Mary Hogarth Dickens' first child was named Mary in her memory. Hogarth was the daughter of George Hogarth (1783–1870), a music critic, cellist and composer, and Georgina Hogarth Thompson (1793–1863). She was born in Edinburgh, where her father was a legal advisor to Walter Scott, whom the young Charles Dickens greatly admired. She was the fourth of ten children, and the third daughter. Hogarth was named after her paternal grandmother. The name Mary Scott had previously been given to George and Georgina's third child, born 1817 or 1818, who was an infant when she died. Mary and her sister Catherine first met
The Bench (Hogarth) the art of character painting as the "wild attempts of children". In his own comments on "The Bench" he compared character, caricature, and "outré" to comedy, tragedy, and farce in the theatre. Comedy, which he aligned with character, showed a true view of nature, as nothing was outside reality. Tragedy, which he compared to caricature, heightened reality, exaggerating aspects of its subjects. Farce and "outré" both took this heightening of features to ridiculous extremes. Hogarth scholar Ronald Paulson suggests that by the time he produced "The Bench" Hogarth had become very sensitive to the criticisms levelled at him as a