In
the latter respect he was beaten by all the blockheads of the school,
but in his adornments he stood alone. His father put him apprentice
to a silversmith, where he learnt to draw, and also to engrave spoons
and forks with crests and ciphers. From silver-chasing he went on to
teach himself engraving on copper, principally griffins and monsters
of heraldry, in the course of which practice he became ambitious to
delineate the varieties of human character. The singular excellence
which he reached in this art was mainly the result of careful
observation and study. He had the gift, which he sedulously
cultivated, of committing to memory the precise features of any
remarkable face, and afterward reproducing them on paper; but if any
singularly fantastic form or odd face came in his way, he would make
a sketch of it on the spot upon his thumbnail, and carry it home to
expand at his leisure. Everything fantastical and original had a
powerful attraction for him, and he wandered into many out-of-the-way
places for the purpose of meeting with character. By this careful
storing of his mind, he was afterward enabled to crowd an immense
amount of thought and treasure observation into his works. Hence it
is that Hogarth's pictures are so truthful a memorial of the
character, the manners, and even the very thoughts of the times in
which he live. True painting, he himself observed, can only be learnt
in one school, and that is kept by Nature. But he was not a highly
cultivated man, except in his own walk. His school education had been
of the slenderest kind, scarcely even perfecting him in the art of
spelling; his self-culture did the rest. For a long time he was in
very straitened circumstances, but nevertheless worked on with a
cheerful heart. Poor though he was, he contrived to live within his
small means, and he boasted with becoming pride, that he was "a
punctual paymaster." When he had conquered all his difficulties and
become a famous and thriving man, he loved to dwell upon his early
labors and privations, and to fight over again the battle which ended
so honorably to him as a man and so gloriously as an artist. "I
remember the time," said he on one occasion, "when I have gone
moping into the city with scarce a shilling, but as soon as I have
received ten guineas there for a plate, I have returned home, put on
my sword, and sallied out with all the confidence of a man who had
thousands in his pockets."

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