There is no one whom we more readily or more completely identify with Leicester Square than Hogarth. He was born in the Old Bailey in 1697, close to old Leicester House, which, in Pennant’s days, was turned into a coach factory. His father was a schoolmaster, who is, perhaps, to be recognised in the following curious advertisement of the reign of Queen Anne; ‘At Hogarth’s Coffee House, in St. John’s Gate, the midway between Smithfield Bars and Clerkenwell, there will meet daily some learned gentlemen who speak Latin readily, where any gentleman that is either skilled in the language, or desirous to perfect himself in speaking thereof, will be welcome. The Master of the House, in the absence of others, being always ready to entertain gentlemen in that language.’ It was in the above Queen’s reign that Hogarth went, bundle in hand, hope in his heart, and a good deal of sense and nonsense in his head, to Cranbourne Alley, Leicester Fields, where he was ’prentice bound to Ellis Gamble, the silver-plate engraver. There, among other and nobler works, Hogarth engraved the metal die for the first newspaper stamp (‘one halfpenny’) ever known in England. It was in Little Cranbourne Alley that Hogarth first set up for himself for a brief time, and left his sisters (it is supposed) to succeed him there as keepers of a ‘frock shop.’ Hogarth studied in the street, as Garrick did, and there was no lack of masks and faces in the little France and royal England of the Leicester Fields vicinity. Much as Sir James Thornhill disliked his daughter’s marriage with Hogarth, he helped the young couple to set up house on the east side of Leicester Fields. Thornhill did not, at first, account his son-in-law a painter. ‘They say he can’t paint,’ said Mrs. Hogarth once. ‘It’s a lie. Look at that!’ as she pointed to one of his great works. Another day, as Garrick was leaving the house in the Fields, Ben Ives, Hogarth’s servant, asked him to step into the parlour. Ben showed David a head of Diana, done in chalks. The player and Hogarth’s man knew the model. ‘There, Mr. Garrick!’ exclaimed Ives, ‘there’s a head! and yet they say my master can’t paint a portrait.’ Garrick thought Hogarth had not succeeded in painting the player’s, whereupon the limner dashed a brush across the face and turned it against the wall. It never left Leicester Square till widow Hogarth gave it to widow Garrick.