Page:The English humourists of the eighteenth century. A series of lectures, delivered in England, Scotland, and the United States of America (IA englishhumourist00thacrich).pdf/252

 story, or the humour of it, from one’s admiration for the prodigious merit of his performances, to remember that he persisted to the last in believing that the world was in a conspiracy against him with respect to his talents as an historical painter, and that a set of mis- ereants, as he called them, were employed to run his genius down. They say it was Liston’s firm belief, that he was a great and neglected tragic actor; they say that every one of us believes in his heart, or would like to have others believe, that he is something which he is not. One of the most notorious of the “mis- creants,” Hogarth says, was Wilkes, who assailed him in the “North Briton;” the other was Churchill, who put the “North Briton” attack into heroic verse, and published his “Epistle to Hogarth.” Hogarth replied by that caricature of Wilkes, in which the patriot still figures before us, with his Satanic grin and squint, and by a caricature of Churchill, in which he is represented as a bear with a staff, on which, lie the first, lie the second, lie the tenth, is engraved in unmis- takeable letters. There is very little mistake about honest Hogarth’s satire: if he has to paint a man with his throat cut, he draws him with his head almost off; and he tried to do the same for his enemies in this little controversy. “Having an old plate by me,” says he, “with some parts ready, such as the background, and a dog, I began to consider how I could turn so much work laid aside to some account, and so patched