"_Brittains_ attend--view this harmonious stage, And listen to those notes which charm the age. How sweet the sound where cats and bears With brutish noise offend our ears! Just so the foreign singers move Rather contempt than gain our love. Were such discourag'd, we should find Musick at home to charm the mind! Our home-spun authors must forsake the field, And _Shakespear_ to the _Italian Eunuchs_ yield."[2] Perhaps the original print was the work of _Gravelot, Vandergucht,_ or some person unknown.[3] The idea of it is borrowed from a _French_ book, called _Les Chats_, printed at _Amsterdam_ in 1728. In this work, facing p. 117, is represented an opera performed by cats, superbly habited. The design is by _Coypel_; the engraving by _T. Otten_. At the end of the treatise, the opera itself is published. It is improbable that _Hogarth_ should have met with this _jeu d'esprit_; and, if he did, he could not have read the explanation to it. [1] The following paragraph appeared in the _Grub-street Journal_ for _April_ 10, 1735; and to this perhaps _Hogarth_ alluded in the list of donations already mentioned: "His Royal Highness the Prince hath been pleased to make a present of a fine wrought gold snuff-box, richly set with brilliants and rubies, in which was inclosed a pair of brilliant diamond knee buckles, as also a purse of 100 guineas, to the famous Signor _Farinelli_, &c." [2] These two last lines make part of _Addison's_ Prologue to _Phædra_ and _Hippolytus_, reading only "the soft _Scarlatti_," instead of _Italian Eunuchs_. [3] At the back of an old impression of it, in the collection of the late Mr. _Rogers_, I meet with the name of _Echerlan_, but am unacquainted with any such designer or engraver.----I have since been told he came over to _England_ to dispose of a number of foreign prints, and was himself no mean caricaturist. Having drawn an aggravated likeness of an _English_ nobleman, whose figure was peculiarly unhappy, he was forced to fly in consequence of a resentment which threatened little short of assassination. * * * * * 1729. 1. King _Henry_ the Eighth, and _Anna Bullen_. "_Very indifferent._" This plate has very idly been imagined to contain the portraits of _Frederick_ Prince of _Wales_ and Miss _Vane_;[1] but the stature and faces, both of the lady and _Percy_, are totally unlike their supposed originals. Underneath are the following verses by _Allan Ramsay_: