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+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: ASCII
+
+*** 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.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  THE LANGHAM SERIES
+  AN ILLUSTRATED COLLECTION
+  OF ART MONOGRAPHS
+
+  EDITED BY SELWYN BRINTON, M.A.
+
+
+
+THE LANGHAM SERIES OF ART MONOGRAPHS
+
+EDITED BY SELWYN BRINTON, M.A.
+
+Vol. I.--BARTOLOZZI AND HIS PUPILS IN ENGLAND. _By_ SELWYN BRINTON, M.A.
+
+Vol. II.--COLOUR-PRINTS OF JAPAN. _By_ EDWARD F. STRANGE, Assistant
+          Keeper in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
+
+Vol. III.--THE ILLUSTRATORS OF MONTMARTRE. _By_ FRANK L. EMANUEL.
+
+Vol. IV.--AUGUSTE RODIN. _By_ RUDOLF DIRCKS, Author of "Verisimilitudes,"
+          "The Libretto," &c.
+
+Vol. V.--VENICE AS AN ART CITY. _By_ ALBERT ZACHER.
+
+Vol. VI.--LONDON AS AN ART CITY. _By_ Mrs. STEUART ERSKINE, Author of
+          "Lady Diana Beauclerk," &c.
+
+Vol. VII.--NUREMBERG. _By_ H. UHDE-BERNAYS.
+
+Vol. VIII.--THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IN ENGLISH CARICATURE. _By_ SELWYN
+            BRINTON, M.A., Author of "Bartolozzi and his Pupils in
+            England," &c.
+
+  _In Preparation_
+  ROME AS AN ART CITY
+         AND
+  ITALIAN ARCHITECTURE
+
+These volumes will be artistically presented and profusely illustrated,
+both with colour plates and photogravures, and neatly bound in art
+canvas. 1_s_. 6_d_. net, or in leather, 2_s_. 6_d_. net.
+
+
+
+
+=RECRUITS.   By H. W. Bunbury.=
+
+
+
+
+  THE
+  EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
+  IN
+  ENGLISH CARICATURE
+
+  BY
+
+  SELWYN BRINTON, M.A.,
+  _Author of_
+  "BARTOLOZZI AND HIS PUPILS IN ENGLAND,"
+  ETC.
+
+  A. SIEGLE
+
+  2 LANGHAM PLACE, LONDON, W.
+  1904
+
+
+
+
+  _To Friends beyond the Seas_
+  _this Study_
+  _Of a Common Heritage in_
+  _English Art_
+
+
+_All rights reserved_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+                                _Page_
+
+   I. INTRODUCTORY                 1
+
+  II. THE COMEDY OF VICE           8
+
+ III. THE COMEDY OF SOCIETY       29
+
+  IV. THE COMEDY OF POLITICS      54
+
+   V. THE COMEDY OF LIFE          74
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+RECRUITS.                     _By Henry William Bunbury_     _Frontispiece_
+
+SHRIMPERS (Tail-piece).       _By Thomas Rowlandson_              _Page_  7
+
+MORNING.                      _By William Hogarth_         _Facing page_ 10
+
+THE DISTREST POET.            _By William Hogarth_                "      12
+
+MARRIAGE A LA MODE.           _By William Hogarth_                "      20
+
+THE FAMILY PIECE.             _By H. W. Bunbury_                  "      42
+
+A FASHIONABLE SALUTATION.     _By H. W. Bunbury_                  "      48
+
+LUMPS OF PUDDING.             _By H. W. Bunbury_                  _Page_ 53
+
+BRITANNIA BETWEEN DEATH AND THE DOCTORS.
+                              _By James Gillray_           _Facing page_ 64
+
+ARMED HEROES.                 _By James Gillray_                  "      66
+
+BUONAPARTE AS KING-MAKER.     _By James Gillray_                  "      68
+
+NELSON RECRUITING WITH HIS BRAVE TARS AFTER THE BATTLE OF THE NILE.
+                             _By Thomas Rowlandson_               "      82
+
+FILIAL AFFECTION(Colour-print).
+                              _By Thomas Rowlandson_              "      86
+
+A BALL AT THE HACKNEY ASSEMBLY ROOMS.
+                              _By Thomas Rowlandson_              "      90
+
+A THEATRICAL CANDIDATE.       _By Thomas Rowlandson_              "      92
+
+OLD JOSEPH NOLLEKENS AND HIS VENUS.
+                              _By Thomas Rowlandson_              "      94
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+INTRODUCTORY
+
+
+The word Caricature does not lend itself easily to precise definition.
+Etymologically it connects itself with the Italian _caricare_, to load
+or charge, thus corresponding precisely in derivation with its French
+equivalent _Charge_; 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 _Spectator_, "Those burlesque pictures which the Italians
+call _caracaturas_."
+
+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
+_caracatura_, our 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.
+
+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 _graffito_ of the Crucifixion,--emerges in the
+Middle Ages in a turbulent growth of grotesque, wherein those grim
+figures of Death or Devil move through a maze of imagery often quaint
+and fantastic, sometimes obscene or terrible--takes a fresh start in the
+_Passionals_ 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?
+
+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 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
+_Tale of a Tub_, 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 _Strephon and Chloe_.
+
+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 Honore Daumier[1] in Paris of the early nineteenth
+century--that is, a public which had come through a period of intensely
+active political existence to a complete and complex self-consciousness,
+and which enjoyed (just as in Paris _La Caricature_, when suppressed,
+found a speedy successor in _Le Charivari_) 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 _levee_ 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.
+
+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 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.
+
+
+=(Illustration without caption)    Shrimpers.=
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE COMEDY OF VICE
+
+
+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.
+
+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 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,[2] "a new species
+of painting, which may be termed the _moral comic_;" 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 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.
+
+
+=_By William Hogarth_   MORNING=
+
+
+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 "Morning" 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 observer, aimed near to
+the mark when he wrote: "_Il ne faut pas attendre beaucoup de noblesse
+de Hogarth. Le vrai beau n'etoit guere a la portee de ce peintre._" 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.
+
+But it is when we turn to the humour of life, even in its most sordid
+tragedies, that his real strength appears. "_Quelle richesse
+inexprimable_"--says Lavater again, and no less justly--"_dans les
+scenes comiques ou morales de la vie_." 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.
+
+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 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.
+
+
+=_By William Hogarth_   THE DISTREST POET=
+
+
+But to multiply examples of Hogarth's humour 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.
+
+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.
+
+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; 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 _mesalliance_ 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."
+
+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.
+
+At the same time the Series which had brought 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.
+
+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 "Marriage a la Mode."
+
+Each of these Series, as well as that of the "Industrious and Idle
+'Prentices" are complete stories, worked out to their _denoument_--
+tragedies, 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. "_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._"
+
+Just as insistent, just as certain of his concluding verdict as the
+Psalmist is the eighteenth-century 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,[3] 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."
+
+Yet it is to be noted that from the first his genius is attracted to
+social satire. The _Masquerades and Operas, Burlington Gate_, 1724
+(which he calls in his own notes _The Taste of the Times_)--the first
+plate which he published on his own 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.
+
+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 talent which he was to develop later on more fully in
+his "Marriage a la Mode"--namely, his satire of eighteenth-century life
+of fashion.
+
+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 _levee_ 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 _maitre
+d'armes_, Dubois, is making a lunge with his _epee de combat_, 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 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.
+
+
+=_By William Hogarth_   MARRIAGE A LA MODE   PLATE II=
+
+
+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
+"Marriage a la Mode." 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 _ennui_ 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 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 _perruquier_ 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 _levee_; and we shall note very soon that these
+allusions were not incidental, but far more probably intended.
+
+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 "Morning" (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 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 _chiaroscuro_, 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 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."
+
+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 him
+in his _self-portrait_ 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 L400, even in his will
+insisting that it should not be sold below that sum.
+
+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!
+
+I am treating in this chapter William Hogarth 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 _je ne scai quoi_," 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."
+
+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 of Fullness, Variety,
+Uniformity, Simplicity, Intricacy, and Quantity; _all which co-operate
+in the production of beauty, mutually correcting, and restraining each
+other occasionally_"; and that the essay, even if entirely inadequate as
+a philosophical treatment of the subject, contains many useful
+suggestions and shrewd observations.
+
+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
+_North Briton_. 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
+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.
+
+"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.
+
+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, 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:
+
+  "... Whose pictur'd morals charm the mind,
+  And through the eye correct the heart.
+  If genius fire thee, reader, stay;
+  If nature touch thee, drop a tear;
+  If neither move thee, turn away,
+  For Hogarth's honoured dust lies here."
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE COMEDY OF SOCIETY
+
+
+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.
+
+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
+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.
+
+"Something of the amateur"--I have written elsewhere[4]--"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 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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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 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 Francois"--published by Bretherton at 134 New Bond St.--belongs
+surely to this period; and Thomas Wright, in his valuable "History of
+Caricature,"[5] 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, _Poste Royale_, with the three _fleur-de-lys_. Our Courier
+belongs evidently to the _ancien regime_, and might indeed have
+stepped--or galloped--to us out of Sterne's "Sentimental Journey." The
+drawing of 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,[6] 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.
+
+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, _H. W. Bunbury, delineavit; J. Bretherton,
+fecit_). In fine contrast to the hurry of the lean Frenchman his English
+counterpart ambles 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.
+
+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" (_H. Bunbury, invt._, published 1771 by
+Harris), "The Englishman at Paris," 1767, the earliest in date of these
+(_Mr. Bunbury, del.; Js. Bretherton, fecit_, published 1799 by J.
+Harris), and lastly the "View on the Pont Neuf at Paris" (_H. W.
+Bunbury, invt._ 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 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.
+
+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.
+
+And now ("La Cuisine de la Poste") we are introduced to the interior.
+The _pot-au-feu_ 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 cure with a friend sipping his glass of red wine--and
+on the walls _Louis le bien-aime_, with baton and perruque, is balanced
+by _Sanctus Paulus_, with a sword much bigger than himself, or by the
+"Ordonnances de Monsieur le Duc de Choiseul, Grand Maitre 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 _La Ville Lumiere_. 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
+_perruquier_ 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 _perruquier_ here, too, must
+have his muff, though both hands are filled with the shaving-pot and
+curling tongs; the trim abbe 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
+of the trade, which combined the shoeblack's lower art with that of the
+dog-barber.
+
+  _Aux Quarante Lions
+  St. Louis
+  Decrotte a l'Anglaise
+  et Tond des Chiens
+  Proprement
+  Allons, Messeigneurs, Allons._
+
+
+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 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.
+
+We have now returned with Bunbury from his "grand tour" abroad, and have
+to study him at his 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.
+
+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.
+
+"Recruits," 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 same class of
+subject. The characterisation of "Recruits" 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 "Recruits";
+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."
+
+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 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"?
+
+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.
+
+
+=_By H. W. Bunbury_    THE FAMILY PIECE=
+
+
+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 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.
+
+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,[7] 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 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."
+
+"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:
+
+  "Hark! the drum commands
+  Honour! I attend thee!
+  Love, I kiss thy hands!"
+
+"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 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.
+
+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:
+
+  "No care but Love can discompose her breast,
+  Love of all cares the sweetest and the best."
+
+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 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.
+
+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?
+
+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.
+
+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 "Fete at Carlton House" (at
+which no doubt he was present in attendance on the Duke), belong to this
+period of his life.
+
+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--
+
+  "Longa Tysonum minuit
+  Quid velit et possit rerum concordia discors."
+
+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.
+
+In his "Lumps of Pudding" 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. 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
+_Fliegende Blaetter_, which Caran d'Ache has used with success in France,
+and which _Pick-Me-Up_, when it was under the able direction of Mr.
+Leslie Willson, scored many a good point with.
+
+
+=_By H. W. Bunbury_   A FASHIONABLE SALUTATION=
+
+
+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 "_broder_" 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 _mise-en-scene_ 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 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,[8] which has the motto:
+
+  "When I followed a lass that was froward and shy."
+
+But the "lass" in question became less shy later, and complied to his
+request to become Countess of Derby.
+
+
+=LORD DERBY=
+
+
+"Patience in a Punt," one of our artist's best-known prints, was
+engraved by Rowlandson, and 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 "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.
+
+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 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.
+
+
+="LUMPS OF DELIGHT"   BY H. W. BUNBURY=
+
+
+="LUMPS OF PUDDING"   BY H. W. BUNBURY=
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE COMEDY OF POLITICS
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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
+them at the head of the Cabinet, Pitt being Chancellor of the
+Exchequer--with others of his Ministerial colleagues above ...
+
+               ... "the gate
+  With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms.
+  Some natural tears they dropt, but wiped them soon;
+  The world was all before them, where to choose
+  Their place of rest, and Providence their guide."
+
+
+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 barn and are getting ready--dressing-rooms
+being at a discount--for the next performance.
+
+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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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 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?"
+
+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.
+
+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 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 maeelstrom 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."
+
+Following the order of time, which is perhaps our safest guide, "The
+Bengal Levee" 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 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.[9] 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 thrown in as an
+_entremet_. 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 (_sic_); 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.
+
+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 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).
+
+
+=THE JACOBIN DRUMMER=
+
+
+=_By James Gillray_   BRITANNIA BETWEEN DEATH AND THE DOCTORS=
+
+
+In the year following (1798) the form of Nelson 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.
+
+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 Liberte, a la Francois (_sic_) or, Buonaparte
+closing the Farce of Egalite at S. Cloud, near Paris, November 16,
+1799."
+
+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--before she appears in his "Handwriting on the Wall."
+
+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
+_decolletees_ and ringleted maids-of-honour waiting in service on them,
+sees with dilated eyes on the wall the warning of his doom.
+
+
+=_By James Gillray_   ARMED HEROES (WILLIAM PITT AND BUONAPARTE)=
+
+
+Of course the threatened invasion of England finds its echo in Gillray's
+prints. "French Invasion, or Buonaparte Landing," "Armed Heroes" (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, which I also reproduce, of "Britannia between
+Death and the Doctor," 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.
+
+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 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."
+
+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.
+
+
+=_By James Gillray_   BUONAPARTE AS KING-MAKER (WITH TALLEYRAND TO HELP)=
+
+
+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 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.
+
+"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.
+
+"Dido in Despair" is evidently a satire on the beautiful Lady Hamilton,
+who is however represented in this print as enormously fat.[10] 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 _Studies of Academic Attitudes_, with
+scarcely academic illustrations, lies near the window, through which is
+seen a line of British battleships standing out to sea.
+
+  "Ah where and oh where is my gallant sailor gone?
+  He's gone to fight the Frenchmen for George upon the throne,"--
+
+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 appears, in another of Gillray's satires, as
+"A Conoscenti contemplating ye beauties of ye Antique." Among these last
+_objets d'art_ 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.
+
+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;[11] and the 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."
+
+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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE COMEDY OF LIFE
+
+
+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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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 his life we shall find in the _insouciance_ 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.
+
+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[12] very
+happily when he says: "It was the more romantic Paris of Sterne that
+Rowlandson first viewed, and he seems to have 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."
+
+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 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.
+
+His imagination was as fertile as his pencil was facile. The market was
+easy--Fores (for whom Gillray also worked), Ackermann,[13] 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 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.
+
+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 "Lords of the Bedchamber," Georgina, seated in her _boudoir_
+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.
+
+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
+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.
+
+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 _decollettee_, and
+with bare arms, are busy singing a dirge on the defeated opponent.
+Georgina, a figure of delicious sprightliness and 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--"Admiral Nelson recruiting with his brave tars after the
+glorious Battle of the Nile" (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).
+
+
+=_By Thomas Rowlandson_ NELSON RECRUITING WITH HIS BRAVE TARS AFTER THE
+BATTLE OF THE NILE=
+
+
+But it is time for us to betake ourselves to 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."[14]
+
+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. 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:
+
+  "Here Juno Devon, all sublime,
+  Minerva Gordon's wit and eyes,
+  Sweet Rutland, Venus in her prime."
+
+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. 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 _macaroni_, man of
+taste and editor of _The World_, 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.
+
+"Filial Affection," 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
+fugitives--whom we have just seen presenting their horse pistols at the
+parental _poursuivant_--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 _Bryan's Dictionary_. It is a plate from _The Dance of Death_, 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.
+
+
+=FILIAL AFFECTION.   By Thomas Rowlandson.=
+
+
+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" 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.
+
+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
+branch, that many continue to pass current."[15] 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."
+
+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 "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 "Preparation for the Academy, or Old
+Joseph Nollekens and his Venus" (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.
+_The Life of the Sculptor Nollekens_, 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 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.
+
+
+=_By Thomas Rowlandson_   A BALL AT THE HACKNEY ASSEMBLY ROOMS (REMEMBER
+THE GRACES!)=
+
+
+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 Fete," 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 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.
+
+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," 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.
+
+
+=_By Thomas Rowlandson_   A THEATRICAL CANDIDATE=
+
+
+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 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.
+
+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.
+
+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 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 L7000 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.
+
+
+=_By Thomas Rowlandson_  OLD JOSEPH NOLLEKENS AND HIS VENUS=
+
+
+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.
+
+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
+many a print of Rowlandson or Gillray find a place in his _Index
+Expurgatorius_; 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.
+
+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
+_England_ and _Liberty_ 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.
+
+
+  Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
+  London & Edinburgh
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+[1] A fine collection of lithographs of Honore Daumier (1808-1879) has
+this year been exhibited in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
+
+[2] "The Works of William Hogarth, elucidated by Descriptions." By T.
+Clerk. London, 1810.
+
+[3] "William Hogarth," by Austin Dobson; with a valuable technical
+introduction by Sir W. Armstrong. London, 1902.
+
+[4] "Bartolozzi and his Pupils in England" (Langham Series). By Selwyn
+Brinton. London, 1903.
+
+[5] "History of Caricature and of Grotesque in Art." By Thomas Wright,
+M.A., F.S.A. London, 1863.
+
+[6] 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!
+
+[7] _Op. cit._ p. 63.
+
+[8] I give a plate of this beautiful Eliza Farren (painted by Lawrence,
+engraved by Bartolozzi) in my work on Bartolozzi in this Series (facing
+p. 63). Gillray has an amusing print of the diminutive Lord Derby,
+standing on his coronet to admire himself in the glass.
+
+[9] 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.
+
+[10] Mme. Vigee 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.
+
+[11] 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.
+
+[12] _The Magazine of Art_, 1901.
+
+[13] Rudolph Ackermann occupies almost the same position to Rowlandson
+that Mistress Humphrey did to Gillray, as his early and faithful friend
+and principal publisher.
+
+[14] _Bartolozzi and His Pupils in England_, p. 46.
+
+[15] _Rowlandson, the Caricaturist._ By Joseph Grego. 1880.
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+  Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.
+
+  Illustration captions are represented by =caption=.
+
+  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.
+
+  Missing quotation marks have been added.
+  Misprint "and and" corrected to "and" (page 82).
+  Otherwise, text matches original printing.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Eighteenth Century in English
+Caricature, by Selwyn Brinton
+
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