Note 3 — CATALOGUE OF HOGARTH'S PRINTS.[1] (continued 3)

In the last of these plates, "how delicate and superior," as Mr. Walpole observes, "is Hogarth's satire, when he intimates, in the College of Physicians and Surgeons that preside at a dissection, how the legal habitude of viewing shocking scenes hardens the human mind, and renders it unfeeling. The president maintains the dignity of insensibility over an executed corpse, and considers it but as the object of a lecture. In the print of the Sleeping Judges, this habitual indifference only excites our laughter." To render his spectacle, however, more shocking, our artist has perhaps deviated from nature, against whose laws he so rarely offends. He has impressed marks of agony on the face of the criminal under dissection; whereas it is well known, that, the most violent death once past, the tumult of the features subsides for ever. But, in Hogarth's print, the wretch who has been executed, seems to feel the subsequent operation. Of this plate Mr. S. Ireland has the original drawing.