e very negligent perusers of
them in book or picture.

It is the fashion with those who cry up the great Historical School
in this country, at the head of which Sir Joshua Reynolds is placed,
to exclude Hogarth from that school, as an artist of an inferior and
vulgar class. Those persons seem to me to confound the painting of
subjects in common or vulgar life with the being a vulgar artist. The
quantity of thought which Hogarth crowds into every picture would
alone _unvulgarize_ every subject which he might choose. Let us take
the lowest of his subjects, the print called _Gin Lane_. Here is
plenty of poverty, and low stuff to disgust upon a superficial view;
and accordingly a cold spectator feels himself immediately disgusted
and repelled. I have seen many turn away from it, not being able to
bear it. The same persons would perhaps have looked with great
complacency upon Poussin's celebrated picture of the _Plague at
Athens_[1] Disease and Death and bewildering Terror, in _Athenian
garments_, are endurable, and come, as the delicate critics express
it, within the "limits of pleasurable sensation." But the scenes of
their own St. Giles's, delineated by their own countryman, are too
shocking to think of. Yet if we could abstract our minds from the
fascinating colors of the picture, and forget the coarse execution
(in some respects) of the print, intended as it was to be a cheap
plate, accessible to the poorer sort of people, for whose instruction
it was done, I think we could have no hesitation in conferring the
palm of superior genius upon Hogarth, comparing this work of his with
Poussin's picture. There is more of imagination in it--that power
which draws all things to one,--which makes things animate and
inanimate, beings with their attributes, subjects, and their
accessories, take one color and serve to one effect. Everything in
the print, to use a vulgar expression, _tells_. Every part is full of
"strange images of death." It is perfectly amazing and astounding to
look at. Not only the two prominent figures, the woman and the
half-dead man, which are as terrible as anything which Michael Angelo
ever drew, but everything else in the print, contributes to bewilder
and stupefy,--the very houses, as I heard a friend of mine express
it, tumbling all about in various directions, seem drunk--seem
absolutely reeling from the effect of that diabolical spirit of
frenzy which goes forth over the whole composition. To show the