The quantity of thought which Hogarth crowds into every picture would alone _unvulgarize_ every subject which he might choose.

Let us take the lowest of his subjects, the print called _Gin Lane_.

Here is plenty of poverty, and low stuff to disgust upon a superficial view; and accordingly a cold spectator feels himself immediately disgusted and repelled.

I have seen many turn away from it, not being able to bear it.

The same persons would perhaps have looked with great complacency upon Poussin's celebrated picture of the _Plague at Athens_[1] Disease and Death and bewildering Terror, in _Athenian garments_, are endurable, and come, as the delicate critics express it, within the "limits of pleasurable sensation." But the scenes of their own St.Giles's, delineated by their own countryman, are too shocking to think of.