You are generous enough to wish, and sanguine enough to foresee, that art shall one day flourish in England.

I, too, much wish, but can hardly extend my hopes so far.
Yet in 1763 Reynolds was forty years of age and Gainsborough but four years younger.

Hogarth was even sixty-six, and at work upon his last plate.

Although, hitherto, the best painting in England had been done by foreign artists such as Holbein and Van Dyck, yet there had always been Englishmen of praiseworthy talent who had painted pleasing portraits.

Hogarth carried this native tradition to a high point of excellence.