In his long warfare with the picture-dealers, who starved living art in England by the manufacture of "old masters," he employed ridicule and caricature with powerful effect. His masterly caricature of "Time smoking a Picture" was well seconded by humorous letters to the press, and by many a passing hit in his more elaborate writings. He maintained that a painting is never so good as at the moment it leaves the artist's hands, time having no possible effect upon it except to impair its beauty and diminish its truth. There was penned at this period a burlesque "Bill of Monsieur Varnish to Benjamin Bister," which is certainly Hogarthian, if it is not Hogarth's, and might well serve as a companion piece to the engraving. Among the items are these: _£ s. d._ To painting and canvas for a naked Mary Magdalen, in the undoubted style of Paul Veronese 2 2 0 To brimstone, for smoking ditto 0 2 0 Paid Mrs. W---- for a live model to sit for Diana bathing, by Tintoretto 0 16 0 Paid for the hire of a layman, to copy the robes of a Cardinal, for a Vandyck 0 5 0 Paid the female figure for sitting thirty minutes in a wet sheet, that I might give the dry manner of that master 0 10 6 The Tribute-money Rendered, with all the exactness of Quintin Metsius, the famed blacksmith of Antwerp 2 12 6 The Martyrdom of St. Winifred, with a view of Holywell Bath, by old Frank 1 11 6 To a large allegorical altarpiece, consisting of men and angels, horses and river gods; 'tis thought most happily hit off for a Rubens 5 5 0 Paid for admission into the House of Peers, to take a sketch of a great character, for a picture of Moses breaking the Tables of the Law, in the darkest manner of Rembrandt, not yet finished 0 2 6 The idea of a wet sheet imparting the effect of dryness was taken from a treatise on painting, which stated that "some of the ancient masters acquired a dry manner of painting from studying after wet drapery."