He started the collection by presenting this portrait of Captain Coram in 1740, and he wrote, some years later, that it is “the best portrait in the place, notwithstanding the first painters in the kingdom exerted all their talents to vie with it.” But “the first painters” were not a very mighty lot; they were Allan Ramsay, Cotes, Hudson, Shackleton, Wilson, Highmore, and a young man called Reynolds, who twenty years after Hogarth had given his “Captain Coram” presented his “Lord Dartmouth.” It is a pretty piece of delicate work, but Reynolds was not then in his prime, and I have a shrewd suspicion that when, in 1787, he produced his magnificent “Lord Heathfield,” great Sir Joshua had cast many a glance at Hogarth’s “Captain Coram,” painted forty-seven years before. This is a problem for the elder foundlings. The mites are content with “For Ever and Ever, Amen.” I watched them, after the long service in the chapel, silently and somewhat timorously enjoying their cold mutton and hot potatoes. Sullen rows and rows of them, all stamped by that sad something that characterises the homeless waif, something of degradation and the menace of the fight to come all uphill. But as I mused sadly on this spectacle my eyes caught sight of a tablet on the wall, a list of many names of foundlings who had died for their country in the Boer War. Well, the tears do start still sometimes. Think of that leap! Here a foundling by chance, later a hero by choice, one of that great brotherhood, equal in death, equally adored, of the privileged and the brave. “_Dulce et decorum est_----” I am sure that Hogarth, of whom Dr Trusler wrote, “Extreme partiality for his native country was the leading trait of his character,” would approve that tablet, and so would Captain Coram. VIII THE “VILLAKIN” AT CHISWICK, AND THE END The “villakin” at Chiswick where, from 1749, Hogarth spent the summers, is not very accessible. The most romantic, if the slummiest route, is to walk from Hammersmith Bridge through riverside alleys and by sedate Thames terraces to Chiswick Mall. Then turn up through the village, virtually unspoilt, a lane of old London still treated with respect. At the beginning of the village the churchyard flanks the street, and if you look through the gates you will see Hogarth’s conspicuous, important, and ugly tomb. If you obtain admittance to the churchyard you will find carved upon the tomb a mask, a laurel wreath, maul-stick, palette, pencils, the title of his unfortunate book, “The Analysis of Beauty,” and his epitaph, written by Garrick:-- “Farewell, great painter of Mankind! Who reach’d the noblest point of Art, Whose _pictur’d Morals_ charm the Mind, And through the Eye correct the Heart. If Genius fire thee, Reader, stay: If _Nature_ touch thee, drop a Tear; If neither move thee, turn away, For Hogarth’s honour’d dust lies here.”