The following anecdote of the celebrated _March to Finchley_ is
curious, though well known:--
"The original painting was, on the publication of the print, disposed of
by a kind of lottery. Seven shillings and sixpence were fixed as the
price of a print; and every purchaser of a print was entitled to a
chance in the lottery for the picture. Eighteen hundred and forty-three
chances were subscribed for; a hundred and sixty-seven tickets, which
remained, were presented to the Foundling Hospital. One of the
Hospital's tickets drew the desired prize; and on the same night Hogarth
delivered the painting to the governors, not a little pleased that it
was to adorn a public place."
After quoting Walpole's description of Hogarth's _Sigismunda_, in which
he says--
"To add to the disgust raised by such vulgar expression, her fingers
were blooded by her lover's heart, that lay before her like that of a
sheep for her dinner;--"
Mr. C. observes, "this is very severe, very pointed, and very untrue.
The Sigismunda of Hogarth is not tearing off her ornaments, nor are her
fingers bloodied by her lover's heart. It is said that the picture
resembled Mrs. Hogarth, who was a very handsome woman; and to this
circumstance Wilkes maliciously alludes in his unprincipled attack on
her husband. 'If the Sigismunda,' says this polite patriot, 'had a
resemblance of any thing ever seen on earth, or had the least pretence
to either meaning or expression, it was what he had seen, or perhaps
made--in real life--his own wife in an agony of passion; but of what
passion no connoisseur could guess.
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