absolutely reeling from the effect of that diabolical spirit of frenzy which goes forth over the whole composition.  To show the poetical and almost prophetical conception in the artist, one little circumstance may serve.  Not content with the dying and dead figures, which he has strewed in profusion over the proper scene of the action, he shows you what (of a kindred nature) is passing beyond it.  Close by the shell, in which, by direction of the parish beadle, a man is depositing his wife, is an old wall, which, partaking of the universal decay around it, is tumbling to pieces.  Through a gap in this wall are seen three figures, which appear to make a part in some funeral procession which is passing by on the other side of the wall, out of the sphere of the composition.  This extending of the interest beyond the bounds of the subject could only have been conceived by a great genius.  Shakspeare, in his description of the painting of the Trojan War, in his Tarquin and Lucrece, has introduced a similar device, where the painter made a part stand for the whole:—­

  “For much imaginary work was there,
  Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind,
  That for Achilles’ image stood his spear,
  Grip’d in an armed hand; himself behind
  Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind: 
  A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head,
  Stood for the whole to be imagined.”

[Footnote 1:  At the late Mr. Hope’s, in Cavendish Square]

This he well calls imaginary work, where the spectator must meet the artist in his conceptions half way; and it is peculiar to the confidence of high genius alone to trust so much to spectators or readers.  Lesser artists show everything distinct and full, as they require an object to be made out to themselves before they can comprehend it.

When I think of the power displayed in this (I will not hesitate to say) sublime print, it seems to me the extreme narrowness of system alone, and of that rage for classification, by which, in matters of taste at least, we are perpetually perplexing, instead of arranging, our ideas, that would make us concede to the work of Poussin above mentioned, and deny to this of Hogarth, the name of a grand serious composition.

We are forever deceiving ourselves with names and theories.  We call one man a great historical painter, because he has taken for his subjects kings or great men, or transactions over which time has thrown a grandeur.  We term another the painter of common life, and set him down in our minds for an artist of an inferior class, without reflecting whether the quantity of thought shown by the latter may not much more than level the distinction which their mere choice of subjects may seem to place between them; or whether, in fact, from that very common life a great artist may not extract as deep an interest as another man from that which we are pleased to call history.

I entertain the highest respect for the talents and virtues of Reynolds, but I do not like that his reputation should overshadow and stifle the merits of such a man as Hogarth, nor that to mere names and classifications we should be content to sacrifice one of the greatest ornaments of England.