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a dramatic writer: my picture is my stage, and men and woman are my players, who by means of certain actions and gestures, are to exhibit a dumb show." As for the dramas enacted, they were to be derived from "that intermediate species of subjects .. between the sublime and the grotesque, "a field hitherto "totally overlooked" and not yet "broken up in any country or any age." He now proceeded to cultivate this ground with his usual bold enthusiasm, "making all possible use of the technical memory I have before described, by observing and endeavouring to retain in my mind lineally, such objects as best suited my purpose; so that be where I would, while my eyes were open, I was at my studies ... Whatever I saw ... became more truly a picture than one that was drawn

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with a camera obscura. And thus the most striking objects, whether of beauty or deformity, were by habit the most easily impressed and retained in my imagination. A redundancy of matter being by this means acquired...

p 90

Hogarth - from a modern admirer's point of view, it is among his more unpleasing traits - loved to reproduce the effects nowadays captured by instantaneous photography. Teacups and teapot hang in the air; the faces of the three actors at the front of the stage, behind an imaginary row of footlights, reflect feelings that occupy a fraction of a second, while the table is still on the slant, and the tinkle and crash of broken porcelain has not yet had time to die away. But each face is alive with character; from