I can see nothing "dangerous" in the contemplation of such scenes as
this, or the _Enraged Musician_, or the _Southwark Fair_, or twenty
other pleasant prints which come crowding in upon my recollection, in
which the restless activities, the diversified bents and humours, the
blameless peculiarities of men, as they deserve to be called, rather
than their "vices and follies," are held up in a laughable point of
view. All laughter is not of a dangerous or soul-hardening tendency.
There is the petrifying sneer of a demon which excludes and kills Love,
and there is the cordial laughter of a man which implies and cherishes
it. What heart was ever made the worse by joining in a hearty laugh at
the simplicities of Sir Hugh Evans or Parson Adams, where a sense of the
ridiculous mutually kindles and is kindled by a perception of the
amiable? That tumultuous harmony of singers that are roaring out the
words, "The world shall bow to the Assyrian throne," from the opera of
_Judith_, in the third plate of the series, called the _Four Groups of
Heads_; which the quick eye of Hogarth must have struck off in the very
infancy of the rage for sacred oratorios in this country, while "Music
yet was young;" when we have done smiling at the deafening distortions,
which these tearers of devotion to rags and tatters, these takers of
Heaven by storm, in their boisterous mimicry of the occupation of
angels, are making,--what unkindly impression is left behind, or what
more of harsh or contemptuous feeling, than when we quietly leave Uncle
Toby and Mr. Shandy riding their hobby-horses about the room? The
conceited, long-backed Sign-painter, that with all the self-applause of
a Raphael or Correggio (the twist of body which his conceit has thrown
him into has something of the Correggiesque in it) is contemplating the
picture of a bottle which he is drawing from an actual bottle that hangs
beside him, in the print of _Beer Street_,--while we smile at the
enormity of the self delusion, can we help loving the good humour and
self-complacency of the fellow? would we willingly wake him from his
dream?