garth seems to have taken a particular delight in)
into his pieces. They have a singular effect in giving tranquillity
and a portion of their own innocence to the subject. The baby riding
in its mother's lap in the _March to Finchley_, (its careless
innocent face placed directly behind the intriguing time-furrowed
countenance of the treason-plotting French priest,) perfectly sobers
the whole of that tumultuous scene. The boy mourner winding up his
top with so much unpretending insensibility in the plate of the
_Harlot's Funeral_, (the only thing in that assembly that is not a
hypocrite,) quiets and soothes the mind that has been disturbed at the
sight of so much depraved man and woman kind.

[Footnote 1: _The Friend_, No. XVI.]

I had written thus far, when I met with a passage in the writings of
the late Mr. Barry, which, as it falls in with the _vulgar notion_
respecting Hogarth, which this Essay has been employed in combating,
I shall take the liberty to transcribe, with such remarks as may
suggest themselves to me in the transcription; referring the reader
for a full answer to that which has gone before.

"Notwithstanding Hogarth's merit does undoubtedly entitle him
to an honorable place among the artists, and that his little
compositions, considered as so many dramatic representations,
abounding with humor, character, and extensive observations on
the various incidents of low, faulty, and vicious life, are
very ingeniously brought together, and frequently tell their
own story with more facility than is often found in many of
the elevated and more noble inventions of Raphael and other
great men; yet it must be honestly confessed, that in what is
called knowledge of the figure, foreigners have justly
observed, that Hogarth is often so raw and unformed, as hardly
to deserve the name of an artist. But this capital defect is
not often perceivable, as examples of the naked and of
elevated nature but rarely occur in his subjects, which are
for the most part filled with characters that in their nature
tend to deformity; besides his figures are small, and the
jonctures, and other difficulties of drawing that might occur
in their limbs, are artfully concealed with their clothes,
rags, &c. But what would atone for all his defects, even if
they were twice told, is his admirable fund of invention, ever
inexhaustible in its resources; and h