In affluence of genius, in variety and exuberance of thought, there surely
can exist little comparison between Reynolds and Hogarth. Reynolds was,
indeed, the finest painter, especially the most superb colorist, of the
English school. But Hogarth was the greatest inventor,--the greatest
discoverer of character,--in the English or any other school. As a painter
of manners he is unapproached. In a kindred walk, he traversed all the
passions from the lowest mirth to the profoundest melancholy, possessing
the tragic element in the most eminent degree. And if grandeur can exist--
as I presume it can--in beings who have neither costume nor rank to set
off their qualities, then some of the characters of Hogarth in essential
grandeur are far beyond the conventional figures of many other artists.
Pain, and joy, and poverty, and human daring are not to be circumscribed
by dress and fashion. Their seat is deeper (in the soul), and is
altogether independent of such trivial accretions. In point of expression,
I never saw the face of the madman (in the "Rake's Progress") exceeded in
any picture, ancient or modern. "It is a face" (Lamb says) "that no one
that has seen can easily forget.
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