Who sees not that the Grave-digger in _Hamlet_, the Fool in _Lear_, have a kind of correspondency to, and fall in with, the subjects which they seem to interrupt: while the comic stuff in _Venice Preserved_, and the doggerel nonsense of the Cook and his poisoning associates in the _Rollo_ of Beaumont and Fletcher, are pure, irrelevant, impertinent discords,--as bad as the quarrelling dog and cat under the table of the _Lord and the Disciples at Emmaus_ of Titian?
Not to tire the reader with perpetual reference to prints which he may not be fortunate enough to possess, it may be sufficient to remark, that the same tragic cast of expression and incident, blended in some instances with a greater alloy of comedy, characterizes his other great work, the _Marriage Alamode_, as well as those less elaborate exertions of his genius, the prints called _Industry_ and _Idleness_, _the Distrest Poet_, &c., forming, with the _Harlot's_ and _Rake's Progresses_, the most considerable, if not the largest class of his productions,--enough surely to rescue Hogarth from the imputation of being a mere buffoon, or one whose general aim was only to _shake the sides_.
There remains a very numerous class of his performances, the object of which must be confessed to be principally comic.

But in all of them will be found something to distinguish them from the droll productions of Bunbury and others.

They have this difference, that we do not merely laugh at, we are led into long trains of reflection by them.

In this respect they resemble the characters of Chaucer's _Pilgrims_, which have strokes of humor in them enough to designate them for the most part as comic, but our strongest feeling still is wonder at the comprehensiveness of genius which could crowd, as poet and painter have done, into one small canvas so many diverse yet cooperating materials.
The faces of Hogarth have not a mere momentary interest, as in caricatures, or those grotesque physiognomies which we sometimes catch a glance of in the street, and, struck with their whimsicality, wish for a pencil and the power to sketch them down; and forget them again as rapidly,--but they are permanent abiding ideas.

Not the sports of nature, but her necessary eternal classes.