If I am asked what were the artist's inducements for making so many alterations, I can account for it in no other way than by supposing some friend suggested that the satire would be mistaken, and that there might be those who would suppose his arrows were aimed at religion, though every shaft is pointed at the preposterous masquerade habit in which it has been frequently disguised. Considering the time that must have been employed in beating out the old figures, the trouble of polishing the copper, etc., it seems rather extraordinary that he should not have wholly discarded his plate of the "First Thought," and taken another piece of copper for the second. It is probable that the alterations were made by degrees, and before the author was fully satisfied with his design, became much more numerous than he had at first intended.[91] TASTE IN HIGH LIFE IN THE YEAR 1742. [Illustration: TASTE IN HIGH LIFE.] The picture from which this print was copied, Hogarth painted by the order of Miss Edwards, a woman of large fortune, who, having been laughed at for some singularities in her manners, requested the artist to recriminate on her opponents, and paid him sixty guineas for his production. It is professedly intended to ridicule the reigning fashions of high life in the year 1742. To do this the painter has brought into one group an old beau and an old lady of the Chesterfield school, a fashionable young lady, a little black boy, and a full-dressed monkey. The old lady, with a most affected air, poises between her finger and thumb a small tea-cup, with the beauties of which she appears to be highly enamoured. The gentleman, gazing with vacant wonder at that and the companion saucer which he holds in his hand, joins in admiration of its astonishing beauties! "Each varied colour of the brightest hue, The green, the red, the yellow, and the blue, In every part their dazzled eyes behold, Here streak'd with silver--there enrich'd with gold." This gentleman is said to be intended for Lord Portmore, in the habit he first appeared at Court on his return from France. The cane dangling from his wrist, large muff, long queue, black stock, feathered _chapeau_, and shoes, give him the air of "An old and finish'd fop, All cork at heel, and feather all at top." The old lady's habit, formed of stiff brocade, gives her the appearance of a squat pyramid, with a grotesque head at the top of it. The young one is fondling a little black boy, who on his part is playing with a _petite_ pagoda. This miniature Othello has been said to be intended for the late Ignatius Sancho, whose talents and virtues were an honour to his colour. At the time the picture was painted he would have been rather older than the figure; but as he was then honoured by the partiality and protection of a noble family, the painter might possibly mean to delineate what his figure had been a few years before.