dal." That it is the "history of
the vulgar," we dispute not. For it is drama of the vulgar as of the
unvulgar--a deep tragedy of human nature; alas! time has not made
"_unintelligible_" these _not_ "fleeting passions of the day." As long
as man is man, will Hogarth be true to nature; and nothing in art is
more strange, than that such opinions should emanate from an Academy,
and be either ventured upon or received _ex cathedra_.

Invention, according to Mr Fuseli, receives its subjects from poetry or
tradition--"they are _epic_ or sublime, _dramatic_ or impassioned,
_historic_ or circumscribed by truth. The first _astonishes_, the second
_moves_, the third _informs_." We confess ourselves weary of this sort
of classification. They only tend to hamper the writer, painter, and
critic. It is possible for a work to admit all three, and yet preserve
its unity. And such we believe to be the case with Homer. He is epic and
dramatic in one, and certainly historic. It is more ingenious than
unquestionable, that Homer's purpose was to "impress one forcible idea
of war--its origin, its progress, and its end." Nor will the "Iliad" be
read with greater delight, by the reader's reception of such an idea.
The drawing forth the purpose of Michael Angelo's design--his invention,
in the series of frescoes in the Sistine Chapel--is more happy. That
theocracy is the subject--the dispensations of Providence to man--the
Creation--life and adoration in Adam and Eve, their sin, their
punishment, their separation from God--justice and grace in the Deluge
and covenant with Noah--prophets, sibyls, herald the Redeemer--and the
patriarchs--the Son of Man--the brazen serpent--and the Fall of
Haman--the giant subdued by the stripling in Goliah and David--and the
conqueror destroyed by female weakness in Judith, are types of his
mysterious progress, till Jonah pronounces him immortal. The Last
Judgment, and the Saviour the Judge of man, complete the whole--and the
Founder and the race are reunited. Such is the spirit of the general
invention. "The specific invention of the pictures separate, as each
constitutes an independent whole, deserves our consideration next: each
has its centre, from which it disseminates, to which it leads back all
secondary points, arranged, hid, or displayed, as they are more or less
organs of the inspiring plan; each rigorously is circumscribed by its
generic character." The more particular criticism on this great work of
M