design on canvas of the _Element of Earth_, to be afterwards worked in tapestry. The painter squared his canvas and set to work; but when the design was completed Morris flatly refused to pay the thirty pounds agreed upon as remuneration. It seems that the timorous tradesman, who must clearly have possessed a large admixture of the “element of earth” in his composition, had been informed by some good-natured friend of Hogarth that the tapestry-designer was no painter, but a “low engraver.” Horror! To think of a mean wretch who had earned his livelihood by flourishing initials on flagons and cutting plates in _taille douce_ for the booksellers, presuming to compete with the flourishing foreigners employed by the eminent and ineffable Morris! ’Twas as though some destitute index-maker of the Hop Gardens, some starved ballad-monger of Lewkner’s Lane, had seduced Mr. Jacob Tonson into giving him an order for a translation of the _Æneid_ into heroic verse. Amazed and terrified, the deceived Joshua Morris rushed to Hogarth’s painting-room and accused him of misrepresentation, fraud, covin, and other crimes. How would ever my lord duke and her ladyship—perhaps Madam Schuylenburg-Kendal herself—tolerate tapestry in their apartments designed by a base churl, the quondam apprentice of a silversmith in Cranbourn Alley, the brother of two misguided young women who kept a slop-shop? Hogarth coolly stated that he should hold the upholsterer to his bargain. He admitted that the _Element of Earth_ was “a bold undertaking,” but expressed an opinion that he should “get through it well enough.” He brought the thing to a termination; and it was, I daresay, sufficiently of the earth earthy. Joshua resolutely withheld payment. No copper-scratcher should defraud him of thirty pounds. The young man, formerly of Little Cranbourn Alley, was not to be trifled with. If Morris had been a lord and had refused (as one of Hogarth’s sitters absolutely did) to pay for his portrait, on the ground that it wasn’t like him, the artist might have taken a satirical revenge, and threatened to add tails to all the figures in the _Element of Earth_, and send the canvas to Mr. Hare, the wild-beast-man, as a showcloth. But the Pall Mall upholsterer was a tradesman, and Hogarth, all artist as he knew himself to be, was a tradesman, too. So he went to his lawyer’s, and sued Morris for the thirty pounds, “painter’s work done.” Bail was given and justified, and on the 28th of May, 1728, the great case of Hogarth against Morris came on _in communi banco_, before the chief justice in Eyre. The defendant pleaded _non assumpsit_. Issue was joined, and the gentlemen of the long-robe went to work. For the defendant, the alleged fraudulent substitution of an engraver for a painter was urged. The eminence of Morris’s tapestry and upholstery was adduced. It was sworn to that he employed “some of the finest hands in Europe.” Bernard Dorridor, De Friend, Phillips, Danten, and Pajou, “some