Perhaps Time's price-enhancing dust,
As statues moulder into earth,
When I'm no more, may mark its worth,
And future connoisseurs may rise,
Honest as ours, and full as wise,
To puff the piece and painter too,
And make me then what Guido's now.'
To some extent the reaction he hoped for has arrived. The latter-day student of 'Sigis-munda,' unblinded by political prejudice or private animosity, renders full justice to the soundness of its execution and the undoubted skill of its technique. Indeed, at the present moment, the tendency seems to be rather to overrate than to underrate its praiseworthy qualities. Yet, when all is said, the subject remains an unattractive and even a repulsive one. It must be admitted also that, in one respect, contemporary critics were right. They were wrong in their unreasoning preference for doubtful 'exotics,' but they were right in their contention that, upon this occasion, Hogarth had strayed perilously from his own peculiar walk, and that so-called 'history painting' was not his strongest point. Conscientious and painstaking, 'Sigismunda' is still a mistake, although it is the mistake of a great artist; and Hogarth's recorded partiality for it affords but one more example of that unaccountable blindness which led Addison to put his poems before the 'Spectator,' Prior to rank his 'Solomon' above the 'loose and hasty scribble' of 'Alma,' and Liston, whose nose alone was provocative of laughter, to cherish the extraordinary delusion that his true vocation was that of a tragic actor.