CHAP. VIL] HOGARTH AND REYNOLDS.

Goldsmith and tlie connoisseurs were at war, too; and tliis 1763.
would help to make more agreeable that frequent intercourse mUs
of which Hogarth has himself left the only memorial. A
portrait in oil, representing an elderly lady in satin with an
open book before her, known by the name of " Goldsmith's
" Hostess," and so exhibited in London several years back,*
is the work of his pencil.» It involves no great stretch of
fancy to suppose it painted in the Islington lodgings, at
some crisis of domestic pressure. Newbery's accounts
reveal to us how often it was needful to mitigate Mrs.
Fleming's impatience, to moderate her wrath, and, when
money was not immediately at hand, to minister to her
vanities. For Newbery was a strict accountant, and kept
sharply within the terms of his bargains; exacting notes of
hand at each quarterly settlement for whatever the balance
might be, and objecting to add to it by new payments when
it happened to be large. It is but to imagine a visit from.
Hogarth at such time. If his good nature wanted any
stimulus, the thought of Newbery would give it. He had
himself an old grudge against the booksellers. He charges
them in his autobiography with " cruel treatment" of his
father, and dilates on the bitterness they add to the necessity
of earning bread by the pen. But, though the copyrights
of his prints were a source of certain and not inconsiderable
income, his money at command was scanty; and it would
better suit his generous good-humour, as well as better serve

" for my father induced him perhaps to take notice of his little girl, and give her
" some odd particular directions about dress, dancing, and many other matters,
" interesting now only because they were his. As he made all his talents, how-
" ever, subservient to the great purposes of morality, and the earnest desire he
" had to mend mankind, his discourse commonly ended in an ethical dissertation,
*' and a serious charge to me never to forget his picture of the Lady's last Stake."
* In the 1832 exhibition of the works of deceased British artists. It then
belonged to Mr. Graves, in whose family it had been for many years, always bearing
the name of Goldsmith's hostess. Prior, i. 461.ranted assumption is made of the genuineness of