are no tricks of distortion, nothing but the
natural face of agony. This is high tragic painting, and we might as
well deny to Shakspeare the honors of a great tragedian, because he
has interwoven scenes of mirth with the serious business of his
plays, as refuse to Hogarth the same praise for the two concluding
scenes of the _Rake's Progress_, because of the Comic Lunatics[1]
which he has thrown into the one, or the Alchymist that he has
introduced in the other, who is paddling in the coals of his furnace,
keeping alive the flames of vain hope within the very walls of the
prison to which the vanity has conducted him, which have taught the
darker lesson of extinguished hope to the desponding figure who is
the principal person of the scene.

[Footnote 1:
"There are of madmen, as there are of tame,
All humor'd not alike. We have here some
So apish and fantastic, play with a feather;
And though 'twould grieve a soul to see God's image
So blemish'd and defac'd, yet do they act
Such antick and such pretty lunacies,
That, spite of sorrow, they will make you smile.
Others again we have, like angry lions,
Fierce as wild bulls, untameable as flies."
_Honest Whore_.]

It is the force of these kindly admixtures which assimilates the
scenes of Hogarth and of Shakspeare to the drama of real life, where
no such thing as pure tragedy is to be found; but merriment and
infelicity, ponderous crime and feather-light vanity, like twiformed
births, disagreeing complexions of one intertexture, perpetually
unite to show forth motley spectacles to the world. Then it is that
the poet or painter shows his art, when in the selection of these
comic adjuncts he chooses such circumstances as shall relieve,
contrast with, or fall into, without forming a violent opposition to
his principal object. Who sees not that the Grave-digger in _Hamlet_,
the Fool in _Lear_, have a kind of correspondency to, and fall in
with, the subjects which they seem to interrupt: while the comic
stuff in _Venice Preserved_, and the doggerel nonsense of the Cook
and his poisoning associates in the _Rollo_ of Beaumont and Fletcher,
are pure, irrelevant, impertinent discords,--as bad as the
quarrelling dog and cat under the table of the _Lord and the
Disciples at Emmaus_ of Titian?

Not to tire the reader with perpetual reference to prints which he
may not be fortunate enough to possess, it may be sufficient to
remark