;--"Who sees not," he asks,
"that the grave-digger in Hamlet, the fool in Lear have a kind of
correspondency to, and fall in with, the subjects which they seem to
interrupt; while the comic stuff in 'Venice Preserved,' and the doggrel
nonsense of the cook and his poisoning associates in the Rollo of
Beaumont and Fletcher are pure irrelevant, impertinent discords--as bad
as the quarreling dog and cat under the table of our Lord and the
Disciples at Emmaus, of Titian."

Lamb's interpretation of Hogarth's works is that of a superior and
thoughtful mind: but we cannot help thinking that the humour in them
was not so entirely subordinate to the moral. One conclusion we may
incidentally deduce from his remarks--that the meaning in pictorial
illustrations, either as regards humour or sentiment, is not so
appreciable as it would be in words, and consequently that caricatures
labour under considerable disadvantages. "Much," he says, "depends upon
the habits of mind we bring with us." And he continues--"It is peculiar
to the confidence of high genius alone to trust much to spectators or
readers," he might have added that in painting, this confidence is often
misplaced, especially as regards the less imaginative part of the
public. We owe him a debt, however, for a true observation with regard
to the general uses of caricatures, that "it prevents that disgust at
common life which an unrestricted passion for ideal forms and beauties
is in danger of producing."

But leaving passages in which Lamb approves of absurd jesting, and those
in which he commends humour for pointing a moral, we come to consider
the largest and most characteristic part of his writings, his pleasant
essays, in which he has neither shown himself a moralist or a
mountebank.

The following is from an Essay "On the Melancholy of Tailors."

"Observe the suspicious gravity of their gait. The peacock is not
more tender, from a consciousness of his peculiar infirmity, than a
gentleman of this profession is of being known by the same
infallible testimonies of his occupation, 'Walk that I may know
thee.'

"Whoever saw the wedding of a tailor announced in the newspapers, or
the birth of his eldest son?

"When was a tailor known to give a dance, or to be himself a good
dancer, or to perform exquisitely upon the tight rope, or to shine
in any such light or airy pastimes? To sing, or play on the violin?
Do they