transient.

A quarterly magazine, called "The Reflector," was published in the autumn
of 1810, and contained Essays by Charles Lamb and several other writers.
Amongst these are some of the best of Lamb's earlier writings--namely, the
paper on Hogarth and that on the Tragedies of Shakespeare. It is singular
that these two Essays, which are as fine as anything of a similar nature
in English criticism, should have been almost unnoticed (undiscovered,
except by literary friends) until the year 1818, when Lamb's works were
collected and published. The grand passage on "Lear" has caused the Essay
on the Shakespeare Tragedies to be well known. Less known is the Essay on
Hogarth, although it is more elaborate and critical; the labor being quite
necessary in this case, as the pretensions of Hogarth to the grand style
had been denounced by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

In affluence of genius, in variety and exuberance of thought, there surely
can exist little comparison between Reynolds and Hogarth. Reynolds was,
indeed, the finest painter, especially the most superb colorist, of the
English school. But Hogarth was the greatest inventor,--the greatest
discoverer of character,--in the English or any other school. As a painter
of manners he is unapproached. In a kindred walk, he traversed all the
passions from the lowest mirth to the profoundest melancholy, possessing
the tragic element in the most eminent degree. And if grandeur can exist--
as I presume it can--in beings who have neither costume nor rank to set
off their qualities, then some of the characters of Hogarth in essential
grandeur are far beyond the conventional figures of many other artists.
Pain, and joy, and poverty, and human daring are not to be circumscribed
by dress and fashion. Their seat is deeper (in the soul), and is
altogether independent of such trivial accretions. In point of expression,
I never saw the face of the madman (in the "Rake's Progress") exceeded in