The earliest work by this greatest English artist of his century, which has been preserved in the British Museum (1720), shows the bent of his genius as plainly as the first sketch by Boz betrays the quality of Dickens. It is called "Design for a Shop-bill," and was probably Hogarth's own shop-bill, his advertisement to the public that he was able and willing to paint signs. In those days, the school-master not having yet gone "abroad," signs were usually pictorial, and sometimes consisted of the popular representation of the saint having special charge of the business to be recommended. In Hogarth's shop-bill we see a tall man holding up a newly painted sign of St. Luke with his ox and book, at which a group of persons are looking, while Hogarth himself appears to be showing the sign to them as possible customers. Along the bottom of the sign is engraved W. HOGARTH, PAINTER. In the background is seen an artist painting at an easel and a boy grinding colors. He could not even in this first homely essay avoid giving his work something of a narrative character. He must exhibit a story with humorous details. So in his caricature of Daniel Button, drawn to ridicule the Tory frequenters of Button's coffee-house, he relates an incident as well as burlesques individuals. There stands Master Button in his professional apron, with powdered wig and frilled shirt; and opposite to him a tall, seedy, stooping scholar or poet is storming at the landlord with clinched fists, because he will not let him have a cup of coffee without the money. There is also the truly Hogarthian incident of a dog smelling suspiciously the poet's coat tail. Standing about the room are persons whom tradition reports to have been intended as portraits of Pope, Steele, Addison, Arbuthnot, and others of Button's famous customers. This drawing, executed with a brush, is also preserved in the British Museum. Daniel Button, as Dr. Johnson reports, had once been a servant in the family of the Countess of Warwick, and was placed in the coffee-house by Addison. A writer in the _Spectator_ alludes to this haunt of the Tories: "I was a Tory at Button's and a Whig at Child's."