the Jew in the second picture, a very Jew in grain-innumerable fine sketches of heads in the POLLING FOR VOTES, of which the Nobleman overlooking the caricaturist is the best; and then the irresistible tumultuous display of broad humour in the CHAIRING THE MEMBER, which is perhaps, of all Hogarth's pictures, the most full of laughable incidents and situations- the yellow, rusty-faced Thresher, with his swinging flail, breaking the head of one of the Chairmen, and his redoubted antagonist the Sailor, with his oak-stick, and stumping wooden leg, a supplemental cudgel the persevering extacy of the hobbling Blind Fidler, who, in the fray, appears to have been trod upon by the artificial excrescence of the honest tar-Monsieur, the Monkey, with piteous aspect, speculating the impending disaster of the triumphant candidate, and his brother Bruin, appropriating the paunch-the precipitous flight of the pigs, souse over head into the water-the fine Lady fainting, with vermilion lips-and the two Chimney-Sweepers, satirical young rogues! We had almost forgot the POLITICIAN, who is burning a hole through his hat with a candle in reading the newspaper; and the chickens, in the MARCH TO FINCHLEY, wandering in search of their lost dam, who is found in the pocket of the Serjeant. Of the pictures in the RAKE'S PROGRESS in this collection we shall not here say any thing, because we think them on the whole such inferior to the Prints, and because they have already been criticised by a writer, to whom we could add nothing, in a paper which ought to be read by every lover of Hogarth and of English genius.* W. H.

* See the following Essay by Mr. Lamb.—N.

91

ESSAY

ON THE

GENIUS AND CHARACTER

OF

HOGARTH,

BY CHARLES LAMB, ESQ.*

ONE of the earliest and noblest enjoyments I had when a boy was in the contemplation of those capital prints by Hogarth, the Harlot's and Rake's Progresses, which, along with some others, hung upon the walls of a great hall in an old-fashioned house in shire, and seemed the solitary

* This ingenious essay was originally printed in “The Reflector, No. III. 1811;" and was copied by permission of Mr. Leigh Hunt, the principal proprietor of that publication, into the third Volume of Nichols's edition of Hogarth's Works.-In this Essay Mr. Lamb has successfully combated, that this great and truly English Painter necessarily belongs to a class inferior to the Historical. He has opened to us the hidden soul of beauty, and made us feel how independent the imagination is of extreme pomp and circumstance for its most genuine and excellent productions.

tenants (with myself) of that antiquated and life-deserted apartment.

Recollection of the manner in which those prints used to affect me, has often made me wonder, when I have heard Hogarth described as a mere comic painter, as one whose chief ambition was to raise a laugh. To deny that there are throughout the prints which I have mentioned circumstances introduced of a laughable tendency, would be to run counter to the common notions of mankind; but to suppose that in their ruling character they appeal chiefly to the risible faculty, and not first and foremost to the very heart of man, its best and most serious feelings, would be to mistake no less grossly their aim and purpose. A set of severer satires (for which they are not so much comedies, which they have been likened to, as they are strong and masculine satires), less mingled with any thing of mere fun, were never written upon paper, or graven upon copper. They resemble Juvenal, or the satiric touches in "Timon of Athens."

I was pleased with the reply of a gentleman, who, being asked which book he esteemed most in his library, answered, Shakspeare:" being asked which he esteemed next best, replied, Hogarth." His graphic representations are indeed books they have the teeming, fruitful, suggestive meaning of words. Other pictures we look at his prints we read.

In pursuance of this parallel, I have sometimes entertained myself with comparing the Timon of Athens of Shakspeare (which I have just mentioned) and Hogarth's Rake's Progress together. The story, the moral, in both is nearly the The wild course of riot and extravagance, ending in the one with driving the Prodigal from the society of men into the solitude of the deserts, and in the other with con

same.

ducting the Rake through his several stages of dissipation into the still more complete desolations of the mad-house, in the play and in the picture are described with almost equal force and nature. The levee of the Rake, which forms the subject of the second plate in the series, is almost a transcript of Timon's levee in the opening scene of that play. We find a dedicating poet, and other similar characters, in both.

The concluding scene in the Rake's Progress is, perhaps, superior to the last scenes of Timon. If we seek for something of kindred excellence in poetry, it must be in the scenes of Lear's beginning madness, where the King and the Fool and the Tom-o'-Bedlam conspire to produce such a medley of mirth checked by misery, and misery rebuked by mirth; where the society of those "strange bed-fellows" which misfortunes have brought Lear acquainted with, so finely sets forth the destitute state of the monarch, while the Junatic bans of the one, and the disjointed sayings and wild but pregnant allusions of the other, so wonderfully sympathize with that confusion, which they seem to assist in the production of, in the senses of that "child-changed father."

In the scene in Bedlam, which terminates the Rake's Progress, we find the same assortment of the ludicrous with the terrible. Here is desperate madness, the overturning of originally strong thinking faculties, at which we shudder, as we contemplate the duration and pressure of affliction which it must have asked to destroy such a building ;—and here is their gradual hurtless lapse into idiotcy, of faculties, which at the best of times never having been strong, we look upon the consummation of their decay with no more of pity than is consistent with a smile. The mad tailor, the poor driveller that has gone out of his wits (and truly he appears to have

had no great journey to go to get past their confines) for the love of Charming Betty Careless,-these half-laughable, scarce-pitiable objects take off from the horror which the principal figure would of itself raise, at the same time that they assist the feeling of the scene by contributing to the general notion of its subject :

"Madness, thou chaos of the brain,

What art, that pleasure giv'st, and pain?
Tyranny of Fancy's reign!

Mechanic Fancy, that can build

Vast labyrinths and mazes wild,

With rule disjointed, shapeless measure,
Fill'd with horror, fill'd with pleasure!
Shapes of horror, that would even
Cast doubts of mercy upon Heaven.
Shapes of pleasure, that, but seen,

Would split the shaking sides of spleen.*"

Is it carrying the spirit of comparison to excess to remark, that in the poor, kneeling, weeping female, who accompanies her seducer in his sad decay, there is something analogous to Kent, or Caius, as he delights rather to be called, in Lear,the noblest pattern of virtue which even Shakspeare has conceived,-who follows his Royal Master in banishment, that had pronounced his banishment, and forgetful at once of his wrongs and dignities, taking on himself the disguise of a menial, retains his fidelity to the figure, his loyalty to the carcass, the shadow, the shell and empty husk of Lear?

In the perusal of a book, or of a picture, much of the impression which we receive depends upon the habit of mind which we bring with us to such perusal. The same circum.

*Lines inscribed under the plate.