In his first efforts he had little more assistance than could be acquired by casual communications, or imitating the works of others;[4] those of Callot were probably his first models; and shop-bills and book-plates his first performances. Some of these, with impressions from tankards and tea-tables which escaped the crucible, have, by the laudable industry of collectors, been preserved to the present day. How far they add to the artist's fame, or are really of the value at which they are sometimes purchased, is a question of too high import for me to decide. By the connoisseur it is asserted, that the earliest productions of a great painter ought to be preserved, for they soar superior to the mature labours of plodding dulness, and though but seeds of that genius intended by nature to tower above its contemporaries, invariably exhibit _clear marks of mind_; as every variety in the branches of a strong-ribbed oak is, by the aid of a microscope, discoverable in the acorn.
By the opposite party it is urged, that collecting these _blotted leaves of fancy_, is burying a man of talents in the ruins of his _baby-house_; and that for the honour of his name, and _repose of his soul_, they ought to be consigned to the flames, rather than pasted in the _portfolio_.
I must candidly acknowledge, that for trifles by the hand of Hogarth or Mortimer, I have a kind of religious veneration; but, like the rebuses and riddles of Swift, they are still trifles, and except when considered as tracing the progress of the mind from infancy to manhood, are not entitled to much attention. If examined with this regard, especial care should be taken that their names are not dishonoured by the unmeaning and contemptible productions of inferior artists, some of whose prints have found a place in the catalogue of Hogarth's works. Mr. Nichols properly questions the plate of _Æneas in a Storm_: he might safely put the same query to _Riche's Triumphal Entry into Covent Garden_, and a few other plates, which some of the collectors have _very positively_ asserted to be his. The _Jack in Office_ and _Pug the Painter_, I believe, belong to other collectors. That _the design for General Wolfe's monument_ should ever be supposed the work of Hogarth, has often astonished me. I do not see the most distant resemblance of his manner, in mind, conception, design, or execution.