scenes as terrible as any that the artist struck into black and white; he looked steadily at such things, and, at the proper time, could speak of them. But when he took up the pen of the story-teller, his genius constrained him to such use, such interpretation, of bitter fact as made him beloved, not dreaded, by readers asking, before all else, to be soothingly entertained. On this point I shall have more to say presently. Enough here, that Hogarth undoubtedly helped to concentrate the young writer's mind on the subjects he was to treat in his own way. Evidence, were it needed, is found in the preface to Oliver Twist, where, after speaking of the romantic types of rascality then popular in fiction, he declares that only in one book has he seen the true thief depicted, namely, in the works of Hogarth.
A friend, himself a painter, suggests to me that the true parallel in this sort would be between Dickens and Wilkie. Certainly there is strong resemblance, though, it must be remembered, only on one plane of Dickens's observant and imaginative powers; Wilkie's spirit, in his familiar pictures, strikes one as no less tolerant, no less mirthful, than that of the greater man in whose work he was known to delight; he has the same inborn appreciation of homeliness, the same seeking after
