hall in an old-fashioned house in ----shire, and
seemed the solitary tenants (with myself) of that antiquated and
life-deserted apartment.

Recollection of the manner in which those prints used to affect me
has often made me wonder, when I have heard Hogarth described as a
mere comic painter, as one of those whose chief ambition was to
_raise a laugh_. To deny that there are throughout the prints which I
have mentioned circumstances introduced of a laughable tendency,
would be to run counter to the common notions of mankind; but to
suppose that in their _ruling character_ they appeal chiefly to the
risible faculty, and not first and foremost to the very heart of man,
its best and most serious feelings, would be to mistake no less
grossly their aim and purpose. A set of severer Satires (for they are
not so much Comedies, which they have been likened to, as they are
strong and masculine Satires) less mingled with anything of mere fun,
were never written upon paper, or graven upon copper. They resemble
Juvenal, or the satiric touches in Timon of Athens.

I was pleased with the reply of a gentleman, who being asked which
book he esteemed most in his library, answered,--"Shakspeare:" being
asked which he esteemed next best, replied, "Hogarth." His graphic
representations are indeed books: they have the teeming, fruitful,
suggestive meaning of _words_. Other pictures we look at,--his prints
we read.

In pursuance of this parallel, I have sometimes entertained myself
with comparing the _Timon of Athens_ of Shakespeare (which I have
just mentioned) and Hogarth's _Rake's Progress_ together. The story,
the moral, in both is nearly the same. The wild course of riot and
extravagance, ending in the one with driving the Prodigal from the
society of men into the solitude of the deserts, and in the other
with conducting the Rake through his several stages of dissipation
into the still more complete desolations of the mad-house, in the
play and in the picture, are described with almost equal force and
nature. The levee of the Rake, which forms the subject of the second
plate in the series, is almost a transcript of Timon's levee in the
opening scene of that play. We find a dedicating poet, and other
similar characters, in both.

The concluding scene in the _Rake's Progress_ is perhaps superior to
the last scenes of _Timon_. If we seek for something of kindred
excellence in poetry, it must be in the scenes of Lear's beginning
madne