as a
portrait-painter was not lucrative, nor his popularity lasting.
Although many of his likenesses were strong and characteristic, in the
representation of beauty, elegance, and high-breeding he was little
skilled. The nature of the artist was as uncourtly as his pencil. When
Hogarth obtained employment and eminence of another sort through his
wonderful prints, he abandoned portrait-painting, with a growl at the
jealousy of his professional brethren; and the vanity and blindness of
the public.

March 25, 1729, Hogarth contracted a stolen marriage with the only
daughter of the once fashionable painter, Sir James Thornhill. The
father, for some time implacable, relented at last; and the
reconciliation, it is said, was much forwarded by his admiration of
the "Harlot's Progress," a series of six prints, commenced in 1731 and
published in 1734. The novelty as well as merit of this series of
prints won for them extraordinary popularity; and their success
encouraged Hogarth to undertake a similar history of the "Rake's
Progress," in eight prints, which appeared in 1735. The third, and
perhaps the most popular, as it is the least objectionable of these
pictorial novels, "Marriage a la Mode," was not engraved till 1745.

[Illustration: Hogarth Sketching the Highway of Queenborough.]

The merits of these prints were sufficiently intelligible to the
public: their originality and boldness of design, the force and
freedom of their execution, rough as it is, won for them an
extensive popularity and a rapid and continued sale. The "Harlot's
Progress" was the most eminently successful, from its novelty rather
than from its superior excellence. Twelve hundred subscribers' names
were entered for it; it was dramatized in several forms; and we may
note, in illustration of the difference of past and present manners,
that fan-mounts were engraved containing miniature copies of the six
plates. The