ok a Gravesend boat for
themselves; had straw to lie upon, and a tilt over their heads, they say,
and went down the river at night, sleeping and singing jolly choruses.

They arrived at Gravesend at six, when they washed their faces and hands,
and had their wigs powdered. Then they sallied forth for Rochester on
foot, and drank by the way three pots of ale. At one o'clock they went to
dinner with excellent port, and a quantity more beer, and afterwards
Hogarth and Scott played at hopscotch in the town hall. It would appear
that they slept most of them in one room, and the chronicler of the party
describes them all as waking at seven o'clock, and telling each other
their dreams. You have rough sketches by Hogarth of the incidents of this
holiday excursion. The sturdy little painter is seen sprawling over a
plank to a boat at Gravesend; the whole company are represented in one
design, in a fisherman's room, where they had all passed the night. One
gentleman in a nightcap is shaving himself; another is being shaved by the
fisherman; a third, with a handkerchief over his bald pate, is taking his
breakfast; and Hogarth is sketching the whole scene.

They describe at night how they returned to their quarters, drank to their
friends, as usual, emptied several cans of good flip, all singing merrily.

It is a jolly party of tradesmen engaged at high-jinks. These were the
manners and pleasures of Hogarth, of his time very likely, of men not very
refined, but honest and merry. It is a brave London citizen, with John
Bull habits, prejudices, and pleasures.(146)

Of SMOLLETT'S associates and manner of life the author of the admirable
_Humphry Clinker_ has given us an interesting account, in that most
amusing of novels.(147)

I have no doubt that the above picture is as faithful a one as any from
the pencil of his kindred humourist, Hogarth.

We have before us, and painted by his own hand, Tobias Smollett, the
manly, kindly, honest, and irascible; worn and battered, but still brave
and full of heart, after a long struggle against a hard fortune. His brain
had been busied with a hundred different schemes; he had been reviewer and
historian, critic, medical writer, poet, pamphleteer. He had fought
endless literary battles; and braved and wielded for years the cudgels of
controversy. It was a hard and savage fight in those days, and a niggard
pay. He was oppressed by illness, age, narrow fortune; but his spirit was
still resolute,