allusions were not incidental, but far more probably intended.

For Hogarth had now in these three series attained a reputation which he
probably increased by his delightful studies of pure humour, among which
"Modern Midnight Conversation," "The Sleeping Congregation," "Strolling
Players in a Barn," "The Laughing Audience," "The Enraged Musician," and
"The Distressed Poet" are to be especially commended, as well as that
fine series of "The Four Times of the Day," in which last "Morning" (of
which I am able to give an illustration) is certainly a masterpiece. His
estimate of his own powers had increased, and now led him to leave that
path in which his genius had already found its intimate expression, and
to seek to become that which he was not and never could be--a great
imaginative and historical painter. Without ever having really studied
the great Masters of the past, without comprehending either their merits
or demerits, he declared that it were an easy task for him to surpass
even Correggio on his own ground: the result was, if not disaster, at
least something very near to it. The "Sigismunda," which he had painted
with the above object, was returned on his hands by the purchaser. It
hangs now, indeed, in the National Gallery, but I do not imagine many
serious critics will prefer it to the marvellous _chiaroscuro_, the
refined ideal beauty of the Master of Parma. Yet that delicious "Shrimp
Girl" which hangs near it, painted with almost a Fragonard's gaiety of
palette, shows what our artist might have achieved had he gone, like
Morland, for his subjects to the common life of his own country. The
staircase paintings of St. Bartholomew's Hospital are not likely, I
think, to induce us to revise the above opinion; and Sir Joshua's
criticism is here so apposite and so just that I need no excuse for
quoting it in some detail. "After this admirable artist had spent the
greater part of his life in an active, busy, and, we may add, successful
attention to the ridicule of life; after he had invented a new species
of dramatic painting in which probably he will never be equalled; and
had stored his mind with infinite materials to explain and illustrate
the domestic and familiar scenes of common life which were generally,
and ought to have been always, the subject of his pencil,--he very
imprudently, or rather presumptuously, attempted the great historical
style, for which his previous habits had by no means prepared him: he
wa