"To return to my narrative: the instant I became master of my own time, I determined to qualify myself for engraving on copper. In this I readily got employment; and frontispieces to books, such as prints to _Hudibras_, in twelves, etc., soon brought me into the way. But the tribe of booksellers remained as my father had left them when he died about five years before this time,[12] which was of an illness occasioned partly by the treatment he met with from this set of people, and partly by disappointment from great men's promises; so that I doubly felt this usage, which put me upon publishing on my own account. But here again I had to encounter a monopoly of printsellers equally mean and destructive to the ingenious; for the first plate I published, called the 'Taste of the Town,' in which the reigning follies were lashed, had no sooner begun to take a run, than I found copies of it in the print-shops, vending at half price, while the original prints were returned to me again; and I was thus obliged to sell the plate for whatever these pirates pleased to give me, as there was no place of sale but at their shops. "Owing to this and other circumstances, by engraving, until I was near thirty, I could do little more than maintain myself; but even then I was a punctual paymaster." The print here alluded to, I apprehend to be that now entitled the "Small Masquerade Ticket," or "Burlington Gate," published in 1724, in which the follies of the town are very severely satirized by the representation of multitudes, properly habited, crowding to the masquerade,[13] opera, pantomime of _Doctor Faustus_, etc., while the works of our greatest dramatic writers are trundled through the streets in a wheel-barrow, and cried as waste paper for shops. As a further illustration of the taste of the times, the artist has given a view of Burlington Gate, with a figure, I believe, intended to represent the then fashionable artist, William Kent, on the summit, brandishing his palette and pencils, and placed in a more elevated situation than either Michael Angelo or Raphael, who, seated beneath, become the two supporters to this favourite of Lord Burlington. To this popular artist, architect, and improver of gardens, Hogarth seems to have had an early dislike, founded in some degree on his being, as he really was, a most contemptible painter; and probably heightened by his ranking higher, with those who led the fashion of the day, than that very superior artist, Sir James Thornhill. Hogarth the year following published his COPY OF KENT'S ALTAR-PIECE,[14] [Illustration: KENT'S ALTAR-PIECE] which, combined with the inscription engraved beneath, is a very bitter satire on the painter; though it must be acknowledged that the original, which has been for many years in the vestry-room of St. Clement Danes, amply justifies the ridicule. This picture produced a small tract, with the following title:--