ds than
to sense; notwithstanding all these points in her favour, when the
Jewish heroine had made her theatrical _debut_, and so effectually smote
Holofernes,

----"As to sever
His head from his great trunk for ever and for ever."

the audience compelled her to make her exit. To set aside this partial
and unjust decree, Mr. Huggins appealed to the public, and printed his
oratorio. Though it was adorned with a frontispiece designed by Hogarth,
and engraved by Vandergucht, the world could not be compelled to read,
and the unhappy writer had no other resource than the consolatory
reflection, that his work was superlatively excellent, but unluckily
printed in a tasteless age; a comfortable and solacing self-consciousness,
which hath, I verily believe, prevented many a great genius from becoming
his own executioner.

To paint a sound is impossible; but as far as art can go towards it,
Hogarth has gone in this print. The tenor, treble, and bass of these
ear-piercing choristers are so decisively discriminated, that we all but
hear them.

The principal figure, whose head, hands, and feet are in equal
agitation, has very properly tied on his spectacles; it would have been
prudent to have tied on his periwig also, for by the energy of his
action he has shaken it from his head, and, absorbed in an eager
attention to true time, is totally unconscious of his loss.

A gentleman--pardon me, I meant a singer--in a bag wig, immediately
beneath his uplifted hand, I suspect to be of foreign growth. It has the
engaging air of an importation from Italy.

The little figure in the sinister corner, is, it seems, intended for a
Mr. Tothall, a woollen-draper, who lived in Tavistock-court, and was
Hogarth's intimate friend.

The name of the performer on his right hand,

----"Whose growling bass
Would drown the clarion of the braying ass,"

I cannot learn, nor do I think that this group were meant for particular
portraits, but a general representation of the violent distortions into
which these crotchet-mongers draw their features on such solemn
occasions.

Even the head of the bass-viol has air and character: by the band under
the chin, it gives some idea of a professor, or what is, I think, called
a Mus. D.

The words now singing, "The world shall bow to the Assyrian throne," are
extracted from Mr. Huggins' oratorio; the etching is in a most masterly
style, and was originally given as a