While this statue was in progress, Mr Hogan conceived the subject and completed the model of his second great work--one in which the peculiar powers of his genius were more fully developed, and on the execution of which, from peculiar circumstances, he entered with the most excited enthusiasm. During the first year of his residence at Rome, Mr Hogan happening to be present at an evening meeting of artists of eminence, the conversation turned on the difficulty of producing any thing in sculpture perfectly original; and to Mr Hogan’s astonishment, the celebrated British sculptor Gibson stated as his opinion that it was impossible now to imagine an attitude or expression in the human figure which had not been already appropriated by the great sculptors of antiquity. This opinion, though coming from one to whom our countryman then looked up, appeared to him a strange and unsound one, and with the diffidence of an artist whose powers were as yet untried, he ventured to express his dissent from it; when Gibson, astonished at his presumption, somewhat pettishly replied, “Then let us see if _you_ are able to produce such an original work!” The challenge thus publicly offered could not be refused by one of Hogan’s temperament; and the young sculptor, stung with the taunt, lost no time in entering upon a work which was to test his abilities as an artist, and to rescue his character from the imputation of vanity and rashness. Under such feelings Mr Hogan toiled day and night at his work, till he submitted to the artists in whose presence the challenge had been offered, the result of his labours--his statue of the Drunken Faun--a work which the great Thorwaldsen pronounced a miracle of art, and which, if Hogan had never produced another, would have been alone sufficient to immortalize his name. It is to be regretted that this figure, which has all the beauty and truth of the antique sculpture, combined with the most perfect originality, and which Mr Hogan himself has recently expressed his conviction that it is beyond his power to excel, should never have been executed in marble; but a cast of it, presented by Lord de Tabley to the Royal Irish Institution (though intended by Mr Hogan for the Dublin Society), may still be seen in their deserted hall.