After a time, Runciman was again back at Penicuik. Perhaps his fervour about his subject had a little cooled, or the incessant discussions in regard to it had disturbed his faith. In fact the Ossian swindle was getting to be, in common phrase, a little blown upon. His health was failing him; his mode of life had never been very careful. He fell ill; he neglected himself. He worked on steadily, but with a palpable failure of heart in the business. He achieved his task. Yet the painting of the great ceiling, to effect which he had to lie on his back in an almost painful position, brought on an illness from which he never fairly recovered. Some time he lingered, growing very pale and wan, and his strength giving way until he could barely crawl about. On the 21st of October 1785, he fell down dead at the door of his lodgings in West Nicolson Street. Four years more of life to Widow Hogarth--still, as ever, true to her husband's memory and herself. Horace Walpole sought to buy forgiveness for his attack on the 'Sigismunda,'--he had called it a 'maudlin fallen virago'--by sending to the widow a copy of his 'Anecdotes;' but she took no heed of him or his gift. Four years more, and then another interment in the Chiswick sepulchre. The widow's earthly sorrows are at an end; and beneath the name of 'William Hogarth, Esq.,' they now engrave on the stone, 'Mistress Jane Hogarth, wife of William Hogarth, Esq. Obiit 13th of November 1789. AEtat. 80 years.' In 1856, on the restoration of the monument, which from the sinking of the earth threatened to fall in pieces, the grave was opened, and there were seen the 'little' coffin of the painter and the larger coffin of his widow. There too was seen, literally, 'the hand' Johnson wrote of in his projected epitaph:-- The hand of him here torpid lies, That drew the essential forms of grace; Here closed in death the attentive eyes, That saw the manners in the face. ALLAN RAMSAY, JUNIOR.