the
artist, whose work shows least of its influence or attraction, should
have devoted the one offspring of his pen to an Analysis of Beauty.

But it is when we turn to the humour of life, even in its most sordid
tragedies, that his real strength appears. "_Quelle richesse
inexprimable_"--says Lavater again, and no less justly--"_dans les
scenes comiques ou morales de la vie_." None like Hogarth has
characterised "the lowest types of modern humanity, has better depicted
the drunken habits of the dregs of the people, the follies of life, and
the horrors of vice." And it is just here, as I have hinted, that
Hogarth connects himself with the later caricaturists.

It were quite possible to treat a purely moral story, such as that of
"The Industrious and the Idle Apprentice," in a purely moral sentiment;
but this is just what our artist cannot bring himself to do. He must
have that touch of nature, and of humour, which makes the whole world
kin. He must introduce the quarrelling cat and dog into the office
scene between West and Goodchild, or the feline visitant whose
apparition through the chimney disturbs Thomas Idle's unhallowed
slumbers; he must accentuate the gormandising guests in the Sheriff's
banquet, and the humours of the crowd even in a Tyburn execution. And in
other subjects--where the moral lesson is either absent or less
intrusive--the man's fancy runs absolutely riot in humorous observation.
"The Distressed Poet," with the baby squalling in his bed, the poor wife
stitching at his solitary pair of breeches, and a strapping milkmaid
clamouring for payment of her account; "The Enraged Musician," with
every conceivable pandemonium of noise congregated beneath his window;
above all, "The Sleeping Congregation," collected in a conventicle of
very early Georgian design, and unanimously occupied in carrying out the
precept of their reverend pastor's text, "Come unto me ... and I will
give Rest"--save only those two vigilant old ladies, perhaps pillars of
the edifice, and the clerk to whose interest in the sleeping nymph of
the next pew I have already alluded--are studies in pure humour.

=_By William Hogarth_ THE DISTREST POET=

But to multiply examples of Hogarth's humour would come very near to
cataloguing his every work. Let us turn now from that work to the man
himself, and study something of those conditions of life of which his
genius gives us our most vivid impress.

William Hogarth was born in 1697