Now Swift wrote this in Ireland, at a distance from means of accuracy, and the “pleasant rogue’s” name was not likely to be found in a calendar of the nobility and gentry. If Bolingbroke or Pope had written to the dean about the rogue and his pleasantries, it is very probable that they might have spelt his name “Hogart,” “Hogard,” “Hoggert,” or “Hogarth.” You must remember that scores of the most distinguished characters of the eighteenth century were of my Lord Malmesbury’s opinion concerning orthography, that neither the great Duke of Marlborough, nay, nor his duchess, the terrible “old Sarah,” nay, nor Mrs. Masham, nay, nor Queen Anne herself, could spell, and that the young Pretender (in the Stuart papers) writes his father’s name thus: “Gems” for “James.” Again, Swift may have suppressed the “_th_” for mere rhythmical reasons; just as Pope, _aux abois_ between dactyls and spondees, barbarized a name which undeniably before had been pronounced “Saint John” into “Sinjin.” But, on the other hand, Jonathan Swift was not so dizzy when he wrote the _Legion Club_ to have lost one pin’s point of his marvellous memory; and he was too rich in rhymes to have resorted to the pusillanimous expedient of cutting off a letter. If ever a man lived who could have found an easy rhyme to “Hippopotamus,” it was the Dean of St. Patrick’s. I opine, therefore, that when Swift first heard of Hogarth--in the early days of George I.--he was really called “Hogart;” that such a name was carried by the dean with him to Dublin, and that the change to “Hogart” only took place when the great Drapier was dying “in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.” Richard Hogart--whatever he called himself in the scholastic Latinity that converted “Saumaise” into “Salmasius,” and a Dutch logician, “Smygel” into “Smeglesius,”--was educated at St. Bees’ College, in Westmoreland; was too poor, it is thought, after his college course to take orders, and kept school for a time in his native county. His classical accomplishments were considerable. In the manuscript department of the British Museum are preserved some Latin letters by him; and he wrote besides a Latin-English dictionary, and a school-book entitled _Grammar Disputatations_, which has not attained the fame or immortality of the works of Cocker and Walkingame. It is stated that Richard Hogart was occasionally employed as a corrector of the press; an office then frequently discharged by trustworthy scholars quite extraneous to the recognized staff of the printing-office.