‘Inloudrecess andbrawlingconclave sit:’—
‘Inloudrecess andbrawlingconclave sit:’—
‘Inloudrecess andbrawlingconclave sit:’—
‘Inloudrecess andbrawlingconclave sit:’—
the Jew, in the second picture, a very Jew in grain—innumerable fine sketches of heads in thePolling for Votes, of which the nobleman, overlooking the caricaturist, is the best;—and then the irresistible, tumultuous display of broad humour in theChairing 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 ecstasy of the hobbling blind fiddler, 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 a newspaper; and the chickens, inThe March to Finchley, wandering in search of their lost dam, who is found in the pocket of the serjeant. Of the pictures inThe Rake’s Progresswe shall not here say any thing, because we think them, on the whole, 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.[11]