MISTAKE OF THOSE WHO COMPARE MODERN CARICATURISTS WITH HOGARTH. It is a common practice, and I may add mistake, with writers on comic artists or caricaturists of our day, to compare them with Hogarth. Both Hogarth and the men of our day are graphic satirists, but there is so broad a distinction between the satire of each, and the circumstances of the times in which they respectively laboured, that comparison is impossible. Those who know anything of this great and original genius, must know that he entertained the greatest horror of being mistaken for a _caricaturist_ pure and simple; and although he executed caricatures for special purposes, they may literally be counted on the fingers. "His pictures," says Hazlitt, "are not imitations of still life, or mere transcripts of incidental scenes and customs; but powerful _moral_ satires, exposing vice and folly in their most ludicrous points of view, and with a profound insight into the weak sides of character and manners, in all their tendencies, combinations, and contrasts. There is not a single picture of his containing a representation of mere pictorial or domestic scenery." His object is not so much "to hold the mirror up to nature," as "to show vice her own feature, scorn her own image." "Folly is there seen at the height--the moon is at the full--it is the very error of the time. There is a perpetual error of eccentricities, a tilt and tournament of absurdities, pampered with all sorts of affectation, airy, extravagant, and ostentatious! Yet _he is as little a caricaturist_ as he is a painter of still life. Criticism has not done him justice, though public opinion has."[4] "A set of severer satires," says Charles Lamb, "(for they are not so much comedies, which they have been likened to, as they are strong and masculine satires), less mingled with anything of mere fun, were never written upon paper or graven upon copper. They resemble Juvenal, or the satiric touches in Timon of Athens." [Illustration: W. HOGARTH. "_Mariage a la Mode._"] [Illustration: PAUL SANDBY. _Anti-Hogarthian Caricature._ "A Mountebank Painter demonstrating to his admirers and subscribers that crookedness is y^e most beautifull." _Face p. 7._] CHARACTER OF HOGARTH'S SATIRES.