These Dutch-English pictures William Hogarth, we may be sure, often inspected as they successively courted public notice in the shops of London, as we see in his early works a character evidently derived from them. During the bubble period of 1720, he was an ambitious young engraver and sign-painter (at least willing to paint signs if a job offered),[19] much given to penciling likenesses and strange attitudes upon his thumb-nail, to be transferred, on reaching home, to paper, and stored away for future use. He was one of those quick draughtsmen who will sketch you upon the spot a rough caricature of any odd person, group, or event that may have excited the mirth of the company; a young fellow somewhat undersized, with an alert, vigorous frame, a bright, speaking eye, a too quick tongue and temper, self-confident, but honest, sturdy, and downright in all his words and ways. "But I was a good paymaster even _then_" he once said, with just pride, after speaking of the days when he sometimes walked London streets without a shilling in his pocket. [Footnote 19: "Catalogue of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum," Division I., vol. ii., p. 566.] _Hogherd_ was the original name of the family, which was first humanized into Hogert and Hogart, and then softened into its present form. In Westmoreland, where Hogarth's grandfather cultivated a farm--small, but his own--the first syllable of the name was pronounced like that of the domestic animals which his remote ancestors may have herded. There was a vein of talent in the family, an uncle of Hogarth's having been the song-writer and satirist of his village, and his own father emerging from remote and most rustic Westmoreland to settle in London as a poor school-master and laborious, ill-requited compiler of school-books and proof-reader. A Latin dictionary of his making existed in manuscript after the death of the artist, and a Latin letter written by him is one of the curiosities in the British Museum. But he remained always a poor man, and could apprentice his boy only to an engraver of the lowest grade known to the art. But this sufficed for a lad who could scarcely touch paper with a pencil without betraying his gift, who drew capital burlesques upon his nail when he was fifteen, and entertained Addison's coffee-house with a caricature of its landlord when he was twenty-two. [Illustration: The Sleeping Congregation. (Hogarth.)]