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 is forestalling matters to trot out an old man's hobby, when our beardless lad is not bound 'prentice yet. I cannot, however, defend him from the charges of writing "militia," "milicia," "Prussia," "Prusia"—why didn't he hazard "Prooshia" at once? —"knuckles," "nuckles"—oh, fie!—"Chalcedonians," "Calcidonians;" "pity," "pitty;" and "volumes," "volumns." It is somewhat strange that Hogarth himself tells us that his first graphic exercise was to "draw the alphabet with great correctness." I am afraid that he never succeeded in writing it very correctly. He hated the French too sincerely to care to learn their language; and it is not surprising that in the first shop card he engraved for his master there should be in the French translation of Mr. Gamble's style and titles a trifling pleonasm: "bijouxs," instead of "bijoux."

No date of the apprenticeship of Hogarth is anywhere given. We must fix it by internal evidence. He was out of his time in the South Sea Bubble year, 1720. On the 29th of April in the same year, he started in business for himself. The neatness and dexterity of the shop card he executed for his master forbid us to assume that he was aught but the most industrious of apprentices. The freedom of handling, the bold sweep of line, the honest incisive play of the graver manifested in this performance could have been attained by no Thomas Idle; and we must, therefore, in justice grant him his full seven years of 'prentice servitude. Say then that William Hogarth was bound apprentice to Mr. Ellis Gamble, at the Golden Angel, in Cranbourn Street, Leicester Fields, in the winter of the year of our Lord, Seventeen hundred and twelve. He began to engrave arms and cyphers on tankards, salvers, and spoons, at just about the time that it occurred to a sapient legislature to cause certain heraldic hieroglyphics surmounted by the Queen's crown, and encircled by the words "One halfpenny," to be engraven on a metal die, the which being the first newspaper stamp ever known to our grateful British nation, was forthwith impressed on every single half-sheet of printed matter issued as a newspaper or a periodical. "Have you seen the new red stamp?" writes his reverence Doctor