Mary Hogarth beautiful and light-hearted". When Robert Story visited the Hogarth household in 1836, he described Hogarth as "the fairest flower of spring". Dickens showed particular affection to Hogarth, and described her as "a close friend, an exceptional sister, a companion at home." It is believed that Hogarth was the first person to read "The Pickwick Papers" and "Oliver Twist", as Dickens valued Hogarth's input and feedback more than his wife's. In the early hours of 7 May 1837, after Hogarth had returned from a showing of "Is She His Wife?" at the St James's Theatre with the Dickens couple, she collapsed
The Bench (Hogarth) by trying to differentiate character and caricature Hogarth hoped place himself in a class with the Renaissance painters and disassociate his work from that of the gentleman caricaturists for whom caricature was an enjoyable distraction or tool for their own advancement. The surviving painting and original (first state) print shows four judges sitting below the King's Arms, in session in the Court of Common Pleas. Hogarth ridicules the lack of ability or interest among the judiciary, whose "shallow discernment, natural disposition, or wilful inattention, is here perfectly described in their faces". None of the four judges is concerned with the