To show the poetical and almost prophetical conception in the artist, one little circumstance may serve.

Not content with the dying and dead figures, which he has strewed in profusion over the proper scene of the action, he shows you what (of a kindred nature) is passing beyond it.
Close by the shell, in which, by direction of the parish beadle, a man is depositing his wife, is an old wall, which, partaking of the universal decay around it, is tumbling to pieces.

Through a gap in this wall are seen three figures, which appear to make a part in some funeral procession which is passing by on the other side of the wall, out of the sphere of the composition.

This extending of the interest beyond the bounds of the subject could only have been conceived by a great genius.

Shakspeare, in his description of the painting of the Trojan War, in his _Tarquin and Lucrece_, has introduced a similar device, where the painter made a part stand for the whole:-- "For much imaginary work was there, Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind, That for Achilles' image stood his spear, Grip'd in an armed hand; himself behind Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind: A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head, Stood for the whole to be imagined." [Footnote 1: At the late Mr.Hope's, in Cavendish Square] This he well calls _imaginary work_, where the spectator must meet the artist in his conceptions half way; and it is peculiar to the confidence of high genius alone to trust so much to spectators or readers.