There is no foundation for the story which asserts of George II. that he professed no love for poetry or painting. This king has been pilloried and pelted, so to speak, with the public contempt for having an independent, and not unjustifiable, opinion of the celebrated picture, the ‘March to Finchley.’ Hogarth had the impertinence to ask permission that he might dedicate the work to the King, and the latter observed, with some reason, that the fellow deserved to be picketed for his insolence. When this picture was presented as worthy of royal patronage, rebellion was afoot and active in the north (1745). The Guards were sent thither, and Hogarth’s work describes them setting out on their first stage to Finchley. The whole description or representation is a gross caricature of the brave men (though they may have sworn as terribly then as they did in Flanders) whose task was to save the kingdom from a great impending calamity. All that is noble is kept out of sight, all that is degrading to the subject, with some slight exceptions, is forced on the view and memory of the spectator. It has been urged by way of apology for this clever but censurable work, that it was not painted at the moment of great popular excitement, but subsequently. This is nothing to the purpose. What is to the purpose is, that Hogarth represented British soldiers as a drunken, skulking, thieving, cowardly horde of ruffians, who must be, to employ an oft-used phrase, more terrible to their friends than their enemies. The painter may have been as good a Whig as the King himself, but he manifested bad taste in asking George II. to show favour to such a subject; and he exhibited worse taste still in dedicating it to the king of Prussia, as a patron of the arts. Hogarth was not disloyal, perhaps, as Wilkes charged him with being, for issuing the print of this picture, but it is a work that, however far removed from the political element now, could not have afforded much gratification to the loyal when it was first exhibited. Hogarth died in Leicester Square in 1764, and was buried at Chiswick. There was an artist on the opposite side of the square who saw the funeral from his window, and who had higher views of art than Hogarth. Towards the close of Hogarth’s career Joshua Reynolds took possession of a house on the west side of Leicester Square. In the year in which George III. ascended the throne (1760) Reynolds set up his famous chair of state for his patrons in this historical square.