Hodge's Explanation of a Hundred Magistrates

Thomas Rowlandson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Hodge, at right wearing a smock, has been brought before three justices in wigs at left. One of the justices says, "How dare you Fellow to say it is unfair to bring you before one hundred Magistrates when you see there are but three of us!" Hodge responds, "Why please your Worship you maun know—when I went to school, they Taught I that a one and two O's stood for a hundred—so do you see your Worship be One and the other two be Cyphers!"

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art