But his satiric histories had a higher and still more useful direction. They were calculated to encourage industry, and promote humanity in the lower orders of society, by exhibiting the baneful consequences of idleness and cruelty; and to check the ostentatious follies of those in a higher rank, by pointing out the happiness attendant on the practice of virtue, and the consequent misery of dissipation, sensuality, and vice. I hope the warmest admirers of Cervantes will not be offended if I venture to assert that these were objects of more national and individual importance than was the extirpation of knight-errantry. Both these great men may be considered as universal classics; for while Cervantes delights the learned and the illiterate in his own country, and is translated and eagerly read in France, Italy, Germany, and England, while the artists of all these nations emulate each other in delineating the scenes he has described, and every age and rank peruse _Don Quixote_ with pleasure,--the fame of Hogarth is not bounded by the shores of Albion, but takes as wide a circuit through Europe, and his pictured stories are contemplated with admiration by men of every clime.[116] Could their congenial spirits witness the tribute posterity pay to their talents, how would they be gratified! Large as is their portion of fame, they were little favoured by fortune. Hogarth, after a long life of persevering industry, died comparatively poor. As to the maimed hero of Spain, when the learned Don Gregorio Mayans y Siscar, at the request of Lord Carteret, collected materials for his life, he could neither learn where he was born nor where he died. Sevilla, Madrid, Esquivias, Toledo, Lucena, and Alcazor de San Juan, contended for the honour of his birth, whom living they had suffered to languish in a prison. He was born in Alcala de Henares, in the year 1547, and died at Madrid, April 23, 1616, on the same nominal day with Shakspeare; so that Spain and England lost their two great luminaries at the same period, nor have succeeding centuries produced a successor worthy of ascending either of their vacant thrones. From the similarity of their genius, it was reasonable to expect that Hogarth would excel in delineating the scenes described by Cervantes; and though our great painter of nature succeeded better in subjects drawn from the rich storehouse of his own mind than in those described by others, yet in the portraits of the knight, and knight companions, he has adhered very closely to their leading characteristics, which are thus depicted by Cervantes:-- "The age of our gentleman bordered upon fifty years; he was of a robust constitution, spare-bodied, of a meagre visage, and a very keen sportsman.