It is very properly observed by Mr. _Walpole_, that "If ever an author wanted a commentary, that none of his beauties might be lost, it is _Hogarth_; not from being obscure (for he never was that but in two or three of his first prints, where transient national follies, as Lotteries, Free-masonry, and the _South Sea_, were his topics) but for the use of foreigners, and from a multiplicity of little incidents, not essential to, but always heightening the principal action. Such is the spider's web extended over the poor's box in a parish church; the blunders in architecture in the nobleman's seat, seen through the window, in the first print of _Marriage à la Mode_; and a thousand in the Strollers dressing in a barn, which, for wit and imagination, without any other aid, is perhaps the best of all his works; as, for useful and deep satire, that on the Methodists is the most sublime. _Rouquet_, the enameller, published a _French_ explanation, though a superficial one, of many of his prints, which, it was said, he had drawn up for the use of Marshal _Belleisle_, then a prisoner in _England_." However great the deficiencies in this work may be, it was certainly suggested by _Hogarth_, and drawn up at his immediate request. I receive this information from undoubted authority. Some of the circumstances explanatory of the plates, he communicated; the rest he left to be supplied by _Rouquet_ his near neighbour, who lived in the house at which _Gardelle_ the enameller afterwards lodged, and murdered his landlady Mrs. _King. Rouquet_, who (as I learn from Mr. _Walpole_) was a _Swiss_ of _French_ extraction, had formerly published a small tract on the state of the Arts in _England_, and another, intituled "L'Art de peinture en fromage ou en ramequin, 1755;" 12mo. (V. "La _France_ litteraire, ou Dictionaire des Auteurs _François_ vivans, par _M. Formey_, 1757.") On the present occasion he was liberally paid by _Hogarth_, for having cloathed his sentiments and illustrations in a foreign dress. This pamphlet was designed, and continues to be employed, as a constant companion to all such sets of his prints as go abroad. Only the letter descriptive of the _March to Finchley_ was particularly meant for the instruction of Marshal _Belleisle_.[79] It was added after the three former epistles had been printed off, and before the plate was published. The entire performance, however, in my opinion, exhibits very strong marks of the vivacious compiler's taste, country, and prejudices. Indeed many passages must have been inserted without the privity of his employer, who had no skill in the _French_ language. That our _clergy_ always _affect to ride on white horses_, and other remarks of a similar turn, &c. &c. could never have fallen from the pen of _Hogarth_, or any other _Englishman_.