"As (according to the standard of judgement, so righteously and laudably established by picture-dealers, picture-cleaners, picture-frame-makers, and other connoisseurs) the works of a painter are to be esteemed more or less valuable as they are more or less scarce, and as the living painter is most of all affected by the inferences resulting from this and other considerations equally uncandid and edifying; Mr. _Hogarth_, by way of precaution, not puff, begs leave to urge, that, probably, this will be the last suit or series of pictures he may ever exhibit, because of the difficulty of vending such a number at once to any tolerable advantage, and that the whole number he has already exhibited of the historical or humourous kind does not exceed fifty, of which the three sets called _The Harlot's Progress, The Rake's Progress,_ and that now to be sold, make twenty; so that whoever has a taste of his own to rely on, not too squeamish for the production of a Modern, and courage enough to own it, by daring to give them a place in his collection (till Time, the supposed finisher, but real designer of paintings, has rendered them fit for those more sacred repositories where Schools, Names, Heads, Masters, &c. attain their last stage of preferment), may from hence be convinced that multiplicity at least of his (Mr. _Hogarth's_) pieces will be no diminution of their value." Mr. _Lane_, of _Hillingdon_ near _Uxbridge_, bought the six original pictures for 120 guineas, at _Hogarth's_ auction.[8] [1] _London Daily Post, April_ 7, 1743. "Mr. _Hogarth_ intends to publish by subscription Six Prints from copper plates, engraved by the best masters in _Paris_, after his own paintings (the heads, for the better preservation of the characters and expressions, to be done by the author), representing a variety of modern occurrences in high life, and called _Marriage a-la-mode_. "Particular care is taken that the whole work shall not be liable to exception on account of any _indecency_ or _inelegancy_, and that none of the characters represented shall be _personal_. The subscription will be one guinea; half, &c." [2] See p. 325. [3] In the third plate of this work, the figure of the female unclasping a penknife, is said to have been designed for the once celebrated _Betty Careless_. This remark is supposed to be countenanced by the initials E. C. on her bosom. From being in a state to receive company, this woman had been long reduced to show it, and, after repeated confinements in various prisons, was buried from the poor's house of St. _Paul, Covent Garden, April_ 22, 1752, about seven years after this set of prints had been published. Such a representation of her decline from beauty, as may be given in the plate before us, is justified by various passages in _Loveling's_ poems, _Latin_ and _English_, written about the year 1738, and published in 1741. Thus in his ode, "Ad _Sextum_," _Carlesis_ turpis macies decentem Occupat vultum----