An impoverished nobleman who marries his son to a rich
citizen's daughter; a husband who, pursuing his own equivocal pleasures,
resigns his wife to the temptations of opportunity; a foregone sequel
and a tragic issue:--this material is of the oldest, and could make but
slender claim to originality. Submitted to Colman or Garrick as the
_scenario_ of a play for Yates and Mrs. Woffington, it would probably
have been rejected as pitifully threadbare. Yet combined and developed
under the brush of Hogarth, set in an atmosphere that makes it as vivid
as nature itself, decorated with surprising fidelity, and enlivened by
all the resources of the keenest humour, it passes out of the line of
mere transcripts of life, and, retaining the merits of the specific and
particular, becomes a representative and typical work, as articulate
to-day, as direct and unhesitating in its teaching, as it was when it
was first offered to the world.

How well-preserved, even now, these wonderful pictures are! It would
almost seem as if Time, unreasoning in his anger, had determined to
ignore in every way the audacious artist who treated him with such
persistent indignity. Look at them in the National Gallery. Look, too,
at the cracks and fissures in the Wilkies, the soiled rainbows of
Turner,--the bituminous riding-habit of Lady Douro in Sir Edwin's _Story
of Waterloo_. But these paintings of William Hogarth are well-nigh as
fresh to-day as when, new from the easel, they found their fortunate
purchaser in Mr. Lane of Hillingdon. They are not worked like a Denner,
it is true, and the artist is often less solicitous about his method
than about the result of it; yet they are soundly, straight-forwardly,
and skilfully executed. Lady Bingley's red hair, Carestini's nostril,
are shown in the simplest and directest manner. Everywhere the desired
effect is exactly produced, and without effort. Take, as an
illustration, the inkstand in the first scene, with its bell and
sand-caster. In these days it would be a patient _trompe-l'oeil_,
probably better done than the figures using it. Here it is merely
indicated, not elaborated; it holds its exact place as a piece of
furniture, and nothing more. And at this point it may be observed that
if in the ensuing descriptions we should speak of colour, the reader
will remember we are describing, not the performances of Messrs. Ravenet
and the rest, but Hogarth's original pictures at Trafalgar Square. It is
the more ne