[55] "Many causes may vitiate a writer's judgement of his own works. On that which has cost him much labour he sets a high value, because he is unwilling to think that he has been diligent in vain; what has been produced without toilsome efforts is considered with delight, as a proof of vigorous faculties and fertile invention; and the last work, whatever it be, has necessarily most of the grace of novelty. _Milton_, however it happened, had this prejudice, and had it to himself." Dr. JOHNSON. [56] _Sigismunda_, however, though she missed of judicious admirers, had, at least, the good fortune to meet with a flatterer in the late Mr. _Robert Lloyd_, whose poem intituled _Genius, Envy,_ and _Time,_ addressed to _William Hogarth_, esq. has the following lines. _Time_ is the speaker. "While _Sigismunda's_ deep distress Which looks the soul of wretchedness, When I, with slow and softening pen, Have gone o'er all the tints agen, Shall urge a bold and proper claim, To level half the ancient fame; While future ages, yet unknown, With critic air shall proudly own Thy _Hogarth_ first of every clime For humour keen, or strong sublime, &c." It is but justice, on one hand, to add, that when _Lloyd_ wrote this eulogium, he was not yet enlisted under the banners of fashion; but impartiality, on the other hand, requires we should observe that, having, like _Hogarth_, seen few pictures by the best masters, he was treating of an art he did not understand. The authors of the _Monthly Review_ are of opinion, that _Mr. Walpole_ speaks too contemptuously of _Sigismunda_, and that there is no ground for the insinuation that the person for whom it was painted thought meanly of it. "We have in our possession (say they) a letter to _Hogarth_ from the noble person referred to, in which he expresses himself in the following terms;--_I really think the performance so striking and inimitable, that the constantly having it before one's eyes, would be often occasioning melancholy ideas to arise in one's mind, which, a curtain being drawn before it, would not diminish in the least._" Surely this epistle, if genuine, was ironical. Or shall we suppose that, afterwards, his lordship only saw the picture through the disgusting medium of the price? Mr. _Wilkes's_ opinion of the piece will be best conveyed in his own words, which are therefore copied in p. 81.