Tailpiece, or the Bathos

This engraving was published just months before Hogarth’s death. He intended it to serve as the tailpiece, or final print, in his volume of collected works. The landscape is littered with symbols of death, decay, and the passage of time. The reclining figure, an allegorical representation of Time, appears himself to be exhausted.

The print also gestures self-reflexively to Hogarth’s own artistic career. Among the collection of broken things is one of his own prints—plate 1 of The Times, also on view in this case—being consumed by a fire. Its imminent destruction captures a profound misgiving about the survival of his work, as subject to political censorship and changing tastes.