The ingenious Abbé _Du Bos_ has often complained, that no history-painter of his time went through a series of actions, and thus, like an historian, painted the successive fortune of an hero, from the cradle to the grave. What _Du Bos_ wished to see done, _Hogarth_ performed. He launches out his young adventurer a simple girl upon the town, and conducts her through all the vicissitudes of wretchedness to a premature death. This was painting to the understanding and to the heart; none had ever before made the pencil subservient to the purposes of morality and instruction; a book like this is fitted to every soil and every observer, and he that runs may read. Nor was the success of _Hogarth_ confined to his persons. One of his excellencies consisted in what may be termed the furniture[30] of his pieces; for as in sublime and historical representations the fewer trivial circumstances are permitted to divide the spectator's attention from the principal figures, the greater is their force; so in scenes copied from familiar life, a proper variety of little domestic images contributes to throw a degree of verisimilitude on the whole. "The Rake's levee-room," says Mr. _Walpole_, "the nobleman's dining-room, the apartments of the husband and wife in Marriage Alamode, the Alderman's parlour, the bed-chamber, and many others, are the history of the manners of the age." It may also be observed, that _Hogarth_, both in the third and last plate of the _Harlot's Progress_, has appropriated a name to his heroine which belonged to a well-known wanton then upon the town. The _Grub-street Journal_ for _August_ 6, 1730, giving an account of several prostitutes who were taken up, informs us that "the fourth was _Kate Hackabout_ (whose brother was lately hanged at _Tyburn_), a woman noted in and about the hundreds of _Drury, &c_." In 1735 our artist lost his mother, as appears by the following extract from an old Magazine: "_June_ 11, 1735. Died Mrs. _Hogarth_, mother to the celebrated painter, of a fright from the fire which happened on the 9th, in _Cecil Court, St. Martin's Lane_, and burnt thirteen houses;[31] amongst others, one belonging to _John Huggins_, esq. late Warden of _The Fleet_, was greatly damaged." The "Rake's Progress" (published in the same year, and sold at _Hogarth's_ house, the _Golden Head_ in _Leicester Fields_), though "perhaps superior, had not," as Mr. _Walpole_ observes, "so much success, from want of novelty; nor is the print of the arrest equal in merit to the others.[32]