Rhode Island Republican

HOGARTH'S LAST PAINTING.

A FEW months before this ingenious artist
was seized with the malady which deprived
society of one of its most distinguished orna-
ments, he proposed for the subject of his last
pencil the work he had entitled "A Tail
Piece." The first idea of which is said to have
been started in company, while the convivial
glass was circulating round his own table.--
"My next undertaking" said Hogarth "shall
be the end of all things." "If that be the case,"
replied one of his friends, "your business will be
finished, for there will be an end of the painter."
"There will so!" answered Hogarth, sighing
heavily: and therefore the sooner my work is
done the better." Accordingly, he began the next
day, and continued his design with a diligence
that seemed to indicate an apprehension that he
should not live till he had completed it. This
however he did, in the most ingenious manner,
by grouping every thing which could denote
the end of all things.--A broken bottle, and an
old broom worn to the stump, the butt end
of an old musket, a cracked bell, a bow un-
strung, a crown tumbled in pieces, towers in ru-
ins, the sign post of a tavern, called the World's
End, crumbling, the moon in her wane, the map
of the globe burning, a gibbet sailing, the body
gone, and the chains which held it, dropping
down, Phoebus and horses dead in the clouds, a
vessel wrecked, Time with his hour glass and
scythe broken, and a tobacco pipe in his mouth,
the last whiff of smoke going out, a play book
opened, with Exeunt Omnes, trampled on the
corner, an empty purse, and a statute of bank-
ruptcy taken out against Nature.--"So far,
so good," cried Hogarth; "nothing remains
but this," taking his pencil, in a sort of pro-
phetic fury, and dashing off the similitude of a
painter's pallet broken. "Finis!" exclaimed
Hogarth: "The deed is done! all is over!"
--It is remarkable, and little known, perhaps,
that he died in about a month after finishing this
TAIL PIECE, having never again taken the pal-
let in his hand.