Originally published in The National Magazine (National Magazine Company) #1 (Nov 1856).
One of the eminent merits of Hogarth is, that he can tell a story as perfectly by means of pictorial as of written signs. Once give the key-word, and the whole is before us. Mr. Wallis's picture of Chatterton shows the same power; the single word "Chatterton" is a key to the entire tale. The youthful figure of beauty, the tasteful dress, its soiled condition, the beggarly furniture of the attic, the wretched pallet-bed, bring before us the aspirations and the disappointments of the youthful poet. The box of torn papers carries us back to his labours and his letters. The bottle on the ground is evidence as to the mode of death; the candle going out in its socket is a type of the life expired, while at the same time it shows that some hours have elapsed since the act of death. The sickly plant with its leaves turning to the window is another type of the poet's hopes and despairs. The window with its dim glass half-open, and the cheerful sunlight bursting over the roofs of a great city and entering the chamber of death, present another emblem of those contrasts which the short story of the poet comprises. There is not a trait in the most inanimate part of the picture that does not bear upon the story and enforce its moral.
The design complies with other canons of art. When the attention is firmly fixed upon any striking event, the mind naturally becomes so abstracted from other circumstances, that the eye neglects to see them, and the event upon which the mind concentrates itself forms distinctly the centre of a picture. Art is nature taken e converso, and when the event has to be presented to the mind in the same forcible manner, it must take the centre of the frame. Nature herself, in the exercise of organic force, tends to the symmetrical; and symmetry is the very vitality of design. The grouping and arrangement of a picture should be perfectly natural; they should be just such as might happen spontaneously, and yet they should also accord with the special requirements of artistic symmetry. We need only point to the woodcut of Mr. Wallis's fine picture for the reader to note how completely this rule is observed. The body forms a curve like an arch of low convexity, above the crown of which the open lattice shows the morning sunshine. The plant is balanced by the curtain, the bed-head and pillow by the table and candlestick, the box by the coat; the poison, lying as the sting of death at the bottom of the picture in the centre, balances the living sunlight above: yet accident could not have arranged all these accessories in a distribution more perfectly natural. Every one of them helps the effect of the story, whilst none of them distract the attention, and their arrangement necessarily leads up the eye to the centre.