Look at the hands of the boy playing the pipe in the picture opposite page 74; look at the woman filling a pipe at the table.

To-day we are accustomed to pictures containing children: they are as necessary as sunsets to picture buyers: all our figure-painters lavish their talents upon them; but who had ever troubled to paint a real peasant child before Jan Steen?
It was this rough toper that showed the way, and no one since has ever excelled him.
Parallels have been drawn between Jan Steen and Hogarth, and there are critics who would make Jan a moralist too.

But I do not see how we can compare them.

Steen did what Hogarth could not, Hogarth did what Steen would not.

Hogarth is rarely charming, Steen is rarely otherwise.