But so did not William Hogarth. He was self-confident and self-conscious enough,[2] when, after many years of toilsome struggling he turned up the trump-card, and his name was bruited about with loud _fanfares_ to the crowd. He attained the desired end: this Fame, this renown; and to vulgarize the allegory, he managed to snatch that comfortable shoulder of mutton which surmounts the greasy pole, and which, although we feign to covet it not, we _must_ have. But he never attempted to conceal the smallness of his beginnings, to assert that his ancestors came over with the Conqueror, or to deny that his father came up to London by the waggon. He sets down in his own black and white, how he fought the battle for bread, how he engraved plates, and painted portraits and conversations and assemblies, in order to obtain the necessary bite and sup; how, with no money, he has often “gone moping into the city,” but there receiving “ten guineas for a plate,” has come home, jubilant, “put on his sword,” and swaggered, I doubt it not, with the most dashing bucks in the coffee-house or on the Mall. I think they are happy traits in the character of this good fellow and honest man, that he should have had the courage to accomplish ten guineas’ worth of graver’s work, without drawing money on account, and that he should have had a sword at home for the red-letter days and sunshiny hours. You, brave young student and fellow-labourer! draw on your corduroys, shoulder your pick and shovel, be off to the diggings; do your work, get paid; and then come home, put on your sword and be a gentleman. One sees Mr. Beverly or Mr. Telbin slashing away with a large whitewasher’s brush in a scene-painting room, fagging away in canvas jackets and over-alls, covered with parti-coloured splashes. Then, the work done, they wash their hands and come forth spruce and radiant, in peg-tops and kid-gloves. When our Prime Minister is at Broadlands, I hear that he stands up writing at a high desk, not seated like a clerk, working away bravely at the affairs of the _chose publique_, as for a wage of five-and-twenty shillings a week, and afterwards enjoys the relaxation of pruning his trees, or riding over his estate. Keep then your swords at home, and don’t wear them in working hours; but, the labour done, come out into the open and claim your rank.