There is the stretch of human suffering to the utmost endurance, severe bodily pain brought on by strong mental agony, the frightful, obstinate laugh of madness,--yet all so unforced and natural, that those who never were witness to madness in real life, think they see nothing but what is familiar to them in this face.

Here are no tricks of distortion, nothing but the natural face of agony.

This is high tragic painting, and we might as well deny to Shakspeare the honors of a great tragedian, because he has interwoven scenes of mirth with the serious business of his plays, as refuse to Hogarth the same praise for the two concluding scenes of the _Rake's Progress_, because of the Comic Lunatics[1] which he has thrown into the one, or the Alchymist that he has introduced in the other, who is paddling in the coals of his furnace, keeping alive the flames of vain hope within the very walls of the prison to which the vanity has conducted him, which have taught the darker lesson of extinguished hope to the desponding figure who is the principal person of the scene.
[Footnote 1: "There are of madmen, as there are of tame, All humor'd not alike.

We have here some So apish and fantastic, play with a feather; And though 'twould grieve a soul to see God's image So blemish'd and defac'd, yet do they act Such antick and such pretty lunacies, That, spite of sorrow, they will make you smile.
Others again we have, like angry lions, Fierce as wild bulls, untameable as flies." _Honest Whore_.] It is the force of these kindly admixtures which assimilates the scenes of Hogarth and of Shakspeare to the drama of real life, where no such thing as pure tragedy is to be found; but merriment and infelicity, ponderous crime and feather-light vanity, like twiformed births, disagreeing complexions of one intertexture, perpetually unite to show forth motley spectacles to the world.

Then it is that the poet or painter shows his art, when in the selection of these comic adjuncts he chooses such circumstances as shall relieve, contrast with, or fall into, without forming a violent opposition to his principal object.