ight into the weak sides of character and
manners, in all their tendencies, combinations, and contrasts. There is
not a single picture of his containing a representation of mere
pictorial or domestic scenery." His object is not so much "to hold the
mirror up to nature," as "to show vice her own feature, scorn her own
image." "Folly is there seen at the height--the moon is at the full--it
is the very error of the time. There is a perpetual error of
eccentricities, a tilt and tournament of absurdities, pampered with all
sorts of affectation, airy, extravagant, and ostentatious! Yet _he is as
little a caricaturist_ as he is a painter of still life. Criticism has
not done him justice, though public opinion has."[4] "A set of severer
satires," says Charles Lamb, "(for they are not so much comedies, which
they have been likened to, as they are strong and masculine satires),
less mingled with anything of mere fun, were never written upon paper or
graven upon copper. They resemble Juvenal, or the satiric touches in
Timon of Athens."

[Illustration:
W. HOGARTH. "_Mariage a la Mode._"]

[Illustration:
PAUL SANDBY. _Anti-Hogarthian Caricature._

"A Mountebank Painter demonstrating to his admirers and subscribers
that crookedness is y^e most beautifull."

_Face p. 7._]

CHARACTER OF HOGARTH'S SATIRES.

Hogarth was a stern moralist and satirist, but his satires have nothing
in common with the satires of the nineteenth century; such men as the
infamous Charteris and the quack Misaubin figure in his compositions,
and their portraits are true to the life. Although his satire is
relieved with flashes of humour, the reality and gravity of the satire
remain undisturbed. The _March to Finchley_ is one of the severest
satires on the times; it shows us the utter depravity of the morals and
manners of the day, the want of discipline of the king's officers and
soldiers, which led to the routs of Preston and Falkirk, the headlong
flight of Hawley and his licentious and cowardly dragoons. Some modern
writers know so little of him that they have not only described his
portrait of Wilkes as a _caricature_, but have cited the inscription on
his veritable contemporary _caricature_ of Churchill in proof of the
assertion. Now what says this inscription? "The Bruiser (Churchill, once
the Reverend), in the character of a Russian Hercules, regaling himself
after having killed the monster _Caricatura, that so severely galled his
vir