"His first employment" (i.e. after he set up for himself) "seems," says John Nichols, in his _Anecdotes_, "to have been the engraving of arms and shop bills." After this he was employed in designing "plates for booksellers." Of these early and mostly insignificant works we may pass over "The Lottery, an Emblematic Print on the South Sea Scheme," and some book illustrations, to pause at "Masquerades and Operas" (1724), the first plate he published on his own account. This is a clever little satire on contemporary follies, such as the masquerades of the Swiss adventurer Heidegger, the popular Italian opera-singers, Rich's pantomimes at Lincoln's Inn Fields, and last, but by no means least, the exaggerated popularity of Lord Burlington's protege, the architect painter William Kent, who is here represented on the summit of Burlington Gate, with Raphael and Michelangelo for supporters. This worthy, Hogarth had doubtless not learned to despise less in the school of his rival Sir James Thornhill. Indeed almost the next of Hogarth's important prints was aimed at Kent alone, being that memorable burlesque of the unfortunate altarpiece designed by the latter for St Clement Danes, which, in deference to the ridicule of the parishioners, Bishop Gibson took down in 1725. Hogarth's squib, which appeared subsequently, exhibits it as a very masterpiece of confusion and bad drawing. In 1726 he prepared twelve large engravings for Butler's _Hudibras_. These he himself valued highly, and they are the best of his book illustrations. But he was far too individual to be the patient interpreter of other men's thoughts, and it is not in this direction that his successes are to be sought. To 1727-1728 belongs one of those rare occurrences which have survived as contributions to his biography. He was engaged by Joshua Morris, a tapestry worker, to prepare a design for the "Element of Earth." Morris, however, having heard that he was "an engraver, and no painter," declined the work when completed, and Hogarth accordingly sued him for the money in the Westminster Court, where, on the 28th of May 1728, the case was decided in his (Hogarth's) favour. It may have been the aspersion thus early cast on his skill as a painter (coupled perhaps with the unsatisfactory state of print-selling, owing to the uncontrolled circulation of piratical copies) that induced him about this time to turn his attention to the production of "small conversation pieces" (i.e. groups in oil of full-length portraits from 12 to 15 in. high), many of which are still preserved in different collections. "This," he says, "having novelty, succeeded for a few years." Among his other efforts in oil between 1728 and 1732 were "The Wanstead Conversation," "The House of Commons examining Bambridge," an infamous warden of the Fleet, and several pictures of the chief actors in Gay's popular _Beggar's Opera_.