Much of the untamed, unmanageable, heterodox nature of Runciman's art pertained to his life generally. Gay, free-thinking, prankish--with a tendency to late-houred habits that must have often scandalized his landlady--and a talent for conversation rare amongst artists, who, as a rule, express their thoughts better by their brushes than by word of mouth; kind-hearted, sociable, never behind in passing the bottle--no wonder he gathered round him a group of eminent men of his day, most of them with attributes much like his own, who did not flinch from strong outspeaking, who were not shocked by many things. Kames, Monboddo, Hume, and Robertson knocked at the late William Hogarth's door, and paid their respects to Widow Hogarth's lodger. Did _she_ ever stand before his easel and contemplate his works? Doubtless often enough when the painter was out firing off his smart cracker sayings, and making away with his port wine. And what did she think of his art? How different from William's! She could understand _him_ always. There was always nature on _his_ canvas, and meaning and common sense--there was always a story plainly, forcibly told. But Mr. Runciman's meanings were not so clear. What was all the smoke about, and the waving arms, and the distorted features, and the Bedlamite faces, and, oh! the long legs and the flying draperies? Surely draperies never did fly like that--at least William Hogarth never painted them so. And then--really this was too much--he, Alexander Runciman, under that roof had presumed to paint a 'Sigismunda weeping over the heart of Tancred,' with William's treatment of the same great subject actually in the house! To bed, Widow Hogarth, in a rage. Of course Runciman had _his_ opinion about Hogarth and his art, despising both, no doubt, and agreeing with Fuseli in deeming him a caricaturist merely, and his works 'the chronicle of scandal and the history book of the vulgar.' It was so much nobler to portray wild-contortions from Ossian, demoniac nightmares and lower region revelations, than to paint simply the life around they had but to stretch out a hand to grasp. Yet with all their talk, in the humbler merits of colour, expression, and handling, they were miles behind Hogarth. He has been so praised as a satirist, there is a chance of his technical merits as a painter being overlooked. One only of the 'Mariage a la Mode' pictures, for all that is really valuable in art, might be safely backed against all that was ever done by both Fuseli and Runciman put together. Yet they looked upon him as rather a bygone sort of creature--a barbarian blind to poetic art. Could William Hogarth have seen the works of Fuseli and Runciman, he would probably have had something to say about _them_!