He was lecturer at St. Dunstan's in the East, chaplain to the lord mayor, then under-master at Merchant Taylors' School until 1753, when he became grammar master at Christ's Hospital.

[4] He was a friend[5] and collaborator of William Hogarth and verses by him accompanied the artist's prints Beer Street and Gin Lane and The Four Stages of Cruelty.

He assisted in Hogarth in his The Analysis of Beauty and was depicted in Paul Sandby's satirical prints — "Puggs Graces etched from his original daubing"[6] and 'The Analyst Besh-n in his own Taste'.

[7] He had taken a keen interest in the theatre, and it has been asserted that many of David Garrick's best productions and revivals owed much to his assistance.

He was the author, although the fact was long concealed, of High Life Below Stairs, a two-act farce presented at Drury Lane on 31 October 1759; also of False Concord (Covent Garden, 20 March 1764) and The Tutor (Drury Lane, 4 February 1765).