A pen and brown ink and wash preparatory drawing for the twelfth engraving in a set of prints from Samuel Butler's Hudibras. Incised. The lower right corner torn, and repaired.

Samuel Butler's Hudibras, published in 1662, is a lengthy poem satirising the hypocrisy of Puritanism during the English Civil War. In the eighteenth century it was often seen as an English counterpart to Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote. Hogarth was attracted to its satire of religious fanaticism and made two sets of prints depicting episodes from the story. The first set was created in the early 1720s, but not published until April 1726, and intended as book illustrations. This design is for the twelfth print in the second series, intended as thirteen independent engravings, and published by Philip Overton in the spring of 1726.

This design shows Hudibras visiting a lawyer, who encouraged him to write a letter to a woman he was courting. In total, the Royal Collection has six drawings relating to the later Hudibras series and one for the earlier set (RCINs 913459-65).