Gravelot, who kept a drawing-school in the Strand, nearly opposite Southampton Street, was another frequenter of Old Slaughter’s. Henri François Bourignon Gravelot was born in Paris in 1699, and died in that city in 1773. His drawings were always minutely finished, and his designs tasteful, particularly those which he etched himself for Sir John Hanmer’s small edition of Shakspere. He found an excellent engraver in poor Charles Grignon, Le Bas’ pupil, who in his old age was driven off the field, fell into poverty, and so remained till he died in 1810, aged 94. John Gwynn, the architect, who lived in Little Court, Castle Street, Leicester Fields, also frequented this house. He built the bridge at Shrewsbury, and wrote a work on London improvements, which his friend Dr. Johnson revised and prefaced. The doctor also wrote strongly in favour of Gwynn’s talent and integrity when he was unsuccessfully competing with Mylne for the erection of old Blackfriars Bridge. Hogarth, too, “used” Slaughter’s, and came there to rail at the “black old masters,” the follies of patrons, and the knavery of dealers. Here he would banter and brag, and sketch odd faces on his thumb-nail. Perhaps the “Midnight Conversation” was partly derived from convivial scenes in St. Martin’s Lane. Roubilliac, the eccentric French sculptor, was another habitué of the place. His house and studio were opposite on the east side of the lane, and were approached by a long passage and gateway. Here his friends must have listened to his rhapsodies in broken English about his great statues of Handel, Sir Isaac Newton, and that of Shakspere now at the British Museum, which cost Garrick, who left it to the nation, three hundred guineas.[457] That pompous and wretched portrait-painter, Hudson, Reynolds’s master and Richardson’s pupil, used also to frequent Slaughter’s. Hudson was the most ignorant of painters, yet he was for a time the fashion. He painted the portraits of the members of the Dilettanti Society, and was a great and ignorant collector of Rembrandt etchings. Hogarth used to call him, in his brusque way, “a fat-headed fellow.” Here Hogarth would meet his own engraver, M’Ardell, who lived in Henrietta Street. One of the finest English mezzotints in respect of brilliancy is Hogarth’s portrait of Captain Coram, the brave old originator of the Foundling Hospital, by M’Ardell. His engravings after Reynolds are superb. That painter himself said that they would immortalise him.[458] Here, also, came Luke Sullivan, another of Hogarth’s engravers, from the White Bear, Piccadilly. His etching of “The March to Finchley” is considered exquisite.[459] Sullivan was also an exquisite miniature-painter, particularly of female heads. He was a handsome, lively, reckless fellow, and died in miserable poverty.