Title from Paulson.
The 2nd state as described by Paulson, with the words "Datur Vacuum" etched onto the page of the open book in the lecturer's hands.
Library's copy trimmed within plate mark and mounted with two other prints by Hogarth on bound album leaf, 455 x 625 mm.
Print forms part of an album (PML 146853) that is one of three containing the collected works of William Hogarth; evidently comprised of prints reissued by the artist's widow and compiled no earlier than 1781 (see PML 146851-53).
Etching shows a professor (identified by some sources William Fisher, the Registrar of Oxford) standing in a pulpit and reading from a book to a group of scholars in mortarboards, their faces variously betraying boredom, bewilderment, displeasure, amazement, etc.