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diff --git a/29647-h/29647-h.htm b/29647-h/29647-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c493906 --- /dev/null +++ b/29647-h/29647-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2556 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature, by Selwyn Brinton. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> + + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 12%; + } + + .pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + } /* page numbers */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + .u {text-decoration: underline;} + + .caption {font-weight: bold;} + + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + .figleft {float: left; clear: left; margin-left: 0; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: + 0em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .figright {float: right; clear: right; margin-left: 0; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: + .5em; margin-right: 0em; padding: 1em; text-align: center;} + + a:link {color:#0000ff; text-decoration:none} + a:visited {color:#6633cc; text-decoration:none} + + ins.correction {text-decoration:none; /* replace default underline.. */ + border-bottom: thin solid gray; /* ..with delicate gray line */} + + .spacer {padding-left: 5em; padding-right: 5em;} + + div.center {text-align: center;} + div.indent {margin-left:25%; margin-right:25%;} + div.poem {margin-left:15%; margin-right:15%;} + + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature, by +Selwyn Brinton + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature + +Author: Selwyn Brinton + +Release Date: August 9, 2009 [EBook #29647] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 18TH CENTURY IN ENGLISH CARICATURE *** + + + + +Produced by Stephanie Eason and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + + + + + +</pre> + + + +<h3>THE LANGHAM SERIES</h3> +<h3>AN ILLUSTRATED COLLECTION</h3> +<h3>OF ART MONOGRAPHS</h3> + +<h3>EDITED BY SELWYN BRINTON, M.A.</h3> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<h3>THE LANGHAM SERIES OF ART MONOGRAPHS</h3> + +<div class="center">EDITED BY SELWYN BRINTON, M.A.</div> + +<div class="indent"> +<p>Vol. I.—<span class="smcap">Bartolozzi and his Pupils in England.</span> <i>By</i> <span class="smcap">Selwyn Brinton</span>, M.A.</p> + +<p>Vol. II.—<span class="smcap">Colour-Prints of Japan.</span> <i>By</i> <span class="smcap">Edward F. Strange</span>, Assistant +Keeper in the Victoria and Albert Museum.</p> + +<p>Vol. III.—<span class="smcap">The Illustrators of Montmartre.</span> <i>By</i> <span class="smcap">Frank L. Emanuel</span>.</p> + +<p>Vol. IV.—<span class="smcap">Auguste Rodin.</span> <i>By</i> <span class="smcap">Rudolf Dircks</span>, Author of +"Verisimilitudes," "The Libretto," &c.</p> + +<p>Vol. V.—<span class="smcap">Venice as an Art City.</span> <i>By</i> <span class="smcap">Albert Zacher</span>.</p> + +<p>Vol. VI.—<span class="smcap">London as an Art City.</span> <i>By</i> Mrs. <span class="smcap">Steuart Erskine</span>, Author of +"Lady Diana Beauclerk," &c.</p> + +<p>Vol. VII.—<span class="smcap">Nuremberg.</span> <i>By</i> <span class="smcap">H. Uhde-Bernays</span>.</p> + +<p>Vol. VIII.—<span class="smcap">The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature.</span> <i>By</i> <span class="smcap">Selwyn +Brinton</span>, M.A., Author of "Bartolozzi and his Pupils in England," &c.</p></div> + +<div class="center"> +<i>In Preparation</i><br /> +<span class="smcap">Rome as an Art City</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">and</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">Italian Architecture</span></div> +<div class="indent"> +<p>These volumes will be artistically presented and profusely illustrated, +both with colour plates and photogravures, and neatly bound in art +canvas. 1<i>s</i>. 6<i>d</i>. net, or in leather, 2<i>s</i>. 6<i>d</i>. net.</p></div> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p><a name="frontis" id="frontis"></a></p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i004.jpg" alt="Recruits" /><br /> +<span class="caption"><span class="smcap">Recruits.</span><br /> By H. W. Bunbury.</span></div> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + + +<h2>THE</h2> +<h2>EIGHTEENTH CENTURY</h2> +<h2>IN</h2> +<h2>ENGLISH CARICATURE</h2> +<p> </p> +<h4>BY</h4> +<h3>SELWYN BRINTON, M.A.,</h3> +<h4><i>Author of</i><br /> +"BARTOLOZZI AND HIS PUPILS IN ENGLAND,"<br /> +ETC.</h4> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h3>A. SIEGLE</h3> +<h3>2 LANGHAM PLACE, LONDON, W.</h3> +<h3>1904</h3> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<div class="center"> +<i>To Friends beyond the Seas</i><br /> +<i>this Study</i><br /> +<i>Of a Common Heritage in</i><br /> +<i>English Art</i></div> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<div class="center"><i>All rights reserved</i></div> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2> + +<table cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" summary="Table of Contents"> +<tr><td> </td><td> </td><td align="right"><i>Page</i></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#I">I.</a></td><td>INTRODUCTORY</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#II">II.</a></td><td>THE COMEDY OF VICE</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_8">8</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#III">III.</a></td><td>THE COMEDY OF SOCIETY</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_29">29</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#IV">IV.</a></td><td>HE COMEDY OF POLITICS</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_54">54</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#V">V.</a></td><td>THE COMEDY OF LIFE</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_74">74</a></td></tr></table> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2> +<table cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" summary="Illustrations"> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Recruits.</span></td><td><i>By Henry William Bunbury</i></td><td> </td><td><i><a href="#frontis">Frontispiece</a></i></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Shrimpers</span> (Tail-piece).</td><td><i>By Thomas Rowlandson</i></td><td align="center"><i>Page</i></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_7">7</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Morning.</span></td><td><i>By William Hogarth</i></td><td align="center"><i>Facing page</i></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_10">10</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Distrest Poet.</span></td><td><i>By William Hogarth</i></td><td align="center">"</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_12">12</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Marriage à la Mode.</span></td><td><i>By William Hogarth</i></td><td align="center">"</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_20">20</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Family Piece.</span></td><td><i>By H. W. Bunbury</i></td><td align="center">"</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_42">42</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">A Fashionable Salutation.</span></td><td><i>By H. W. Bunbury</i></td><td align="center">"</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_48">48</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Lumps of Pudding.</span></td><td><i>By H. W. Bunbury</i></td><td align="center"><i>Page</i></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_53">53</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Britannia between Death and the Doctors.</span></td><td><i>By James Gillray</i></td><td align="center"><i>Facing page</i></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_64">64</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Armed Heroes.</span></td><td><i>By James Gillray</i></td><td align="center">"</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_66">66</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Buonaparte as King-Maker.</span></td><td><i>By James Gillray</i></td><td align="center">"</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_68">68</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Nelson Recruiting with his Brave Tars<br /> after the Battle of the Nile.</span></td><td><i>By Thomas Rowlandson</i></td><td align="center">"</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_82">82</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Filial Affection</span> (Colour-print).</td><td><i>By Thomas Rowlandson</i></td><td align="center">"</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_86">86</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">A Ball at the Hackney Assembly Rooms.</span></td><td><i>By Thomas Rowlandson</i></td><td align="center">"</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_90">90</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">A Theatrical Candidate.</span></td><td><i>By Thomas Rowlandson</i></td><td align="center">"</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_92">92</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Old Joseph Nollekens and his Venus.</span></td><td><i>By Thomas Rowlandson</i></td><td align="center">"</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_94">94</a></td></tr></table> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h3> +<h3>INTRODUCTORY</h3> + +<p>The word Caricature does not lend itself easily to precise definition. +Etymologically it connects itself with the Italian <i>caricare</i>, to load +or charge, thus corresponding precisely in derivation with its French +equivalent <i>Charge</i>; and—save a yet earlier reference in Sir Thomas +Browne—it first appears, as far as I am aware, in that phrase of No. +537 of the <i>Spectator</i>, "Those burlesque pictures which the Italians +call <i>caracaturas</i>."</p> + +<p>Putting the dry bones of etymology from our thought the essence, the +life-blood of the thing itself, is surely this—the human creature's +amusement with itself and its environment, and its expression of that +amusement through the medium of the plastic arts. So that our +<i>caracatura</i>, our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> burlesque picture of life, stands on the same basis +as comedy or satire, is, in fact, but comedy or satire finding its +outlet in another form of expression. And this is so true that wherever +we find brilliant or trenchant satire of life there we may be sure, too, +that caricature is not far absent. Pauson's grotesques are the +correlative of the Comedies of Aristophanes; and when the development of +both is not correlative, not simultaneous, it is surely because one or +other has been checked by political or social conditions, which have +been inherently antagonistic to its growth.</p> + +<p>Those conditions—favourable or antagonistic—it becomes part of our +inquiry at this point to examine. We have this to ask, even granting +that our "burlesque picture" is a natural, almost a necessary, +accompaniment of human life,—was found, we may quite safely assume, in +the cave-dwelling of primitive man, who probably satirised with a flint +upon its walls those troublesome neighbours of his, the mammoth and the +megatherium,—peers out upon us from the complex culture of the Roman +world in the clumsy <i>graffito</i> of the Crucifixion,—emerges in the +Middle Ages in a turbulent growth of grotesque, wherein those grim +figures of Death or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> Devil move through a maze of imagery often quaint +and fantastic, sometimes obscene or terrible—takes a fresh start in the +<i>Passionals</i> of Lucas Cranach, and can be traced in England through her +Rebellion and Restoration up to the very confines of the eighteenth +century. Why, we have to ask, even granting that William Hogarth's +"monster Caricatura" is thus omnivorous and omnipresent, does he tower +aloft in some countries and under some conditions to the majesty of a +new art, and in others dwindle down to puny ridicule?</p> + +<p>Taking the special subject of this little volume, the eighteenth century +itself, we find little to interest us in French pictorial satire until +that monstrous growth of political caricature created by the Revolution. +Italy in the same period has but little to offer us, Germany as little +or less; and it is to England that we must turn for the pictorial +humour, whether social or political, of that interesting epoch. And this +because the England of that time is a self-conscious creature, emergent +from a successful struggle for freedom, and strong enough to enjoy a +hearty laugh—even at her own expense. While the Bastille still frowns +over France, the Inquisition and the Jesuits are an incubus upon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> Spain +and Italy, while Germany is split up into little principalities, +Dukedoms, Bishoprics, Palatinates, England has already won for herself +the great boon of freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of +religious and political opinion. The satirist could here find expression +and appreciation. The birth of the pictorial satirist who is the subject +of my first chapter coincides pretty closely with the creation of that +<i>Tale of a Tub</i>, of which Dean Swift, in all the ripeness of his later +talent, exclaimed: "Good God! what genius I had when I wrote that book"; +and no print from the artist's graver—even his "Stages of Cruelty," or +his "Players dressing in a Barn"—could excel in coarseness of fibre the +great satirist's <i>Strephon and Chloe</i>.</p> + +<p>The pen of Swift and the graver of Hogarth in the early eighteenth +century found in England conditions not very dissimilar to those which +awaited Philipon and Honoré Daumier[<a name="f1.1" id="f1.1" href="#f1">1</a>] in Paris of the early nineteenth +century—that is, a public which had come through a period of intensely +active<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> political existence to a complete and complex self-consciousness, +and which enjoyed (just as in Paris <i>La Caricature</i>, when suppressed, +found a speedy successor in <i>Le Charivari</i>) sufficient political freedom +to render criticism a possibility. And from Hogarth through Sandby and +Sayer and Woodward to Henry William Bunbury, and onwards to that giant +of political satire, James Gillray, and his vigorous contemporary Thomas +Rowlandson, what a feast of material is spread before us; what an +insight we may gain, not only into costume, manners, social life, but +into the detailed political development of a fertile and fascinating +period of history. In the earlier age Hogarth is ready to present the +very London of his time in the <i>levée</i> and drawing-room, in the vice and +extravagance of the rich, in the industrious and thriving citizen, and +those lowest haunts where crime hoped to lurk undisturbed. In the +century's close Gillray's pencil notes every change of the political +kaleidoscope. In his prints we seem almost to hear the muffled roar of +the Parisian mob, clamorous for more blood in those days of Terror; or +we watch the giant forms of Pitt and Buonaparte fronting each other as +the strife comes nearer home to Britain.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>To attempt within the limits of this little volume to exhaust a subject +so rich in magnificent material would be obviously impossible. All that +is permitted me here by imperative limits of space is a sketch, where my +matter tempts me sorely to a comprehensive study. Yet even the sketch +may claim for itself a place beside the finished work of art, if—while +omitting the detail which it was unable to include—it has yet secured +for us the main outlines, the swing of the figure, the balance of light +and shadow, the sweep and spacing of the horizon; just as the massed +clouds in a Constable study can give us as keen artistic pleasure as the +"Valley Farm," or his "Salisbury Cathedral." And thus I have attempted +here not so much the history of the men, the catalogue of their achieved +work—interesting or valuable though such a history or catalogue might +be—as to show the spirit of the age itself reflected most faithfully, +even when it seems most caricatured or burlesqued, by their brush or +graver or pencil; to watch the grotesque visage and ignoble form of Vice +traced by Hogarth's genius from the homes of London's luxury to her dens +of hidden crime; to study the more refined, if somewhat weaker, social +satire of Henry William<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> Bunbury; to admire those magnificent political +cartoons of James Gillray—colossal and overwhelming, even in their +brutality or obscenity; and finally, to lose ourselves in the luxuriant +and living growth of Thomas Rowlandson's pencil, recreating for us the +features of an age that was, like himself, vigorous, buoyant, and +expansive,—that true Age of Caricature, which is also known as the +Eighteenth Century.</p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i017.jpg" alt="Shrimpers" title="Shrimpers"/></div> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h3> +<h3>THE COMEDY OF VICE</h3> + +<p>The eighteenth century, which was to witness the magnificent and, in its +own way, unequalled achievement of English art in the paintings of +Reynolds, Romney, Gainsborough, Hoppner; in the engravings of +Bartolozzi, Dalton, John Raphael Smith, and William Henry Ryland; in the +caricatures, which we have just noted, of Bunbury, Rowlandson, and +Gillray, was to open, not inappropriately, with the appearance and +speedy recognition of a very individual and very characteristic +genius—with the pictured comedies of William Hogarth.</p> + +<p>A first survey of my subject led me for a moment to doubt how far my +title would cover the creations of that incomparable humourist. He is, +indeed, more than caricaturist in the sense in which we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> shall use this +term of his artistic successors. His pictured moralities teem with +portraits drawn from the very life. He is a satirist, as mordant and +merciless as Juvenal, or, in his own day, the terrible Dean of St. +Patrick's; from his house in Leicester Fields he looks out upon the +London of his day, and probes with his remorseless brush or graver to +the hidden roots of its follies, its vices, and crimes. "He may be said +to have created," says one of his early biographers,[<a name="f2.1" id="f2.1" href="#f2">2</a>] "a new species +of painting, which may be termed the <i>moral comic</i>;" meaning, thereby, +that the instinctive humour of the man's art is generally (not, as we +shall see, always) directed to some moral purpose, some lesson of +conduct to be thence derived. That is just where Hogarth connects +himself, inevitably and intimately, with the Puritan England which had +preceded him. Not for nothing had that century, into whose last years he +was born, seen the great uprising of Puritan England,—the struggle for +civil and political liberty, and its achievement,—the Ironsides of +Cromwell with Bible and uplifted sword. That intensity of moral and +spiritual conviction, that earnestness about life<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> and its issues was +yet in the nation's blood, and must find some outlet in the returning +world of art, which its own austerity had banished; but, in another +sense, mark how truly Hogarth connects himself with the later +caricaturists of the coming age.</p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i021.jpg" alt="Morning" /><br /> +<span class="caption"><i>By William Hogarth</i><br /> MORNING</span></div> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<p>Beauty does not enter into his art,—most of all in that highest sense +of plastic beauty of form, which the great Italians had so intensely +felt, which the great English school, uprising in his own day, was in +some measure to recover. At most a comely buxom wench steals sometimes +slyly into his canvas or copper-plate—the two servant-maids in his +print of <a href="#Page_10">"Morning"</a> at Covent Garden, whom the roysterers turning out +from Tom King's coffee-house are kissing in the Piazza; the demure and +pretty Miss West, looking over a joint hymn book with the amorous—but +industrious—apprentice; or that coy minx—most delicious of them +all—who has just dozed off amid "The Sleeping Congregation," with her +prayer-book opened at the fascinating page of Matrimony, and to whose +luxuriant charms of face and form the eyes of the fat old clerk are +stealthily directed. To Hogarth these are the incidents, not the +inspiration, of his art. Lavater, that keen <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>observer, aimed near to +the mark when he wrote: "<i>Il ne faut pas attendre beaucoup de noblesse +de Hogarth. Le vrai beau n'étoit guère à la portée de ce peintre.</i>" It +is, indeed, one of the unconscious ironies of art history that the +artist, whose work shows least of its influence or attraction, should +have devoted the one offspring of his pen to an Analysis of Beauty.</p> + +<p>But it is when we turn to the humour of life, even in its most sordid +tragedies, that his real strength appears. "<i>Quelle richesse +inexprimable</i>"—says Lavater again, and no less justly—"<i>dans les +scènes comiques ou morales de la vie</i>." None like Hogarth has +characterised "the lowest types of modern humanity, has better depicted +the drunken habits of the dregs of the people, the follies of life, and +the horrors of vice." And it is just here, as I have hinted, that +Hogarth connects himself with the later caricaturists.</p> + +<p>It were quite possible to treat a purely moral story, such as that of +"The Industrious and the Idle Apprentice," in a purely moral sentiment; +but this is just what our artist cannot bring himself to do. He must +have that touch of nature, and of humour, which makes the whole world +kin. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> must introduce the quarrelling cat and dog into the office +scene between West and Goodchild, or the feline visitant whose +apparition through the chimney disturbs Thomas Idle's unhallowed +slumbers; he must accentuate the gormandising guests in the Sheriff's +banquet, and the humours of the crowd even in a Tyburn execution. And in +other subjects—where the moral lesson is either absent or less +intrusive—the man's fancy runs absolutely riot in humorous observation. +"The Distressed Poet," with the baby squalling in his bed, the poor wife +stitching at his solitary pair of breeches, and a strapping milkmaid +clamouring for payment of her account; "The Enraged Musician," with +every conceivable pandemonium of noise congregated beneath his window; +above all, "The Sleeping Congregation," collected in a conventicle of +very early Georgian design, and unanimously occupied in carrying out the +precept of their reverend pastor's text, "Come unto me ... and I will +give Rest"—save only those two vigilant old ladies, perhaps pillars of +the edifice, and the clerk to whose interest in the sleeping nymph of +the next pew I have already alluded—are studies in pure humour.</p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i025.jpg" alt="The Distrest Poet" /><br /> +<span class="caption"><i>By William Hogarth</i><br /> THE DISTREST POET</span></div> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<p>But to multiply examples of Hogarth's humour <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>would come very near to +cataloguing his every work. Let us turn now from that work to the man +himself, and study something of those conditions of life of which his +genius gives us our most vivid impress.</p> + +<p>William Hogarth was born in 1697 or 1698, in London, but of a +Westmorland family (Hoggard would seem to have been the earlier +spelling), one member of which, the artist's father, after working as a +schoolmaster in Westmorland, had settled in London as corrector of the +Press.</p> + +<p>He must have been a man of some education, since we hear of a +Latin-English Dictionary of his composition, though there seems some +uncertainty as to whether it ever got beyond the initial stage of MS.; +and his son William was early in life bound 'prentice to a silversmith +named Gamble, his business being to learn the graving of arms and +ciphers upon plate. His marvellous gift for caricature soon showed +itself; and a tavern quarrel at Highgate seems to have afforded subject +for an early manifestation of his talent in this direction. As the +period of his 'prenticeship came to its close he entered an Academy of +drawing in St. Martin's Lane, where he may have come under Sir James +Thornhill's notice;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> but seems to have failed to show any exceptional +proficiency in his life studies. Form, we have seen already, lay +outside—in certain manifestations entirely outside—the peculiar limits +of his temperament. Shop-bills and coats-of-arms were probably the +mainstay of his livelihood at this period, though plates for books were +beginning, little by little, to come in his way; but when in 1730 he +clandestinely married the daughter of Sir James Thornhill, the Court +painter was so incensed at this <i>mèsalliance</i> that he refused the young +couple any acknowledgment. It was at this very time that Hogarth created +his first work of individual genius in that superb series of plates to +which he gave the name of "The Harlot's Progress"; and it is said that +Lady Thornhill designedly placed one of the plates in her husband's way, +only to elicit the grudging praise of: "The man who can produce these +can also maintain a wife without a portion."</p> + +<p>But the ice was broken, and the ensuing thaw led to a complete +reconciliation. Sir James Thornhill treated his daughter and son-in-law +more generously, and lived with them in future till his death in 1733.</p> + +<p>At the same time the Series which had brought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> about domestic +reconciliation, had also brought fame and fortune to the artist. The +third scene of the Progress, in which the erring girl is arrested, +contained, it would seem, a clever portrait of Sir James Gonson, a +magistrate whose energies were famous in this direction. The print is +passed around at a meeting of the Board of Treasury, at which Sir James +is present; every Lord must repair to the print-shop, to obtain for +himself a copy; the vogue was started, and twelve hundred subscribers +entered their names for the Series, the price of each set being one +guinea.</p> + +<p>William Hogarth was now well started in his career of fame; and +deservedly so, for in some respects "The Harlot's Progress" is one of +the most characteristic and the most brilliant of his creations. Its +popularity was immense and instantaneous; it was played in pantomime, +and reproduced on ladies' fans. But if he did not surpass the genius of +his first invention he certainly came very close to it, both in the +"Rake's Progress" and in his <a href="#Page_20">"Marriage à la Mode."</a></p> + +<p>Each of these Series, as well as that of the "Industrious and Idle +'Prentices" are complete stories, worked out to their +<i>dénoûment</i>—tragedies,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> one might say, written with a burlesque pencil, +of eighteenth-century life. And if the note struck seem sometimes too +insistent, if the Industrious one be too sleek, too self-complacent, the +prodigal too immersed in sensual folly and indulgence; if the blacks +seem too black, and the whites too white, and those half-tones which +accord the values of life be generally missing; if a more refined age +demands a subtler analysis, a more artistic treatment, can we yet deny +the truth and necessity of the eternal lesson? Have we yet reached, or +shall we ever reach, an age in which ineptitude, insolence, idleness, +fail to work out their inevitable resultant? Or is it less true for us +than for those earlier ages—the message which the writer of that +magnificent thirty-eighth Psalm reiterates, as though he would drive +deep into our souls its lasting verity. "<i>Put thou thy trust in the Lord +and be doing good; dwell in the land and verily thou shall be fed. +Delight thou in the Lord; and he shall give thee thy heart's desire.... +Yet a little while and the ungodly shall be clean gone ... the Lord +shall laugh him to scorn, for he hath seen that his day is coming.</i>"</p> + +<p>Just as insistent, just as certain of his concluding verdict as the +Psalmist is the eighteenth-century<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> engraver and humorist. Even his own +day may already have seen "the ungodly" set high above men in social +position, quoted with respect in financial circles, perhaps even a +regular attendant at the local conventicle,—"flourishing," in short, to +quote that inimitable phrase of the same Psalmist, "like a green +bay-tree"; but he, at least will admit no doubt of the ultimate +conclusion. "In all his delineation," says Mr. Austin Dobson,[<a name="f3.1" id="f3.1" href="#f3">3</a>] with +fine insight, "as in that famous design of Prudhon, we see Justice and +Vengeance following hard upon the criminal. He knew, no doubt, as well +as we, that not seldom (humanly speaking) the innocent are punished and +the guilty go at large. What matter! that message should not be preached +by him at any rate. So he drew his 'Bogey' bigger ... and drove his +graver deeper in the copper."</p> + +<p>Yet it is to be noted that from the first his genius is attracted to +social satire. The <i>Masquerades and Operas, Burlington Gate</i>, 1724 +(which he calls in his own notes <i>The Taste of the Times</i>)—the first +plate which he published on his own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> account,—was popular enough to be +freely pirated. "The Wanstead Assembly" brings him close to the later +caricaturists; "The Burning of Rumps" shows us a London crowd beside old +Temple Bar, with its ghastly trophies of Jacobite relics; and all these +lead up to his later success in the two Progresses and the Marriage +Series. In 1733 he had settled in his house in Leicester Fields, with +its gilt sign of the Golden Head—the sign which he had fashioned and +gilded himself, in the similitude of the painter Van Dyck; and here the +most of his life was to be spent, varied by visits in later years to the +villa which he then acquired at Chiswick. He is now fairly facing his +life work, and a brief survey of this is all we can hope to attempt in +the limits of this chapter.</p> + +<p>I have already mentioned "The Harlot's Progress," and its immediate +successor, "The Rake's Progress," the subjects of which speak for +themselves. The country maiden's arrival in London, the breakfast scene +with her Jewish admirer, and the scene in Bridewell are to be noted +among the prints of the first Series; but all are full of character and +interest. In "The Rake's Progress" the second plate introduces us to a +side of Hogarth's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> talent which he was to develop later on more fully in +his <a href="#Page_20">"Marriage à la Mode"</a>—namely, his satire of eighteenth-century life +of fashion.</p> + +<p>The awkward youth who in the plate before had come into his fortune is +now in the full of its enjoyment: become a fine gentleman, he holds his +morning <i>levée</i> of those numerous parasites who minister to his vanity +or pleasure. The foreign element (which Hogarth in his heart detested) +is here to the front in the figure of the French dancing-master, trying +a new step, with the fiddle in his hand; behind him the <i>maître +d'armes</i>, Dubois, is making a lunge with his <i>epée de combat</i>, while +Figg, a noted English prize-fighter, watches his movements with an +expression of contempt. Another portrait is Bridgman, a well-known +landscape gardener of the time, who is proposing to our young hero some +scheme for his estate; while the seated and periwigged figure who runs +his fingers over the harpsichord has been suggested as that of the great +composer Handel. But when we start forth to knock down the watch, "beat +the rounds," intrigue with the fair, and generally keep up the character +of a young blood or "macaroni," a little timely assistance is often +welcome; and is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> here proffered (with hope of due remuneration) by the +villainous-looking figure on the prodigal's left, whose recommendation +is seen in the letter he presents: "The Capt. is a man of honour, his +sword may serve you." Meanwhile, a jockey holds before his master the +cup he has won; and a tame poet in the corner seems to be invoking the +Muses in unmerited praise of the same patron.</p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i035.jpg" alt="Marriage à la Mode" /><br /> +<span class="caption"><i>By William Hogarth</i><br /> MARRIAGE À LA MODE<br /> <span class="smcap">Plate II</span></span></div> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<p>In his next plate Hogarth passes to a scene of indescribable orgy; but +all this satire on fashionable extravagance, which we have just noted in +detail, is still more fully developed in his masterly Series of +<a href="#Page_20">"Marriage à la Mode."</a> Hogarth's oil paintings of this complete Series +are in the London National Gallery, and it is instructive to compare +these with the prints, the two first pictures of the Series being +especially attractive in treatment. The second of these, representing +the morning, when husband and wife awake to <i>ennui</i> from a night of +dissipation, is peculiarly happy in spacing and composition, as my +illustration may show; while Plate IV. of this Series, showing a +reception of the Countess while at her toilet, gives an opening for a +clever satire by our artist of the fashionable society of his day, which +is as brilliant as any Venetian <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>scene by Longhi, and the ensuing +plates point the sequel to a life of folly. Nor has the artist forgotten +here to give a side blow to the foreign element—which aroused his +hostility, from the French dancing-master or <i>perruquier</i> to the great +Italian Masters—Correggio's "Jupiter and Io" finding a place on the +walls of her ladyship's bedroom, just as the "Choice of Paris" had been +included in the Rake's <i>levée</i>; and we shall note very soon that these +allusions were not incidental, but far more probably intended.</p> + +<p>For Hogarth had now in these three series attained a reputation which he +probably increased by his delightful studies of pure humour, among which +"Modern Midnight Conversation," "The Sleeping Congregation," "Strolling +Players in a Barn," "The Laughing Audience," "The Enraged Musician," and +"The Distressed Poet" are to be especially commended, as well as that +fine series of "The Four Times of the Day," in which last <a href="#Page_10">"Morning"</a> (of +which I am able to give an illustration) is certainly a masterpiece. His +estimate of his own powers had increased, and now led him to leave that +path in which his genius had already found its intimate expression, and +to seek to become<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> that which he was not and never could be—a great +imaginative and historical painter. Without ever having really studied +the great Masters of the past, without comprehending either their merits +or demerits, he declared that it were an easy task for him to surpass +even Correggio on his own ground: the result was, if not disaster, at +least something very near to it. The "Sigismunda," which he had painted +with the above object, was returned on his hands by the purchaser. It +hangs now, indeed, in the National Gallery, but I do not imagine many +serious critics will prefer it to the marvellous <i>chiaroscuro</i>, the +refined ideal beauty of the Master of Parma. Yet that delicious "Shrimp +Girl" which hangs near it, painted with almost a Fragonard's gaiety of +palette, shows what our artist might have achieved had he gone, like +Morland, for his subjects to the common life of his own country. The +staircase paintings of St. Bartholomew's Hospital are not likely, I +think, to induce us to revise the above opinion; and Sir Joshua's +criticism is here so apposite and so just that I need no excuse for +quoting it in some detail. "After this admirable artist had spent the +greater part of his life in an active, busy, and, we may add, successful +attention<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> to the ridicule of life; after he had invented a new species +of dramatic painting in which probably he will never be equalled; and +had stored his mind with infinite materials to explain and illustrate +the domestic and familiar scenes of common life which were generally, +and ought to have been always, the subject of his pencil,—he very +imprudently, or rather presumptuously, attempted the great historical +style, for which his previous habits had by no means prepared him: he +was indeed so unacquainted with the principles of this style that he was +not even aware that any artificial preparation was necessary. It is to +be regretted that any part of the life of such a genius should be +fruitlessly employed."</p> + +<p>This criticism, which is all the more telling from its reticence, was +keenly felt, and probably never forgiven, by our artist; to us it is of +value critically as marking the cleavage between himself and the great +English school of the eighteenth century, which sought its inspiration +otherwise than in his comedy of life. But with a tenacity, with a +stubborn faith in his genius which we cannot but admire, he holds firm +to his own view of art. That is in the character of the man—sound, +honest, sincere even where he is mistaken or narrow—just as we see<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> him +in his <i>self-portrait</i> of the London Gallery, with his faithful "Trump" +sitting in front, as who should say, "This is my master, Hogarth—and +let me just see the dog who will dare bark at him." And so when his +critics barked or railed he held but the more stubbornly to his opinion; +he rated the more mercilessly those "black masters," whose faults or +whose supreme genius it needed a deeper study than he had given them to +understand; and when "Sigismunda," that was to rival Allegri, comes back +upon his hands he prices it obstinately at £400, even in his will +insisting that it should not be sold below that sum.</p> + +<p>But now, not content with attempting to eclipse the great Italian +masters, not content with quarrelling with the critics, in the same +reckless confidence, with the same bull-dog courage and tenacity he will +descend from his artistic charger to meet these last upon their own +ground, and armed only with those weapons so dear to them, but new to +his untried hands—the goose quill and the ink bottle—will tear down +the veil that conceals Beauty, and teach them what in future to write, +what to select, what to admire!</p> + +<p>I am treating in this chapter William Hogarth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> as a delineator of the +comedy of life, not as an art critic, nor as a philosopher; and it is +not my painful duty to drag the gentle reader through the verbose +Preface to a no less verbose Introduction, to find ourselves at the end +of these still in front of the author's main problem of the "Analysis of +Beauty." The work probably suffered from the presence of more than one +obliging literary—or would-be literary—friend. We hear of a Mr. Ralph, +from Chiswick, volunteering his services in this direction, of a Mr. +Nichols following him; and of the Rev. Mr. Townley being much busied on +that Preface, wherein Lomazzo rubs shoulders with Michelangelo and +Protogenes, and where the modern mortal hears with astonishment of "the +sublime part which is a real <i>je ne sçai quoi</i>," and which, "being the +most important part to all connoisseurs, I shall call a harmonious +propriety, which is a touching or moving unity, or a pathetic agreement, +&c."</p> + +<p>But it would be unfair to judge the Analysis by this preface, which +admittedly befogged even poor Hogarth himself. Suffice to say here that +he seeks to divide his elusive element, which might have defied even the +dialectic of Socrates, into its "principles<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> of Fullness, Variety, +Uniformity, Simplicity, Intricacy, and Quantity; <i>all which co-operate +in the production of beauty, mutually correcting, and restraining each +other occasionally</i>"; and that the essay, even if entirely inadequate as +a philosophical treatment of the subject, contains many useful +suggestions and shrewd observations.</p> + +<p>It had been enough surely for one short life-time to have been the +greatest pictorial humorist of his age, to have tried to climb above +Allegri and Titian, and to have traced in thought Beauty's self to her +hidden source; but behold our ill-judged artist plunging now, with equal +assurance and courage, into that tumultuous sea of English +eighteenth-century political strife. The result was this time fatal to +his peace, and probably even to his life. John Wilkes was not a very +safe man to attack carelessly, nor yet likely to remain quiescent under +this treatment; and Hogarth's print of the "Times," published in +September of 1762, provoked a very savage rejoinder in No. 17 of the +<i>North Briton</i>. Hogarth's reply was a caricature of the popular leader; +who then engaged one of his supporters, named Churchill, to retaliate in +an angry epistle to the artist. Hogarth again replies with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> +graver—that terrible weapon in his practised hands—and draws a +portrait of "The Bruiser, once the Reverend Churchill," shown in the +form of a dancing bear, with club plastered with lies, and a tankard of +porter at his side.</p> + +<p>"Never," says one of his earlier critics, "did two angry men with their +abilities throw mud with less dexterity; but during this period of +pictorial and poetic warfare (so virulent and disgraceful to all the +parties) Hogarth's health declined visibly." A presentiment of his end +seems to have come to him at his own table among his friends, and he +said to them: "My next undertaking shall be the 'End of all things.'" +The next day his graver was already busy with the strange plate which he +called "The Bathos," where Father Time is seen dying, his broken scythe +and hour-glass beside him, amid a chaos of ruin all around.</p> + +<p>This was actually his last work, for a month later, on the 28th of +October, 1764, having returned in weak health from Chiswick to his house +in Leicester Fields, he died suddenly of an aneurysm on his chest. His +tomb at Chiswick, where his widow came to join him twenty-five years +later (in 1789), was adorned in relief with the mask of Comedy,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> the +wreath of laurel, the palette and the book on Beauty; and it was his +friend Garrick who is said to have composed those lines of his epitaph, +with which we too may take our farewell of the great artist of comedy:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +"... Whose pictur'd morals charm the mind,<br /> +And through the eye correct the heart.<br /> +If genius fire thee, reader, stay;<br /> +If nature touch thee, drop a tear;<br /> +If neither move thee, turn away,<br /> +For Hogarth's honoured dust lies here."</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h3> + +<h3>THE COMEDY OF SOCIETY</h3> + +<p>In the work of Henry William Bunbury we strike an entirely different +note to that of the artist we have just studied. The contrast is, in its +way, refreshing as well as instructive. Just as Hogarth appears (b. +1698) at almost the first years of the eighteenth century, so Bunbury +dates (b. 1750) from exactly its dividing year; therefore he belongs no +longer to those days of Swift and Bolingbroke and Walpole, of Jacobite +intrigue and Hanoverian power, but to the period of the American war, +and those ominous thunderclouds preceding the French Revolution.</p> + +<p>Again, just as William Hogarth belongs entirely to the people, and +shares profoundly both their best and worst qualities, so the artist we +are now considering belongs no less definitely to the aristocratic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> +class—is a member of a Suffolk family which dated its English origin to +the Conquest, which had gained its knighthood from Queen Elizabeth, and +its baronetcy from the Merry Monarch; and had himself in his younger +days made the "grand tour" of France and Italy, and later held a +commission in his Majesty's Militia, and the post of equerry to the Duke +of York.</p> + +<p>"Something of the amateur"—I have written elsewhere[<a name="f4.1" id="f4.1" href="#f4">4</a>]—"remains +through all the work of Bunbury, who left politics practically out of +his field of subjects, and whose social qualities were one of his +greatest charms. He married Catherine Horneck, whose sister Mary had +been painted—and, it is said, proposed to—by Sir Joshua Reynolds, who +had elsewhere painted these two pretty women together; and when he +settled in the country with his young wife, his circle of friends came +to include Oliver Goldsmith, the actor Garrick, Hoppner, and Sir +Joshua—the latter being godfather to his second son, Henry, and +painting his eldest as Master Bunbury in 1781—and last, but not least, +Dr. Samuel Johnson." The great Doctor had in fact<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> presented to the +young couple their family Bible—a fact which is recorded upon the +fly-leaf in our artist's own handwriting. Of the two sons that were born +to Henry and Catherine Bunbury, their special hopes seem to have centred +on the eldest, Charles John, the lovely child for whom Sir Joshua +himself had improvised fairy tales to keep him amused while busy on his +portrait; but those hopes were not fulfilled, for his manhood did not +bear out the promise of his schooldays, and he died comparatively early.</p> + +<p>Bunbury's caricatures commence as early as his foreign tour, though some +of the best refer to his later military life in England; especially to +the time when he was in camp at Coxheath, during the troubled days of +the American War. For we have now left far behind the days of Swift and +Bolingbroke and Oxford, of Marlborough's battles, and of the great +political settlement which marked the Hanoverian succession. Dettingen +and Fontenoy are now old soldiers' tales, and the invasion of England by +Charles Stuart, the younger Pretender—in which connection we may +remember Hogarth's print of the march of the Guards to Finchley—lies +equally behind us: we have passed through the long<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> Ministry of Walpole +and that of the elder Pitt, we have seen the war with France, and been +stirred by Wolfe's victory and heroic death upon the Heights of Abraham. +In a word, we have turned the corner with the year of our artist's +birth, and are going downwards into the latter half of the eighteenth +century.</p> + +<p>George III. has now taken his father's place upon the throne of England: +the Tories have returned again to be a power in political life as in the +days of Bolingbroke, and against the "King's friends," the party +subservient to Court influence, there appears in the nation a very +strong democratic movement with John Wilkes as its leader and idol. +Meanwhile the fatal policy of Grenville had led to the alienation of the +great American colonies, and the passing of the Stamp Act in 1765 +brought a complete rupture. But this phase of politics enters but little +into our present subject. It is of more interest to inquire, apart from +this complex turbulent world of home or foreign politics, what were the +people themselves in their home life, their outdoor life, their tastes, +aspirations, sympathies, social surroundings? I think we shall get an +answer to some of these questions—an answer none the less<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> valuable +because it comes to us indirectly—from the study of Henry William +Bunbury's social caricatures. These appear to commence with (or are in +some special cases even earlier than) his Grand Tour. The delightful +"Courier François"—published by Bretherton at 134 New Bond St.—belongs +surely to this period; and Thomas Wright, in his valuable "History of +Caricature,"[<a name="f5.1" id="f5.1" href="#f5">5</a>] seems to bear this out when he says of Bunbury that his +earlier prints were etched and sold by James Bretherton, who published +also the works of James Sayer—an artist whom we shall meet in our next +chapter. In this print the "Courier" cracks a long whip as he covers the +ground, mounted upon a steed almost as long, as tough and wiry-looking +as himself. A short sword is at his side, and he wears enormous +jack-boots. In the distance rise peaked mountains, perhaps those of +Southern France or Savoy; and the inn to which he seems bound bears the +legend, <i>Poste Royale</i>, with the three <i>fleur-de-lys</i>. Our Courier +belongs evidently to the <i>ancien règime</i>, and might indeed have +stepped—or galloped—to us out of Sterne's "Sentimental Journey." The +drawing of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> these prints is clumsy and coarse in technique, though full +of character; and, in fact, Bunbury, who seems to have begun to publish +as early as 1771,[<a name="f6.1" id="f6.1" href="#f6">6</a>] when he was only twenty-one years of age, had +little knowledge or skill in engraving, and seems, after some preliminary +efforts which were not very successful, to have entrusted +the most of his work to be engraved by other hands. Thus James +Bretherton, who was an engraver as well as a publisher, was engaged on +Bunbury's prints from 1772 onwards; though later we shall find +Rowlandson working as an engraver on Bunbury's humorous sketches, and +necessarily, from his strong individuality, imparting to them much of +his own character.</p> + +<p>The pendant to the print just described is the "Courrier Anglois," and +this was in fact both engraved and published by Bretherton in 1774 (it +bears the inscription, <i>H. W. Bunbury, delineavit; J. Bretherton, +fecit</i>). In fine contrast to the hurry of the lean Frenchman his English +counterpart ambles<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> leisurely along, as if time were for him a matter of +entire indifference; his horse is loaded with a heavy pack, against +which the rider comfortably leans, while he puts a long horn to his +lips. He has no sword, or any weapon of defence; but the two grisly +figures by the roadside dangling on a gibbet, and his own inimitable +expression of contented ease, seem to imply that travelling is secure +for him, and Justice prompt and keen-eyed.</p> + +<p>To this period of the Grand Tour belong also, in my judgment, the "Tour +to Foreign Parts" (drawn by Bunbury, engraved by Bretherton, published +in 1799 by J. Harris of Cornhill), the "Cuisine de la Poste," or "The +Kitchen of a French Post House" (<i>H. Bunbury, invt.</i>, published 1771 by +Harris), "The Englishman at Paris," 1767, the earliest in date of these +(<i>Mr. Bunbury, del.; Js. Bretherton, fecit</i>, published 1799 by J. +Harris), and lastly the "View on the Pont Neuf at Paris" (<i>H. W. +Bunbury, invt.</i> The engraver's name, in my example, is cut). These +prints are as precious in their detailed evidence of costume and methods +of life as they are amusing. They are snapshots caught—not with a +camera, but with an eye and pencil which were almost as quick—of the +life of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> that old monarchic France as it was seen by the English +traveller, posting along the great high-roads, or taking his walk +through the town. Soon, very soon, all that life was to be swept away in +the hurricane of political passion, never in any of its quainter +features to return; that is why these jottings of our artist are to the +student of this period so inestimably precious.</p> + +<p>Our travellers, three in number, and evidently portrayed from the life, +have just descended ("A Tour in Foreign Parts") from the two-horse +chaise, which the postilion is driving into the yard. The smallest of +the three Englishmen, with "Chesterfield's Letters" under his arm, +approaches the obsequious host of the "Poste Royale" with a conciliatory +smile; the while the landlady is engaged in an assault upon her +hen-roost, and the servant-girl seems to aim at a similar result with +the domestic cats.</p> + +<p>And now ("La Cuisine de la Poste") we are introduced to the interior. +The <i>pot-au-feu</i> hangs in the great chimney over the blazing logs; the +village gossips are there—the postilion in his clumsy jack-boots, the +housewife, and the curé with a friend sipping his glass of red wine—and +on the walls<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> <i>Louis le bien-aimé</i>, with baton and perruque, is balanced +by <i>Sanctus Paulus</i>, with a sword much bigger than himself, or by the +"Ordonnances de Monsieur le Duc de Choiseul, Grand Maître des Postes et +Relais de France." Or, again, our travellers have arrived at last in the +great city ("Englishman at Paris"), and take their walk in the streets +of <i>La Ville Lumiére</i>. A fat monk and a thin peasant seem both to regard +our tourist with astonishment; a dandy of the period is driving his +chariot with a lackey hanging on behind, and the indispensable +<i>perruquier</i> is hurrying to an appointment. Or—in its way most curious +of all—we see the Pont Neuf of those old days, with the costumes and +characters which then thronged its thoroughfare. Huge muffs seem to have +been then the fashion, often combined in use with umbrellas, such as we +now should call Japanese sunshades; the <i>perruquier</i> here, too, must +have his muff, though both hands are filled with the shaving-pot and +curling tongs; the trim abbé in his short cassock, even the +truculent-looking postilion are all provided. In the corner a poodle is +being clipped, just as we may see to-day beside the Seine, and is loudly +vociferating his complaints; and, above all, we see the quaint ensign<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> +of the trade, which combined the shoeblack's lower art with that of the +dog-barber.</p> + +<div class="center"> +<i>Aux Quarante Lions<br /> +St. Louis<br /> +Décrotte à l'Anglaise<br /> +et Tond des Chiens<br /> +Proprement<br /> +Allons, Messeigneurs, Allons.</i></div> + +<p> </p> +<p>We must turn now to our artist's later prints of English +eighteenth-century social life, which are as full of humorous +observation, even though they have not the special interest of these +notes on old France. For, like Collet and Sandby, his predecessors in +English caricature, Bunbury gave but little attention to political +caricature. Sandby belongs almost (b. 1725) to the later years of +Hogarth's ascendency; and, though not a professional caricaturist, being +perhaps annoyed at that artist's depreciation of other painters, many of +his caricatures are directed against Hogarth himself. But Sandby's best +claim to our interest lies outside our present subject; for his +landscape work in steel engraving, in aquatint and oil-colour, had led +him up to the discovery of the beauty and interest of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> water-colour +painting, in which art he may claim to be a pioneer. He outlived John +Collet, who had been born in the same year (1725) as himself, and is +said to have been a pupil of Hogarth, though Lambert, a +landscape-painter, is mentioned as giving him his first instructions. +Certainly there is something which recalls Hogarth in his drawings, +which deal, as I have said, with social satire rather than politics. "A +Disaster" treats of a lady who has lost both hat and wig together by the +same gust of wind; her footman behind has caught one of these in each +hand, and the rustics, who have preserved nature's covering, laugh at +her plight. Collet's picture of "Father Paul in his Cups, or The Private +Devotions of a Convent," was one of a series by our artist intended to +illustrate Sheridan's comedy of "The Duenna," produced in 1775. This was +close upon the period of Lord Gordon's riots (1780), and the "No Popery" +feeling which then prevailed finds illustration in this work of +Collet's. Like Sandby, he worked also in water-colour, and two of his +sketches in this medium are mentioned by Bryan as in the Victoria and +Albert Museum.</p> + +<p>We have now returned with Bunbury from his "grand tour" abroad, and have +to study him at his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> best in his sketches of English social life in town +and country. He was probably himself a good horseman, and at any rate +understood, as thoroughly as even Caran d'Ache himself, the humorous +side of the equestrian art. A whole series of his smaller prints deal +with the rider and his steed. "How to pass a carriage," "How to lose +your way," "How to travel on two legs in a frost," are among the best of +these. Another clever print shows the rider of a pulling animal with a +mouth of cast-iron just clearing an old woman's barrow; while among the +larger prints we have "Richmond Hill," "Hyde Park," "Coxheath Ho," and +"Warley Ho," and his inimitable print of a "Riding House," published by +Bretherton in 1780.</p> + +<p>Bunbury's caricatures of military subjects naturally connect themselves +with the period when he was actively connected with the Suffolk County +Militia, more especially when, in 1778, he was in camp at Coxheath at +the time of the war in America.</p> + +<p><a href="#frontis">"Recruits,"</a> of which I give an illustration, may be included among +these, as well as the "Militia Meeting" and "The Deserter," while "A +Visit to the Camp" and "A Camp Scene" belong to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> same class of +subject. The characterisation of <a href="#frontis">"Recruits"</a> is excellent, from the smart +young officer to the rustic awkwardness of the two recruits, and the +more dangerous self-approval of the third; behind we see a chawbacon +grinning at the scene, beneath the portentous sign of "The Old Fortune," +with its painting of a wooden-legged and armless veteran. "A Visit to +the Camp" gives just such a scene—save that the characters are in +eighteenth-century costume—as might be witnessed even to-day, when +parents, aunts and cousins visit their young hopeful amid the martial +surroundings of his volunteer camp; and here, too, may be mentioned a +series of single figures in military costume—a "Life-guardsman," "Light +Infantryman," "Light-horseman" and a "Foot-soldier." These were all +published by Macklin. The foot-soldier's uniform appears in <a href="#frontis">"Recruits"</a>; +the handsome uniform of the Light-horseman, with its plumed helmet and +high boots, in "A Visit to the Camp," and again in "The Deserter."</p> + +<p>While Bunbury was thus occupied with his military career his wife, whom +he had left in lodgings in Pall Mall, gave him their second son, to whom +Sir Joshua Reynolds stood godfather. Is it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> too much to suggest that +this latter is the artist caricatured in that delightful "Family Piece," +of which I also hope to give an illustration; and which may have been +suggested to our artist by the scene in his friend Oliver Goldsmith's +masterpiece, "The Vicar of Wakefield"?</p> + +<p>To the next period of Bunbury's life—when war's alarms were over and +the camp at Coxheath broken up—belong many of his best prints of +English country life. He was living now in Suffolk, and his print of the +"Country Club" is said to have depicted to the life an institution of +that nature in quiet old Bury St. Edmunds; while "Conversazione" and the +"Sulky Club" display the social efforts of the period, and his famous +"Barber's Shop," which Knight engraved in 1783, comes into this part of +his career.</p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i059.jpg" alt="The Family Piece" /><br /> +<span class="caption"><i>By H. W. Bunbury</i><br /> THE FAMILY PIECE</span></div> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<p>To his visits to the West of England and North Wales about this time we +owe some charming sketches—the two "Wynnstay Theatre Tickets," for +instance, dating from some visit to Sir Watkin Williams Wynn when +theatricals were in the air at Wynnstay, and that lovely print of "The +Modern Graces," drawn, it is said, from the three beautiful Misses +Shakespere during the stay of our artist at <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>Aston; while those two +prints of "Peasants from the Vale of Llangollen" hint at some pleasant +ramble in the Welsh hills. Bunbury excelled, in fact, in a class of +subject which does not strictly fall within our notice, since we are +treating him here as a caricaturist, but which must by no means be +neglected by those who appreciate his work.</p> + +<p>These are what may be characterised as fancy sketches, which are often, +in his hand, singularly graceful and charming in treatment and +conception. "The Song," "The Dance," and "Morning Employments" may be +mentioned especially among these, all these three having been entrusted +to the graver of the famous Bartolozzi. Indeed, in writing of +Bartolozzi,[<a name="f7.1" id="f7.1" href="#f7">7</a>] I found it impossible to leave Bunbury out of my subject, +and said of this artist: "He supplied the engraver with some charming +drawings, mostly of English girls in simple country dress—such as the +'Sophia and Olivia,' drawn for Goldsmith's 'Vicar of Wakefield,' where +one of the girls touches a guitar and the other holds a roll of music; +or, again, that very lovely print, a copy of which is in the Victoria +and Albert collection, where three young girls dance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> hand in hand to +the strain which a country lad seated near them is piping. 'The Song,'" +I added, "a pendant to this, is no less charming."</p> + +<p>"Love and Honour" is another of Bartolozzi's prints from Bunbury, +representing a Light-Cavalry soldier taking leave of a pretty country +girl, and bearing the legend:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +"Hark! the drum commands<br /> +Honour! I attend thee!<br /> +Love, I kiss thy hands!"<br /> +</div> + +<p>"Lucy of Leinster" and "Bothwell's Lament," it may be noted, are by the +same engraver. Apart from its own beauty the engraving of "The Dance" is +of especial interest, since the three figures dancing are said to be +taken from those famous beauties of the time, the Misses Gunning; and in +his "Love and Hope," "Love and Jealousy," and a "Tale of Love," which +Bartolozzi's pupil, J. K. Sherwin, engraved for him, he follows with +success the same class of subject. It is the sentimental charm, which +streams from the fair Angelica Kauffman's pencil and kept busy the best +engravers of the time, notably Bartolozzi, Ryland, Sherwin, and Tomkins, +which here attracts the soldier and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> caricaturist, who was also the +devoted lover and husband; and in these prints, though the initiative +and conception is certainly our artist's, it is difficult to know how +much we may not owe to the practised hand of such an engraver as +Francesco Bartolozzi.</p> + +<p>But certainly this side of art was treated by Henry Bunbury freely, and +with marked success, and the list would be a long one if we were to +attempt to chronicle all. "Edwin and Ethelinda," "Black-eyed Susan," +"Auld Robin Gray" (a charming colour-print, also engraved by +Bartolozzi), "Adelaide in the Garden" (by the same engraver), the +charming "Songstress," "Charlotte and Werther's meeting," "Margaret's +Tomb," "The Girl of Snowdon," "The Girl of Modena," "Marianna," +"Cicely," and that sweet "Country Maid" engraved by J. R. Smith in 1782, +and whose legend tells us:</p> + +<div class="poem">"No care but Love can discompose her breast,<br /> +Love of all cares the sweetest and the best."</div> + +<p>His illustrations to Macklin's Shakespeare come nearer to our subject +proper, and here we have the whole Falstaff episode very fully and very +humourously illustrated; while Launce and his dog, whom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> he "would have +to behave as a dog at all things," may be compared in our artist's +treatment of canine life with his "Black George," the Suffolk +gamekeeper.</p> + +<p>Was it, we may here ask, in returning to the story of our artist's life, +that fatal quality, the artistic temperament, or was it his charming +social qualities, his frequent visits to great houses and corresponding +expenses, which had brought Henry Bunbury at this time into financial +difficulties?</p> + +<p>His military connection, which had led to his appointment as A.D.C. to +the Duke of York, was too important to be neglected even under these +conditions.</p> + +<p>Hence it is that in 1788 we find the Bunburys settled in London at +Whitehall. Our artist was now, from his Court position and his own +tastes, thrown into the midst of London social life; and this new life +in all its features begins to reproduce itself in his caricatures. "Hyde +Park," "The Coffee House Patriots," "The Chop House," "Richmond Hill," +"Bethnal Green," and the large print of a "Fête at Carlton House" (at +which no doubt he was present in attendance on the Duke), belong to this +period of his life.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>Bath he no doubt knew well already from his visits to the West of +England, where it was at this time the great rendezvous for fashionable +society; he must have himself moved in this society, and enjoyed the +study of its follies and foibles, its airs and graces, which the +dramatists of the time love to reproduce. For here certainly it was that +he gained his inspiration for the "Long Minuet," as danced at Bath, with +its line of stately dancers and its classical inscription—</p> + +<div class="poem">"Longa Tysonum minuit<br /> +Quid velit et possit rerum concordia discors."</div> + +<p>This is one of Bunbury's most famous prints; and justly so, for nothing +could be truer to life, especially to eighteenth-century life, and +probably to Bath of the period, than these bowing and pirouetting +figures.</p> + +<p>In his <a href="#Page_53">"Lumps of Pudding"</a> we have the same theme, but treated with a +coarser note; and yet some of the figures are excellent—notably the +stout gentleman in the corner, who has removed his wig to mop his heated +brow—the enthusiast near him who is "setting" before a dame with a +three-decker and its anchor in her hair, and the group of four who are +next the lady dancing with her pet dog.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> The "Long Minuet" and this last +belong to that class of caricatures in which the figures form a +continued story—a line of humour which the Germans have developed in +<i>Fliegende Blätter</i>, which Caran d'Ache has used with success in France, +and which <i>Pick-Me-Up</i>, when it was under the able direction of Mr. +Leslie Willson, scored many a good point with.</p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i067.jpg" alt="A Fashionable Salutation" /><br /> +<span class="caption"><i>By H. W. Bunbury</i><br /> A FASHIONABLE SALUTATION</span></div> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + + +<p><span class="figright"><img src="images/i069tmb.jpg" alt="Lord Derby" /><br /> +<span class="caption"><small><a href="images/i069.jpg">LORD DERBY</a></small></span></span>To this class, too, belongs Bunbury's famous "Propagation of a Lie," +published in 1787. Male figures only appear in this wonderful series; +though (alas!) many of us have learnt from experience that the fair sex, +with all its charm, is not always averse to "<i>broder</i>" the simple truth, +especially when a prospect of scandal is concerned. Bath, we may feel +sure, would have offered in those days every facility of this nature, if +required; and it may be fairly assumed that the <i>mise-en-scène</i> for this +print was the same as that of the "Long Minuet." From "Dear me! You +don't say so!" we proceed through the stages of "Heigh ho!" "O fye!" +"Indeed!" "There now!" to that lively dandy who exclaims "Ha! Ha!" and +that irascible old gentleman who is shaking his fist at him with the +reply, "God's zounds! hold your tongue!" To <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>the same line of social +satire belong the "Front, side, and back view of a modern Gentleman," "Sunday Evening," "Morning, or the Man of Taste," and "Evening, or the +Man of Feeling" (engraved by J. R. Smith in 1781), and a "Fashionable +Salute," called "Salutation Tavern," of which I give a plate from the +print in my own collection. The same engraver, J. R. Smith, produced +Bunbury's sketch of "Lord Derby on Horseback," following the coach of +the lovely Miss Farren,[<a name="f8.1" id="f8.1" href="#f8">8</a>] which has the motto:</p> + +<div class="poem">"When I followed a lass that was froward and shy."</div> + +<p>But the "lass" in question became less shy later, and complied to his request to become Countess of Derby.</p> + +<p>"Patience in a Punt," one of our artist's best-known prints, was +engraved by Rowlandson, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> has acquired a good deal of his +characteristic drawing in the process; and I may mention briefly here +some prints dealing with Cambridge life—"The Hope of the Family," +"Admission at the University," and "Pot Fair, Cambridge" (dated 1777), +as well as a series of very interesting original etchings by our artist +in the British Museum collection. Professor Colvin tells me that a +recently acquired collection there of Italian prints included several by +Bunbury; and among these may have been "John Jehu—L'Inghilterra," 1772, +and "The Dog-Barber—La Francia," 1772 (a theme which we have noted in +his print of the "Pont Neuf"), as they by their titles seem to be +evidently intended for the Italian market. By far the most interesting, +in one way, of these etchings by our artist—which date from the +beginning of his career and are often very weak in drawing—is one which +shows two boys, or men, one of whom is riding a pig; and which belongs +to the time when Bunbury was a boy at Westminster School, being thus, as +I believe, his earliest existing caricature. The British Museum is, in +fact, very rich in Bunbury's prints; and his series there of the +"Arabian Nights" (in colour, engraved by Ryder) may be noted here (the +print of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> "Morgiana's Dance" being especially charming), ere we turn +back to our artist's life story. In 1797 the Bunburys had taken a small +house at Oatlands, near Weybridge, to be near the Duke and Duchess of +York, who were then residing at Oatlands Park; and it was here that in +1798 Henry Bunbury had a terrible blow, in the loss of his wife at the +early age of forty-five years. The beautiful face and figure of +Catherine Horneck had often appeared in our artist's fancy subjects; +their life together seems to have been a very happy one, and we may +believe that he never entirely recovered from this loss, for the next +thirteen years of his life after her decease were spent by him in +comparative retirement. He left Oatlands, and probably also, then or +later, his official post at Court, and came to live in the Lake Country, +where he had Robert Southey as his friend; it was at Keswick that he +died, in 1811, and lies buried there far away from the grave of his wife +in Weybridge Church.</p> + +<p>His prints form a link in our knowledge of eighteenth-century social +life in England which we could ill afford to lose. Not always very +strong in drawing, his humour is genuine, wholesome, spontaneous; his +sense of beauty, in subjects outside<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> of pure caricature, often very +fascinating and refined; while in both classes of subject he remains +happily free from that coarseness which disfigures to some extent the +great caricaturists whom I shall treat of in my next two chapters. A +charming personality—all his work seems to tell us—and a lovable man; +English to the core, in the best sense, fond of his home, fond of +outdoor life, fond of his joke, but a joke whose laughter has no +bitterness or malice, and leaves no bad taste behind.</p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i072.jpg" alt="Lumps of Delight" /><br /> +<span class="caption">"LUMPS OF DELIGHT"<span class="spacer"> </span> BY H. W. BUNBURY</span></div> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p> + +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i073.jpg" alt="Lumps of Pudding" /><br /> +<span class="caption">"LUMPS OF PUDDING"<span class="spacer"> </span> BY H. W. BUNBURY</span></div> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h3> + +<h3>THE COMEDY OF POLITICS</h3> + +<p>In treating here of English eighteenth-century caricature, I find that +the conditions of space at my command in this work compel me, in order +to do my subject any justice at all, to focus my reader's interest on +certain central figures, who typify, each in themselves, one side or +other of their art; and to pass by more slightly some of the lesser men, +whose interest is either divided or secondary.</p> + +<p>Such a towering personality in caricature as James Gillray comes +necessarily into the first of these categories; such draughtsmen as +Woodward or Sayer into the second.</p> + +<p>Woodward comes near to Bunbury in style and subject, and like him seems +to have preferred social satire, though occasionally—as in his "General +Complaint," of 1796—he touches political topics of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> the time. Sayer, +belonging to the period of Gillray, is, like him, essentially a +political caricaturist. James Sayer was the son of a merchant captain, +and had been put to the profession of attorney: but caricature attracted +him more than law, and, having gained the notice and interest of the +younger Pitt, he attached himself to his service with such industry and +success that Charles James Fox is said to have remarked that Sayers' +caricatures had cost him more votes than all the speeches in the House +of Commons.</p> + +<p>In fact, just as certain modern English politicians,—Lord Palmerston in +earlier days, and, in later, Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Joseph +Chamberlain—seem to have been singled out (a compliment this to the +public interest in their personality) as especial targets for the +caricaturist's shaft, so Fox was throughout the object of Sayer's +constant devotion. His first effort was directed against the Rockingham +Ministry of 1782; but far happier was his "Paradise Lost," published on +the fall of that Administration, which shows the once happy pair, Fox +and Burke, turned away from their previous Paradise, the Treasury, over +whose gate appears the menacing head of Lord Shelburne—who succeeded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> +them at the head of the Cabinet, Pitt being Chancellor of the +Exchequer—with others of his Ministerial colleagues above ...</p> + +<div class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 6em;">... "the gate</span><br /> +With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms.<br /> +Some natural tears they dropt, but wiped them soon;<br /> +The world was all before them, where to choose<br /> +Their place of rest, and Providence their guide."</div> + +<p> </p> +<p>James Gillray made his entry into English political caricature almost at +the same date as Sayer—namely in 1782—with his caricatures on the +subject of Rodney's naval victory. His father was of Scotch descent, and +having been wounded as a soldier at the battle of Fontenoy—where he +lost his arm—he became in later life an out-pensioner of Chelsea +Hospital; so that it was in Chelsea that James, his son, was born. Like +William Hogarth he too was put in his early years to letter engraving; +but, becoming tired of this rather dull employment, he ran away and +joined a company of strolling players, sharing in the hardships and +adventures of their roving life, perhaps taking part in such scenes as +Hogarth had depicted in his famous print, where the company have +successfully "stormed" their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> barn and are getting ready—dressing-rooms +being at a discount—for the next performance.</p> + +<p>But Gillray's bent towards the plastic arts must have been too strong to +let him remain long in the theatre: when he returned to London he became +a student of the Royal Academy, and seems to have worked hard at +improving his drawing. He also studied under the engraver Bartolozzi; +and the result of his training begins to show itself in his engravings +of "The Deserted Village" and "The Village Train," published in 1784 to +illustrate Goldsmith's poem, and in his imitations of drawings by +Lavinia, Countess Spencer. But, though successful as an engraver, and +even as a painter, it was as a caricaturist that he was destined to win +his lasting fame. Here his individuality came at once to the front; +though even when a professional caricaturist he continued the practice +of engraving and painting, as his portraits of William Pitt and numerous +engravings bear witness.</p> + +<p>The political history of England was then approaching a most dramatic +epoch, and this—even apart from Gillray's marvellous natural aptitude +in this direction—might well have tempted him to choose politics as his +special subject. The French<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> and American wars had scarcely yet left +men's memories; a King was on the throne who had joined to no great +political sagacity or insight a stubborn determination to govern; and +the clash of political issues, the struggle of the two great traditional +English parties, was intensified and rendered more brilliant by the +figures of famous statesmen or orators—such as Pitt, Fox, Burke, and +Sheridan, and, but in a lesser degree, Thurlow and Shelburne.</p> + +<p>But yet further, before this very generation the tremendous and (as we +shall see it to have been) world-absorbing spectacle of the French +Revolution was to unrol itself, touching every individual in his most +intimate interests and convictions, awaking everywhere feelings of +passionate enthusiasm, or of corresponding hatred; and then, gradually, +out of that sea of blood which we know in history as the Terror, the +sinister form of Buonaparte, General, Consul, Dictator, Emperor, came to +detach itself, to blot out all lesser figures, to become a menace to the +world. All this had passed before the eyes of Gillray and his +fellow-countrymen. He saw the thundercloud arise that was to darken the +horizon. He saw the energy and genius of Pitt create one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> Coalition +after another, only to find them melt away before the victorious armies +of France. He saw at length—and his trumpet-call at that crisis gave no +uncertain sound—England stand alone, and find in herself the forces +that were to bring her safely through the storm.</p> + +<p>We have noted already Sayers' caricature of the triumph of the Shelburne +Ministry in 1782; a print which had been followed by his still more +clever satire—called "Carlo Khan's Triumphant Entry into Leadenhall +Street"—on Fox's India Bill of 1783. In that same year Shelburne's +Ministry had been overthrown, and Fox and Burke came back into office +with Lord North. Against these statesmen, whether in or out of office, +Gillray's pencil became largely employed, though he was never a hired +caricaturist or kept in fee like Sayer, and all sides of politics +(including the Court and even the King himself) felt the edge of his +satire; while Lord Thurlow, the great Lord Chancellor, was in no way +neglected. Thus we find a "New Way to pay the National Debt" (1786), +"Ancient Music" (1787), "Monstrous Craws" (1787), "Frying Sprats" (1791) +and "Anti-Saccharites, or John Bull and his Family leaving off the use +of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> Sugar" (1792), are all directed against the reigning House, and +allude frequently to the parsimonious habits of George III. and his +Queen. The story goes that this monarch, having remarked of Gillray's +drawings, "I don't understand these caricatures," the artist drew him +("A Connoisseur Examining a Cooper," 1792) studying minutely with a +glass the miniature of Oliver Cromwell, remarking at the time: "I wonder +if the Royal Connoisseur will understand this?"</p> + +<p>But if the economy of the King was a subject for his satire, the +opposite qualities in the Prince of Wales met with as little mercy. "The +Voluptuary under the Horrors of Digestion" (1792) gives a very clever +treatment of this latter theme; and in a "Morning after Marriage, or a +Scene upon the Continent," we seem to find the same distinguished +person, with a lady who may be the charming Mrs. Fitzherbert.</p> + +<p>About this period, too, Lord Thurlow, in a "Westminster Hunt" (1788) and +"Market Day" (also 1788, where the motto, "Every man his price," seems +aimed at the fat kine of the House of Commons), is not forgotten; while +in "Dido Forsaken," where the Queen of France stands deserted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> and +desperate on her own shores, and Fox and his friends in a row-boat are +steering for Dover Castle with the remark, "I never saw her in my life!" +("No! never in his life, damme!" adds Fox at the rudder), we seem to be +already getting drawn into the mäelstrom of the French Revolution. +Perhaps to the average student the period of Gillray's work which we are +here approaching will be of most interest, because a fairly exact +knowledge of English party politics is necessary to follow with +enjoyment his earlier prints on home affairs. Gillray had treated a +French subject with success in his amusing "Landing of Sir John Bull and +his Family at Boulogne-sur-Mer," which recalls Bunbury to our thought +both in its humour and treatment. This latter artist had thoroughly +appreciated James Gillray's genius, and said of his great contemporary +that "he was a living folio, every page of which abounded with wit."</p> + +<p>Following the order of time, which is perhaps our safest guide, "The +Bengal Levée" is a large print, full of clever portraits, "made on the +spot by an Amateur"; and "The Dagger Scene, or the Plot discovered," is +a political print which must not be omitted. But now we find ourselves +suddenly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> launched into the midst of the French Revolution in "French +Liberty and British Slavery" (showing a starving Jacobin praising his +own Government, and a fat John Bull at dinner abusing his); and +"Sansculottes feeding Europe with the Bread of Liberty," this latter a +most inimitably clever print, whose centre is formed by John Bull, with +Fox and a sympathiser administering the Bread of Liberty on the dagger's +point, while Germany, Holland, and Italy are at the corners.[<a name="f9.1" id="f9.1" href="#f9">9</a>] Gillray +had already, as we see here, taken a strongly anti-French attitude, +which he never altered, and which, no doubt, faithfully reflected the +mass of English public opinion, horrified at the excesses with which +Paris had in those days sullied the pure name of Liberty. I say +advisedly the mass, for Charles James Fox next appears in "Dumourier +dining in State at St. James's" (1793), serving up to the French General +the head of Pitt upon a dish, with the British crown<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> thrown in as an +<i>entremet</i>. A very striking print of the same year shows the heroic +"Charlotte Corday upon her Trial" (July 17, 1793), and a figure very +like Gillray's usual rendering of Talleyrand, with two other judges, +upon the bench beneath the cap of Liberty. "The Blessings of Peace and +the Curses of War," with its inscription—"Such Britain was, such +Flanders, Spain and Holland now is (<i>sic</i>); from such a sad reverse, O +Gracious God, preserve our country!"—is an eloquent, if slightly +ungrammatical, appeal (Jan. 17, 1795) to his fellow-countrymen, an +appeal to which our artist must have been stirred by the horrible +carnage and misery which the French armies were then inflicting upon the +continent of Europe; while "John Bull ground down" (June 1, 1795) shows +the guineas being extracted from that long-suffering person, despite his +cries of "Murder"; and in "Blind-man's Buff, or Too Many for John Bull" +(June 12, 1795) he is being handed over, with Pitt's assistance, to the +kicks and plunder of the Powers of Europe.</p> + +<p><span class="figleft"><img src="images/i084tmb.jpg" style="margin-top: 1em;" alt="The Jacobin Drummer" /><br /> +<span class="caption"><small><a href="images/i084.jpg">THE JACOBIN DRUMMER</a></small></span></span>We reach the full horrors of the Terror in Paris, and trace its effect +on outside opinion, in a very clever print in my own possession entitled +"Promised Horrors of the French Invasion, or Forcible<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> Reasons for +Neglecting a Regicide Peace." The print is so full of masterly detail +that it almost defies description. In the centre a figure (? that of +Pitt) is being flogged by Fox beneath the Tree of Liberty, planted at +the Piccadilly end of St. James's Street, with three human thigh-bones +at its base; beside it the French troops march up St. James's Street, +leaving the Palace in smoke and flames, and invade White's Club on their +right, pitching its ill-fated members on to the bayonets in the street, +but are received by the members of Brookes's Club on their left with +cries of welcome, and a set of heads neatly arranged upon a plate, with +the motto, "Killed for the Public Good!" October 20, 1796, is the date +of this magnificent cartoon of our artist, which must have found an echo +in public opinion: but ships, troops, and subsidies mean taxation, and +Pitt's continued demands on the Treasury are satirised in "The Nuptial +Bower" (February 15, 1797) and "Political Ravishment, or The Old Lady of +Threadneedle Street in Danger" (May 22, 1797).</p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i085.jpg" alt="Britannia between Death and the Doctors" /><br /> +<span class="caption"><i>By James Gillray</i><br /> BRITANNIA BETWEEN DEATH AND THE DOCTORS</span></div> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<p>In the year following (1798) the form of Nelson <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>makes its appearance +in the print of "The British Hero cleansing ye Mouth of ye Nile," and in +"John Bull Taking a Luncheon"—off a captured French three-decker.</p> + +<p>For now, too (November 21, 1799), the figure of Buonaparte, which was to +occupy so fully Gillray's pencil, makes his entry into these caricatures +in the cartoon of "Exit Liberté, a la Francois (<i>sic</i>) or, Buonaparte +closing the Farce of Egalité at S. Cloud, near Paris, November 16, +1799."</p> + +<p>Another print, however, touching the Directorate period is too important +to be entirely omitted from our list. It is called "Ci-devant +Occupations, or Madame Tallien and the Empress Josephine dancing naked +before Barras in the Winter or 1797—a Fact." The dancers can be traced +behind a veil of gauze, while Barras sits at table, very drunk, beneath +an infant Bacchus wearing the Cap of Liberty, and Buonaparte watches the +scene from the side in front of a pile of skulls. "Madame Tallien," we +are here informed, "is a beautiful woman, tall and elegant: Josephine is +smaller and thin, with bad teeth"; in which case she must be the figure +nearest Buonaparte, and must have gone up in weight—in Gillray's +view<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>—before she appears in his "Handwriting on the Wall."</p> + +<p>It would be impossible within the limits of this series to give a +detailed list of all the superb series of Gillray's satires on the +Napoleonic struggle. I have been fortunate enough to obtain for this +work reproductions of three among the best ones; but my account may do +well to commence with that delightful print (another hit at Charles +James Fox) of the "Introduction of Citizen Volpone and his Suite at +Paris"; might note further "The Vexation of Little Boney"; and strike a +higher note in "The Handwriting upon the Wall," where, in the hour of +his triumph, Buonaparte, seated at table beside an enormously stout +Josephine, with gigantic and savage-looking Guards and very +<i>décolletées</i> and ringleted maids-of-honour waiting in service on them, +sees with dilated eyes on the wall the warning of his doom.</p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i089.jpg" alt="Armed Heroes" /><br /> +<span class="caption"><i>By James Gillray</i><br /> ARMED HEROES<br /> (<span class="smcap">William Pitt and Buonaparte</span>)</span></div> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<p>Of course the threatened invasion of England finds its echo in Gillray's +prints. "French Invasion, or Buonaparte Landing," <a href="#Page_66">"Armed Heroes"</a> (of +which I give here a reproduction), and the "King of Brobindnag and +Gulliver" all belong to this theme of the nation's peril; as does that +interesting print, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>which I also reproduce, +of <a href="#Page_64">"Britannia between Death and the Doctor,"</a> where the sick lady is threatened on the one side +by Buonaparte as Death, the while Pitt, as chief physician, executes a +war dance at the expense of his professional rivals, planting his heel +very neatly in the mouth of the prostrate Charles James Fox. Napoleon's +European victories find comment in the "Surrender of Ulm," and in +another of my plates, "Tiddy Doll, the Great French Gingerbread Maker, +drawing out a New Batch of Kings," where Talleyrand seems, very +appropriately, to be the figure in the background kneading the dough +(note, too, the rubbish heap). But the worst danger was past already at +the time (as we know now) of that fine plate that commemorates the +"Death of Admiral Lord Nelson in the Moment of Victory," published by +Humphrey of St. James Street, on December 23, 1805.</p> + +<p>Gillray, after trying various publishers—Kent, Brown, Holland of Oxford +Street, Fores of Piccadilly—seems to have settled down with Humphrey, +first in the Strand, then in Bond Street, and later St. James Street, +whose shop-windows became famed for his prints. Joseph Grego, a known +authority<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> on our artist, relates that Fox and Burke once walked into +the shop together, alarming the worthy proprietress by this sudden +invasion of Gillray's favourite subjects. But Burke reassured her with a +smile: "Were I to prosecute you it would be the making of your fortune; +and that favour, excuse me, Mrs. Humphrey, you do not entirely merit at +my hands."</p> + +<p>We may terminate our study or Gillray's Napoleonic caricatures very +appropriately with the "Spanish Bullfight," in which Buonaparte is +tossed by the Spanish bull (Peninsular War of 1808) before the assembled +Powers of Europe (dated July 11, 1808); and the fine print of the +"Valley of the Shadow of Death" (September 24, 1808), in which the +prediction of an earlier print ("The Handwriting on the Wall") seems +near its fulfilment, and the Powers of Europe in grim demonic shapes +surround the terrified ruler, the British lion charging him full in +front, while the Russian bear takes an ugly snatch from behind at his +legs.</p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i093.jpg" alt="Buonaparte as King-Maker" /><br /> +<span class="caption"><i>By James Gillray</i><br /> BUONAPARTE AS KING-MAKER<br /> (<span class="smcap">With Talleyrand to help</span>)</span></div> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<p>James Gillray's political caricatures are so interesting and so +important, they form such a priceless commentary on the history of the +time, that I have given them the priority of space over his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>amusing +social satires, which scourge without mercy the follies of dress and +fashion. "A Lady putting on her Cap" (1795), "Lady Godiva's Rout" +(1796), "High Change in Bond Street" (1796), "A Modern Belle at Bath" +(1796), and "A Fashionable Mamma" come into this class, as well as +"Following the Fashion," "Characters in High Life," and many others. It +was the epoch when English ladies' waists seem to have risen nearly to +their arm-pits, and when their hair towered up correspondingly into a +forest of feathers; and all the above prints—as well as the series of +"Faro's Daughters," directed at the gambling craze, "The Graces in a +High Wind (as seen from Nature in Kensington Gardens)," and the still +more risky series of "Three Stages of a Lady's Toilet,"—depict these +extreme fashions.</p> + +<p>"Tales of Wonder," "Advantages of Wearing Muslin Dresses, dedicated to +the Fashionable Ladies of Great Britain," "A Broad Hint of not Meaning +to Dance," "A Company shocked at a Lady getting up to Ring the Bell," +belong to a slightly later period of costume, say 1802-04.</p> + +<p>"Dido in Despair" is evidently a satire on the beautiful Lady Hamilton, +who is however<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> represented in this print as enormously fat.[<a name="f10.1" id="f10.1" href="#f10">10</a>] +Gillray has evidently no sympathy or mercy for the frail and famous beauty; for +here she is tumbling out of bed in nightcap and nightdress, from which a +huge foot protrudes, while she waves her fat arms in despair. A flask of +Maraschino is on the dressing-table near the rouge pot; on the floor +lie broken antiques; and a work on <i>Studies of Academic Attitudes</i>, with +scarcely academic illustrations, lies near the window, through which is +seen a line of British battleships standing out to sea.</p> + +<div class="poem">"Ah where and oh where is my gallant sailor gone?<br /> +He's gone to fight the Frenchmen for George upon the throne,"—</div> + +<p>is the motto of this print, which was published by Humphrey on February +6 of 1801. "The Bulstrode Siren" (Mrs. Billington), where she is seen +warbling to the Duke of Portland, fares little better than Emma herself; +and Sir William Hamilton<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> appears, in another of Gillray's satires, as +"A Conoscenti contemplating ye beauties of ye Antique." Among these last +<i>objets d'art</i> a battered "Lais" and a "Bacchante" who has lost her head +seem as full of cryptic allusion as the dancing figures on a Greek vase +and the Cupid with a bent arrow; while quite in Hogarth's best vein is +the "Mark Antony" framed upon the wall, in a cocked hat and admiral's +uniform, the "Cleopatra" with a gin bottle, and a view of Vesuvius in +full eruption.</p> + +<p>Sheridan is a frequent figure in Gillray's political caricatures; but +perhaps he was never more happily treated than when he enters as +Harlequin, armed with a goose quill, and assisted by John Kemble and the +famous Mrs. Siddons, in "Blowing up the Pic Nics." To the same class and +subject of satire belongs the "Pic Nic Orchestra" and "Dilettante +Theatre"—this last a Green-room scene which seems reminiscent of +Hogarth's print of a similar subject. "Two-penny Whist" and "Push-pin" +are filled with contemporary portraits;[<a name="f11.1" id="f11.1" href="#f11">11</a>] and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> +two series of "Cockney Sportsmen" (4 plates, 1800) and "Elements of Skating" (4 +plates, 1805) must not be overlooked any more than such weirdly hideous +creations as "Comfort to the Corns," as "Begone dull Care, I prithee," +and "The Gout."</p> + +<p>Interesting, however, though much of Gillray's social satire certainly +is, it scarcely reaches the same level as his political work. He was a +magnificent engraver, and was able in his best time to build up his +cartoon with the smallest possible scaffolding, a few lines pencilled +upon a card being enough to enable him to commence at once upon the +copper; while the freedom and facility of his design is witnessed amply +by all his prints—those prints which we have now studied in some +measure together, though anything in the nature of a comprehensive +catalogue is denied me by the space at my command. His influence, too, +upon Isaac Cruikshank is to be marked, as a link in the evolution of +English caricature.</p> + +<p>In his later years James Gillray resided almost entirely with his kindly +publisher, Mrs. Humphrey, of whom, as I have noted, he has left a +whimsical portrait, with her faithful maid "giggling Betty," in his +print of "Two-penny Whist." Mrs. Humphrey<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> appreciated her client's +genius, and at one time their mutual understanding got so far on the +road to matrimony that they had already reached the door of the church +(their parish church of S. James, Piccadilly) when this eccentric +bridegroom remarked, "This is a foolish affair, Mrs. Humphrey. We live +very comfortably together—better let well alone!"—and walked home to +work on his copper plate. But even if this legend of blighted hopes be +correct, the good spinster in any case devoted herself no less to the +artist's comfort and welfare; and the tragedy of his later years was due +to himself alone. Intemperance weakened his powers; and in the last +years of his life he lapsed, from this cause probably, into a condition +of mental imbecility, which contrasts sadly with those busy and +successful years of his life, from 1777 to close on 1810.</p> + +<p>He died upon the 1st of June, 1815, and was buried near the rectory of +S. James, Piccadilly; within reach of the busy roar of that London whose +complex multitudinous life he had lived amongst and loved and studied, +and which still surges around his last resting-place in changed and +ever-changing forms.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h3> +<h3>THE COMEDY OF LIFE</h3> + +<p>Thomas Rowlandson, the last and in some ways the greatest of the +caricaturists whose work illustrates the eighteenth century, was born in +London in 1756, being thus just six years younger than Bunbury, and one +year older than Gillray; so that all these artists cover very much the +same period, although their work has elements of the greatest diversity.</p> + +<p>In Bunbury we have seen the really gifted amateur, who entrusted his +clever sketches to other hands to be engraved, who kept in touch with +social life in London and county society, and pursued his career in the +army and at Court, while throughout devoting himself to art as his +greatest hobby. Again, later, we have traced briefly Gillray's supreme +talent, both as engraver and draughtsman, more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> especially in his +magnificent series of contemporary political cartoons. But in Rowlandson +we touch a genius as fertile, but of a different order, and, I incline +to think, of a considerably wider grasp; and if I call this chapter, +which I am devoting especially to his work, the "Comedy of Life"—in +contrast to pictorial morals, to society or politics—it is because life +in all its exuberance, all its variety and fertility, seems to stream on +us from the gifted artist's pencil.</p> + +<p>But Life contains—thanks be—not only coarse, distorted types of +humanity, exaggerations of foolish fashion, and political antagonisms, +but grace and beauty, even with the changing form of the time-spirit; +and it is just here that Rowlandson infinitely surpasses those +contemporaries whom we studied in our last chapter. His female figures +have often that rich English beauty which we find in Reynolds, Hoppner, +or sometimes in Morland; and his landscape has qualities of very +exceptional merit. He might, we are frequently tempted to think, have +been a painter worthy to take a front rank even in that magnificent +English eighteenth-century school, which included Reynolds, +Gainsborough, Romney, Hoppner, among its glories; but as we come to +study<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> his life we shall find in the <i>insouciance</i> of his character, in +the very facility of his genius, the causes which made him—not, indeed, +entirely to our loss—only the greatest caricaturist of his time.</p> + +<p>As a boy already, at Dr. Barrow's academy in Soho, he had attracted +notice by his humorous sketches of his fellow pupils; and in his +sixteenth year he went to Paris at the invitation of his aunt, a Mlle. +Chatelier, with the object of pursuing art study in that city. He had +already been admitted as a student in the Royal Academy; and his life +studies in Paris are said to have possessed great merit. Paris itself at +this time (about 1772-4), with Louis XV. still on the throne, must have +been very fascinating to the young English lad, living with a relative +who treated him with affection and generosity, in the first +consciousness too of his genius, in the midst of a most brilliant +capital, and with every prospect of fortune waiting for him. These years +left, without doubt, an indelible impression on his mind. Mr. Grego, an +authority on this artist as well as Gillray, expresses this[<a name="f12.1" id="f12.1" href="#f12">12</a>] very +happily when he says: "It was the more romantic Paris of Sterne that +Rowlandson first viewed, and he seems to have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> recognised and noted down +the characteristics of the same typical personages described by +'Yorick'; their two satirical points of view were identical. It was +indeed the ideal artistic centre: Fragonard, Lavrience, Eisen, St. +Aubin, and the school of followers of Boucher and Lancret—elegant +triflers in their way, but unequalled for dash and brilliancy—were the +leading spirits as Rowlandson imbibed his first inspiration from these +attractive fonts. His two years' residence in the midst of these +appetising surroundings must have been the happiest of Rowlandson's +career; the seeds sown amid these gayer scenes blossomed forth in later +years, and influenced the artist in gradually devoting his gifts from +the dull routine of portrait-painting to the indulgence of his fruitful +imagination."</p> + +<p>Whether indeed all the influence which the critic here mentions was +entirely for good, is, I think myself, open to question. It is quite +possible that our artist acquired at this time the taste for gambling +which led him to the brink of ruin more than once in later life; and I +have suggested already that had he kept to painting he might have +achieved in that medium a fame far above even that which he now +possesses. For on his return to London he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> resumed his studies at the +Royal Academy Schools, and in 1775 exhibited at the Academy "Samson +visited by Delilah," which he followed up by the portraits on which he +was busy now in Wardour Street from 1778 to 1781. His work must have +shown considerable power to be hung beside the canvases of Reynolds, +Romney, and Hoppner; but at the later date of 1784 his exhibited +drawings—"Vauxhall Gardens," "The Serpentine," and "An Italian +Family"—show already a tendency to the lighter side of art, and between +the above date and 1787 the direction of his art has changed in favour +of caricature.</p> + +<p>His imagination was as fertile as his pencil was facile. The market was +easy—Fores (for whom Gillray also worked), Ackermann,[<a name="f13.1" id="f13.1" href="#f13">13</a>] and others +offering a ready sale for his satires; and, since we are treating of him +here as a caricaturist, it is at this point that we must take his work +in detail. The purely humorous prints commence as early as 1781 ("The +Village Doctor," published in June of that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> year by Humphrey), and are +followed up (November 27, same year and publisher) by "Charity Covereth +a Multitude of Sins," and that unpleasing subject (published by Fores, +1783) of "The Amputation"; but it is in his political cartoons of +1784—such as "Britannia roused, or the Coalition Monster +destroyed"—that we begin to recognise the distinctive touch of Thomas +Rowlandson. This vigorous print shows a half-draped female figure +catching Charles James Fox by the ankle and Lord North by the throat; in +this print he takes the same political attitude as his contemporary +Gillray, whom he resembles, though far less virulently, in his +anti-French prints, while he shows less marked hostility to the reigning house.</p> + +<p>The famous Westminster election of the same year (1784) brought +Rowlandson still further into political satire, in which Charles James +Fox and the beautiful Georgina, Duchess of Devonshire, are leading +figures. In "The Devonshire, or the most approved manner of securing +votes," the lovely duchess is bestowing a warm embrace on a voter, in +the shape of a fat butcher, while another lady, perhaps the Duchess of +Gordon, looks on approvingly with the words "Huzza! Fox for ever!" In +the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> "Lords of the Bedchamber," Georgina, seated in her <i>boudoir</i> +beneath Reynolds' portrait of her duke, is entertaining to tea two +privileged visitors, Fox and his leading supporter, Sam House—"brave, +bald-headed Sam" as he was then called. The enthusiastic support which +her Grace gave to Fox's candidature gave an opening which was +used—often too freely—by the caricaturists. In "Wit's last stake, or +the Cobbler's vote," she is seated upon Fox's knee, the while a cobbler +puts a stitch into her shoe, so that she may have the excuse of pouring +a handful of guineas into his wife's hand. In another print she appears +neglecting the infant heir of the Cavendishes for a fox, dressed up in +baby clothes; and upon Fox's triumphant return is made by the artist to +carry him pick-a-back, and to stop at Mungo's Hotel for a drop of gin.</p> + +<p>It is but fair to our Caricaturist to say that the fair Pittite +champion, Lady Buckingham, is treated no less mercilessly; and that, +even while he was aiming the most outrageous shafts of ridicule and +innuendo at the Duchess, his pencil did justice to her extraordinary +beauty and charm, both in the prints above mentioned, and in a +"Procession to the Hustings after a successful Canvass," in which she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> +leads the way in a big picture hat, and carrying a perfectly +indescribable ensign with "The Man of the People" as its legend. +Finally, "The Westminster Mendicant" and the "Westminster Deserter +drummed out" complete this really brilliant series of election +caricatures, of which I have only detailed the most interesting. In the +last-named print it is "brave baldheaded" Sam House who beats the drum, +while on his left is the triumphant candidate, Charles James Fox, who +addresses the crowd with the time-hallowed words, "Friends and fellow +citizens, I cannot find words to express my feelings, etc.," and on his +right the defeated Sir Cecil Wray; while behind are the Irish chairmen +who had fought (in every sense of the word) so lustily for Fox, and a +procession of London maidservants, armed with mops and brooms.</p> + +<p>In my account of this series of prints (which all fall within the dates +of April and May of 1784) I shall note briefly one remaining print, "For +the Benefit of the Champion," in which Fox and Lord North, in female +attire, and the Duchess in her large picture hat, but <i>décollettée</i>, and +with bare arms, are busy singing a dirge on the defeated opponent. +Georgina, a figure of delicious sprightliness <ins class="correction" title="Original reads 'and and'">and</ins> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> beauty, points to +the tombstone marked "Here lies poor Cecil Ray," while the spectacled +profile of Burke peeps into the door. And here I may remark again how +astonishingly to my own experience a study of these prints makes history +real, vivid, and living. These dry bones of bygone politics become +clothed with flesh; and names which we had studied with colder interest +become friends, and almost intimates. Ere we leave the theme of +politics, it may be noted that in the great French War Rowlandson does +not come behind Gillray in his patriotic enthusiasm. A whole series of +prints, from July to September 1808, was directed against Napoleon; +while Nelson appears in a print of which, by the kindness of its +possessor, Mr. Newman, a great collector of Nelson relics, I am able to +give a plate—<a href="#Page_82">"Admiral Nelson recruiting with his brave tars after the +glorious Battle of the Nile"</a> (published by Ackermann, October 20, 1798); +and both contemporary figures are alluded to in "Napoleon Buonaparte in +a Fever on Receiving the Astounding Gazette of Nelson's Victory over the +Combined Fleets" (Ackermann, November 13, 1805).</p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i109.jpg" alt="Nelson Recruiting with His Brave Tars after the Battle of the Nile" /><br /> +<span class="caption"><i>By Thomas Rowlandson</i><br /> NELSON RECRUITING WITH HIS BRAVE TARS AFTER THE BATTLE OF THE NILE</span></div> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<p>But it is time for us to betake ourselves to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>Rowlandson's social +caricatures, which after all represent the best of his life work; and I +am tempted to quote—in seeking illustration of that wonderful sense of +life which seems to stream upon us from his pencil—some words of my own +in an earlier work, in which I had occasion to treat of this artist. +"These creatures of his scenes of comedy—drawn boldly in outline with +the reed pen dipped in Indian ink and vermillion, with the shadows then +washed in, and the whole slightly tinted in colour—seem full-blooded, +vigorous, overflowing with animal life and energy. His women above all +are delicious. Rather voluptuous, perhaps, and full in form, but yet +indescribably charming in their mob caps, or those big 'picture' hats +that George Morland loved, in the tight sleeves and high-waisted gowns +falling in long folds about their limbs—their eyes sparkling with +roguery, and their whole being breathing the charm of sex."[<a name="f14.1" id="f14.1" href="#f14">14</a>]</p> + +<p>We may commence our study of his social satires here, in following to +some extent the sequence of time, with "A Sketch from Nature"—published +by J. R. Smith in January of 1784, and engraved by him in stipple with +great beauty and finish.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> +The subject here recalls a very similar scene in Hogarth's "Rake's +Progress," for here, as there, a merry company of both sexes is engaged +in riotous revel; and the wine and punch flowing freely has got into the +heads, and found expression in the behaviour, of the nymphs and their +attendant swains. "Money-lenders," "Councillor and Client," and +"Bookseller and Author" (all 1784) are excellent character-studies of +male figures: the eighteenth century evidently needed the presence of +Sir Walter Besant, for the bookseller is fat, prosperous, and +overbearing, the author terribly thin, poorly dressed, and looking +overworked. In "The Golden Apple or the Modern Paris" (1785) the fair +Georgina again appears before us with her rival beauties, the Duchesses +of Rutland and Gordon:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +"Here Juno Devon, all sublime,<br /> +Minerva Gordon's wit and eyes,<br /> +Sweet Rutland, Venus in her prime."</div> + +<p>The three ladies appear before the Prince of Wales, afterwards George +the Fourth—the "Modern Paris" who has the difficult task of awarding +the apple. The Prince re-appears in Rowlandson's famous print of +"Vauxhall Gardens" (published by J. R.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> Smith in 1785) with a star upon +his breast, where he is paying much attention to Mrs. Robinson—the +lovely "Perdita," whose portrait now hangs in the Wallace Collection. +The Duchess of Devonshire and her sister, Lady Duncannon, are well in +the centre of the picture; Captain Topham takes in the gay scene through +his glass; Doctor Johnson, in a supper box, seems deeply engaged upon +his meal, though Mrs. Thrale is on his right and "Bozzy" and Goldsmith +are of the party. Captain (later Colonel) Topham, the <i>macaroni</i>, man of +taste and editor of <i>The World</i>, appears in another plate of 1785—as +"Captain Epilogue," and as "Colonel Topham endeavouring to extinguish +the Genius of Holman" (the actor); and to the same date belong "Grog on +Board" and "Tea on Shore," as well as the print in colour chosen for +illustration to this chapter.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_86">"Filial Affection,"</a> as this is called, depicting a runaway trip to +Gretna Green, speaks so fully for itself that it needs no further +description from my pen; but I may mention here its companion print +(also published by Mr. Hinton on December 15 of 1785), and called "The +Reconciliation, or The Return from Scotland," in which the pair of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> +fugitives—whom we have just seen presenting their horse pistols at the +parental <i>poursuivant</i>—have now returned, all penitence and submission, +and have won their forgiveness. A very curious and somewhat grisly +adaptation of "Filial Affection" is reproduced by Messrs. Bell, to +illustrate the article upon Rowlandson in their new and valuable edition +of <i>Bryan's Dictionary</i>. It is a plate from <i>The Dance of Death</i>, an +illustrated volume published by Ackermann in 1815, and resembles the +earlier print—save that the figure behind the angry parent is a +skeleton rider mounted on a skeleton steed. At this point, in touching +these two periods (of 1785 and 1815) we may note how far fresher and +more spontaneous is the figure-work in that rich period from 1785 +onwards. Rowlandson had gained, perhaps, in what we may call his "Dr. +Syntax period," in the treatment of landscape perspective or the massing +of crowds, but had become more of the caricaturist, had lost the rich +organic beauty which really irradiates some of his earlier prints.</p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i115.jpg" alt="Filial Affection" /><br /> +<span class="caption"><span class="smcap">Filial Affection.</span><br /> By Thomas Rowlandson.</span></div> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<p>A print in colour from my own collection, published by Fores only +sixteen days earlier (November 30, 1785) than "Filial Affection," may +help here to illustrate my meaning. "Intrusion on Study" <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>or "The +Painter Disturbed," shows a very charming model, attired in nothing but +the prettiest of mob caps, posing for some goddess on the canvas of the +artist, who turns to wave his palette and brushes—a most effective +weapon of defence—in the faces of two unwelcome visitors of his own +sex, who have just broken in open-mouthed upon his study. The details of +the studio, the expressive faces of the artist and his visitors +(especially the second), are in Rowlandson's best mood; but what is more +interesting, because more exceptional, is the exquisite feeling of line, +as subtle as anything Beardsley has recorded, in the girl's recumbent +figure—in the flow of the shoulder into the right arm, and in the sweep +of the right hip, and faultless drawing of the right hand—which touches +a note of purely plastic beauty entirely beyond the reach of either +Hogarth or Gillray.</p> + +<p>Joseph Grego says of our artist very justly: "Rowlandson's sense of +feminine loveliness, of irresistible graces of face expression and +attitude, was unequalled in its way; several of his female portraits +have been mistaken for sketches by Gainsborough or Morland, and as such, +it is possible, since the caricaturist is so little known in this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> +branch, that many continue to pass current."[<a name="f15.1" id="f15.1" href="#f15">15</a>] An engraving which came +into my own hands, some years ago, of three young girls by Rowlandson, +might be an exact illustration of these words, and as the above writer +says, be a portrait group by Gainsborough or Hoppner—so refined and yet +so masterly was the treatment. I alluded to this print with others, when +speaking of Rowlandson as what might be here called a "feminist" in my +study of Bartolozzi and his contemporaries, and found illustration there +of this peculiarly charming type of his women in "Luxury" (typified, for +this artist, by breakfast in bed), "House Breakers," "The Inn Yard on +Fire" (where the ladies are making a very impromptu exit), in the lovely +model of "The Artist Disturbed," and (for women of fashion) in the +series (twelve prints in all) of the "Comforts of Bath."</p> + +<p>I mention there, too, that delightful print of "Lady Hamilton at Home," +where poor Sir William (whom the caricaturists never neglected) is +suffering from an acute attack of gout, while<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> "the lovely Emma, in very +classic garb, is watering a flower-pot, and Miss Cornelia Knight, also +dressed after the antique, touches the strings of a lyre, and warbles +poems of her own composition." In treating, however, of Rowlandson's +women, other prints, such as "Tastes Differ," "Opera Boxes," "Harmony," +"A Nap in Town," and "In the Country," "Interruption, or Inconvenience +of a Lodging House" (published April 1789), and "Damp Sheets" (August +1791), have a strong claim on our notice. Nor must I entirely neglect +here Rowlandson's print called <a href="#Page_94">"Preparation for the Academy, or Old +Joseph Nollekens and his Venus"</a> (1800). It is perhaps the Miss Coleman +here upon the model-stand who nearly caused a domestic breach between +old Nollekens and his jealous spouse—the group on which he is at work +being his "Venus Chiding Cupid," which was modelled for Lord Yarborough. +<i>The Life of the Sculptor Nollekens</i>, by his pupil John Thomas Smith, +contains some amusing contemporary gossip. He describes the sculptor +much as we see him in this plate—his figure short, his head big, his +shoulders narrow, his body too large. His worthy better half held strong +opinions upon the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> sculptor's models—"abandoned hussies, with whom she +had no patience"; and Miss Coleman having ventured to visit the scene of +her early labours in a carriage and pair, the wrath of the virtuous Mrs. +Nollekens became unbounded. Words indeed (perhaps a rare defect with the +good lady) seem to have failed her at this crisis; in a later interview +with Joseph they were not wanting.</p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i121.jpg" alt="A Ball at the Hackney Assembly Rooms" /><br /> +<span class="caption"><i>By Thomas Rowlandson</i><br /> A BALL AT THE HACKNEY ASSEMBLY ROOMS<br /> (<span class="smcap">Remember the Graces!</span>)</span></div> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<p>But here I would also point out that not only was our caricaturist an +unequalled illustrator of lovely woman (and as such makes us often +regret that the becoming mob cap has disappeared from use), but also a +magnificent landscape artist. I came to notice this especially last year +in a very interesting exhibition of Rowlandson's drawings at the +Leicester Gallery in London. "A Country Fête," a "Village Scene with +Bridge," and the "Promenade on Richmond Hill," were good examples of his +delightful handling of English landscape. The last of these formed part +of a very interesting set of the artist's original drawings, which were +not exhibited, but which I was able to study by kind permission. +"Greenwich Park" was among these drawings, with merrymakers racing and +tumbling down the hill, and a delicious perspective of the park and +hospital; a "Review of Guards <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>in Hyde Park," where, upon the soldiers +firing, two of the spectators' horses have bolted into the crowd; the +charming drawing in pencil and colour work of two girls called "The +Sirens;" rustic scenes such as "Eel Pie Island at Richmond," "Playing +Quoits," and a "Rustic Maid Crossing a Stile," to her sweetheart's +admiration; such echoes too of war as the crowd cheering the great +battleships at Portsmouth, or the print of "Invaders Repulsed," where +British troops are seen driving out the French invaders.</p> + +<p>Drawn most delicately in pencil with a wash of pure colour, these +drawings bring us nearer to the feeling of the artist than even his +prints, and it was interesting to compare "Greenwich Hill" in the print +and drawing, and to see how much the transcript had lost. Yet seen by +themselves the prints were interesting and characteristic. "A Visit to +the Uncle" and "to the Aunt," "Travelling in France, 1790"—a signed +work showing a large clumsy diligence, which the artist is +sketching—"Angelo's Fencing Room," full of contemporary portraits, "The +Pleasure of the Country," where fine ladies struggling through the mud +find a litter of piglets rushing in among their skirts, were among the +best of these, while a print of "Girls Dressing for the Masquerade," and +the "Dutch Academy,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> with a fat model posing before solid Dutchmen, +were among those not infrequent prints of our artist whose satire comes +near—if not over—the confines of good taste.</p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i125.jpg" alt="A Theatrical Candidate" /><br /> +<span class="caption"><i>By Thomas Rowlandson</i><br /> A THEATRICAL CANDIDATE</span></div> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<p>Some clever prints of Dr. Syntax himself were here—a subject this +which, published by Ackermann under the title of a "Tour of Dr. Syntax +in search of the Picturesque" in 1809, was republished in 1812, and +occupied the artist in various developments during his later life. To +the same period of Rowlandson's career belonged "The Microcosm of +London" (1808), "A Mad Dog in a Coffee House" (1809), and "In a Dining +Room" (1809), the print called "Exhibition Stare-case, Somerset House" +(1811)—where the visitors of both sexes are tumbling headlong +downstairs, the extraordinary cleverness of drawing scarcely +compensating for the doubtful taste of the subject; and later followed +"The World in Miniature" (1816), "Richardson's Show," "The English Dance +of Death" (1814-16), and "Dance of Life" (1817), which leads on to the +later "Tour of Dr. Syntax in search of Consolation" (1820), and (1821) +"In search of a Wife." Although Fores of Piccadilly seems to have +published many of our artist's prints during the last years of the +eighteenth century, throughout his whole career Rudolph <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>Ackermann +remained his constant friend; to the suggestion of this latter was due +the idea of a monthly publication, which gave Rowlandson regular +employment in his later years, and resulted in the series of prints +which I have just detailed, among which the quaint, angular form of Dr. +Syntax, with his thin legs, black coat and breeches, and hooked nose, +claims a prominent place.</p> + +<p>These subjects lead us already into the early nineteenth century, and, +as doing so, fall outside our present limit; but Rowlandson himself +belongs in his art, as much as Bunbury or Gillray, to the earlier age. +An artist of extraordinary genius, we have it on record that two +successive Presidents of the Academy in his day, Sir Joshua Reynolds and +Sir Benjamin West, in expressing their admiration of his drawings, added +their opinion that, had he chosen a higher branch of art, he might have +stood in the forefront of English contemporary painting. Instead of this +he preferred to devote his genius and his best years to caricature, and +in doing so, has bequeathed to us a rich and most precious heritage.</p> + +<p>He was happy in his friendships. James Gillray was well known to him; +George Morland, that brilliant artist with whom he had so much in +common, Henry Angelo, whom he loved to depict<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> among his pupils of the +foil ("Angelo's Fencing Room" and "Signora Cigali Fencing at Angelo's"), +Bannister, and Ackermann the art publisher were among his intimates. He +was less happy in the conduct of his life. Extravagance and carelessness +were combined with a passion for gambling which made him a frequent +figure in the fashionable playhouses of London; and these habits +placed the fortune, which should have been his by industry and +inheritance, beyond his reach. The legacy of £7000 bequeathed him by his +French aunt, who had treated him so generously in his student days, was +speedily dissipated in this way. Indeed, but for the frequent advice and +assistance of his friend and publisher, Rudolph Ackermann, he might have +found himself in serious difficulties; and the story runs that on one +occasion he sat for thirty-six hours at the cards, and that on another, +after losing all he had, he sat down coolly to his work and (raising +that facile pencil of his) said, "Here is my resource." Thus it was +that, after many years of fertile labour, he died a poor man in lodgings +at the Adelphi, on the 22nd of April, 1827. His faithful friends of +earlier days, Henry Angelo, Bannister, and Rudolph Ackermann, followed +to his grave the last great caricaturist of the bygone century.</p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i129.jpg" alt="Old Joseph Nollekens and His Venus" /><br /> +<span class="caption"><i>By Thomas Rowlandson</i><br /> OLD JOSEPH NOLLEKENS AND HIS VENUS</span></div> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>In these pages we have traced together the record of that century in +English Caricature; and if we have been compelled to note but hastily +the lesser men, have, in so doing, at least gained breathing space to +study four great and typical figures. We saw how William Hogarth, when +he handles the graver as humourist and delineator of character, stands +forth immortally great; how, when he sought to place himself at the head +of the nascent English School, he fell beneath his own level. We saw in +Henry William Bunbury the cultured artist, soldier, and man of society, +the welcome guest in many a great country-house, who could bring his +host's pretty daughters into some charming sketch, or take his part in +the improvised theatricals; but whose prints have real humour, charm, +and the sweet, wholesome breath of English country life. Then we watched +Gillray tower aloft in political satire, and Rowlandson's pencil touch +every side of life.</p> + +<p>If we noticed at the same time a certain coarseness of fibre come to the +surface in much of their work, finding expression often both in subject, +and still more in treatment and in type, we must remember that this +quality belongs not to the men alone, but to the age. The more sensitive +modern may feel himself at first repelled rather than attracted, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> +many a print of Rowlandson or Gillray find a place in his <i>Index +Expurgatorius</i>; but the brutality of these men is the brutality of +Nature in some of her moods, and their work, like Nature, fertile, +fresh, and vigorous, attracts us (as all strong work will and must) the +more we study it by its masterly drawing, its free, open humour, and +often its high imaginative grasp.</p> + +<p>Behind these men, these Masters of English Caricature, appears, never +entirely absent from our thought, the history of the century, with its +magnificent record of English achievement. Behind them, too, a +corrective and a stimulant to their best effort, is that wonderful +revelation of English eighteenth-century pictorial art. For just as +when, in years to come, men think on that stirring epoch, the two words +<i>England</i> and <i>Liberty</i> will leap unbidden to their thought; so, too, +in the record of the greatest epoch of our country's art, a place must +be found for the English Caricaturists of the Eighteenth Century.</p> + + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h3>Printed by <span class="smcap">Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.</span><br /> +London & Edinburgh</h3> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + + +<p>Footnotes:</p> + +<p>[<a name="f1" id="f1" href="#f1.1">1</a>] A fine collection of lithographs of Honoré Daumier (1808-1879) has +this year been exhibited in the Victoria and Albert Museum.</p> + +<p>[<a name="f2" id="f2" href="#f2.1">2</a>] "The Works of William Hogarth, elucidated by Descriptions." By T. +Clerk. London, 1810.</p> + +<p>[<a name="f3" id="f3" href="#f3.1">3</a>] "William Hogarth," by Austin Dobson; with a valuable technical +introduction by Sir W. Armstrong. London, 1902.</p> + +<p>[<a name="f4" id="f4" href="#f4.1">4</a>] "Bartolozzi and his Pupils in England" (Langham Series). By Selwyn Brinton. London, 1903.</p> + +<p>[<a name="f5" id="f5" href="#f5.1">5</a>] "History of Caricature and of Grotesque in Art." By Thomas Wright, M.A., F.S.A. London, 1863.</p> + +<p>[<a name="f6" id="f6" href="#f6.1">6</a>] His "Englishman at Paris" even predates this by four years (1767). +The British Museum etchings, to which I allude later, are early work, one even dating from his schooldays at Westminster!</p> + +<p>[<a name="f7" id="f7" href="#f7.1">7</a>] <i>Op. cit.</i> p. 63.</p> + +<p>[<a name="f8" id="f8" href="#f8.1">8</a>] I give a plate of this beautiful Eliza Farren (painted by Lawrence, engraved by Bartolozzi) +in my work on Bartolozzi in this Series (facing <a href="#Page_63">p. 63</a>). Gillray has an amusing print of the diminutive Lord Derby, +standing on his coronet to admire himself in the glass.</p> + +<p>[<a name="f9" id="f9" href="#f9.1">9</a>] They are all enjoying their new diet under similar conditions. In +Italy (perhaps the cleverest hit of all) the old Pope, seated, is having +the bread shot into his open mouth from a French soldier's blunderbuss, +while an assistant at the same moment neatly removes from his head the triple crown.</p> + +<p>[<a name="f10" id="f10" href="#f10.1">10</a>] Mme. Vigée le Brun, in her delightful memoirs, gives some +justification to Gillray's severe treatment. Visiting Lady Hamilton soon +after Sir William's death she found "this Andromache" draped in black, and extremely fat.</p> + +<p>[<a name="f11" id="f11" href="#f11.1">11</a>] In "Two-penny Whist" appear the worthy Mrs. Humphrey and her maid +Betty; in "Push-pin" the Duke of Queensbury and the Duchess of Gordon.</p> + +<p>[<a name="f12" id="f12" href="#f12.1">12</a>] <i>The Magazine of Art</i>, 1901.</p> + +<p>[<a name="f13" id="f13" href="#f13.1">13</a>] Rudolph Ackermann occupies almost the same position to Rowlandson +that Mistress Humphrey did to Gillray, as his early and faithful friend and principal publisher.</p> + +<p>[<a name="f14" id="f14" href="#f14.1">14</a>] <i>Bartolozzi and His Pupils in England</i>, p. 46.</p> + +<p>[<a name="f15" id="f15" href="#f15.1">15</a>] <i>Rowlandson, the Caricaturist.</i> By Joseph Grego. 1880.</p> + + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="u">Transcriber's Notes:</span></p> +<p>Missing quotation marks have been added. Otherwise text matches original printing.</p> +<p>Additional spacing after some of the quotes is intentional to indicate + both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new paragraph as + presented in the original text.</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Eighteenth Century in English +Caricature, by Selwyn Brinton + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 18TH CENTURY IN ENGLISH CARICATURE *** + +***** This file should be named 29647-h.htm or 29647-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/9/6/4/29647/ + +Produced by Stephanie Eason and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. 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