Rowlandson the Caricaturist; a Selection from His Works. Vol. 1

by Joseph Grego

ROWLANDSON THE CARICATURIST

FIRST VOLUME

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LONDON: PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET

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ROWLANDSON THE CARICATURIST

A SELECTION FROM HIS WORKS

WITH ANECDOTAL DESCRIPTIONS OF HIS FAMOUS CARICATURES

AND

A Sketch of his Life, Times, and Contemporaries

BY
JOSEPH GREGO
AUTHOR OF 'JAMES GILLRAY, THE CARICATURIST; HIS LIFE, WORKS, AND TIMES'

WITH ABOUT FOUR HUNDRED ILLUSTRATIONS

IN TWO VOLUMES—VOL. I.

London

CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1880

[The right of translation is reserved]

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DEDICATED

TO

ALL LOVERS OF HUMOUR

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PREFACE.

'Tuâ nobis est gratiâ.'—Cic.
We have need of your favour.

The Editor recognises that the admirers of Rowlandson's peculiar graphic productions, and those fortunate amateurs who are able to indulge their taste for collecting caricatures and works embellished with humorous illustrations, will not expect any excuse for the preparation and appearance of the present work: he anticipates that—in spite of much that he would improve—the two volumes devoted to a résumé of the great Caricaturist, with the multifarious, ludicrous, and grotesque creations which emanated from his fertile fancy, will be accepted as, in some degree, supplying that which, without being absolutely indispensable, has frequently been instanced as a compilation likely to be acceptable to the appreciators of graphic and literal satire.

To the initiated few this sketch of a famous delineator of whimsicalities, with the review of his works, times, and contemporaries, is offered with the conviction that the intentions of the Author are not liable to be misconstrued by them; nor has he any grounds to dread that the subjects represented run the risk of being questioned at their hands on the grounds of propriety.

Fuller consideration is due to the many to whom the name of Rowlandson conveys no more than a perception of 'oddity' or of license of treatment which approaches vulgarity, to whom the innumerable inventions of the artist represent foreign ground—a novel, strange land, populated with daring absurdities, according to their theories.

It is felt that some justification is needed for the writer's temerity in volunteering as a pioneer to conduct the unsophisticated through the devious and eccentric intricacies which characterise the progress of pictorial satire, as demonstrated in the subject of the work now submitted to the public with all due deference.

The neophyte, it is anticipated, will be somewhat startled at the first glance of the surroundings amidst which he will wander; but it is believed that, in the course of his journey through an anomalous past, he will alight on discoveries, more or less interesting in themselves, which provide abundant food for the student of humanity.

The writer deprecates a hasty conclusion, with the assurance that those who have the moderation to reserve their opinions until they have fully acquainted themselves with the materials, may possibly suffer their critical instincts to be modified in the process.

We have taken the liberty of scrutinising somewhat closely—with a view to the portrayal of its salient features—a generation which was marked with a colouring more intensified than those who live in our time are prepared to adopt. Of this age, diversified with much which has been discarded, we accept Rowlandson as the fitting exponent. His works epitomise a state of being comparatively recent in actual fact, but, from the circumstances of change, so distantly removed in appearance, as to constitute a curious experience to the majority.

With every qualification to ensure success, Rowlandson, as his story indicates, deliberately threw away the serious chances of life, to settle down as the delineator of the transitory impressions of the hour. 'There is wisdom in laughter,' says the sage; and—without precisely regarding life as a 'stale jest'—our artist drew mirth from every situation, and illustrated from his own fecund resources that, while nearly every circumstance has its grotesque as well as its sinister aspect, the ludicrous elements of any given event are often more enduring than the serious ones.

Good-natured pleasantry, we may remind the reader, is held to be wholesome. Rowlandson's shafts, so far as our judgment serves, were never pointed with gall: while he possessed the faculty of seizing the weak or ridiculous side of his subject, he seems, unlike Gillray, his best-known contemporary, to have been an utter stranger to acrimonious instigations. A fuller acquaintanceship reveals the Caricaturist—as he was described in his day—'an inexhaustible folio of amusement, every page of which was replete with fun'—perhaps the most genial travelling companion who could be selected in traversing the ways of life led by our ancestors, for the half-century which witnessed the gradual extinction of the quaint, old-fashioned Georgian era, and inaugurated the less picturesque generation to which our immediate predecessors belong.

Be it recorded, concerning the part played in the world by the satirists, pictorial and literal—'the less they deserve, the more merit in your bounty.' We would modestly suggest the sapient axiom embodied by the great master, 'Fancy's favourite child,' relative to the transient jesters whose lot it has been 'to hold, as't were, the mirror up to nature' upon the mimic stage: 'Let them be well used; for they are the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time: after your death you were better have a bad epitaph, than their ill report while you live.'

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CONTENTS
OF
THE FIRST VOLUME.

(1774–1799.)
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.
	PAGE
The prevalent taste for pictorial satires—Contributions to the literature and history of caricature—Collectionsof caricatures in national museums—Rowlandson's publishers—Scarcity of his works andthe avidity of collectors—Difficulties in the way of forming a collection of Rowlandson's engravedplates—Rowlandson regarded as an artist in water-colours—Examples of his productions to befound in picture galleries—Establishes himself as a serious artist, 1777 to 1781—His contributionsto the Royal Academy as a portrait-painter in oils—His female likenesses—His versatile acquirementsand imitative fidelity—Rowlandson considered as a landscape artist—As a painter of marinesubjects—George Cruikshank's estimation of Thomas Rowlandson—General review of Rowlandson'scaricatures: Gambling, the Westminster Election, 1784; political struggles between the Whigsand Tories, Pitt and Fox, the King and the Prince, fashions, the clergy, the Bar, usures, doctors,quackery, John Bull, foreigners, cockneys, countrymen, the Universities, collegians, the military,the navy, seaport sketches, amusements of the bon-ton, Vauxhall, the Opera, theatres, card-playing,sharpers, drinking, feasting, sport, fox-hunting, horse-racing, prize-fighting, rural sports, masquerading,picnic revels, fortune-hunters, elopements, Gretna Green, travesties, parodies, and burlesques,trials, scandals, housebreaking, highway robberies, the passions, the Royal Family—Imitationsof the old masters: Female studies, croquis taken in France, Holland, Belgium, Germany,England and Wales, the metropolis—The Regency struggle—Admiral Lord Nelson—The miseriesof human life—The Great French Revolution—Napoleon Buonaparte—The Delicate Investigation—TheRoyal Academy, &c., &c.—Manifold production of drawings—Contributions to book illustration—Portraitsof the caricaturist—The artist and his relatives—His schoolfellows—A student inParis—At the Academy schools—His early friends Bannister and Angelo—Tricks on the RoyalAcademicians—His friends Pyne and John Thomas Smith—Studies of Continental character—BetweenLondon and Paris—Is left a fortune—His passion for the gambling-table—The integrityof his conduct—Successive exhibits at the Royal Academy—Portraits in oil—His travels at homeand abroad; the companions of his excursions; Mitchell the banker and Henry Wigstead the magistrate—Congenialspirits—Vauxhall Gardens—Lord Barrymore—Nocturnal frolics—Play—Successivedrawings of social satires, contributed to the Royal Academy Exhibitions—Rowlandson robbed—Identifiesa thief—Lord Howe's victory—French prisoners—Sketches of the embarkation of theexpedition for La Vendée—Sojourns in Paris with Angelo, John Raphael Smith, Westmacott, andChasemore—Sketching in the Netherlands and Germany with Mitchell—John Bull on his travels—Nightauctions of pictures, drawings, and prints—Old Parsons, 'Antiquity' Smith, Edwin,Greenwood, Hutchins, Heywood—Relaxations of the period—Nights at Mitchell's—Wigsteadand 'Peter Pindar'—Wolcot's stories—Dinners with Weltjé at Hammersmith—The Prince ofWales—Theatrical worthies, Munden, Palmer and Madame Banti—Convivialities—The Prince'sMaître d'Hôtel: his cooking and anecdotes—Excursions in England: views in Cumberland, Cornwall,Devon, Somerset, Norfolk, Suffolk, Kent, Hampshire, &c.—Studies in the Universities: viewsof the Colleges of Oxford and Cambridge—Malcolm's 'Historical Sketch of the Art of Caricaturing'—Wright's'History of Caricature and Grotesque in Literature and Art'—Rowlandson as an etcherof the works of amateur caricaturists: his own spirit lent to the productions of Wigstead, Nixon,Woodward, Bunbury, Collings, &c.—Sketches of contemporary caricaturists: William HenryBunbury, George Moutard Woodward, Henry Wigstead, the facetious John Nixon—The Beef-steakClub—The 'well-bread man'—Collings, artist and editor of the 'Public Ledger'—CalebWhiteford—'Ephraim Hardcastle'—James Heath—George Morland—James Gillray—Allusionsto Rowlandson in the 'Life of James Gillray, the Caricaturist, with the Story of his Works andTimes'—The position of caricaturists in relation to their contemporaries—Henry Angelo, thefencing master—Personal characteristics of satirists—Rowlandson's publisher, Rudolph Ackermann:sketch of his life—Conversazioni at the 'Repository of Arts'—Special qualities of Rowlandson'sproductions—Esteem in which he was held by contemporaries—His death and funeral	[1]
1774–1781. EARLY PRODUCTIONS.
A Rotation Office—[The Village Doctor]—A Scene at Streatham—[Bozzy and Piozzi]—SpecialPleading—[The Power of Reflection]—[E O, or the Fashionable Vowels]—Gambling Tables—[CharityCovereth a Multitude of Sins]—[Bob Derry]—[Luxury]—Political and social caricaturesfor 1781	[96]
1782–1783.
[Amputation]—[The Rhedarium]—The Discovery—[Interior of a Clockmaker's Shop]—The Times—Politicaland social caricatures for 1783	[107]
1784. POLITICAL CARICATURES.
The Pit of Acheron—The Fall of Dagon—The Coalition—Fox and North Ministries—[BritanniaRoused]—The East India Company—[The Apostate Jack Robinson]—The Champion of the People—[MasterBilly's Procession to Grocers' Hall]—The State Auction—The Westminster Election—[TheHanoverian Horse and the British Lion]—The Canvass—The Rival Duchesses—[The Rival Candidates]:Hon. Charles James Fox, Lord Hood, Sir Cecil Gray—[The Devonshire], or most ApprovedManner of Securing Votes—The Poll—Fox, the [Westminster Watchman]—Honest Sam House—[Lordsof the Bedchamber]—The Court Canvass of Madame Blubber—[Wit's Last Stake], or theCobbling Voter and Abject Canvassers—Monsieur Reynard—[The Case is Altered]—The Hustings—[Processionof the Hustings] after a Successful Canvass—Lord Lonsdale—The Westminster Mendicant—[TheWestminster Deserter] Drumm'd out of the Regiment—Court Influence—Preceptorand Pupil—[Secret Influences] Directing the New Parliament—[For the Benefit of the Champion]—ThePetitioning Candidate—Christopher Atkinson, a 'Rogue in Grain'—John Stockdale, the'Bookselling Blacksmith'	[111]
SOCIAL CARICATURES.
A Sketch from Nature—[English Curiosity]—[Counsellor and Client]—La Politesse Françoise—1784, orthe Fashions of the Day—The Vicar and Moses—[Money-lenders]—Bookseller and Author—TheHistorian Animating the Mind of a Young Painter—Billingsgate—Illustrations of Conveyances—Rowlandson'simitations of modern drawings	[145]
1785.
The Fall of Achilles—The Golden Apple, or the Modern Paris—[Defeat of the High and Mighty Balissimo]Corbettino and his Famed Cecilian Forces—The Wonderful Pig—The Waterfall—[Comfort in theGout]—Vauxhall Gardens: Vauxhall Characters—Vincent Lunardi: [Aërostation Out at Elbows],or the Itinerant Aëronaut—[Too Many for a Jew]—[An Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful]—TheMaiden Speech—Captain Epilogue—[Col. Topham] Endeavouring with his Squirt to Extinguish theGenius of Holman—Persons and Property Protected by Authority—[Intrusion on Study], or thePainter Disturbed—Courtship—Filial Affection, or a Trip to Gretna Green—[The Reconciliation], orthe Return from Scotland—Lord Eden and Gen. Arnold—[Harmony]—Sympathy—John Gilpin—[TastesDiffer]—[Nap in the Country]—[Nap in Town]—[Sea Amusement], or Commander-in-Chief ofCup and Ball on a Cruise—[Opera Boxes]	[152]
1786.
[Box Lobby Loungers]—Love and Learning—Sketch of Politics in Europe, January 1786—Uncle Toby(the Duke of Richmond)—[An Ordnance Dream], or Planning Fortifications—[Luxury]—[Misery]—[TheMorning Dram]—[Count Boruwloski] (the Polish Dwarf) Performing before the Grand Seigneur—[Brewers'Drays]—[Youth and Age]—[Sailors Carousing]—A Theatrical Chymist—[The Return fromSport]—A Box Lobby Hero—Werter—[Covent Garden Theatre]—Illustrations to the poems of'Peter Pindar' (Dr. Wolcot)—'Picturesque Beauties of Boswell'	[180]
1787.
Uncle George and Black Dick—Illustration to Peter Pindar's poems, '[The Lousiad],' '[Peter's Pension],'['Odes for the New Year']—[The Triumph of Sentiment]—[The Triumph of Hypocrisy]—Transplantingof Teeth (Baron Ron)—[The Village Forge]—[A Brewer's Dray]—[A Posting Inn]—[A RuralHalt]—[Haymakers]—[A Sailor's Family]—[A College Scene], or a Fruitless Attempt on the Purseof Old Squaretoes—[Tragedy Spectators]—[Comedy Spectators]—[Love in the East]—[The Art ofScaling]—[Modish]—[Prudent]—Cribbage Players	[199]
1788.
Hunting Series—[The Meet]—[The Humours of St. Giles's]—Warren Hastings—[Ague and Fever]—LordHood—The School for Scandal—The King's Illness—Filial Piety—The Prospect before us—TheRegency Struggle—The Restrictions—The Addresses—The Word-Eater—Blue and Buff Loyalty—[Housebreakers]—[Loveand Dust]—[Luxury and Desire]—[Lust and Avarice]—[Stage Coach andBasket]—[An Epicure]—[A Comfortable Nap] in a Post-chaise—[A Fencing Match]—[The Pea-Cart]—APrint Sale	[223]
1789.
The Regency Restrictions—The Modern Egbert, or the King of Kings—The Pittfall—The Propagationof a Truth—Loose Principles—State Butchers—[A New Speaker]—Britannia's Support, or theConspirators Defeated—Going in State to the House of Peers—A Sweating for Opposition—IrishAmbassadors Extraordinary—Address from the Parliament of Ireland to the Prince of Wales—ThePrince's Answer—The King's Recovery—Irish Ambassador's Return—Rochester Address—GrandProcession to St. Paul's on St. George's Day, 1798—Sergeant Kite (Duke of Orleans) Recruitingat Billingsgate—[Grog on Board]—[Tea on Shore]—[Interruption], or Inconvenience of aLodging House—[A Sufferer for Decency]—[The Start]—[The Betting Post]—[The Course]—[The Mount]—Bay of Biscay—Chelsea Reach—La Place des Victoires, Paris—[A Dull Husband]	[242]
1790.
[Tythe Pig]—[A Roadside Inn]—Frog-Hunting—[A Butcher]—[Repeal of the Test Act]—A French Family—Kick-upat a Hazard Table—Who Tells First for a Crown—Philip Thicknesse—'An Excursionto Brighthelmstone, made in the year 1789'—[Saloon at the Pavilion, Brighton]—[Waiting for Dinner]—[AtDinner]—[After Dinner]—[Preparing for Supper]—Four o'clock in Town—Four o'clock in theCountry—[Fox-Hunters Relaxing]—John Nichols—Miniature groups and scenes	[268]
1791.
The Pantheon—The Prospect before us, Nos. [1] and [2]—[Chaos is Come Again]—Sheets of picturesqueetchings—The Attack—Bardolph Badgered—An Imperial Stride—[The Grand Battle between theFamous English Cock and the Russian Hen]—[A Little Tighter]—A Little Bigger—[Damp Sheets]—[EnglishBarracks]—French Barracks—[Slugs in a Sawpit]—The Prince's jockey, Chiffney—Howto Escape Winning—How to Escape Losing—Angelo's Fencing Rooms—Notorious Fencers—The[Inn-yard on Fire]—A Squall in Hyde Park—Illustrations to Fielding's 'Tom Jones'—Smollett's'Adventures of Peregrine Pickle'—'Délices de la Grande Bretagne'	[283]
1792.
St. James's and St. Giles's—Work for Doctors' Commons—Six Stages of Marring a Face—Six Stagesof Mending a Face—Ruins of the Pantheon—Hogarthian Novelist: 'Adventures of RoderickRandom'—Philosophy Run Mad—[On her Last Legs]—[Studious Gluttons]—Cold Broth andCalamity—[An Italian Family]—The Hypochondriac—[Benevolence]—The Contrast: which isBest? British Liberty, or French Liberty?	[306]
1793.
Reform Advised: Reform Begun: Reform Complete—New Shoes—Illustrations to Smollett's novels—Illustrationsto a 'Narrative of the War'—Illustrations to Fielding's novels	[319]
1794.
[The Grandpapa]—The Foreigner Stared out of Countenance—[Traffic]—The Invasion Scare: VillageCavalry Practising in a Farmyard—[A Visit to the Uncle]—A Visit to the Aunt—Bad News uponthe Stock Exchange	[321]
1795.
Harmony: Effects of Harmony: Discord—[A Master of the Ceremonies Introducing a Partner]	[326]
1796.
Sir Alan Gardiner—Portraits—An Impartial Narrative of the War	[327]
1797.
Theatrical Candidate—Views in the Netherlands—'Tiens bien ton Bonnet, et toi, defends ta Queue'—Cupid'sMagic Lanthorn	[330]
1798.
The Hunt Dinner—Illustrations to the '[Comforts of Bath],' in twelve plates—'The New Bath Guide, orMemoirs of the Blunderhead Family; in a series of poetical epistles,' by Christopher Anstey—Viewsof London—The Invasion Panic: Volunteers and Recruiting—The Hungarian andHighland Broadsword Exercise—The Glorious Victory obtained over the French Fleet off theNile, August 1, 1798, by the gallant Admiral Lord Nelson of the Nile—High Fun for John Bull,or the Republicans put to their Last Shift—The Discovery—'Annals of Horsemanship'—TheAcademy for Grown Horsemen—'Love in Caricature'	[333]
1799.
[Cries of London]—[A Charm for a Democracy]—An Artist Travelling in Wales—Nautical Characters—[An Irish howl]—Etchings after the old masters—[St. Giles's Courtship]—St. James's Courtship—Connoisseurs—HorseAccomplishments—Comforts of the City—[Procession of a Country Corporation]—Forgetand Forgive—A Note of Hand—Legerdemain—[A Bankrupt Cart], or the Road toRuin in the East—Subjects engraved after designs by Bunbury—[Distress]—Hungarian and HighlandBroadsword Exercise—Loyal Volunteers of London and the Environs	[354]

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ROWLANDSON THE CARICATURIST.

Buyers and readers of books, all admirers of pictures, drawings, and engravings—in a word, the intelligent, and, let us hope, larger proportion of the community—are well aware, if they are inclined to search for information in respect to the celebrities of art, or would inquire into the personal careers of the renowned pioneers and practitioners of the serious branches of the profession, of whatever period, school, or nationality, that numerous sources of reference, tolerably easy of access, are open to the seeker without being driven far abroad in his quest.

There exist, as we are all thoroughly aware, abundant lives of artists, dictionaries of painters, and other prolific sources of information upon the practisers of the sober walks of pictorial art, with rich collections of engravings from their works, in fact, a complete library of delightful literature, which goes far towards proving that the world at least acknowledges a slight interest in individuals as well as works, and that people care to learn some particulars of the men who spent their industrious existences, and devoted the gifts of their admitted genius and application to the humanising walks of life, and to the fitting illustration of the world's universal passions and history, or to the delineation of the ever-varying beauties of nature under picturesque aspects.

Wealthy collectors, the cultivated patrons of material refinement, frequenters of picture galleries, those who love pictures by instinct, art amateurs, and the hopeful and fervent student, have alike a provision prepared for them in this regard, which happily leaves little to be desired. The memoirs of artists—men whose domestic and inner lives in so many instances teach lessons of gentleness, simplicity, and singleness of purpose, of perseverance under difficulties; making manifest to a world which is often slow to give them credit for the gifts that are in them, the strong impulses of talent under untoward conditions—are, for the most part, tender memorials, labours of love, cherished productions of biographers, whose own natural qualifications and trained appreciation of the subtler attractions of art have brought them into more intimate communion with the memorable subjects of their studies.

It has ever been a source of regret to the writer, since his youthful fancies were first won by the marvels of grotesque art, and the pleasant creations of the graphic humourists, that while the names of the designers, familiarly known as caricaturists—who have enriched the more playful branches of the profession—are household words, no fitting memorials are to be found of the careers of these draughtsmen of true genius; they knew their generation, as is instanced in the inexhaustible memorials they have bequeathed their descendants in their works, and while they were themselves thoroughly familiar with the varied aspects and workings of the social life with which they were surrounded, their generation knew them not, and took no care to preserve any record of the capricious wits whose pleasant inventions had often afforded them enjoyment. The humourists, who did so much to contribute towards the amusement of others, have been suffered to pass away, in too many cases, as impersonalities. The works of their fanciful and fertile imaginations have been accepted on all hands and allotted their recognised position among the other agreeable accessories of life, while the gifted professors have, with one or two notable exceptions, which make the reverse the more marked, been pretty generally passed over, if they are thought of at all under the relationship of realistic characters, as mythical beings, less tangible—as regards their connection with the living people of their generations, of whose persons, habits, and follies they have bequeathed animated instances to posterity—than the most weird and fantastic creations of their own pencils or etching-points, emanations of the mind, whose utmost substance amounts to paper, and printing-ink, and ideas.

The whimsical conceptions which owe their origin to Gillray, Rowlandson, Bunbury, Ramberg, Woodward, Dighton, Nixon, Newton, Boyne, Collings, Kingsbury, Isaac Cruikshank, his son, 'the glorious George,' the veteran calcographist, who has just passed away full of years and reputation, Lane, Heath, Seymour, and a bevy of their contemporaries, were in their day tolerably familiar, their etchings and sketches were in the hands of the print-buying public of the period, and they enjoy, as far as these relics of the past are concerned, a posthumous reputation which varies according to the merits of their productions, a generation or two having assigned them their just relative positions on the ladder of fame; all the inimitable amusing travesties which reproduce the manners, and even the sentiments of past celebrities and perished generations, owe their creation to artists who were suffered to labour in partial obscurity; while the creatures of their brains were in the hands of every one, their contemporaries, for the most part, did not trouble themselves sufficiently to reflect whether the designers had any real existence, possibly classing the actual, practical, living, and working men under the category of abstract ideas in their own minds, impalpable atomies, less substantial than their tangible satirical pictures, which enjoyed a popular circulation.

The late Thomas Wright, F.S.A. (with the collaboration of an earnest worker in the same field, the late F. W. Fairholt, F.S.A., who contributed the valuable aid of his pencil), has done a great deal for the subject in his 'History of the Grotesque in Literature and Art,' and still more in his 'Caricature History of the Three Georges.' 'The Caricature History of the Fourth George,' which offers a still wider field of selection, as regards political and pictorial squibs and satires, has yet to appear.

A preliminary contribution to the history of caricature, as an attempt to repair in some measure the oversight of indifferent contemporaries, 'The Works of James Gillray the Caricaturist, with the Story of his Life and Times,' published under the auspices of Messrs. Chatto and Windus, has already met with a favourable reception at the hands of the press and the public; the present writer devoted several years to the completion of the volume, with the solitary end in view of associating the artist more intimately with his works, in the estimation of the public, before it was too late. Mr. Thomas Wright, as an indefatigable pioneer in a comparatively unbeaten track, deserved personal recognition on the strength of his important contributions, bearing on the political history of the House of Hanover, as duly set forth in the present writer's introduction, and to his name was offered such repute as was conferred by the editorship.

The writer, from his gleanings in the same direction, has been able to offer the public a sketch of the 'Life of Henry Bunbury the Caricaturist,' with slighter croquis of his contemporaries. During the interval since the first intention of compiling the present volume as a further contribution to the literature of caricature assumed a definite form, some ten years back, the preparation of the work, imperfect and incomplete as it confessedly must remain—a mere ébauche at best—has been proceeding by slow and toilsome stages, the self-imposed task being rendered a more difficult one than in the instance of James Gillray,[1] from the disheartening circumstance that it is utterly impossible to arrive at anything approaching a comprehensive view of the works of Rowlandson; no adequate collection being in existence, as far as the writer has discovered, with the possible exception of an accumulation in the hands of Mr. Harvey of St. James's Street, the advantages of which gathering (it has been going on steadily for years) have hitherto remained inaccessible to the editor, the possessor's time having been too occupied by the requirements of his other engagements to permit him to arrange the prints as he wishes. This circumstance is to be regretted, since Mr. Harvey admits the personal interest he feels in caricature, upon which, when communicatively inclined, he is able to furnish very valuable information, in part the results of his own wide experience as a purchaser, and still more, perhaps, of painstaking investigations conducted for his private delectation; as his position and opportunities enable him to gratify his tastes in this direction to the fullest extent, it is hinted that on occasions he may feel disposed to furnish the critic with certain valuable facts of a special nature, drawn from the results of his own practical investigations in directions not generally available. This gentleman is, undoubtedly, an authority, and as, it is believed, he possesses unrivalled opportunities for forming a unique collection of prints by any master whose works he may fancy, the writer has, from season to season for the past six years, deferred the completion of his volume on the faith of a generous-sounding promise that he should be allowed to consult Mr. Harvey's collection of prints by Rowlandson, which, according to his knowledge, must be both interesting and valuable, and may possibly contain a great deal that has escaped his previous researches, however zealously they may have been instituted.

The sacrifice of time, labour, and patience involved in attempting to compile anything approaching a fairly compendious summary of Rowlandson's etchings is simply incredible. The desire to furnish a complete catalogue, though seemingly reasonable in itself at the first glance, is discovered upon experience to be practically impossible, and hence out of the question as regards arrangement; the productions of the artist, multiplied by pen, graver, and etching-point, as supplied by the hand of the master, or reproduced by other engravers, are legion, and where the examples are scattered no amount of application can adequately ascertain.

As far as kindly assistance is concerned, the writer has to acknowledge, with sincere gratitude, that where his previous experience has taught him to anticipate courtesies, he has been gratified in the highest degree, and he is proud to record that he once more finds himself indebted for cordial sympathy to the best qualified experts of the day.

Mr. G. W. Reid,[2] the respected keeper of the prints and drawings in the British Museum, with Messrs. Fagan and Donaghue, urbane members of his staff, have at all times made his access easy to the invaluable collection of social and political caricatures in his department; Mr. George Bullen (whose affability and scholarly acquirements are proverbial), the respected keeper of the printed books in the same magnificent national institution, has been able to facilitate the writer's quest of illustrations and caricatures by Rowlandson, so far as they come within the scope of the important department which that gentleman so efficiently administers; the obliging and accomplished custodian of the superb collection belonging to the Bibliothèque Nationale of France has most readily allowed the writer to avail himself of the select and valuable gathering of caricatures by Rowlandson, which are to be found under his charge. It must be mentioned that the caricature resources of the royal collection in the museum at Brussels were as courteously placed at his service by the well-informed custodian, who, it may be added, takes a considerable individual interest in this branch as illustrative of men and manners under special aspects. The writer has pursued his perquisitions as far as the national state collection of engravings contained in the Trippenhuizen Museum, Amsterdam. These magnificent national institutions are all, more or less, rich in caricatures of an historical description, but unfortunately, as regards the success of the present undertaking, the works of Rowlandson, numerous as they are, happen to be the reverse of the strong features of their collections of satirical prints, either political or social. The writer has accordingly been thrown back, to a dispiriting extent, on his own necessarily restricted resources; and the numerous illustrations which accompany this volume are for the most part unavoidably drawn from his own folios.

The principal source from whence it was hoped the best information could be detached proved utterly and exceptionally valueless; the writer refers to the important publishing establishments (and the successors who carry on the firms at the present day), whence the far-famed caricatures were originally issued. The firms of the Humphries, Hollands, Jackson, J. R. Smith, and others under whose auspices the artist's earliest, and in several instances most finished and ambitious works, first secured their lasting reputation, have long become extinct, as far as the editor is informed. But three leading print-publishing houses, established by Rowlandson's principal patrons, to whom the publication of the major part of his works was due, are still flourishing, under conditions modified to harmonise with the requirements of the present age, by descendants and successors of the well-known founders. These resources have proved, however, a disappointing failure, as far as assistance towards the compilation of a catalogue of the artist's productions is concerned. To Mr. Rudolph Ackermann, the respected inaugurator of the 'Repository of Arts,' a truly liberal and enterprising gentleman, who will be referred to at greater length in the course of this volume, Rowlandson (with many other professional artists and authors) was deeply indebted both for business-like co-operation, for the pains he took to sell the artist's countless original drawings, for personal encouragement, untiring friendship, and pecuniary accommodation. Messrs. Ackermann have unfortunately preserved no account of the numerous publications due to the hand of the caricaturist, and issued for half-a-century by their respected firm, nor have they any collection of impressions from the plates they gave to the public.

The same observation applies to Mr. William Tegg, whose father, the indefatigable and well-known Thomas Tegg of Cheapside, published hundreds of the satirist's later and cruder caricatures, which were more generally familiar in the windows of printsellers, &c., since copies were multiplied to a larger extent than was practicable in the case of delicately finished aquatints, which gave fewer impressions, and commanded higher prices. Consequently, Rowlandson is better known to the public by his least desirable prints, and under his most common-place aspect. Mr. S. W. Fores seems to have issued an important proportion of Rowlandson's larger and more valuable plates, with the addition of an immense number of small subjects etched by Rowlandson, and finished by clever aquatinters, published in a more costly form than was generally the custom of the time. The successors of this gentleman have mentioned that the firm has not preserved any list of the publications issued under its original and well-recognised standing, in respect to satirical production, as Fores' Caricature Museum, but it is understood that, at the present writing, there still remains in the house a collection, in huge volumes, of early impressions from the multitudinous plates issued from the establishment under its earlier auspices—a publisher's summary, in short, such as, it is to be regretted, is rarely preserved for any length of time. Unfortunately, owing to the exigencies of their modern print business, the writer has not been permitted to consult this highly interesting collection; he has, however, been informed, as an equivocal sort of consolation for his discomfiture, by the member of the firm to whom his application was addressed, that the major part of the prints, as far as the works of Rowlandson are concerned, are of a political character, and that the interesting and valuable social engravings are wanting; he also learns that nothing of importance by Rowlandson is to be found in this collection.

It is worthy of note, that the majority of the caricatures described in the present work, as published by S. W. Fores, belong almost entirely to the more attractive order of social satires, and pictorial skits at home and abroad, or cartoons levelled at the leaders of fashion, holding up the prevalent follies of the hour to legitimate ridicule. The writer confesses that he is inclined to feel a deeper regret at his inability to describe these political prints, presuming his informant, who certainly ought to know, is correct in this conclusion, since he is unable to account for their existence, as amongst the immense number of caricatures published by S. W. Fores, he has not hitherto lighted upon the series in question. Rowlandson's political prints—which, as the reader will realise in the progress of this compilation, are numerous enough in all conscience—were mostly published, as regards the early examples, by Humphries (a few of the somewhat hackneyed Westminster Election set, 1784, were due to S. W. Fores, it is acknowledged); while his later productions in this field, such as the succession of plates attacking Buonaparte, were issued from Ackermann's Repository of Arts, or circulated by Thomas Tegg (like the series treating of that Delicate Investigation, the Clarke scandal), according to the circumstances of the artist's employment or the cost of the plates. Popular prices being a requisition in the case of the sets published from the City, a coarser method of execution, with unmistakable instances of haste, detract in an unqualified degree from the interest of these prints, as instances of the artist's ability, which is exhibited to greater advantage in productions where his skill was allowed a more liberal exercise, as is evidenced in the capitally executed plates published by the West End print-selling firms.

The hopeful chances of aid from fountain-heads, upon experience, diminished to zero; and, while obstacles multiplied, the writer found it necessary to redouble his energy. As it proved that his own collection must, in the end, serve as the main source of reliance, fresh efforts were made to increase his gathering, and valuable additions were gradually secured. The process was somewhat tedious and costly withal, but it was the only course left open, unless the intention was renounced after the work had been advertised in progress.

Print-sellers' shops, at home and abroad, were ransacked, and auctions of engravings were attended, whenever the alluring word caricatures occurred in the catalogue. The supply was remarkably limited, the demand considerable and increasing; and prices, from the nature of the request, shortly became unreasonable. Choice caricatures, or those in fairly good condition, were pushed up to nearly the prices of the original drawings, and even at these enhanced rates but few examples were forthcoming. In Paris, Brussels, and London, a five-pound note became about a fair equivalent for a moderately fine impression after Rowlandson, if the plate were large and the subject important or curious, while for certain of the more sought-after examples, this rate was doubled; for such plates as Vauxhall Gardens, dealers expect a still larger price—indeed, five-and-twenty pounds have been demanded in many instances. The chances of fresh examples by Rowlandson coming into the market have decreased, and possibly the competition will relax when there is no longer a chance of exciting it.

The writer has necessarily made the acquaintance of several gentlemen who are fervent collectors of Rowlandson's works, and he by no means ignores his obligations to those happy possessors of rarer specimens, who have frequently carried them off with an air of conquest from discomfited rival amateurs, the condition of their purses, and the artistic enthusiasm aroused at the moment, rendering similar triumphs comparatively facile, when incidental questions as to actual worth are too insignificant to engage the attention.

Certain collectors of eminence, who are discriminating selectors of caricatures, well qualified to judge of their technical merits, and who, further, are well posted up in curious and out-of-the-way points of the political and social histories of the times thus illustrated, have volunteered the results of their researches; these good-natured offers have arrived too late to be available, but the writer is not the less indebted to the kindness which prompted the action; in an earlier and preparatory stage, these advances would have been of considerable value and assistance.

So much for the materials; perhaps too much stress has been laid, as far as the reader's patience is concerned, on the preliminary difficulties which have hindered and weakened the execution of the writer's desire to reproduce, by pencil and pen, a fair gathering of the works of our greatest humorous designers, an idea long cherished, and tardily carried out, as regards the first part of his task, James Gillray; and beset, as he has recounted, in respect to Thomas Rowlandson, the concluding portion, by unforeseen impediments and technical difficulties which it would be tedious to enumerate; they may, however, in a minor degree, be taken into consideration as a plea for the obvious shortcomings of this laborious compilation, and, while inclining rigid specialists to be less exacting, induce critics to regard the unavoidable faults of the performance with lenient forbearance.

For the space of a century, Rowlandson's caricatures, which are more properly croquis of the life which surrounded him, have continued to afford delight to the appreciators of graphic humour, from the date, 1775, when he sent his first contribution to the Royal Academy. It was only this year (1878) that a pair of his remarkably spirited drawings, Faro Table at Devonshire House, and A Gaming Table, attracted considerable praise and attention on the walls of the Grosvenor Gallery. Although the artist was master of the most elegant refinement, both of delineation and colouring, and produced the most delicious female heads with that lightness and daintiness of touch which was his peculiar gift, bringing all the graces, sparkle and animation of the French school to bear upon the models of winsome female beauty our own favoured isles produced for the exercise of his pencil, we are constrained to admit, thus early in our summary, that too many of his productions are strongly tinctured by that coarseness of subject and sentiment which has been held to disfigure the works of contemporary humorists; his wit, it must be remembered, was of the jocose school of Smollett and Fielding, and in justice it must be taken into consideration that his designs, even in their most uncompromising and grosser aspects, simply reflect the colour of a period which was the reverse of squeamish, and, as has been pertinently observed by the late Thomas Wright, 'of a generation celebrated for anything rather than delicacy.'

The artist was pretty generally recognised as the famous illustrator of Doctor Syntax and The Dance of Death, and in this relation he is fairly acknowledged by posterity; this limited view, as the present volume is designed to demonstrate, being far indeed from an adequate acknowledgment of his proper artistic standing. Rowlandson's higher qualifications, as a draughtsman in water-colours of remarkable merit, a portrait-painter of felicitous promise, and the originator of countless witty and pointed conceptions, were discovered more tardily. His surprising facility for representing the human figure, with knowledge and freedom of execution, his marvellous power of combining groups and crowds of figures in active movement, his grasp of expression, and fluency of colour and handling, were more particularly admitted (though in a sense they have since been lost sight of) after the Exhibition of 1862, where two of his truly characteristic subjects, of considerable size, made their appearance on the walls, to the amazement and delight of the spectators, who had no previous acquaintance with his whimsical genius. These two drawings, which opened the eyes of the world to his gifts for a little season, are entitled An English Review and A French Review; they originally formed a very noticeable feature on the walls of the Royal Academy in 1786; it is believed that eventually they came into the possession of the Prince of Wales, and, with the rest of George IV.'s collection, have remained in keeping of the royal family ever since, her gracious Majesty, the Queen, being pleased to lend them, with other fine representative examples of art, to the Exhibition Commissioners of 1862.

The English Review, and its companion drawing, a French Review, hang at Windsor Castle, where we are informed there is a very large accumulation of caricatures, drawings and prints, put away in a closet, in the order of their appearance; which, it is likely, have remained undisturbed for generations. It is not impossible that, hidden away in this mass of satirical productions, may be found the series of drawings, notoriously of a free tendency as regards subject, which Rowlandson is understood to have produced for the delectation of George IV. A collection of a similar description was, as we learn from the same authority, destroyed by a nobleman well known for his princely liberality, on the death of the patron who had selected the subjects.

In the unrivalled collection of water-colour drawings of the English school, which are found on the walls of the sumptuous permanent Museum of Art at South Kensington, are exhibited three characteristic examples of Rowlandson's talents in the caricature direction. The Parish Vestry, 1784, a humorous and spirited drawing, belonging to the artist's best time, formed part of the munificent gift made by Mr. William Smith to the nation; as did the second example, entitled Brook Green Fair, which we should assign to about the year 1800. The third drawing, representing The old Elephant and Castle Inn, Newington, is also due to a liberal donor, being the gift of G. W. Atkinson, Esq.

As has been related, the caricaturist produced thousands of capital drawings, delicately tinted, excelling in all styles; and from these original designs, he executed in turn thousands of spirited etchings with his own hand, which were frequently coloured to reproduce the first sketches, or aquatinted by engravers (sometimes by himself), in imitation of drawings tenderly shaded in Indian ink, to which, in some instances, the resemblance is sufficiently faithful to deceive the eye of anyone who is not familiar with this method of reproduction.

It must be borne in mind—and we insist the more earnestly on this point, as, from some incomprehensible wilfulness, it has seemingly been suffered to sink out of sight for a time—in treating of Rowlandson, that the man was essentially an artist; it is undoubtedly true that he was gifted (perhaps we might consider fatally as far as his proper estimation is concerned) with the faculty known as caricature, and he excelled in burlesque, but his successes were sufficiently high in other branches of the artist's profession to indicate that he was equally qualified by original talents, by academic training which he might have turned to the best advantage, by a sense of the beautiful unusually keen, and a happy power of expressing his first impressions, to take a foremost place amongst the best recognised masters of the early English school, to whose body he might have been an ornament, if he had not preferred his chosen calling of 'a free-lance' with a roving commission to work mischief. His remarkable gifts of originality, ever fertile, and apparently exhaustless, and facile powers of invention, either pleasant or terrific, which seemed spontaneous, were in his case insurmountable hindrances, instead of promoting his advancement and reputation as a painter of acknowledged value and eminence. He had the calamity—so fatal, in his and many other instances, to serious application—to succeed without sensible effort; from the very first his progress was a series of triumphs; none of the students of the Academy could draw such ludicrous and yet life-like figures, and thus his popularity with his fellow-labourers was assured; his studies from the nude, both in London and in Paris, were wonderful for the rapid ease and talent with which they were executed, and hence arose another source of glorification, and although personal vanity has never been mentioned in connection with the artist (he being thoroughly blind to everything but his own particular hobbies), the professors at home and abroad, and the members of the Academy themselves, were proud to patronise in their classes such precocious ability, which could accomplish the most difficult delineations without effort, and thus reflected credit on their schools; and the prodigy who drew from the life, in his youth, as vigorously and well as the most painstaking adepts in their maturity, could not fail to receive a dangerous amount of admiration, which tempted him to depend upon trifling exertions, and left his ambition without a spur.

While yet in his boyhood he was recognised as a genius, and was unhappily flattered into becoming a wayward one; the very fluency of his pencil, and the fidelity of his memory towards the grotesque side of things proved his stumbling-blocks. It is with more than a passing shade of regret that we reflect, with his far-seeing colleagues at the Academy and elsewhere, how eminent a painter was lost in the development of a caricaturist, admirable and unsurpassed in his own branch as Rowlandson must admittedly remain. The gifts which were in the man were marvellous, and beyond this he possessed nerve to persevere, and manly resolution to sustain his exertions, as he proved in his youth, and subsequently demonstrated when past life's meridian, times then being less prosperous, since fortunes and legacies had long ceased to fall in adventitiously, but the very excitement of setting the little world wondering, and making the public smile, while his tickled audience accorded him the cheapest popularity by crowding in admiration round his travesties, turned the wilful artist away from serious application, where no immediate fun was to be secured for either the limner or his following.

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 Moreland, and as such, it is possible, since the caricaturist is so little known in this branch, that many continue to pass current. From 1777 to 1781, five years of Rowlandson's residence in Wardour Street, with all the freshness of his academic studies, and the laurels unfaded he had won in the schools, with golden opinions, as a youth of paramount promise, indulged by the most eminent of the Royal Academicians and the French professors, the artist practised the more laborious and prosaic, but surer branch of portrait-painting with success, and his pictures were duly received by his patrons and well-wishers amongst the omnipotent Forty, and found their place on the walls of the Royal Academy Exhibition without a break—no barren compliment when it is remembered that his compeers were Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Hoppner, and that of the two or three hundred works selected for the gallery at the period referred to, the superb canvases of the artists named constituted an average of over ten per cent. of the entire exhibits.

If we but think for a passing instant over the winsome portraitures of fair women, whose faces live, for the delectation of all time, on the canvases of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Gainsborough, Romney, and a few lesser luminaries, it is cruel to realise that Rowlandson, from sheer wantonness (promoted by what seemed a happy hit in 1784),[3] neglected his opportunities in the direction of portraiture, with an indifference which, while proving his disinterestedness and superiority to mere profit, is the more exasperating when we are frequently told, as every one of Rowlandson's contemporaries who has mentioned the caricaturist never fails to reiterate, that the successive presidents of the Royal Academy, the great Reynolds, the royally patronised West, the courtly and fashionable Lawrence, the very men we have mentioned who were, it must be conceded, the most competent judges on the point, pronounced their conviction that his abilities entitled to acceptance, as one of themselves, a brother artist whose addition to their ranks they would have gloried to acknowledge, since he had the undoubted genius to reflect a lustre on the Academy, if he had exerted his talents in the recognised channels, and withstood the impulse of his notoriety for producing irresistibly droll novelties, which, as they foresaw, must infallibly prove pernicious to the practice of sober portraiture.

The versatile acquirements of our artist may, in a sense, be looked upon as an infirmity, a theory which had been thoroughly established while the subject of it remained in the flesh, and enjoyed a certain perverse gratification in contributing to support its soundness and perspicacity.

In landscape art we discover Rowlandson successfully rivalling the most respected practitioners in water-colours amongst his contemporaries, and helping the younger professional generation, that carried the art to perfection, to discard the obsolete theories of blackness for clear translucid colouring. His studies after nature are much esteemed, and are to be occasionally recognised in galleries and collections. It is a sufficiently capricious circumstance which has come within our experience—we have heard it asserted confidently more than once—that Rowlandson, the simple harmonious colourist and ready draughtsman, whose brush with limpid tints so deftly translated on paper the charms of sylvan scenes; the truthful artist who pictured the forest, fall, and glade, the distant hamlets amidst the foliage, the picturesque windings of the silver stream, the rustic cottages, the cattle wending leisurely through the fertile pastures, the mellow atmosphere, and the far-extending horizon, is often held a distinct individual from that other universally known Rowlandson—of equivocal reputation, it is hinted—whose daring reed-pen produced grotesques which perhaps were inimitable, but which, it is certain, were often indefensibly vulgar.

The artist's facility was so considerable that, had he been less scrupulous (his horror of fraud and imposition, especially in their pecuniary reference, was implacable, in spite of, or perhaps in contradistinction to, his other levities), he could have allowed his own productions, in the manner of his reputable contemporaries, and even of deceased celebrities, whose subjects and method he chose to imitate as a question of pure ingenuity—(while his own style is above all difficult to reproduce)—to pass current as veritable originals by the masters. A book of etchings consisting entirely of these imitations is described in the course of this work, and he has managed to assume, without copying any particular picture, the modus operandi of the artists, and has varied his own manner of execution and disguised his salient individualities with such subtlety, that, even to the etching-point, slight trace of Rowlandson remains to betray the acknowledged imposition.

In his sketches after nature, as we have ventured to advance in respect to his female portraits and delicious studies from life, in many instances it is difficult to distinguish between the artless rustic groupings and charming pastoral drawings by George Moreland and Thomas Gainsborough, let alone those of Barrett, Hills, Howitt, Pugh, and other of his associates (who executed pictures lightly outlined with a reed-pen, shaded with a warm tint and delicately washed with transparent water-colours, as was then the process),[4] and the acknowledged contributions of our versatile genius to this department, in the earlier stages of the captivating art of water-colour drawing.

The writer, in the course of his preparation for this work, has been at the pains to consult more than one well-recognised artist of reputation and authority; seeking for hints from professors whose celebrity extended well back towards the beginning of the nineteenth century; these respected ancients, who are now nearly all gathered to the shades to join the subject of this volume, being from their age, knowledge, and experience, as well as from the traditions of their earlier masters, most likely to know and remember circumstances of a special character bearing upon the subject. Some of these worthies were actually working as contemporaries of the caricaturist who departed fifty years ago. The last time the writer met George Cruikshank, a few months before that truly splendid old gentleman passed away, full of years and honour, to his well-earned repose, he took occasion to allude to the veteran's acknowledged admiration for the works of his extraordinarily endowed predecessor, James Gillray, in whose footsteps he had very literally commenced his career, being selected during the lifetime of the gifted caricaturist (when Gillray's genius had proved too exacting for the tension of his faculties, and his reason had unhappily departed, never to be restored beyond an occasional lucid flitter) to complete several plates which the attacks of his malady had suspended. George Cruikshank, the most deservedly popular of the name, was not a little proud of having been thought worthy, while still a very young man (Gillray's faculties were deranged in 1811), to take up the plates of the first genius that has adorned his art. With the earnestness of his disposition, and perhaps with characteristic partiality, he regarded the unfortunate Gillray as the greatest man, in his eyes, who ever lived, indisputably 'the prince of caricaturists,' as he has appropriately christened him, and this title, won from a loving disciple, who, in his turn, became still more famous, is likely to last as long as the great caricaturist is remembered.

George Cruikshank voluntarily called on the writer to express the interest he good-naturedly felt in certain slight records of past caricaturists then publishing, and to communicate some valuable facts about the works of his father, a meritorious artist whose reputation would be widely increased if his pictures, exhibited at the Royal Academy, were better known. On a subsequent occasion the cheery veteran imparted various anecdotes on the subject within his knowledge, but confessed that he had never been admitted to terms of personal familiarity with either Gillray or Rowlandson in the flesh. It was his father, Isaac Cruikshank—for whose graphic powers in the same walk he expressed the best deserved and truest filial respect—who enjoyed their intimacy, and it was he who related (with a genial force happily done justice to by his descendant) to his deeply interested son the circumstances with which George was acquainted.

The writer was naturally eager to gather, while there was yet time, any facts which might be of importance for the furtherance of his contemplated sketch of Rowlandson's career, which was then occupying all his energies, from the last representative of the famous caricaturists, who formed, in himself, so desirable a link with the generation of the Georgian epoch, which had been dissolved into the thinnest elements for three-fourths of a century back. Cruikshank expressed the most cordial interest in the undertaking, and genially declared, by way of an encouragement, which is the writer's most appreciated reward, that he should look forward to its successful completion, and further promised that if, in revising his notes, and the personal memoirs, touching upon such kindred topics (which, as he imparted, had long employed his leisure), he could discover any allusions of an interesting description to his gifted contemporary Rowlandson, or any similar memoranda left by his father, he would communicate them for the benefit of the present volume. His death has unfortunately prevented the accomplishment of this valued service, which was volunteered spontaneously with his well-known readiness to confer favours.

The point about Rowlandson which had most impressed George Cruikshank is somewhat original, and properly belongs to this part of our subject; hence we have been glad to have an opportunity of quoting the trustworthy authority of the aged caricaturist. 'Rowlandson,' said George, 'was a remarkable man in most respects;' the waywardness of his youth and the notoriety of his gambling days seemed to have rather prejudicially influenced the mind of his simpler successor, who had taken his place in 1827, as he had, almost of right, succeeded to the working-table and unfinished plates of James Gillray, many years before. Cruikshank, moreover, considered that Rowlandson's academical successes, his successful rivalry of Mortimer in depicting the nude, the knowledge of his art and the fluency he had acquired, were altogether exceptional features in the profession of a caricaturist, to his English views; but, according to his kindly creed, mellowed by age—his steel a trifle tempered since his own youth, when his shafts too were not without poignancy—'Rolley' was somewhat unreflecting, and reckless in exposing the infirmities of others, having but scant regard for his own reputation or the feelings of society, and further he had suffered himself to be led away from the exercise of his legitimate subjects, to produce works of a reprehensible tendency, which respectable dictum will probably find numerous subscribers.

A SHIPPING SCENE.

Strangely as it may sound, it was not as a caricaturist that Rowlandson had gained Cruikshank's admiration; he appreciated the artist enthusiastically as an accomplished water-colour painter, the equal in his opinion of most of the founders of our special school. Rowlandson's masterly power over the delineation of the figure, and his happy gift, amounting almost to inspiration, of portraying female charms of face and person, deserved high regard in Cruikshank's estimation; his peculiarly felicitous pictures of quaint Continental life, and the examples his free and scholarly handling held out, as admirable models of style to the French caricaturists of his day; the social sketches produced in Paris at the beginning of the century, though remarkable for neatness and delicacy, being laborious, formal, timid, and wanting in that racy comicality, and dashing power of expression, characterising the drawings under consideration, to which George accorded unqualified praise.

It was chiefly for his skill in landscape delineation that Cruikshank respected the artist under discussion, and more especially, as he declared, warming with his reminiscences of the drawings he called to mind, he had never seen anything superior, in his estimation, to Rowlandson's water-side and maritime sketches, for their clear freshness and simple air of fidelity to nature; the banks of the river, the 'pool' filled with vessels, wharves, landing-places, ports, and naval stations, with the noble men-of-war lying off; and the bustling craft, travelling between the fleet and the shore; the groups of busy figures, far and near, happily introduced in a state of seeming activity; the shipping, which he drew with picturesque ease and dexterity, his far-spreading landscapes and distant horizons, the treatment of the water, the movement of his skies, and the general sense of expanse and atmosphere, were beautiful in the extreme, all noted down, as they were, without apparently a second thought, with the slightest possible labour, recalling in a forcible degree the drawings of William Vandevelde, who was, in Cruikshank's opinion, the only artist whose marine studies could be quoted in comparison with those of Rowlandson.

THE QUAY.

We are necessarily anxious to avoid the suspicion of attempting to prove too much, and it must be admitted that we do not pronounce Rowlandson a Rubens, a William Vandevelde, a Reynolds, and a Moreland, all at once; any more than we can be deluded into the belief that his landscape drawings might be claimed by Turner, Girtin, De Wint, Fielding, or David Cox. In treating of our artist in relation to the truly great names which have been frequently put into contrast with his own, it must not be forgotten that his works are spoken of, as they exist, under their modest condition of sketches manipulated in the very slightest manner possible, and, if considered at all in juxtaposition with those of the higher luminaries, it is only by the side of studies executed under similar circumstances; it would be a piece of pretension, entirely out of character on our part, to even suggest submitting Rowlandson's attempts in the most respectable exercise of his talents in competition with the more substantial finished and ambitious pictures bequeathed us by the select few of really eminent painters, whose unrivalled works cannot fail to afford the most unqualified delight to all cultivated lovers of art of whatever school. Their productions are admitted to stand alone, even though there exist diversities of opinion, schisms, and heresies in regard to the generality of the profession.

In resuming our summary of Rowlandson's conceptions in the caricature branch, we must notice, while contemplating his strongly characterised works, that, while the rest of his competitors in the grotesque walk have in most examples left no record of their prints beyond the plates on which they were executed, for every subject he has produced of his own designing, at least one corresponding drawing has existed, and frequently three or four variations of leading ideas are worked out as completed pictures, without, however, any appearance of experimentalising under difficulties of execution—technical points never puzzled his skill; and such daring flights as Rubens ventured with the brush, in the way of foreshortened and difficult attitudes, Rowlandson's reed-pen accomplished right merrily, as if by its own volition, and without a thought on the part of its highly-trained wielder, about such common-place requirements as the posing of living models or preparatory sketches. The original notions of Rowlandson's whimsical inventions are in the generality of instances far worthier of attention than the most spirited etchings he thought fit to circulate after them; and it is well to keep in mind that the artist has produced some thousands of humorous conceptions (placing his more serious studies out of the question), of which no engraving has ever appeared; and amongst these unpublished delineations may be included several of the most ingenious and attractive pictures executed by his hand, especially from the year 1790, that is to say, for more than two-thirds of his professional life—a circumstance with which every collector of original drawings by this artist is thoroughly conversant.

The career of Rowlandson may be divided into periods; the work belonging properly to the several stages is tolerably distinctive as to general characteristics. An adept can positively determine, within a year or two, the particular section to which his designs, when the date happens to be wanting, may be justly assigned, and, as his manifold sketches and etchings extend over the space of half a century, this circumstance is a trifle remarkable in itself.

The first period, as far as his published plates are concerned, includes his smaller social and political satires; the execution, though free and fluent, as his productions uniformly were, exhibits indications of care which is not so traceable as his method grew mellower, and practice confirmed the facility which came to him as a gift. These juvenile etchings bear more affinity to Gillray's manner of manipulation than is traceable in his subsequent cartoons. A view of A Hazard Table and its frequenters (E.O. or the fashionable Vowels, October 28, 1781) offers perhaps the best indications of his growing powers, between 1774 and 1783. His publishers were Humphrey, Holland, Jackson, and a few others; and he further appears, in conjunction with J. Jones, to have gone into the publishing way himself, at 103 Wardour Street.

In 1784 the excitement of the famous Westminster Election seems to have carried him more thoroughly into political satires, and, as we observe, his humour discovered an unflagging source of impulse round the parliamentary candidates, Fox, Wray, and Hood; the fair Duchess of Devonshire, Lady Duncannon, and honest Sam House, the Whig canvassers, and their opponents on the ministerial side, the Hon. Mrs. Hobart (Lady Buckinghamshire), and the Duchess of Gordon; together with the whimsicalities of the polling-booth. If we were asked to select his most noticeable social and satirical effusions, we should incline to particularise [English Curiosity], or the Foreigner stared out of countenance; 1784, or the Fashions of the Day; and A Sketch from Nature (January 24, 1784).

In 1784, Rowlandson realised the full extent both of his powers of fancy and his mastery of the art of water-colour delineation. He discontinued the practice of sending portraits to the Exhibition of the Royal Academy, in which he had persevered for five years, and contributed in their places three mirth-provoking drawings, which must have produced no little sensation amongst the visitors, who were unaccustomed to such works. These were the inimitable Vauxhall Gardens, which reveals his talents at their best, [An Italian Family], and The Serpentine River.

In 1785 appeared some of John Raphael Smith's graceful publications after Rowlandson's more refined originals, notably Vauxhall, [Opera Boxes], Toying and Trifling, [An Italian Family], A French Family, [Grog on Board], [Tea on Shore]; Filial Affection, or a Trip to Gretna Green; [Reconciliation]; [Intrusion on Study], or the Painter disturbed; [Comfort in the Gout]; and several other excellent subjects in his most finished manner, besides an animated scene after Henry Wigstead, John Gilpin's Return to London.

Rowlandson sent five important and highly humorous drawings, displaying advanced qualities in the direction of execution, to the Royal Academy in 1786; those of the first consequence were An English Review, A French Review, the pair exhibited at the International Exhibition 1862; Opera House Gallery, under which designation, as we suspect, we recognise his [Box Lobby Loungers], published the very same year; A French Family (published the year previous); and A Coffee House, of which we can discover no further record.

Among the engraved works for the same year we must refer to the print of [Box Lobby Loungers], already mentioned, and [Covent Garden Theatre], as the most noticeable as to size, subject, and the numerous figures introduced.

Rowlandson sent four known works to the Royal Academy, the season following (1787). They were French Barracks, a superlative drawing, [Grog on Board] a Ship, Countrymen and Sharpers (engraved by Sherwin as [Smithfield Sharpers]), and The Morning Dram, or Huntsman rising, engraved as Four o'clock in the Country, S. W. Fores (October 20, 1790). All Rowlandson's contributions for this year have been published; indeed, it is very possible, from the popularity of the caricaturist's novel exhibits, that all the pictures he sent to the Royal Academy were straightway issued on copper. There are two exceptions, The Serpentine and A Coffee House, of which the writer has never succeeded in meeting impressions, but it by no means follows that sooner or later they may not come to light, and it does not seem unlikely that the first named, The Serpentine River, may be another version of Cold Broth and Calamity (published in 1792).

Amongst the engraved works of 1787, the writer instances Baron Ron's Dental Surgery, or Transplanting of Teeth, and a series of five Hunting Scenes, The Morning, [The Meet], The Run, The Death, and The Dinner, published in a folio size, and now somewhat rarely met with as a set.

In the two succeeding years Rowlandson again threw his etching-point into party conflicts, and came out with a shower of political squibs on the amenities of the Regency Struggle. Nothing very ambitious in the way of social satires appeared in 1788. Among minor subjects we may allude to [Housebreakers], A Cart Race, The School for Scandal, [A Fencing Match], A Print Sale, [Lust and Avarice], and [Luxury and Desire], as being slightly above the average. In 1789 and 1790 but few works of exceptional character were issued to gratify Rowlandson's devoted admirers or the general public. She don't deserve it! Don't he deserve it? A Racing Series, [The Course], [The Betting Post], [The Mount], [The Start], and A Fresh Breeze, take the lead. La Place des Victoires à Paris belongs to 1789, and, in the writer's estimation, it is perhaps one of the most attractive subjects due to the artist's pencil, exhibiting, as it does, the quaint surroundings of Parisian life, as noted by the caricaturist before the Revolutionary era—delineations of feminine beauty, and studies of real character, such as no effort of the imagination could fabricate, unless assisted by travel, a familiar acquaintance with the locality, and keen observation. A fitting companion is given to this delightful subject in another important drawing, crowded with diversified life and animated groups, produced in 1800; The Thuilleries in Paris, a reminiscence of previous studies in the French metropolis, of manners noted anterior to the destruction of antiquated fashions; the dainty belles of ton, and the picturesque society which might be discovered flourishing under the reign of Louis XVI., before the inauguration of the all-devouring Republic, which worked more change in a few feverish months of turbulence, in which all the recognised phases of the past were lost, than many sober decades had effected in their better regulated courses.

The best of Rowlandson's publications for 1790 were A Kick-up at a Hazard Table, in which, as may be supposed, he was perfectly at home; Four o'clock in the Morning in Town, which was also in the artist's way, and its companion, Four o'clock in the Morning in the Country; Frog-hunting (Gallic gourmets fins), and [Tythe Pig], a fine old English equivalent.

The year 1791 was richer in those more ambitious plates, which the writer is seeking to identify, and several of the caricaturist's choicer subjects appeared, etched by his hand, and finished in aquatint, to facsimile the meritorious original drawings. A Squall in Hyde Park is one of the score or two of delineations of the highest type, which adequately demonstrate the exceptional qualifications of the artist; and these, we have no hesitation in averring, have never been excelled in their walk, as far as executive ability, sense of loveliness, grouping, movement, grasp of character, powers of observation, and diverting qualities are concerned. Another remarkable subject of extraordinary ability, founded on Rowlandson's Continental studies, entitled French Barracks (exhibited in 1787), and its pendant, [English Barracks], were issued this year. [An Inn Yard on Fire], belonging to the same important series; The Attack; The Prospect before us; The Pantheon; [Chaos is Come Again], in allusion to the dilapidated state of Drury Lane theatre condemned by the surveyors; Toxophilites; House breakers; [Damp Sheets] and [Slugs in a Saw Pit], among the numerous lesser subjects, bring up the total of the truly estimable works which gratified the public in 1791.

Cold Broth and Calamity, a skating scene representing disasters in the park, from a ludicrous point of view; A Dutch Academy, drawn from the caricaturist's experiences in the Netherlands; and [Studious Gluttons] were the leading plates published in 1792.

New Shoes, a small, but delicate subject, belongs to 1793.

In 1797 appeared the admirable plates published after Rowlandson's studies in the Netherlands; we cannot too highly commend such inimitable originals as Fyge Dam, Amsterdam; Stadt House, Amsterdam; Companion View, Amsterdam; and Place de Mer, Antwerp.

Admiral Nelson Recruiting with his Brave Tars after the Glorious Battle of the Nile, was published in 1798; a series of London Views, of considerable merit and importance, entrances to the great metropolis from the four leading turnpikes; and a series of twelve plates portraying the [Comforts of Bath], are most worthy of attention in the same year, as were some large studies of reviews of the Volunteer Forces, held under the threat of the anticipated French invasion.

[Distress], from a large picture, indicating the horrors of shipwreck with tragic impressiveness, is assigned to 1799.

Summer Amusement, a Game at Bowls; Doctor Botherum, the Mountebank; Preparations for the Academy; and A French Ordinary, were among the noticeable features of the artist's publications in 1800; the peculiarly interesting panorama of the Parisian world anterior to the French Revolution, entitled The Thuilleries in Paris was also produced this year.

Rowlandson's skill as an etcher had further, about this time, provided him with abundance of work in executing the humorous conceptions of Woodward and Bunbury after his own characteristic fashion.

Rowlandson's plate of The Brilliants, and a long series of subjects designed by Woodward, with many originals of his own, sufficiently excellent in their order, but not of the first consequence, found their way to the public in 1801. The leading print-publishers at the West End, Rudolph Ackermann, S. W. Fores, Williamson, and Rowlandson himself,[5] at his residence, 1 James Street, Adelphi, issued an inexhaustible collection of highly ludicrous social satires, and numerous patriotic and political subjects, during intervening years; and in 1807 the name of Thomas Tegg of Cheapside was added to the print-publishers who employed the remunerative talents of the indefatigable caricaturist. Rowlandson also continued to execute the whimsical conceptions of less qualified draughtsmen, and swarms of comicalities—by Woodward, Bunbury, Wigstead, Nixon, and other fashionable amateurs, who possessed the humorous vein, but lacked the skill to give their ideas a fitting form for presentation to the public—were put into acceptable shape, and etched by our artist at this period.

In 1808 appeared the long succession of Miseries of Human Life, of which examples occur in previous years; and Rowlandson settled down, somewhat grimly, under worthy Mr. Ackermann's auspices, to take up the gauntlet against the dreaded Buonaparte, the great little Corsican, against whom Gillray had waged such savage warfare until his powers dwindled into vacancy, and George Cruikshank stepped valiantly into the place of the colossus of caricaturists, and carried on the combat with unflagging zeal and whimsicality on his own account. Rowlandson's ludicrous attacks upon the ambitious 'disturber of the peace of Europe' were duly appreciated by his audience, and the demand for these blood-and-thunder caricatures increased monthly, to the extreme delectation of the great British public, whose antipathies to the conquering general were, at least, founded on sound and excusable principles, and if the overflowing excess of their detestation sometimes blinded the people to points of detail, and wilful misrepresentations passed current, and rather swamped their more generous sentiments—which were put out of sight for awhile—it must be remembered that this patriotic zeal was well directed against the man who had announced his august intention of subjugating England, and was, by accord, considered as the common enemy, and anyone who had indulged the temerity of openly acknowledging the grander elements of his character, since pretty tolerably established, would have been flouted by acclamation, and we are not sure but the national scorn would have fittingly signalised such an unpatriotic enormity.

It is certain that the caricaturist's travesties of the little emperor, his burlesques of his great actions, and grandiose declarations (which, in themselves, occasionally overdid the heroic, and trenched hazardously on the ludicrous), his figurative displays of the mean origin of the imperial family, with the cowardice and depravity of its members, won the popular applause; as did the satirist's representations of the hollowness of Boney's vaunted victories, and the treachery of his designs in the days of his success; and, when disasters began to cloud the career of the mighty Napoleon, and cherished projects were met with sickening failures—as army after army, collected for the slaughter by schemes, lies, fraud, and force, melted away, and the prostrate powers of the Continent plucked up courage, singly at first and finally in legions, until the end of the Corsican's glory arrived—the artist lent his skill to celebrate the delight of the public, and the rejoicings over the discomfiture of the traditional bugbear; glib cartoons were hurried off by Ackermann and often by Tegg—the City competing with the West End in the loyal contest of proving the national enmity to Buonaparte, by buying every caricature—the more extravagant the better relished—that the artists, who toiled like Trojans while the harvest lasted, could contrive to furnish in season for the demand.

A suspicion crosses our mind that, in too many cases, the incentive was to gratify the hatred of the Corsican, rather than any remarkable inherent merit that could be discovered in the satires; the best of which were but feeble vehicles for the exhibition of the jovial abilities of the designers; who, we dare venture to hint, found themselves a little out of their element, plunged, as it were, in the 'blood and iron' theory, striking out with their etching points with the most approved pantomimic vengeance! Very few of these mock-heroic sallies imprint themselves on the recollection by the sheer force of their own brilliancy, as was the case in the single instance of James Gillray, in the past, and as happened—an undeniable test of the veritable fire of genius—frequently with the cartoons of John Tenniel within our own experience, when the magnitude of the occasion has conjured up the inspiration, and rekindled the latent flame.

Our reflections upon the bellicose creations of Rowlandson and Cruikshank, while their hostile vapourings continue irresistibly droll, never stir the more passionate emotions or reach impulses which lie below the surface; being risible, it is true, but the reverse of inspired; and although many a hearty laugh may be enjoyed over the ludicrous turn the twain caricaturists have, in spite of themselves, given to situations of an avowedly tragic tendency, their very fury seems an unctuous jest, their simulated earnestness takes a farcical turn, and the result of a careful review, as the writer has made quite recently, of their prolific slaughterous sallies, is the conviction that, often unconsciously to themselves, they have chiefly succeeded, from the inevitable bent of their innate humoristic impulses, in burlesquing the fiery feeling abroad, which the public were contented to gratify in pictorial guise.

It is certain that those discriminating critics best qualified to appreciate the talents of Rowlandson and Cruikshank, who worked up the anti-Corsican crusade contemporaneously, are continually disposed to regret that the wondrous inventive abilities of these fertile designers were not exercised in a more congenial field.

Our caricaturist worked away, fierce and implacable, following every turn of Boney's fortunes with a show of savage ardour, until the idol fell in 1815. Rowlandson, in addition to the immense mass of caricatures which he fabricated with unflagging energy, came out brilliantly with several large transparencies, painted for public exhibition, outside Ackermann's Repository, on the occasion of the general illuminations, which fittingly signalised the successes of the allied armies after Leipsig, the final downfall of the Emperor after Waterloo, and the subsequent peace rejoicings.

A fresh subject for the exercise of Rowlandson's caricature capabilities was furnished in 1809 by the scandalous revelations which were disclosed, as evidence at the bar of the House of Commons, during the 'inquiry into the corrupt practices of the Commander-in-Chief, in the administration of the army.' With ill-advised weakness the popular Duke of York seems to have transferred the exercise of the patronage legitimately invested in his department, to Mrs. M. A. Clarke, a clever and unscrupulous mistress, whose extravagances he had for awhile contributed to support at Gloucester Place. The demand for this exciting pabulum was sufficiently eager to induce the caricaturist to bring out a fresh pictorial satire almost daily, and sometimes two or more appeared on the same day, while the 'delicate investigation' was proceeding, and the public interest in the circumstances remained at a boiling heat. We are not inclined to argue that any of these ephemeral compositions, superior as they were to the ruck of contemporaneous productions, were worthy, in any degree, of the artist's graphic powers, or were likely to contribute to his celebrity. For some time Rowlandson's ambition seemed to cool down, and although he was working hard, and producing a fair average of results, he appeared satisfied to turn his skill to the most prosaic account, as the means of earning a livelihood. He made no fresh efforts to astonish his admirers, or to sustain his fame by novel efforts of genius, such as we have particularised as appearing before the commencement of the nineteenth century.

Among the countless caricatures, good, bad, and indifferent, according to the circumstances of their publication, produced between 1809 and the close of the designer's career, nearly twenty years later, we cannot direct the reader's attention to many subjects above the generality of similar productions by Rowlandson's hand. It must be borne in mind that the artist's opportunities for graceful delineation had been considerably curtailed; the fair leaders of the old picturesque generation, whose effigies beam so charmingly on Reynolds's canvases, and the days of powder, flowing locks, silk coats, laces, lappels, and their accompaniments, had gradually disappeared, and left a prosier people, of sober exterior, in their stead. The difference between the exteriors of Rowlandson's lively personages, at the earlier part of the career, is so distinct from the outward appearance of his surroundings, and of the world which continued to exercise his pencil, at the close of his years, that it is extremely difficult, with the evidence before our eyes, to credit that such extreme changes could take place within the lifetime of one individual. The wanton cruelty of time in dealing thus harshly with the delicious models, which at one period seemed expressly constituted for the exercise of Rowlandson's pencil, may have discouraged the artist, and given him a distaste for exertions of ambition in which his heart had no part, while his fancy still hovered round his retrospects of the brilliant scenes, at home and abroad, that had met his sight in his gallant youth.

A few of Rowlandson's plates in 1811 recall his best days, but we are not too confident that the originals veritably belong to the year which is engraved upon the plates; indeed, in two cases at least, Exhibition Stare Case, Somerset House, and Royal Academy, Somerset House, the caricatures are most probably reprints, with the dates altered. This practice, common enough in his day, is productive of no slight confusion; all Rowlandson's most popular conceptions, 'the palpable hits' which held their own in the public favour, and were eagerly secured, were republished from year to year, to meet the demand, and, in most cases, the plate was freshly dated, as if the print had only then appeared for the first time. This principle has complicated our task, as it is most difficult to secure even a solitary impression of the finer works, and but scant means exist of tracing them back to the actual date, in the absence of any considerable collections to which the student may apply for purposes of reference and comparison. If the reader will be at the pains to consult the ['Appendix,'] containing the nearest approach to an arrangement of Rowlandson's works, under the years of publication, the writer could arrive at under existing circumstances, it will be seen that the same caricatures frequently reappear, with altered dates, for successive years.

In the latter part of the artist's career, although he executed a great many works of interest in themselves, and his inexhaustible social satires are often meritorious, and always ingenious, his best talents were devoted to the production of original drawings for immediate sale. They were chiefly disposed of through the assistance of Rudolph Ackermann, 101 Strand; and S. W. Fores, Piccadilly. Both these steady patrons of the declining years of a genius, who must, in a sense, have found the close of his life exposed to somewhat chilling influences, are reported, on good authority, to have held hundreds of Rowlandson's original drawings, scrap-books, and portfolios, filled with his admirable sketches at the time of his death; but these collections have of course been since dispersed.

In addition to the immense gathering of water-colour drawings left by Rowlandson, which had accumulated in the possession of those respected gentlemen with whom he held business relations, there were several fine collections, formed about the same period, to be found in the possession of his intimates. Mitchell the banker, his constant friend in town, with whom Rowlandson frequently travelled on the Continent, had secured the most remarkable gallery of the artist's diversified views abroad, and particularly his sketches of life and character in France and the Netherlands, the latter being the most remarkable for broad humour. Henry Angelo, the fencing-master, and Bannister, the comedian, ancient school-fellows of the caricaturist, and, as will be seen, faithful comrades through life, were also steady collectors of his picturesque eccentricities, and many noblemen, and celebrities of the day—among them is mentioned the name of the dashing, and somewhat irrepressible, Lord Barrymore—took a pride in filling their folios with his works, which, as we are told, they justly esteemed 'an inexhaustible fund of amusement.'

A few later collections, with the names of the owners, and the titles of the leading subjects, are mentioned at the end of this volume, with a view to completing the interest of the subject, and affording a slight indication of the whereabouts of many of his productions.

It appears from the statements of Rudolph Ackermann, Rowlandson's industry was such that the considerate owner of the fashionable Repository—favourite lounge of the dilettanti as it was—at last found it difficult, as regards the selling department, to keep pace with his friend's creative abilities. In short, the artist produced drawings faster than the public, as it seems evident, felt inclined to purchase them for the time being, and it became a perplexing problem how to increase the demand proportionately to the supply; for the multiplication of the sketches for awhile—probably under the spur of some emergency, or the pressure of apprehensions for the future—became so overwhelming that the worthy publisher, in his relation as a practical man of business, fancied he foresaw the approaching depreciation of the value of Rowlandson's drawings making such strides, on the strength of an overstocked market, he was afraid, in the end, the artist's remuneration would be so seriously diminished, that it would not be worth his while to persevere, unless a new line could be successfully struck out.

These anticipations were probably well founded, and we cannot but acknowledge that our artist had discarded prudence, and become thoroughly reckless—at least, as far as we can judge by appearances, for possibly he had more confidence in the ultimate request for his studies than was entertained by his friendly employers, and time has proved the soundness of his judgment. If the story we are told of his novel method of multiplying his drawings is serious, it will strike the reader that Mr. Ackermann had reason to feel anxious, on his protégé's account. It is related that Rowlandson would saunter from his neighbouring lodgings in the Adelphi, round to the Repository of Arts, and, as the title of Mr. Ackermann's establishment was no misnomer, every possible appliance was therein found ready to hand. The artist would then order a saucer of vermillion, and another of Indian ink, ready ground, from the colourist's room, with reed pens, and several sheets of drawing-paper; he would then combine his inks in the proportions he thought proper, in the flesh lines vermillion predominated, in draperies Indian ink, shadows were a warm mixture of the two, and distant objects were faintly rendered in Indian ink alone. The outline was filled in on this principle, but, as the designer's own manual and dexterous rapidity had ceased to satisfy him, he had ingeniously discovered an expeditious method of multiplication sufficient for his purpose, without resorting to the sister art of engraving. The drawing was made on the principle essential in any engraving which has to give impressions, that is, the subject was reversed, right being changed to left—the only extra care required; the outline was somewhat stronger, and the reed-pen more fully charged than was the usual practice, and when the design was completed it formed the matrix from which, before the ink became fixed, by means of a press, and paper damped to the proper consistency, it was easy to print off duplicates as long as the ink held out. We are rather inclined to speculate that, ingenious as the process seems, in description, it would by no means turn out a perennial flowing fountain, and two or three decent replicas would exhaust the original, however judiciously manipulated. The copies obtained by this manifold contrivance were corrected and strengthened, according to their requirements; the series of impressions were then shaded with Indian ink, so as to lend the figures contour and solidity, and express the lighter distance; and then came the final tinting, in delicate washes of colour, and the completed works were ready for introduction to the public. The writer does not believe that this modus operandi was ever followed up systematically; that it has been resorted to on occasions, his own observations have demonstrated; and he confesses to a passing acquaintance with a collection of drawings by the artist (belonging to a gentleman of distinction, who is quite satisfied as to their merits), which are for the most part the results of this system, and he has more than once, in the course of his peregrinations, come across the matrix design, very spread and mysterious as to outline, having been exhausted in the working, but shaded with spirit, coloured, and sent into the world, a shameless left-handed production, craftily smuggled into circulation to confuse collectors, and throw discredit on its dexter counterparts. This accounts for a certain proportion of the duplicates after Rowlandson, which are of frequent occurrence; and often have purchasers felt their self-esteem lowered, when another possessor of the same design in a firmer outline has assured them that they have been deceived into buying a mere copy, oblivious that the guilty pair are both due to the hand of the master, and that possibly other members of the same illicit family are lurking in the folios of rival amateurs. A grand central gathering of works by Rowlandson, presuming a person of sufficient enterprise could be found to prosecute the scheme of a comprehensive exhibition of the artist's works, would reveal some curiosities in the way of reproductive capability.

For the credit of our artist, and the comfort of collectors, we can record our assurance that this crafty method was never persevered in, the replicas issued under this illegitimate contrivance are confined to a brief period, the temptation to flood the market was kept within restricted limits, and Mr. Ackermann's business aptitude quickly discovered a method of enhancing the caricaturist's reputation and augmenting his means, without the necessity of resorting to tricks of ill-advised ingenuity. The successful projection of a series of monthly publications allowed the indefatigable projector—who exercised a princely liberality in his dealings, as publishers go—to pay his friend, the artist, so handsomely, that he was relieved from the necessity of multiplying his sketches in any inordinate profusion, and enabled him to take more time and pains, both in seeking his subjects, and working them out at his ease. The results of this happy conception, The Poetical Magazine, the three Tours of Doctor Syntax, and The Dance of Death, enjoyed unqualified popularity. They were followed by other works of a corresponding description, which were also well received. The publisher had his reward; we have every reason to believe that Rowlandson enjoyed his fair share of these successful ventures; and continued to furnish book-illustrations, steadily following up the new branch he had discovered for the exercise of his abilities. Mr. Ackermann's enterprise provided him ample occupation. These octavo prints were produced on the same principle as the superior plates after his chefs-d'œuvre of the Academy period: a neat and carefully finished drawing of the original design was first prepared (these studies were afterwards purchased by Mr. Ackermann), and Rowlandson etched the outline sharply and clearly on the copper plate, an impression from the 'bitten-in' outline was printed on drawing-paper, and the artist put in his shadows, modelling of forms and sketchy distance, with Indian ink, in the most delicate handling possible; the shadows were then copied in aquatint on the outlined plate, sometimes by the designer, but in most cases by an engraver who practised this particular branch, which a few experts were able to manipulate with considerable dexterity and nicety. Rowlandson next completed the colouring of his own Indian ink shaded impression in delicate tints, harmoniously selected; his sense of colour being of a refined order as regarded the disposal of tender shades agreeable to the eye. His aptitude in this respect is quite as remarkable as his ease of delineation; and, if his outlines can be copied with any approach to deceiving the eye of a connoisseur, an attempt to imitate his colouring, simple as it remained in its characteristics, is tolerably certain to betray the fraud.

The tinted impression, which was intentionally finished with greater delicacy and elaboration than the artist generally displayed, served as a copy for imitation, which was handed to Mr. Ackermann's trained staff of colourists, the publisher finding constant employment for a number of clever persons whom he had educated expressly for this skilled employment. These artists had worked under his auspices and personal supervision for years, until, by constant practice, and the pains which were taken by the publisher to improve their abilities, they attained a degree of perfection and neatness never arrived at before, and almost beyond belief in the present day, when the system has fallen into comparative disuse. The assistants did their best to reproduce the effect of the original drawings, and the number of impressions required to satisfy the public must have kept them constantly at work, and occasionally jeopardised their high finish.

There is an amazing contrast between the plates issued from the Repository, worked out like elaborate water-colour drawings, in subdued, well-balanced tints, with the utmost lightness and skill of touch, and the lurid chromatic daubs which pass current to the present day, as Rowlandson's caricatures were issued from Cheapside 'price one shilling coloured,' after a school of vulgarity to which the panorama of the Lord Mayor's Show at one penny, with its four yards of florid tenuity, is quite a refined work of art.

We are not inclined to offer uncharitable reflections on Rowlandson's City publisher; the caricatures—excepting always certain rougher specimens, loosely executed enormities after designs by some of the amateurs of the period, which indubitably belong to the slip-shod order—are fair enough in their way, when one is lucky enough to meet with uncoloured copies; it is the bad taste of his customers, the respectable dealer evidently stooped to flatter, with which we are inclined to disagree, and we think justifiably; for although it was very good of the gentleman in question to issue so many copies of his plates, with a providential eye to the future, that impressions are sufficiently numerous to this day, all print-buyers must deplore the waste of staring colour expended in making his publications abominable to the sight of modern purchasers, and ruinous to the fair fame of the designer, by the uncompromising use of three positive pigments, red, blue, and yellow, to which, with an occasional brown, the colour-box seemed restricted, in most cases liberally plastered over the etchings-figures, sky, buildings and background being treated to the same smart hues in undiluted garishness, which utterly confuses the mind as to the meritorious qualities of the subjects so bespattered, and has the sinister effect, deplorable in itself, of compelling persons of chaste dispositions to dread caricatures as being on the surface something worse than scarlet abominations, fiendishly aggravated with additional lurid iniquities of a depraving tendency.

We have introduced Rowlandson in his later relation to the arts, as a skilful and popular contributor of book illustrations; we cannot leave this portion of our subject without offering a cursory review of his various labours in this capacity, since the wider circulation of printed publications has made his name more familiar to the great world than the finest masterpieces already alluded to, which seem doomed to remain unknown and inaccessible to the bulk of the public.

The first independent publication we have to notice was simply a gathering of subjects, extending over three or four years, collected in 1788, and issued as Rowlandson's Imitations of Modern Drawings, folio; including imitations of the styles of Gainsborough, Wheatley, Mortimer, Barrett, Gilpin, Bartolozzi, Zucchi, Cipriani, &c.

In 1786, Rowlandson supplied G. Kearsley, the publisher of those well-known satirical effusions of Dr. Wolcot, The Poems of Peter Pindar, with illustrations to the first volume of the quarto edition of these familiar works. This publication was continued the next year. In a burlesque strain, Rowlandson also came out with twenty illustrations, the drawings suggested by Collings,[6] caricaturing passages in Boswell's Journal of a Tour in the Hebrides, published by E. Jackson, small folio (1786). Our artist further supplied certain plates in parody of incidents in the Sorrows of Werther, also from suggestions by Collings, who designed a capital series of drolleries in travesty of passages literally extracted from Lord Chesterfield's Polite Letters.

G. and J. Robinson, in 1790, published the results of a trip to Brighton, which the artist had enjoyed in company with his friend, the frequent companion of his wanderings and frolics, Henry Wigstead, Esq., the sitting magistrate at Bow Street—An Excursion to Brighthelmstone made in the year 1782, by Henry Wigstead and Thomas Rowlandson, with eight engravings by Thomas Rowlandson, oblong folio.

There also appeared, in this and the following years, a series of Miniature Groups and Scenes, published by M. L., Brighthelmstone, and H. Brookes, Coventry Street, London; and a series of Sheets of Picturesque Etchings, published by S. W. Fores. Rowlandson also furnished numerous book-plates, octavo, to the series of novels published by I. Siebbald, Edinburgh; among the works thus illustrated we must particularise the novels of Fielding and Smollett.

The succeeding year (1792) our artist also contributed illustrations, in large size folding plates, designed after suggestions by Henry Woodward, to a quarto edition of Smollett's Novels. Cupid's Magic Lantern, with illustrations, etched by Rowlandson, also after designs by Henry Woodward, was published in 1797.

[The Comforts of Bath], and the folio Views of London, belong to 1798. The same year the name of W. Wigstead, Charing Cross, appears as the publisher of the following works:—

Annals of Horsemanship, with seventeen copperplates by Henry Bunbury, Esq. Engraved by Thomas Rowlandson.

The Academy for Grown Horsemen, with twelve copperplates, by Henry Bunbury, Esq. Engraved by Thomas Rowlandson.

Love in Caricature, with eleven plates by Thomas Rowlandson.

The handsome and expensively got-up publications inaugurated by Mr. Ackermann, began to occupy our artist in 1799. The first of this well-executed series, with which Rowlandson was connected, was a set of plates, accurately coloured in fac-simile of the original drawings, in square folio, described as,

The Loyal Volunteers of London and Environs, with eighty-seven plates, designed and etched by Thomas Rowlandson.

Martial ardour being the key-note this year, when foreign invasion menaced our shores, Henry Angelo and Son, who were appointed fencing-masters to the Light Horse Volunteers of London and Westminster, collected a series of subjects which the artist had prepared under their direction, and issued the results of their joint ingenuity as a supplement to the elder Angelo's Treatise on Fencing, under the title of, Hungarian and Highland Broadsword Exercise, with twenty-four plates designed and etched by Thomas Rowlandson, oblong folio.

Another publication, issued by Ackermann in 1799, appeared as Delineations of Nautical Characters, in ten plates by Thomas Rowlandson.

In 1800, the results of an excursion to North and South Wales, undertaken in concert by the author and artist, were given to the public under the following description: Remarks on a Tour to North and South Wales in the year 1797, by Henry Wigstead, with plates by Thomas Rowlandson, Pugh, Howitt, &c. Published by W. Wigstead, Charing Cross.

Rowlandson also supplied some illustrations to The Beauties of Sterne, a selection of choice passages from the works of that author.

A series of Views in Cornwall, Dorset, &c., appeared as a separate publication in 1805. The artist contributed serious book-plates to an edition of the Sorrows of Werther, in 1806. A smaller edition of the witty Annals of Horsemanship and Academy for Grown Horsemen (portions of which are attributed to the pen of the convivial Captain Grose, the well-known antiquary, author of The Military Antiquities, etc.—the original design of the work with the illustrations belonged to Henry Bunbury) was issued in a cheap form by Thomas Tegg in 1800, the etchings being executed in a reduced form by Thomas Rowlandson, and published under the title of An Academy for Grown Horsemen and Annals of Horsemanship, by Geoffry Gambado, octavo. A collection of plates portraying The Miseries of Human Life, consisting of fifty etchings by Thomas Rowlandson, small folio, was published in a reduced form the same year.

The principal work, however, which appeared in 1808, was, and must remain, a fitting instance of the enterprise and good taste of Rudolph Ackermann, his liberal employment of artists whose abilities were of the first order; while demonstrating the popularity of his publications, which could guarantee the most considerable outlays, with a successful return of the capital invested.

We refer to the splendid Microcosm of London, or London in Miniature, with 105 illustrations by Pugin and Rowlandson, in three volumes, quarto. A more extended notice of this valuable series is given in its proper place in this volume, under the description of works for 1808; although we believe the actual preparation of the plates extended over some years.

We have also to notice:—

The Caricature Magazine, or Hudibrastic Mirror, published by Thomas Tegg, and continued to 1810, 386 plates, in five volumes, oblong folio.

The Art of Ingeniously Tormenting, with illustrations by Rowlandson and Woodward, octavo; published by Thomas Tegg, Cheapside, 1808.

A Lecture on Heads, by George Alexander Stevens, with twenty-five illustrations by Rowlandson and Woodward, octavo, published by Thomas Tegg, Cheapside, 1808.

Chesterfield Travestie; or School for Modern Manners, with ten caricatures engraved by Rowlandson from drawings by H. Woodward (who supplied the letterpress), duodecimo, was also published by Thomas Tegg, Cheapside. 1808.

In 1809, appeared numerous book-plates supplied by the artist to publishers. Thomas Tegg issued an edition of Sterne's Sentimental Journey, and The Beauties of Sterne, in a separate volume; both embellished with caricatures by T. Rowlandson. This gentleman also published an edition of The Surprising Adventures of the renowned Baron Munchausen, with numerous original engravings by Thomas Rowlandson; The Annals of Sporting by Caleb Quizem, with illustrations by Rowlandson and Woodward; Advice to Sportsmen, selected from the Notes of Marmaduke Markwell; with sixteen illustrations by Rowlandson; The Trial of the Duke of York, with Rowlandson's collected caricatures on the subject, in two volumes; Investigation of the Charges brought against H.R.H. the Duke of York, &c., with fourteen portraits by Rowlandson, two volumes; and Butler's Hudibras, with five illustrations by William Hogarth, engraved by Thomas Rowlandson.

Beresford's Antidote to the Miseries of Human Life, octavo, is also advertised in 1809.

The Pleasures of Human Life, by Hilari Benevolus & Co., with five plates by Thomas Rowlandson, &c., was published by Longmans, 1809.

It was in 1809 that Ackermann projected his Poetical Magazine, royal octavo, which, it was arranged, should appear in consecutive monthly parts, as a means of affording his friend, the artist, substantial and progressive employment. The generous thought which prompted this enterprise was fittingly rewarded by the successful reception this venture secured at the hands of the public, and the patrons of Ackermann's 'Repository of Arts.' The Poetical Magazine was quite a feature amongst novel publications; the famous plates supplied by Rowlandson (two monthly), and the verses felicitously written up to the caricaturist's designs by William Coombe, under the title of The Schoolmasters' Tour, and introducing the highly popular Doctor Syntax, formed the only important contributions to the Magazine, which came to a conclusion (at the fourth volume), with the end of the first Picturesque Tour.

The success which attended the appearance of the familiar Tour was altogether beyond the expectations of either publisher, artist, or author. The etchings on the plates to The Poetical Magazine were worked fairly away and renewed. In 1812, The Tour of Doctor Syntax in Search of the Picturesque, with thirty-one illustrations by Thomas Rowlandson, was published in a separate form in royal octavo, a fresh set of the much-admired plates, with but the slightest variations, being prepared expressly, and these in turn proved insufficient to supply the number of copies demanded by the delighted public. The Tour had a still larger success in its independent form, and several editions appeared in one season; the request continued for years, and was sufficiently encouraging to induce the projectors to follow it up with a new series, The Second Tour of Doctor Syntax, in Search of Consolation, with twenty-four illustrations by Thomas Rowlandson, which also appeared in monthly parts, and was issued in a collected form in one volume, royal octavo, in 1820. A third tour, in Search of a Wife, was ventured in 1822, but this was evidently intended to be the final sequel, as the hero, 'Doctor Syntax,' is removed from life's scene at the close.

Returning to Rowlandson's successive contributions of book-illustrations, we find a satirical work, Munchausen at Walcheren issued in 1811; and a Tale of the Castle (Dublin), published by Stockdale in 1812, as Petticoat Loose, a Fragmentary Poem, illustrated with four plates by Thomas Rowlandson, quarto.

The artist also issued a series of Views of Cornwall in the form of an independent volume the same year.

Mr. Ackermann had introduced, some years before, an illustrated Miscellany to his subscribers, which ran a long and highly successful career, under the title, borrowed from the circumstances of its publication, of Ackermann's Repository of Arts, Literature, Fashion, and Manufactures.

In the pages of this admirable magazine were given many continuous contributions of a valuable and interesting character, the contents being as diversified as the description of the undertaking. Among the serials were numerous essays of merit, which, in the projector's opinion, were entitled to the distinction of separate publication, and, at intervals, the discriminating proprietor of the Repository selected various series of articles by his best qualified and most respected colleagues in the work, and re-issued their contributions, with the enhanced attraction of fresh pictorial embellishments, as separate publications. In this manner a succession of Letters from Italy, which had appeared in the Repository, between 1809 and 1813, furnished by Lewis Engelbach (who supplied reviews of music; it has been said his criticisms may be usefully studied by the most successful living contributors to the press), were republished in 1815 in one volume, royal octavo, as Letters from Naples and the Campana Felice, with seventeen illustrations by Thomas Rowlandson.

Another deserving work, published by R. Ackermann, in the same finished style, with coloured engravings in aquatint, delicately completed by hand to resemble water-colour drawings, as were the major part of the illustrations to this series, appeared under the title of Poetical Sketches of Scarborough, with twenty-one illustrations by J. Green; etched by Thomas Rowlandson, 1813.

In 1815 was published The Military Adventures of Johnny Newcome, with fifteen illustrations by Thomas Rowlandson, royal octavo, printed for Patrick Martin, 198 Oxford Street. This work is written in Hudibrastic metre, by 'An Officer' in imitation of the flowing lines supplied by Coombe to the Tours of Doctor Syntax. Another volume (1815 and 1816) was published by Thomas Tegg, Cheapside, also composed after the model of the same easy versification, under the description of The Grand Master, or Adventures of Qui Hi in Hindostan, a Hudibrastic poem in eight cantos, by Quiz, illustrated with twenty-eight engravings by Thomas Rowlandson.

The principal triumph of our artist's later years appeared in 1815 and 1816, Rowlandson inventing the subjects, and Coombe supplying the descriptive versification, as was their usual method of proceeding in the entire succession of publications, undertaken under this artistic and literary co-partnership, and issued by R. Ackermann.

We refer to the Dance of Death, which had first been offered the public in monthly parts under the old and highly successful system, between 1814 and 1816. This production, which repays the most careful consideration, received a flattering reception, and, in spite of the grim nature of the subject, enjoyed surprising popularity, and added considerably to the reputation of those concerned in its appearance. We have no hesitation in recording our impression that the ingenuity and invention displayed in the seventy-two plates illustrative of the Dance of Death are considerably in advance, in point of invention, of the pictures supplied to its more genial and popular rival Doctor Syntax. Both artist and author had arrived at a period of mature experience, which qualified and disposed them to bring their finest faculties to the treatment of this melodramatic theme, in which they must have discovered morbid fascinations; since it has enabled them to rise above their average efforts. As we have noticed, although the conception is monumental, not to say sepulchral, in its characteristics, and on occasions, ghastly in its humour, the result is a masterpiece to the memories of Rowlandson and Coombe; the fires of their early inspirations were rekindled from their decline; and the Dance of Death has always impressed us as the last flicker of expiring genius; a fitting memorial of the vast and almost forgotten faculties of the projectors.

A fuller account of this impressive and truly remarkable work, will be found under the year 1810, where we have endeavoured to do justice to the exceptional qualities of a performance which, in our modest conviction, surpasses any previous treatment of the same subject.

In 1816 Rowlandson commenced a series of charming little pictures designed in outline, avowedly intended as an assistance to landscape-artists in the direction of suggesting, and supplying animated groups of figures, suitable for introduction into drawings. The etchings were executed with exceptional neatness, ease, and spirit, and the entire collection is highly interesting; it appeared under the title of The World in Miniature, figure subjects for Landscapes, Groups, and Views, and was published by Mr. Ackermann at 'The Repository.' A series of a similar description was commenced under the same designation by Rowlandson in 1821, and finished by W. H. Pyne in 1826; the set was somewhat diffusive, if it extended to 637 parts, as we are told.

Our artist's illustrations to the Beauties of Tom Brown belong to 1809.

Rowlandson also contributed a frontispiece to another of Tegg's publications in 1816, The Relics of a Saint, by Ferdinand Farquhar.

Rowlandson found a congenial exercise for his skill, taste, and mirth-imparting qualities in the illustration of Oliver Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, in 1817, when the famous tale re-appeared, embellished with twenty-four designs by the artist. Mr. Ackermann was induced to republish this delightful story as a vehicle for the display of the delicate humoristic, and more refined qualifications of the caricaturist (who, by the way, had almost ceased to deserve this epithet). Nothing could be more artless than the pathos of this fiction, its simple humour is ever fresh, and Rowlandson has executed his portion of the undertaking in a congenial spirit, indeed the happy impulses of the author seem spontaneously embodied in the picturesque designs.

The success of the Dance of Death was so considerable that the publisher endeavoured to share its popularity with a successor. The two volumes constituting the first work were, however, executed in a superior manner; and more pains were taken to bring the plates to the utmost perfection, as reproductions of the original drawings, than was the case with later publications. The Dance of Life, illustrated with twenty-eight coloured engravings by Thomas Rowlandson, published by R. Ackermann, royal octavo, appeared in 1817, and although fairly executed, neither the conceptions of Rowlandson, nor the verses of Coombe, rose above the commonplace; it is evident that the sentiment which had inspired their gifted faculties in the former subject found no revival in the present volume, which is somewhat disappointing after the talent which is manifested in its predecessor.

A pendant to the Military Adventures of Johnny Newcome was issued in 1818 as The Adventures of Johnny Newcome in the Navy, a poem in four cantos, with sixteen plates by Rowlandson from the author's designs, by Alfred Burton, published by Simpkin and Marshall, Stationers' Hall Court, Ludgate Hill. More attention was paid to the artistic preparation of the succeeding portion of The Second Tour of Doctor Syntax in Search of Consolation, with twenty-four illustrations by Thomas Rowlandson, royal octavo, which Mr. Ackermann introduced to the public in a collected form as the companion to the popular first volume in 1820.

Rowlandson also furnished illustrations to certain pamphlets or chapbooks in 1819; we may particularise one under the title of Who killed Cock Robin?—a tract on the Manchester Massacre, published by John Cahnac. We have also to notice his contribution to a chapbook which appeared the same year, as, Female Intrepidity, or the Heroic Maiden.

The same year appeared Rowlandson's Characteristic Sketches of the Lower Orders; intended as a Companion to the New Picture of London containing fifty-four coloured plates, printed by S. Leigh, 18 Strand, 1820.

Another contribution, A Tour in the South of France, drawn from the excellent serial publication, 'Ackermann's Repository of Arts, Literature, Fashion, and Manufactures,' originally supplied to its pages in instalments between the years 1817 and 1820, was republished in a completed form in 1821, with additional attractions, in the way of fresh embellishments, by the unflagging hand of our artist, under the title of A Journal of Sentimental Travels in the Southern Provinces of France, illustrated with eighteen coloured engravings from designs by Thomas Rowlandson, royal octavo, published by R. Ackermann, 101 Strand.

A French version of 'Doctor Syntax's Tour in Search of the Picturesque,' Le Don Quichotte Romantique, ou Voyage du Docteur Syntaxe à la Recherche du Pittoresque et du Romantique, also appeared in Paris this year, with twenty-eight illustrations, drawn on stone, after the original designs of Rowlandson, by Malapeau, lithographed by G. Engelmann.

The final complement of 'The Tours,' prepared under the same auspices as the earlier peregrinations, reached completion as an additional volume in 1822, and the monthly instalments were then reissued in a collected form to join the two predecessors as The Third Tour of Doctor Syntax in Search of a Wife, with twenty-five illustrations by Thomas Rowlandson, royal octavo, published by R. Ackermann.

A further instance of the universal popularity enjoyed by The First Tour of Doctor Syntax in Search of the Picturesque was afforded, in 1822, by the appearance of an edition translated into German and freely adapted as Die Reise des Doktor Syntax um das Malerische au Frusuchen with Rowlandson's famous illustrations imitated on stone and lithographed by F. E. Rademacher, Berlin.

The interest which it was found, on experience, still surrounded the grotesque prototype Dr. Syntax, induced the energetic projectors—publisher, artist, and author—under their old, well-defined relations, to venture on a farther extension of the familiar framework, and a fresh volume, which had, like the preceding publications, found its way to the public in monthly instalments, was inaugurated in 1822 under the description of The History of Johnny Quæ Genus: The Little Foundling of the late Doctor Syntax—a poem by the author of The Three Tours (William Coombe)—embellished with twenty-four coloured engravings by Thomas Rowlandson.

The same year our artist issued another distinct volume of landscape subjects of his execution under the title of Rowlandson's Sketches from Nature; a collection of seventeen plates, drawn and etched by the artist and aquatinted by Stradler. Crimes of the Clergy, an octavo volume, with two plates by our artist, also appeared in 1822.

As a further proof that the numerous editions in royal octavo of the illustrious schoolmaster's wanderings were insufficient to satisfy the requirements of his patrons, Mr. Ackermann offered the public a fresh copy, in three volumes 16mo. of The Three Tours of Dr. Syntax, Pocket Edition, with all Rowlandson's plates, executed on a smaller scale to suit the convenience of enthusiasts, who might require to carry the volumes about with them ready for immediate reference, or for perusal on their travels and at odd moments, if such an opportunity should be in request.

In 1825 Charles Molloy Westmacott, an intimate friend of the caricaturist, in whose company we learn he visited Paris, thought proper to edit a publication under his pseudonym of 'Bernard Blackmantle,' a collection of whimsical extracts from the press, which had appeared in print in the previous season. The description of his production is as follows: The Spirit of the Public Journals for the year 1824, with Explanatory Notes. Illustrations on wood by T. Rowlandson, R. and G. Cruikshank, Lane, and Findlay. London; published by Sherwood, Jones, and Co., Paternoster Row, 1825. Our artist contributed eleven highly humorous cuts to this publication, his drawings being engraved on wood—a novel process as far as the designs usually supplied by Rowlandson are concerned.

A notable plate was furnished by the caricaturist in 1825 to The English Spy, a work also produced under the auspices of 'Bernard Blackmantle,' after the description of the better-known Life in London. The major part of the plates are due to the hand of Robert Cruikshank. Rowlandson's name is given on the title-page as having contributed a portion of the illustrations on wood, but the only example of his skill we have been able to identify is an adaptation of his drawing (now the property of Mr. Capron), The Life School at the Royal Academy, which he originally presented to his old friend John Thomas Smith, of the British Museum. Plate 32.—R. A—ys of Genius Reflecting on the True Line of Beauty at the Life Academy, Somerset House, by Thomas Rowlandson; and this illustration is undeniably the most interesting to be found in the entire contents of the two octavo volumes of which Mr. Westmacott's English Spy is composed; further particulars of this subject are given under the year 1825.

After the caricaturist's death in 1827 the admirable publications, of which his coloured plates formed the principal attractions, were discontinued; the taste of the public had changed. Wood blocks and steel plates came into fashion. Cheap annuals illustrated with woodcuts came into favour for a season, until the appearance of the more elaborately prepared 'Gift Books,' with fine steel engravings, 'Keepsakes,' 'Gems,' &c., subsequently took their place. The folios of Mr. Ackermann were still sufficiently rich in studies by Rowlandson to furnish the framework for a fresh publication. A choice was made from the large collection of original drawings, published and unpublished, which still remained, after the artist's decease, in the possession of the indefatigable proprietor of the 'Repository'; and these sketches, which of necessity, for the most part, are assignable to Rowlandson's declining period, when his drawings became looser in execution and less picturesque in point of subject, were selected as the materials for a new venture, with a departure from the old popular style of reproduction in facsimile of the artist's pictures coloured by hand.

The subjects culled from Mr. Ackermann's portfolios were redrawn on a reduced scale, either as a whole, or striking portions of caricatures, and prominent figures or groups were adapted, transferred to wood-blocks, and put into the hands of an engraver. In cutting the designs a considerable amount of the original spirit, with the individuality of execution peculiar to the master, have unfortunately been sacrificed; the engravings are heavy and poor; however, they offer a rough idea of the nature of the studies which happened to remain in the hands of the publisher, and some interest attaches to this circumstance, as the major part of these designs have never been issued on copper.

Mr. W. H. Harrison was engaged to write up to the pictorial sketches, and he has constructed various small fictions founded on the suggestions offered by the engravings; but the entire work is somewhat clumsy in contrivance, both as respects the illustrations and the literary setting intended to assist their interest in the eyes of the public; the editor's inventions are neither original nor brilliant. The title of the annual produced on this compound principle was The Humourist, a Companion for the Christmas Fireside, embellished with fifty engravings, exclusive of numerous vignettes after designs by the late Thomas Rowlandson: published by R. Ackermann, 96 Strand, and sold by R. Ackermann, junior, 191 Regent Street, 1831. The Humourist contained sixty-seven illustrations in all; the titles of these, and a brief description of the various subjects, will be found at the close of the present volume, under the year 1831.

Although Rowlandson was so well known as an artist, no fitting memorials of his career are extant; and while, as we have related, the task of discovering a collection of works by the artist, worthy of illustrating his exceptional abilities, is surrounded by unforeseen difficulties, the operation of culling personal traits, or records of the life and adventures of the caricaturist, demands even greater extensions of patience. Nothing short of sincere appreciation for the vast talents of the man, and of a lasting conviction of the original qualities of his works, could have encouraged the writer to prolong his researches, the chances in this case of alighting on any discoveries of note being so problematical.

The person of Rowlandson was familiarly recognised amongst his contemporaries from his youth, when he was first admitted as a student at the schools of the Royal Academy (about 1770), through his diversified fortunes, till his death, which occurred on April 22, 1827.

His figure, we learn, was large, well set-up, muscular, and above the average height—in fact, his person was a noticeable one; his features were regular and defined, his eye remarkably full and fearless, his glance being described as penetrating, and suggestive of command; his mouth and chin expressed firmness and resolution; the general impression conveyed to a stranger by his countenance, which was undeniably fine and striking in its characteristics, was that of the inflexibility of the owner.

SMITHFIELD SHARPERS; OR THE COUNTRYMAN DEFRAUDED

Old Trusty, with his Town-made Friends, To gentle sleep himself commends, With Tray upon his knees; Whilst Tom, his son, all eager, gaping, Expects each moment he'll be scraping The treasure up he sees.

Meanwhile the Harpy Tribe are plotting, By forcing liquor, winking, nodding, To cheat the youth unlearn'd; Who, to his cost, will quickly find Nor watch, nor money, left behind, And Friends to Sharpers turn'd.

Two or three portraits of the caricaturist are traceable, besides numerous burlesque transfers of his own effigy to his imaginary personages. In common with Cruikshank, Thackeray, and many other humorists of the brush and etching-needle, he was prone to introduce the presentment of his own lineaments in whimsical juxtapositions. The most generally recognised likeness, from which a separate plate has been published by Mr. Parker, occurs in a clever eccentric drawing, exhibited by the artist at the Royal Academy Exhibition in 1787, under the title of Countrymen and Sharpers (No. 555).

This subject was subsequently engraved by J. K. Sherwin, whose portrait also figures therein, in the person of the pigeon, while Rowlandson has chosen to represent himself as the leading sharper, he who, with blustering front, is fleecing the simple youth at cards, in defiance of his well-accepted reputation for rigid integrity; for although the gaming table long held the caricaturist an enslaved votary, ready to make the most reckless sacrifices to tempt the fickle favours of the gambler's fortune, it is recorded by those of his acquaintances who have mentioned this disastrous failing (which by the way he shared with all the wealthy, distinguished, and witty celebrities of his day), and deplored the havoc it made with his means, and professional pursuits, that his sense of honour was ever of the keenest, his word was always regarded as sufficient security, and he possessed a delicacy of feeling, and a sense of independence, which would not allow him to remain under a debt or an obligation.

At the time Rowlandson sent his drawing of Countrymen and Sharpers[7] for exhibition, he was 31 years of age, and according to the portrait, looks manhood personified, with a fine comely figure, and a face that imprints itself on the recollection, his hair in a profusion of wavy tresses, worn long, and 'clubbed' as was the fashion of the period. His bold and piercing eyes set under massive and somewhat prominent brows.

The next attributed portrait belongs to 1799, when Rowlandson was 43 years of age. In the design, An Artist travelling in Wales, the result of a journey he made with his friend, the convivial Henry Wigstead, he has represented himself, with a due allowance for burlesque, looking older than his years; the long hair is still there, but its curls are thinned, time and a struggle with seasons less rosy than his youth of many fortunes, are telling on the outward man, but the brows, eyes, mouth and chin have diminished nothing of their resolute characteristics—indeed, they are more marked—and the strong nervous figure is beginning to look gaunt.

The Chamber of Genius appeared in 1812 with the appropriate quotation:—

Want is the scorn of every wealthy fool; And genius in rags is turned to ridicule.—Juv. Sat.

The head of the caricaturist is strongly defined on the shoulders of the gifted occupant of a garret, and the likeness is just what might be supposed from the countenance, as given in 1787, viewed through the intervening quarter of a century of struggles, and disenchantments, when cares of the hour, and incidental anxieties, touching provision for the future, had commenced to take the place of the artist's original careless hardihood.

The last portrait to which we shall at present refer is by another hand; and was sketched when the health of the caricaturist was a grave source of apprehension, since we learn that during the last two years of his life he was a severe sufferer. It represents the figure of a large and powerful-looking old gentleman, of impressive presence; the main characteristics, and the marked profile have gathered force with increasing years, the brows are even firmer, and the features more defined; this croquis of the veteran was drawn by his old friend, and erst fellow-pupil, John Thomas Smith, the keeper of the drawings and prints in the British Museum, and the study was taken while the caricaturist was looking over some prints, on one of his visits to the treasures in his friend's department. The sketcher, who has written the circumstances under which it was taken, below the portrait, has given Rowlandson's age at seventy,—within a year, in fact, of his death. The caricaturist's flowing locks are considerably shorn by the hand of the inevitable mower, and his penetrating eyes do not disdain the assistance afforded by a pair of huge tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles, in which they are framed; but as far as the visible flight of time goes, regarding the outward man, he might be assumed to possess powers of vitality sufficient to carry him over another score years.

If our memory does not deceive us, a sketch of the caricaturist's figure, from the life, and drawn in chalks, was exhibited some time ago at Bethnal Green, in the Loan Collection, formed under the auspices of the Science and Art Department.

We learn that our artist, who is perhaps the most popularly recognised practitioner of the caricature branch, was born in the Old Jewry, in July 1756, that is to say, just a year before his remarkable compeer James Gillray. The members of the Rowlandson family, according to the little we can trace of their personal history, seem to have been highly respectable people of the middle class in life. The name is not of common occurrence. There is a tract relating certain misfortunes which attended two bearers of this cognomen; a pious and worthy couple who in the seventeenth century went evangelising to New England, where they suffered incredible persecutions, and escaped all sorts of dismal tortures amongst the aboriginal Indians, in whose hands they had the mischance to fall; the succession of hardships which they encountered, and their final miraculous deliverance, are duly recorded for the encouragement of the faithful. The narrative, which is simple and circumstantial, forms an item of 'improving reading' not without its interest in the present age. There is nothing to prove the relationship of this faithful and much-enduring pair to our caricaturist, beyond the circumstance of the similarity of name. Rowlandson the elder was assuredly at one time a man of fair substance, as we are informed—'some say a city merchant,' but his disposition, like that of his son, seems to have been tinctured with recklessness. Mention is made of an uncle Thomas Rowlandson, who was godfather to the subject of our notice; also, as far as we can discover, connected with mercantile pursuits. This relationship was destined to serve the caricaturist in good stead, if he had only exercised the commonest prudence in husbanding the resources which he derived from this connection. We discover that, before Rowlandson had arrived at man's estate, his chances of inheriting a provision to help him on his way, together with the prospect of any future support, so far as the paternal resources were concerned, had melted away; the elder Rowlandson's 'speculative turn' had taken a sinister bent, considerable sums had been sunk, and still more portentous liabilities had been incurred, 'by experimenting on various branches of manufacture,' which were attempted on too extensive a scale for the means at his command; and, his resources becoming exhausted, before the fruition of his schemes, pecuniary embarrassments involved his career, and he failed to realise the considerable fortune which his sanguine temperament had anticipated. The natural talents of the son, and the professional training which had cultivated his gifts, were the only contributions he received, on attaining manhood, towards his future maintenance, as far as the help he could derive from his father was concerned. Other adventitious aids came to the artist's assistance, indeed, in spite of the untoward direction which the previous prosperity of the elder had taken, Rowlandson was to a large degree the spoiled child of fortune throughout his early career.

HOW TO TREAT A REFRACTORY MEMBER.

We are not informed whether the paternal estate was restored to solvency. Among the various 'valuable legacies' which, it is related, fell to the caricaturist's share (only to be scattered broadcast), it is very possible that, in some sort, an inheritance from his father formed part of these unexpected 'good gifts.' It seems, although we have no direct records of the remaining relatives, that Rowlandson had a sister, since we learn that his brother-in-law was Howitt, famous as an artist for his delineation of animals, for his spirited hunting subjects, being eminent as a sportsman, rider, and angler; and, like the caricaturist, somewhat of a spoiled child—a wayward genius—of a congenial soul, and vivacious impulses, a trifle too given to yield to careless convivial company, or the allurements which the hour might hold forth, oblivious of sober consequences to follow.

Thomas Rowlandson, the uncle, had married a certain Mademoiselle Chattelier, who was, it is evident, a lady with some command of wealth; and from the partiality and indulgence of this aunt, our artist, we are told, 'derived that assistance which his father's reverse of fortune had withheld.'

Another reference to the family name further occurs amongst the announcements of marriages for September 1800 (Gentleman's Magazine, vol. 70, p. 898), where we find that Thomas Rowlandson, Esq., of Watling Street, espoused Miss Stuart, daughter of George Stuart, Esq., of the Grove, Camberwell, Surrey. It is obvious that Rowlandson senior intended to give his son a sound training. As a school-boy, the future celebrity wandered into the precincts of that Soho district to which he afterwards clung in his varying fortunes with the persistence developed by habit.

The caricaturist began to draw his first instalments from the fount of knowledge at the scholastic symposium of Doctor Barvis in Soho Square, 'at that time, and subsequently, an academy of some celebrity.' We are told this establishment was kept by Doctor Barrow when young Rowlandson was pursuing his studies. The respectability of the school, and its soundness as an educational institution, is satisfactorily demonstrated to our mind from the circumstance that the great Edmund Burke had elected to confide his beloved son, with whose training, it is well known, the philosopher took especial pains, to the charge of Doctor Barrow; and Richard Burke, the gentle gifted youth whose untimely death hastened the decease of his patriotic father, was a school-fellow of our artist. J. G. Holman, who was destined to acquire reputation as a dramatic writer and performer, was another school-fellow. It appears that, within the walls of this academy, Rowlandson made the acquaintance of John Bannister, whose inimitable talents were afterwards to delight the town, and whose name is a lasting ornament to the histrionic profession; it was, further, in Soho Square that young Rowlandson and young Angelo, the son of the well-known Henry Angelo (one of the best recognised and most respected foreigners domiciled in London of his day), fencing-master to the Royal Family, became fast and firm friends. The intimacy existing between this worthy trio, dating from these early days, continued steadfastly through life. All these lads were, in different degrees, enthusiasts of the graphic art; Angelo and Bannister had strong predilections for the arts, and both drew as amateurs in their subsequent careers, although, with Rowlandson, they originally meditated following up the artist's profession seriously. As to our friend Rolley, like all beginners gifted with the pictorial vein, he could make sketches intuitively before he had learnt to do anything else, as seems the rule with youths who possess the artistic faculty and an imaginative temperament; his powers of fancy directed his hand at a precociously juvenile age to the practice of exercising his abilities with pencil and pen. 'From the early period of his childhood,' it is recorded, 'Rowlandson gave presage of his future talent;' he could make sketches before he learned to write, and, according to the usual course, 'he drew humorous characters of his master and many of his scholars, before he was ten years old. The margins of his school-books were covered with these his handiworks.'

Rowlandson's genius was of the rapid order, his powers were matured before the average of students have sounded the direction of their inclinations. Young Henry Angelo left Doctor Barrow's and Soho Square, for Eton, while Bannister and Rowlandson quitted the seminary of polite learning to follow the arts at the Schools of the Royal Academy; here our artist made rapid strides, and gave convincing proofs of his ability, dexterity, and quickness of parts, during the short interval his name was entered as a probationer.

In his sixteenth year, somewhere about 1771, Rowlandson had the advantage of being sent to Paris to continue his education; we learn that he 'spoke French like a native.' It was his aunt, née Mademoiselle Chattelier, residing in the French metropolis, a widow with what would have then been considered, in that capital, a handsome fortune, who invited her hopeful nephew over to the very centre of gaiety, dissipation, and luxurious refinement—Paris in the latter days of Louis the Fifteenth's reign being a very Capua for a youth of light and picturesque disposition such as our artist possessed. The impulse for purposeless frivolities, so deleteriously nourished amidst the gaieties of Parisian life, seems to have been kept in tolerable subjection by his earnest intentions to work hard at his adopted profession, which certainly must have sustained Master Rolley during his earlier residence on the Continent, until the cup of pleasure was raised to his lips by an unexpected accession of means. The student did a wonderful deal of real solid work and thoroughly steadfast application, before, like Moreland, he allowed himself to be whirled into the eddy of fashionable distractions; in Paris he was inscribed as a student in one of the drawing-academies there, and his natural abilities, aided by the excellence of the methods practised around him, to which his gifts moulded themselves quite naturally, enabled the probationer to make rapid advances in the study of the human figure, and laid the foundation for his future excellences. During his first sojourn, which lasted for nearly two years, Rowlandson became a perfect French buck, with a decided leaning, however, towards the fine-art section of the condition, and a pride in his professional calling; he learned to draw with fidelity to nature, with the graceful ease, and abandon, and the sparkle of style which marks French pictorial art of the period immediately antecedent to the reign of Louis the Sixteenth, the very ideal of luxury and refinement. It is related that, during his abode in Paris, 'he occasionally permitted his satiric talents the indulgence of portraying the characteristics of that fantastic people, whose outré habits perhaps scarcely demanded the exaggerations of caricature.'

Rowlandson returned to London for a season; and, while still a youth in years, his studies at the Academy were resumed; his progress was now so marked that he was set up as a friendly rival to Mortimer, another talented student, who had won the admiration of professors and pupils alike, by his skilful drawings after the nude figure. Our artist seems to have been highly popular with the two sections of academicians and students; the former appreciated his masterly endowments, the latter were won by his whimsicalities, his spirit of mischief, and the marvellous gift he possessed of turning every situation to comical account in the production of exhaustless graphic satires, which seemed to flow from his pen of their own sweet wilfulness.

John Bannister, who, as we have seen, had evinced an equal predilection for the graphic art, with powers, however, of lesser brilliancy, was then studying in the antique school, their old friendship was renewed, and a fresh alliance for fun and frolic was straightway entered into.

These hopeful aspirants were a great acquisition to the mirth of the schools, but both these eccentric geniuses must have sorely tried the patience of their venerated pastors and masters. The nature of their drolleries, which were incessant, is exposed in an extract from the Reminiscences of Henry Angelo, who formed the third person of this waggish trio.

'At the period when Wilson held the appointment of Librarian to the Royal Academy, the students were accustomed to assemble in the library; Bannister and Rowlandson were students, and both being sprightly wights, Wilson kept a watchful eye upon their pranks. The one was apt to engage the attention of his fellow-disciples by caricaturing the surly librarian, never forgetting to exaggerate his mulberry nose; whilst the other, born to figure in the histrionic art, a mimic by nature, used to divert them, in his turn, by playing off the irritable 'Old Dick.' Michael Moser was keeper at Somerset House while Bannister and Rowlandson were students of the Royal Academy, at which period the drawing-school was held in a part of the old palace, Somerset House, just behind the site of the present institution. Moser, in virtue of his office as keeper, had apartments there, which included accommodations for a housekeeper, and other female domestics.

'Bannister and Rowlandson, as before observed, were prankish youths. The latter once gave great offence by carrying a pea-shooter into the life academy, and, whilst old Moser was adjusting the female model, and had just directed her contour, Rowlandson let fly a pea, which, making her start, she threw herself entirely out of position, and interrupted the gravity of the study for the whole evening. For this offence, Master Rowlandson went near getting himself expelled.

'Bannister, who at this time drew in the plaster academy, not having gained the step that admitted to the drawing from the life, used to amuse Moser with his mimicry, and he was, indeed, a pet of the worthy keeper.

'One evening, observing that the student had vacated his seat at his desk, the keeper went to seek him, and, hearing an unusual giggling and confusion in the basement storey he descended to learn the cause; when he discovered the young artist romping with the servant-maids.

'What are you doing, sir, hey?' inquired the keeper, taking him gently by the ear; 'why are you not at the cast? You are an idler, sir.' Bannister met his reproof with an arch smile, and whispered, 'No, kind sir, I only came down to study from the life!'

In dealing with this part of the subject, every scrap of information has its interest, the resources in this direction being unfortunately most restricted. The task of writing on Gillray, and that within the lifetime of the subject, was likened to the toil 'of bondsmen commanded to make bricks without straw,' a comparison with which we have a lively sympathy, as we have realised to the fullest extent the difficulties which surrounded that undertaking. The obstacles to be surmounted in the instance of the first caricaturist are found to be rather more vexatious in the case of the companion volume, taken up under similar auspices, to elucidate the works of Rowlandson, and to trace the artist's career as far as lies within the writer's capabilities. Sixty years ago it was declared while treating of the first-named genius, in reference to contemporaneous indifference: 'It is a scandal upon all the cold-hearted scribblers in the land to allow such a genius as Gillray to go to the grave unnoticed; and a burning shame that so many of his works should have become ambiguous for want of a commentator. The political squibs have lost half of their point for want of a glossary, and many of the humorous traits of private life, so characteristic of men and manners, are becoming oblivious to ninety-nine hundredths of those who perambulate the streets of this mighty town.' This remark, so appropriately applied to Gillray (before Thomas Wright, and successive elucidators, had contributed to render the reading of these pictorial fables fairly clear, and the solutions easy of access), is equally striking as respects its undoubted truth in its application to Rowlandson—in his instance the pioneering remained to be accomplished—although his works are less complex in themselves, a description of them has hitherto proved too perplexing an attempt, since, how were the subjects to be collected?

We feel a glow of gratitude to that worthiest old authority, The Gentleman's Magazine, which contained a capital obituary notice on the caricaturist's decease, April 22, 1827, written by 'one who had known him for more than forty years;' this article has been copied literally in all subsequent notices of Rowlandson.

W. H. Pyne, the artist, who, under a pseudonym as Ephraim Hardcastle, conducted the earliest of English fine-art reviews, The Somerset House Gazette, 1824, was one of the intimates of the caricaturist, and he has left slight allusions to Rowlandson, both in his Gazette and in another publication of his enterprising, Wine and Walnuts, or After Dinner Chat, by Ephraim Hardcastle, 1823.

John Thomas Smith, as we have shown elsewhere, was on terms of personal friendship with Rowlandson throughout his life; but strangely enough, in his Nollekens and his Times, and his second volume, Memoirs of several Contemporary Artists from the time of Roubiliac, Hogarth and Reynolds, to that of Fuseli, Flaxman, and Blake, no mention is made of his much-esteemed associate. A passing allusion to his 'friend and fellow-pupil' Rowlandson, occurs in 'Antiquity' Smith's Book for a Rainy Day.

Henry Angelo, the early schoolfellow and constant comrade of our artist, a gentleman of varied accomplishments, obliged the reading public with his Reminiscences in 1830, a chatty, interesting, and in some respects highly valuable book, of which we wish there were more, since the two volumes are, as described by the title, filled with memoirs of his friends, including numerous original anecdotes and curious traits of the most celebrated characters that have flourished during the last eighty years. Unlike the author of Nollekens and his Times, Angelo has given due prominence to his recollections of the caricaturist's works and career, and his terms of familiar intimacy have supplied him with many entertaining details, trivial or unimportant in themselves perhaps, but very much to the purpose from a biographical point of view, as aids to the effort of reproducing the subject in his wonted aspect, as he struck the men amongst whom he passed his life. The spirit of Angelo's Reminiscences will not bear dilution, and so we think it better to offer his memoirs of the artist as they were published.

'Thomas Rowlandson, John Bannister, and myself, having early in life evinced a predilection for the study of drawing, we became acquainted whilst boys, and were inseparable companions.

'Everyone at all acquainted with the arts must well know the caricature works of that very eccentric genius, Rowlandson; the extent of his talent, however, as a draughtsman is not so generally known. His studies from the human figure at the Royal Academy were made in so masterly a style that he was set up as a rival to Mortimer, whom he certainly would have excelled, had his subsequent study kept pace with the fecundity of his invention. His powers, indeed, were so versatile, and his fancy so rich, that every species of composition flowed from his pen with equal facility. His misfortune, indeed, was, as I have been assured by capable authorities who noticed his juvenile progress, that of possessing too ready an invention; this rare faculty, strange as it may seem, however desirable to the poet, often proves the bane of the painter. "The poet," as Milton says, "can build the lofty rhyme," even with a dash of his pen. The painter, however easily he may conceive the structure of a mighty building—be it a temple, or be it a ship—must describe the subject perfectly with all its parts; he must set to work doggedly, as the great lexicographer, Johnson, said, and labour at the thing with the patience of the philosopher. Rowlandson was no philosopher, and so his uncontrollable spirit, sweeping over the prescribed pale, took its excursive flights and caught its thema on the wing. Hence I think it may safely be averred that he has sketched or executed more subjects of real scenes in his original rapid manner, than any ten artists his contemporaries, and etched more plates than any artist, ancient or modern.

'Few persons—judging from the careless style of drawing and etching which he so fatally indulged in, too soon, after acquiring the first rudiments of his art—would believe the possibility of his being the author of some of his earlier designs; for although all are too slight, yet there are certain subjects of his composition carried through with a compatibility of style so truly original, and so replete with painter-like feeling, that Sir Joshua Reynolds and Sir Benjamin West pronounced them wonders of art.'

On this same head we have the testimony of Ephraim Hardcastle in the Somerset House Gazette. A certain weight, beyond the mere evidence of partiality, is due to the opinions of such authorities as Henry Angelo and W. H. Pyne, who at least deserve the credit of understanding the subject; both were familiar with the best works of their day, and in the case of the latter we respect the opinion of an artist of wide experience and well-known repute.

'Thomas Rowlandson, the merry wag, he who has covered with his never-flagging pencil enough of charta pura to placard the whole walls of China, and etched as much copper as would sheathe the British navy. Of his graphic fun and frolic we have seen, Heaven knows, full many a ponderous folio.

'Master Roley, so friendly dubbed by many an old convive, would have taken higher flights of art had he so willed, for he could draw with elegance and grace; for the design, no mind was ever better stored with thought—no genius more prolific. Nothing, even allowing for caricature, could exceed in spirit and intelligence some of the off-hand compositions of this worthy.

'Predilections for outline and the pen have ruined many a genius who would have done honour to the arts. Mortimer, Porter, and many other artists have sacrificed their talents and their fame to the indulgence of doing that with the pen (confound both goose-quill, crow-quill, and the reed!) that should have occupied that fitter instrument the pencil, aforetime called the painting-brush.'

Angelo affords us occasional glimpses of Rowlandson in Paris, and frequently alludes to the artist's travels on the Continent. It seems, at various stages of his career, he roved about sometimes in search of subjects, at others, on parties of pleasure. We have seen the young student sent to Paris to pursue art; later on Angelo finds him there, at nineteen, still earnest and hard-working.

'The subjects of his humorous designs were not sought in England alone. He travelled early in life to France, Flanders, and Holland; and stored his portfolios with sketches highly characteristic of the habits and manners of the people, at every town through which he passed. Paris, as viewed under the old régime, opened a prolific source for his imitative powers. Nothing can exceed the fun and frolic which his subjects display, picked up among every class, from the court down to the cabaret. He mixed in all societies, and speaking French fluently, made himself acquainted with the habits of thinking, as well as those of acting, in that city, where everything to an English eye bore the appearance of burlesque.

'Hogarth had already pronounced Paris "all begilt and befouled." Rowlandson found it so; and taking that as a sort of maxim which governed all things, physical as well as moral, in the polite city, he burlesqued even the burlesque.

'His drawings of [The Italian] and The French Family, from which John Raffael Smith made engravings, had great merit. My friend John Bannister had one of the originals. I remember the last time I saw poor Edwin the comedian (I mean the elder), was on occasion of his wishing me to procure for him these originals. He was too late in his application, and was obliged to solace himself with the coloured prints, which were touched upon by the hand of Rowlandson. They were handsomely framed and hung in his dining-room on the first floor of one of the houses on the north-east piazza, Covent Garden. They subsequently became the property of Lord Barrymore.

'It would be difficult to enumerate the many choice subjects which he depicted even in these first tours to the Continent. Those descriptive of Parisian manners would now be viewed with tenfold interest, as the general external appearance of things was infinitely more original and amusing before the period of the commencement of the Revolution than since. Indeed, I can speak of these changes from my own observation, whilst two years in that city, and in the midst of its ever-varying gaieties, more than half a century ago.[8]

'During my residence there, Rowlandson came over in company with an Englishman of the name of Higginson, whom he got acquainted with at Dover; a pleasant companion, but, as it fell out, one who seemed to live on his wits.

'Their arrival in Paris was immediately after the death of Louis the Fifteenth at the moment of the putting on public mourning (1774). Mr. Higginson had letters of introduction (like Sylvester Daggerwood) to several persons of distinction, and resided at an hotel adjacent to my quarters. He sent the valet de place with a civil note to request the loan of my black suit, which he knew would fit him to a T. On the written assurance that it would be returned in time for me to pay a promised visit in the evening, I readily consented. Rowlandson lost sight of him for two days and nights; on the morning of the third day he returned, and I went, not over well pleased, to demand restitution, when on entering his apartment, he received me with, "Ah! mon ami, is it you?" seated under the frosting powder-puff of a French friseur, having his hair frizzled and powdered à la mode, in my mourning suit. Rowlandson sketched the group, and subjoined a motto, "Free and Easy." I had many of the drawings made by my friend Roly at this time.'

It is most likely that our artist's first contribution to the Royal Academy (it was the seventh exhibition) arrived from Paris; in 1775 there appeared, under the catalogue Number 253, a certain drawing entitled Delilah payeth Sampson a visit while in prison at Gaza, by Thomas Rowlandson; the exhibitor's address is given 'at No. 4 Church Street, St. Ann's.'

This, no doubt, like his contributions up to 1784, was of a serious character.[9]

From 1777 we find Rowlandson settled down to portrait-painting, his address being given at Wardour Street; his contributions to the Academy were as follow:—

1777.	No.	302.	A Drawing.
1778.	"	259.	Portrait of a Young Gentleman, whole length.
1779.	"	275.	An Officer, small, whole length.
"	"	276.	A Gentleman.
1780.	"	373.	Landscape and Figures.
1781.	"	334.	Portrait of a Lady in a fancy dress.
"	"	339.	Portrait of a Gentleman.

It is improbable, however, that the artist's disposition for change would allow him to vegetate in one spot for any length of time, and we are not surprised to discover that his tours to the Continent became frequent; as far as we can judge of his extended travels, it appears it was in 1778—while his youthful ardour was still fresh, when his sprightly faculties had not been jaded by the allurements of fashionable life, and his hand had not been betrayed into the careless execution which determined some time after his decisive rejection of serious art for the indulgence of uncompromising caricature—that he went very earnestly to work; travelling in Flanders and through the cities of Germany; making clever studies and finished pictures of the incidents of his journeys; noting the travellers he encountered, their mode of conveyance, the foreign nobility and their equipages, the townsfolks and the country people, coaches, waggons, and, above all, horses (which he then drew with great fidelity and spirit from life), as far as the figure subjects which enlivened his pictures were concerned; while his views were faithful representations of the places he visited, worked out with the completeness of landscape art.

The drawings of this period evince the excellence of his talents. There is sufficient spice of character introduced into the groups, and incidents which give action to his pictures, to raise his subjects above the average treatment, but the comic element is subordinated to the general harmony of the whole conception; and we have every opportunity of forming our opinion, from the numerous interesting series of studies which have come under our attention, that it was not until about 1782 that our artist began to cut himself adrift from the more legitimate occupation of his vast abilities in the regions of serious art, for the allurements which the readier exercise of his talents as a caricaturist held out for the indulgence of his eccentric and wayward tendencies. As we have seen, his early bias was undoubtedly towards the simply ludicrous; then intervened his academic training in London and Paris, the maturing of his powers necessitating an immense, and indeed almost incredible amount of sterling hard work, such as fitted him to excel in any branch of his calling he elected to pursue; followed by an attempt towards his establishment as a serious artist and portrait-painter, and then a relapse in the direction of his early impulses. This inclination was fostered by the encouragement of his friends, and the influence of their example. His cronies were, as was most natural, the humorous designers. There was the great and gifted Gillray, the prince of caricaturists, whose works created an impression on the public justified by their remarkable qualities. The friendship of this man, whose reputation was so wide, and whose mastery of the situation appeared extraordinary, encouraged Rowlandson to strike out a pathway in the same direction; bringing original qualifications to bear on this impetus, which in no degree clashed with the strongly marked intentions of Gillray's scathing inventions. There was his constant friend Henry Wigstead, a man of social standing, profusely liberal in his house, a jovial companion out of doors; who, richly endowed with the vein of humorous invention allied to powers of observation, and a refined sense of the beautiful, as well as a ready knack of seizing the comic features of a situation, entrusted his sketches to Rowlandson, that they might be produced in fitting form; and to the proper execution of these whimsicalities Rowlandson willingly lent the full force of his own trained skill. Another amateur of distinction, whose example and influence must have had considerable weight with our artist, was Henry Bunbury, the caricaturist, a man of family, of means, and, above all, of high culture. The celebrated Bunbury seemed formed expressly to be courted by the most eminent of his contemporaries; he had married one of the beautiful Miss Hornecks; the Duke and Duchess of York were delighted with his company; amongst the brilliant assemblies at Wynnstay, Bunbury's society was the most relished; Walpole, Garrick, Reynolds, and Goldsmith were constantly laying adulation at his feet, or exchanging gallant little pleasantries with this favoured child of fortune; West and Reynolds were respectfully solicitous that he should send his contributions to the Royal Academy; the writers of the day were given to deplore that the occupations of town and country life, the court, the hunting-field, and the ceremony of receiving company at his country-house or paying visits to the seats of his noble friends, sadly interfered with the exercise of his artistic abilities.

The instance of Bunbury, who was Rowlandson's senior by six years, no doubt had considerable influence upon our artist's career; the praise and adulation lavished upon the amateur sketches of the man of fashion, and the prophecies which writers were in the habit of recording, that, if Bunbury had not, from his birth and station, been indifferent to mere monetary advantages, the pursuit of his talents must have infallibly produced him a large access of fortune (which he did not need, by the way, since his means were ample) possibly helped to turn Rowlandson from quietly persevering in the less congenial study of portraiture, and induced him to show the public what could be done in the grotesque walk. Nor must we forget Mitchell the banker, whose friendship was always at our caricaturist's service, his travelling companion to the Continent, where Rowlandson and his patron passed for the veritable representatives of John Bull. There was 'the facetious Nixon,' the pleasant and witty John, 'a choice member of the celebrated Old British Beef-Steak Club, honorary secretary, and sometime providore to that society of native gourmands;' further, like his friend Bunbury, distinguished as a man of talent and taste, possessed of original gifts in the humorous department of graphic art, he was an honorary exhibitor at Somerset House for many years: this gentleman, who had perfected the study of how to get the largest possible amount of enjoyment out of existence, also came to Rowlandson to put his drawings into acceptable shape, and to introduce his eccentric pleasantries to the public. Nor must the well-known amateurs and choice spirits, Woodward and Collings, be omitted from the list of those familiars of the artist who, by precept and example, encouraged him to devote his accomplishments to the comic branch. It is not surprising that the tendency of this influence, allied to the strong original bias natural to our artist, drew him farther away from the steady pursuit of art, and plunged him into the tempting career of a caricaturist, a pursuit which held out peculiar attractions to an artist gifted with his whimsical inclinations. We must do Rowlandson the credit to admit that, at the outset, he distinguished himself marvellously. His first contributions, under his changed profession, were by no means discreditable to his great qualifications; indeed these drawings, from the successful impression they produced on the public, appeared to justify the resolution the artist had taken, and to prove that he was evidently more at home in the fanciful branch than any of his predecessors or contemporaries. In 1784 Rowlandson contributed three somewhat ambitious subjects to the Royal Academy Exhibition; according to the Catalogue No. 462, [An Italian Family]; No. 503, Vauxhall; No. 511, The Serpentine River.

Vauxhall Gardens, which is possibly the best recognised of Rowlandson's more aspiring compositions, was engraved by R. Pollard, aquatinted, to resemble the drawing, by F. Jukes, and published under the auspices of John Raphael Smith, also a convivial companion, a leading spirit amongst the careless souls who formed Rowlandson's social surroundings; the well-known printseller, who was 'a jack-of-all-trades' according to his own admission, was celebrated for his liberality to artists; he personally practised the arts both of engraving and painting, and he excelled in executing spirited portrait sketches, in crayons, 'miniatures in large' as they were called, of the fashionable personages of his day.

The Study of Vauxhall is replete with character; the persons of the principal frequenters are, it is believed, portraits of numerous celebrities of the period.

Angelo, in his Reminiscences, which touch upon every topic of the time, among other interesting allusions, recounts the partiality which he and Rowlandson entertained for the popular resort of the past, and the attractions which, according to his admission, its diversions held out to the pair.

'Vauxhall.—I remember the time when Vauxhall (in 1776, the price of admission being then only one shilling) was more like a bear garden than a rational place of resort, and most particularly on Sunday mornings.

'It was then crowded from four to six with gentry, demireps, apprentices, shop-boys, &c. Crowds of citizens were to be seen trudging home with their wives and children. Rowlandson the artist and myself have often been there, and he has found plenty of employment for his pencil.

'The chef-d'œuvre of his caricatures, which is still in print, is his drawing of Vauxhall, in which he has introduced a variety of characters known at the time, particularly that of my old schoolfellow at Eton, Major Topham, the macaroni of the day. One curious scene he sketched on the spot purposely for me. It was this:—A citizen and his family are seen all seated in a box eating supper, when one of the riffraff in the gardens throws a bottle in the middle of the table, breaking the dishes and the glasses. The old man swearing, the wife fainting, and the children screaming, afforded full scope for his humorous pencil.

'Such night scenes as were then tolerated are now become obsolete. Rings were made in every part of the gardens to decide quarrels; it no sooner took place in one quarter, than by a contrivance of the light-fingered gentry, another row was created in another quarter to attract the crowd away.'

Before taking leave of Rowlandson and Angelo, the most agreeable of companions, at Vauxhall, we must add a further note of another of their holiday jaunts, once more borrowed from the Reminiscences.

'Mrs. Weichsel (Mrs. Billington's mother) was the favourite singer at Vauxhall; upon one occasion she had her benefit at the little theatre in the Haymarket. Her daughter and son added considerably to the entertainment that night; though the former could not have been fourteen years old, her execution on the pianoforte surprised everyone. The son, then a little boy, played a solo on the fiddle in such peculiarly fine style that the audience were both astonished and delighted. Exhibiting his early abilities standing on a stool, I was present that night with Rowlandson the artist, who made a sketch of him playing, which he afterwards finished for me, and which, within these few years, was within my collection.'

We will leave Rowlandson rejoicing in the popular impression his drawings had produced in the Exhibition of the Royal Academy for 1784, where, as his friends were inclined to prophesy, his fame and fortune were both assured, and turn to the subject of another fortune which seems to have come into his possession about this period. We have said that the artist was a spoiled child of prosperity; his contemporaries record their impression that the indulgences of his aunt, the ex-Mademoiselle Chattelier already referred to, as the kindly patroness of her wayward nephew's budding talents, who supplied him incautiously with money, when he would have been better without it, paved the foundation of those careless habits which attended his manhood; and to her injudicious generosity his biographer affects to trace that improvidence for which, says our authority, poor Rowlandson was remarkable through life. After this aunt's decease, she left him seven thousand pounds, much plate, trinkets, and other valuable property. He then indulged his predilections for a joyous life, and mixed himself with the gayest of the gay. Whilst at Paris, being of a social spirit, he sought the company of dashing young men; and among other evils, imbibed a love for play. He was known in London at many of the fashionable gaming houses, alternately won and lost, without emotion, till at length he was minus several thousand pounds. He thus dissipated the amount of more than one valuable legacy. It was said to his honour, however, that he always played with the feelings of a gentleman, and his word passed current even when with an empty purse. Rowlandson assured the writer of the memoir which appeared, on his death, in the obituary of The Gentleman's Magazine for June 1827, that he had frequently played throughout a night and the next day; and that once, such was his infatuation for the dice, he continued at the gaming table nearly thirty-six hours, with the intervention only of the time for refreshment, which was supplied by a cold collation, presumably consumed on the spot and during the intervals of play.

This uncontrollable passion for gambling, strange to say, did not pervert his principles. He was scrupulously upright in all his pecuniary transactions, and ever avoided getting into debt. He has been known, after having lost all he possessed, to return home to his professional studies, sit down coolly to produce a series of new designs, and to exclaim, with stoical philosophy, 'I have played the fool; but,' holding up his pencils or the reed pen with which he traced his flowing outlines, 'here is my resource.' Such was his dexterity of hand, combined with the richest fertility of imagination, and graphic mastery over the movements of the human figure, that in a few hours he produced inimitable pictures, replete with his best qualities of humour, form, and colour, with incredible rapidity; and these ingenious productions, invented in endless variety, were at once put into circulation, and excited the competition of collectors of drawings and caricatures, who eagerly accumulated every sketch which his facile hand designed, too often under the pressure of the actual necessities of the hour, or the careless effusions of the intervals in his pleasures or dissipations.

Rowlandson's contributions to the Academy in the succeeding years were as follows:—

1786.	No.	560.	A French Family.
"	"	566.	Opera House Gallery.
"	"	575.	An English Review.
"	"	583.	A French Review.
"	"	599.	Coffee House.
1787.	"	525.	The Morning Dram, or Huntsman rising.
"	"	529.	[Grog on Board a Ship].
"	"	531.	French Barracks.
"	"	555.	Countrymen and Sharpers.

It was about this time that our caricaturist met with a somewhat disagreeable adventure, which is thus related by his friend Angelo:—

'Rowlandson robbed.—Having walked one night with Rowlandson towards his house, when he lived in Poland Street,[10] we parted at the corner. It was then about twelve o'clock, and before he got to his door a man knocked him down, and, placing his knees on his breast, rifled him of his watch and money. The next day he proposed that we should be accompanied by a thief-taker, to try to find him out, as he was certain he should know him again. We first repaired to St. Giles's, Dyot Street, and Seven Dials, but to no purpose. In one of the night-houses, four ill-looking fellows, des coupes-jarrets, so attracted our attention, that whilst we sat over our noggin of spirits, as he always carried his sketch-book with him, he made an excellent caricature group of them for me, introducing a prison in the background. An idea may be formed from the caricature, of the different gradations which lead to the gallows—petty larceny, house-breaking, foot-pad and highway robbery; and he afterwards finished it for me in his best style, superior to the greater part of his works; this was about 1790. The coloured drawing once was included in my collection, in a room crowded with various subjects, the greatest part caricatures by my old friend Rowly—his general appellation among his friends.

'Our first interview originated in Paris (about 1775); he was then studying in the French school. Lately, having to dispose of my collection (I may say unique), my friend Bannister purchased it of me, and it was added to his many choice and valuable drawings of the first masters, which were so very superior that the four thieves ought to have esteemed it an honour to be placed in such good company.[11]

'The next night a gentleman was robbed in Soho Square in like manner. Soon afterwards several suspicious characters were taken to an office then in Litchfield Street, Soho, suspected of street robberies, and Rowlandson and myself went there out of curiosity, accompanied by many others who had been robbed. They were all placed before us, but none were identified. Rowlandson was particularly called upon to look around him, but to no purpose. One man in particular made himself more conspicuous than all the others, treating his curiosity with contempt, saying, "I defies the gemman to say as how I ever stopped him any vare." "No; but you are very like the description of the ruffian," answered Rowlandson, "who robbed a gentleman last Wednesday night in Soho Square." This was a thunderbolt to the man, who instantly looked pale and trembled. The gentleman was immediately sent for, and as soon as he entered the room, though there were several for examination, he fixed directly on the man that had been suspected. At the sessions following he was found guilty of robbery, and hanged. This pleased my friend mightily; "for, though I got knocked down," said he, "and lost my watch and money, and did not find the thief, I have been the means of hanging one man. Come, that's doing something."'

We incidentally learn a few particulars of subjects which found their way into Angelo's gallery, the collection which subsequently came into the possession of his excellent friend Bannister.

'Black and White.—Being fond of the arts and particularly of caricatures, I had by me a great number of Rowlandson's, to one of which I was puzzled to give a name. The subject was an old man, at breakfast, seated near the fire, his gouty leg on a stool, and the kettle boiling over; the water is falling on his leg, and he is ringing the bell. The room door is open behind him, and a black servant is kissing the maid, who is bringing in the toast. I requested Theodore Hook to write a title to it, and he put, "Chacun à son goût."'[12]

We are further afforded an opportunity of recording Rowlandson's enthusiasm for his profession. The details of a certain visit he paid, with Angelo, to Portsmouth, and the unflinching nerve he exhibited under circumstances which were calculated to distress a less robust constitution, are thus recounted by his friend and travelling companion:—

'The general rumour, after Lord Howe's action on June 1, 1794, was that he would return to Portsmouth. I was anxious to see the sight, for it was expected he would bring the French prizes with him.

'The evening after my arrival, according to promise, Rowlandson the artist came to join me.

'The morning following we saw, on the Gosport side, the landing of the French prisoners, numbers of different divisions filing off to the different stations allotted them. As for the wounded, previous to their quitting the boats, carts were placed alongside, and when filled, on the smack of the whip, were ordered to proceed. The sudden jolting made their groans appalling, and must have occasioned the wounds of many to produce an immediate hemorrhage. The sight was dreadful to behold: numbers were boys, mutilated, some not more than twelve years old, who had lost both legs. In the evening we went to Forton Prison. Those who were not in the last engagement were in high spirits in their shops, selling all sorts of toys and devices, made from shin-bones, &c. In one of the sick-wards we saw one of the prisoners, who, an officer told us had been a tall, handsome man, previous to the battle; but, having received a shot that had lacerated his side, a mortification had taken place. He was then making his will; his comrades were standing by, consoling him, some grasping his hand, shedding tears.

'This scene was too much for me, and made such an impression on my mind that I hastened away; but I could not persuade Rowlandson to follow me, his inclination to make a sketch of the dying moment getting the better of his feelings. After waiting some time below for my friend, he produced a rough sketch of what he had seen:—a ghastly figure sitting up in bed, a priest holding a crucifix before him, with a group standing around. The interior exhibited the contrivance of the French to make their prison habitable. When finished, it was added to my collection, a memento of the shocking sight I beheld at Forton Prison.

'Our curiosity not stopping here, we entered another sick-ward, but the stench and closeness of the place, crowded as it was, prevented our remaining there more than a very short time. The next day, having seen quite enough, I returned to town. Rowlandson went to Southampton, where he made a number of sketches of Lord Moira's embarkation for La Vendée. I saw them afterwards, and was delighted, for it appeared he had taken more pains than usual, and he must have portrayed them well, from having been on the spot himself at the time. The shipping and the various boats filled with soldiers were so accurately delineated, that I have often since regretted that I did not at that time purchase them. Mr. Fores of Piccadilly, who had by him many of the very finest drawings executed by Rowlandson in his best days (for latterly they were inferior), fortunately purchased them. He was one of his first and best patrons; and I understand he had twenty-five folio volumes of the most choice caricatures of the last and present centuries, which must have been an invaluable recueil, showing not only what we have been, but the age we lived in. Had Rowlandson gone with the expedition then landing in La Vendée as a draughtsman, the attack at Fort Penthièvre, and the incident that followed, would have furnished us with many eventful scenes of that fatal expedition.'

As we have related, Rowlandson was no stranger to the Continent; in the early part of his career he was constantly abroad. We have shown how he studied in Paris; afterwards we find him wandering farther afield, and taking in Germany and the Netherlands. Then we are introduced to him as a man of fashion, bowling through the legacies which had fallen to his lot, both in the French metropolis and in London, calmly sitting down to gamble away his fortune by the shortest route with the best will in the world. Anon he accompanies his friend Mitchell the banker on a wider tour. Then we hear of his sojourning in Paris with other congenial spirits, and making the most of the passing season with his friends John Raphael Smith, Westmacott, and Chasemore: on all these occasions he produced drawings innumerable; his most frequent travelling companion seems, however, to have been his steadfast patron the banker, and it was this liberal collector who rejoiced in the opportunity of securing the artist's most desirable Continental studies. Our oft-quoted authority Angelo, who, happily for those who entertain an interest in the caricaturist, never tires of telling little anecdotes of his chum Roley, in his own familiar manner relates a few particulars of the figure these worthies made in the eyes of the Monsieurs, amongst whom their visits were favourably received.

'Mr. Mitchell, however, possessed the best collection of Rowlandson's French and Dutch scenes. Among those were many in his most humorous style, particularly a Dutch Life Academy, which represents the interior of a school of artists, studying from a living model, all with their portfolios and crayons, drawing a Dutch Venus (a vrow) of the make, though not of the colour, of that choice specimen of female proportion, the Hottentot Venus, so celebrated as a public sight in London, a few years since.

'This friend and patron of Rowlandson, Mr. Mitchell the quondam banker, of the firm of Hodsol and Co., was a facetious, fat gentleman—one of those pet children of fortune, who, wonderful as it may appear, seem to have proceeded through all the seven ages (excepting that of the lean and slippered pantaloon), without a single visit from that intruder upon the rest of mankind, yclept Care. In him centred, or rather around him the Fates piled up, the wealth of a whole family. He was ever the great gathering nucleus to a large fortune. He was good-humoured and enjoyed life. Many a cheerful day have I, in company with Bannister and Rowlandson, passed at Master Mitchell's.'

Under the auspices of this great banker, Rowlandson subsequently made a tour to France, and other parts of the Continent. 'His mighty stature astonished the many, but none more than the innkeepers' wives, who, on his arrival, as he travelled in style, looked at the larder, and then again at the guest. All regarded him as that reported being, of whom they had heard, the veritable Mister Bull. His orders for the supplies of the table, ever his first concern, strengthened this opinion, and his operations at his meals confirmed the fact.

'Wherever he went he made good for the house.

'On this tour, Rowlandson made many topographical drawings, in general views of cities and towns; amongst others, the High Street at Antwerp, and the Stadt House at Amsterdam, with crowds of figures, grouped with great spirit, though his characters were caricatures.

'The most amusing studies, however, which filled the portfolio of his patron were those that portrayed the habits and customs of the Dutch and Flemish, in the interior scenes, which they witnessed in their nocturnal rambles in the inferior streets at Antwerp and Amsterdam. Some of these compositions, drawn from low life, were replete with character and wit. One of the most spirited and amusing of these represented the interior of a Treischuit, or public passage-boat, which was crowded with incident and humour.'[13]

Another reminiscence of Rowlandson and Mitchell is found in the Somerset-house Gazette, edited by Ephraim Hardcastle (W. H. Pyne), an intimate associate of the caricaturist and a member of the artist's circle of friends.

'I look back with pleasure to former days, when old Mr. Greenwood used to hold the print auctions by candle-light, and have a perfect recollection of his good-humour and upright dealing. I well remember, too, a number of artists and amateurs who constantly attended his room, to purchase etchings of the old masters for themselves and friends.

'Old Parsons, as he was called, and young Bannister, the celebrated comedians, were both collectors and amateur artists: the latter was considered an excellent judge of prints. Rowlandson, the humorous draughtsman, and his friend and patron Mr. Mitchell the banker, of the firm of Hodsols, were also frequently of this evening rendezvous of artists, amateurs, and connoisseurs.'

John Thomas Smith, the whilom pupil of Nollekens the sculptor (with whose life he favoured the public), and one of Mr. Reid's predecessors as Keeper of the Print Room of the British Museum, in his loquacious Book for a Rainy Day rambles into the subject of picture sale-rooms, and notes the eccentric characters, collectors, and their individualities, to be met with thereat in his time. On this subject 'Antiquity Smith's' account tallies with that given by Angelo. We have confined our extract to the paragraph which introduces the caricaturist as a crony and erst fellow-pupil of the versatile chronicler.

'I must not omit to mention another singular but most honourable character, of the name of Heywood, nick-named "Old Iron-wig." His dress was precise, and manner of walking rather stiff. He was an extensive purchaser of every kind of article in art, particularly Rowlandson's drawings; for this purpose he employed the merry and friendly Mr. Seguier, the picture-dealer, a school-fellow of my father's, to bid for him.

'I shall now close this list by observing that my friend and fellow-pupil, Rowlandson, who has frequently made drawings of Hutchins and his print auctions, has produced a most spirited etching, in which not only many of the above described characters are introduced, but also most of the print-sellers of his day.'

The editor of this work has seen a drawing by Rowlandson of this very auction, the cognoscenti gathered round the long tables lighted with flickering candles, and peering over the engravings, glasses on nose, while the auctioneer was endeavouring to excite the interest of the company in the prints brought to his rostrum.

Before we pass on to other contemporaries of the caricaturist, we think it advisable to introduce the reader to the society which Rowlandson shared round the hospitable mahogany of the banker, who, like Wigstead, Nixon, Weltjé, and certain other generous hosts of our artist's acquaintance, appears to have kept open house for the entertainment of choice friends, where the enjoyments of social intercourse were prolonged to the verge of dissipation, and the fun, which enlivened their hours of relaxation, was frequently kept up until the next day was well advanced; the associates being loth to interrupt the pleasures of their sitting, protracted as their gaieties might be considered according to the more staid usages of a better regulated age, such as we have been taught to regard our own.

'Mr. Mitchell resided for many years in Beaufort Buildings, Strand, and occupied the house tenanted by the father of Dr. Kitchiner, of eccentric memory. Here, after the closing of the banking-house, he was wont to retire, and pass a social evening, surrounded by a few chosen associates whose amusements were congenial, and whose talent well paid the host for his hot supper and generous wine. Often, even beyond the protracted darkness of a winter's night, he and his convives have sat it out till dawn of day, and seen the sun, struggling through the fog, from the back windows, shed its lurid ray on the rippling waters of the murky Thames.

'Well do I remember sitting in this comfortable apartment, listening to the stories of my old friend Peter Pindar, whose wit seemed not to kindle until after midnight, at the period of about his fifth or sixth glass of brandy and water. Rowlandson, too, having nearly accomplished his twelfth glass of punch, and replenishing his pipe with choice oronooko, would chime in. The tales of these two gossips, told in one of these nights, each delectable to hear, would make a modern Boccaccio.'

Angelo, in his capital chatty Memoirs, relates an anecdote of one of Wigstead's pranks played off on the satirist Peter Pindar, whose trenchant wit spared 'nor friend nor foe;' but, in his turn, Dr. Wolcot did not relish ridicule, especially when it happened to be excited at his own expense. It was discovered that, eminently satirical as was the bard with his pen, he was not emulous to shine as a wit in colloquial intercourse with strangers, or even amongst his most intimate associates. It was asserted, with some fidelity, that 'Dr. Wolcot's wit seemed to lie in the bowl of a teaspoon.' 'I could not guess the riddle,' writes the discursive and cheerful author of the Reminiscences, 'until one evening, seated at Mitchell's, I observed that each time Peter replenished his glass goblet with cognac and water, that, in breaking the sugar, the corners of his lips were curled into a satisfactory smile, and he began some quaint story—as if, indeed, the new libation begot a new thought.

'Determined to prove the truth of the discovery which I fancied I had made, one night after supper, at my own residence in Bolton Row, he being one among a few social guests, I made my promised experiment. One of the party, who delighted in a little practical joke, namely Wigstead, of merry memory, being in the secret, he came provided with some small square pieces of alabaster. Peter Pindar's glass waning fast, Wigstead contrived to slip the fragments of spurious sweetness into a sugar-basin provided for the purpose, when the Doctor reaching the hot water, and pouring in the brandy, Wigstead handed him the sugar-tongs, and then advanced the basin of alabaster. "Thank you, boy," said Peter, putting in five or six pieces, and taking his tea-spoon, began stirring as he commenced his story.

'Unsuspicious of the trick, he proceeded: "Well, sirs,—and so, the old parish-priest.—What I tell you (then his spoon went to work) happened when I was in that infernally hot place, Jamaica (then another stir). Sir, he was the fattest man on the island (then he pressed the alabaster); yes, damme, sir; and when the thermometer, at ninety-five, was dissolving every other man, this old slouching, drawling, son of the Church got fatter and fatter, until, sir—curse the sugar! some devil-black enchanter has bewitched it. By —— sir, this sugar is part and parcel of that old pot-bellied parson—it will never melt;" and he threw the contents of the tumbler under the grate. We burst into laughter, and our joke lost us the conclusion of the story. Wigstead skilfully slipped the mock sugar out of the way, and the Doctor, taking another glass, never suspected the frolic.'

Let us take a further glimpse of the social meetings which Rowlandson shared in company with Angelo, who duly set down the outlines of the evenings' diversions in his Memoirs. As this anecdote introduces a personage who figures somewhat prominently amidst the more lively records of the period, we must be allowed to say a word or two about the giver of the feast, where we are admitted by favour and enabled to watch the proceedings from a distance.

Another excellent friend, occasional host, and boon companion of our caricaturist was, as we have mentioned, Weltjé, the Prince of Wales' cook and steward, a German of eccentric proclivities, who was pretty universally recognised as a character in his generation. The huge person of this worthy is frequently introduced into the social satires of the period; the artistic and literary wags alike delighted to make the figure of the old bon-vivant conspicuous; it seems that Weltjé was in no wise offended at this popularity, however unflattering might be the intentions of the wicked wights; he was a calm humoristic philosopher, whose composure was not easily deranged, and in return for their mischievous sallies, which only amused him, he made the wits, who grew waggish at his expense, his guests at his residence Hammersmith Mall; where he kept such a table as attracted all classes of society, and to which his friends were ever welcome. Weltjé's culinary accomplishments, united with his hospitable proclivities, rendered him a truly remarkable host; his good humour was imperturbable, his store of anecdotes inexhaustible, and his German bluntness rather added to the charm of his pleasantries; even that superfine Sybarite and highly sensitive exquisite, the Heir Apparent, Mr. Weltjé's patron and employer, was glad to dissemble his offended dignity when his precious and immovable cook was the assailant. Angelo, who declares he owed many a convivial day to the kindness of this rough diamond, assures us in his Reminiscences: 'Whether at Carlton House or his own, Weltjé was always remarkable for singularity. I have been told that when Alderman Newnham was one day dining at Carlton House, the Prince said to him, "Newnham, don't you think there is a strange taste in the soup?" "It appears so to me, your highness." "Send for Weltjé." When Weltjé made his appearance, the Prince observed that the soup had a strange taste. Weltjé called to one of the pages, "Give me de spoone," and putting it in the tureen, after tasting it several times, said, "Boh! boh! tish very goote," and immediately left the room, leaving the spoon on the table, without taking further notice of the complaint.'

It is not, however, with the worthy Weltjé at Carlton House, but at his own villa, that we have to deal. Angelo introduces us to a capital dinner-party which took place at Hammersmith Mall, when the old associates, Rowlandson, Bannister, and Munden, were among the guests; Madame Banti the opera-singer, and Taylor, also of the Opera House, with Mr. Palmer of Bath, contributed to make up a tolerably festive party. The dinner was long and bien recherché; the dishes choice, and cooked in superior style; the sprightly conversation, in which the company delighted, had been somewhat suspended during the discussion of a great variety of entremets, which were duly appreciated by all the guests, and especially by Madame Banti, who not only tasted of every dish, but, in addition to a quantity of strong ale, drank a bottle of champagne. The guests were preparing for that flow of wine and conversation which were the agrémens of social intercourse at the period. The repast was concluded as everyone imagined, and nobody felt disposed to touch another morsel, when Weltjé's grand piece of the entertainment made its appearance—a huge boar's head, at which delicacy everyone stared in consternation.

Weltjé plunged into his element, mixing up sauces piquantes at table, of such ingredients as oil, lemon, cayenne, and different concomitants.

The guests, already lavishly regaled, were inclined to expostulate. 'Indeed, Weltjé, we have had more than enough.' 'Boh!' responds the entertainer, 'I vill make you all hungry again; two heads gomed to dis gontry, von for me, toder for de Queen, dat de Prince of Bronsvick sent;' and away proceeded the compounding of sauces. The long interval occupied in Weltjé's culinary preparations was shortened by droll anecdotes, peculiar to his own description, introduced for the purpose of distracting the attention. Such was his account of his adventure on his return home to Hammersmith, in his carriage, from Carlton House. 'Fon I gote to de fost dumbpike beyond Kensington, from town, de goach stobed some time, fon me say, "Godam, ged on:" fon de dumbike say, "Sir, dere be nobody on de bokes." I was very much fraightened, so I did ged up mine-self. The next day gome de goachman: "Pray, sir, fon am I to ged the carriage ready?" "Tartifle, what become of you last night?"' The coachman, it appears, had fallen off the box in a drunken stupor; unhurt, he had, never troubling himself about his charge, taken a nap all night under a hedge, and attended on his master the next morning to receive orders as coolly as if nothing unusual had happened. The sauce piquante is ready by the time the host has raised a few laughs; clean plates are handed round; a large dish is filled with slices of the boar's head, swimming in provocative mixtures; and the guests fall to again; verifying, as Angelo relates, the French proverb that, l'appétit vient en mangeant, or, as Hamlet says, 'As if increase of appetite had grown with what it fed on.' The second repast proved so excellent that the plates were continually replenished. The poets, painters, actors, musicians, and others, who crowded Weltjé's liberal entertainments, with 'those whose superior station was more suited to a palace,' then gave themselves up to unrestrained mirthfulness. The dinner Angelo describes will serve as a type of the many similar entertainments at which our caricaturist assisted. With the dessert Madame Banti became somewhat lively, from her repeated libations of champagne, being, as Angelo informs us, 'in higher spirits than any French woman I had ever seen. With the enthusiasm of a true John Bull, she sang "God save the King," that she might have been heard on the other side of the river. Munden, whom she had never seen before, sang the "Old Woman of Eighty;" and to give effect to the song, tied his pocket-handkerchief round his head, though his superior humour needed no addition. When he had finished his song, Banti left her seat in ecstasy, and went to the other side of the table, where he and I were sitting, and was so pleased with his mummery (it could be nothing else, for Joe never was an Adonis), that she came behind his chair and kissed him; which, however, did not excite a blush, but an agreeable surprise. What with the songs, the choice wines, the delicious fruits (from Weltjé's hothouse), and the zest given to the entertainment by Banti, it formed such a delightful treat, that the evening passed too quickly, and it was time to depart long before we were sated with "the feast of reason and the flow of soul."'

To return to the working life of our caricaturist: it must be borne in mind that Rowlandson's journeys were not confined to the Continent; from drawings which have come under our attention, we find he must have seen the Lakes; it is highly probable that he paid a visit to Henry Bunbury, who, towards the close of his life, settled at Keswick, where he died in 1811. We also know, from his works, that our artist was familiar with England and Wales: his tours, with his friend Henry Wigstead, have produced many interesting souvenirs; we have described how they travelled to Wales, and how, too, they saw Cheshire, Cornwall, Devon, and Somerset; we find them scampering off to the newly established Brighthelmstone, and to the more old-fashioned watering-places on the coast of Kent. It was at Margate that Rowlandson lost his most congenial associate, who having gone there, in the autumn of 1800, for the benefit of his health, did not live to return; the death of Henry Wigstead was a serious bereavement to the caricaturist, the earliest of those losses of his cherished associates which influenced his spirits considerably.

We can also catch glimpses of Rowlandson on the Scarborough coast, and in Norfolk. Yarmouth seems to have been a favourite spot with him. We find him studying at seaports along the south coast; with Plymouth, Portsmouth, and Southampton he was thoroughly familiar. Of the Thames and the Medway, and the shipping to be encountered thereon in war-time, he has left sketches innumerable; he has visited the fishing spots on the former, and drawn the pretty towns which mark the valley of the river. With London, and its diversified spots of interest, from east to west, and north to south—the centre, and the outskirts alike—he had the most intimate acquaintance. We have already spoken of the drawings he made in the two University cities, and his series of views of the noble colleges.

An Historical Sketch of the Art of Caricaturing was written by the well-known antiquarian J. P. Malcolm, F.S.A., and published in 1813. This book, which might, had the author so willed, have supplied the curious with valuable hints, drawn from personal acquaintance, concerning professors of the art then living, is confined to the briefest recapitulation, as far as concerns contemporary works, the book being retrospective in principle; and it is difficult to discover any allusions of value to those Caricaturists lately deceased or who were still alive. Malcolm's appreciation of grotesque art was somewhat catholic, but he does not seem as familiar as might reasonably be supposed the case, with the masterpieces of the men who were flourishing in his time, or perhaps their chefs d'œuvre were then so generally familiar as to need no further recognition. The compiler of the Historical Sketch was evidently an amateur of humorous productions, and could describe the progress of grotesques, but he does not seem to have completely carried out the scheme of his treatise.

We have borrowed a paragraph from this excellent antiquarian, as an instance of his criticisms on the subject of the present volume.

'Rowlandson's Views in Oxford and Cambridge, 1810, deserve notice for the slight and pleasing manner with which he has characterised the architecture of the places mentioned; but it is impossible to surpass the originality of his figures; the dance of students and filles de joie before Christ Church College is highly humorous, and the enraged tutors grin with anger peculiar to this artist's pencil. The professors, in the view of the Observatory at Oxford, are made as ugly as baboons, and yet the profundity of knowledge they possess is conspicuous at the first glance; and we should know them to be Masters of Arts without the aid of the background. The scene in Emanuel College Garden, Cambridge, exhibits the learned in a state of relaxation; several handsome lasses remove apples from a tree, and the indolent curiosity with which they are viewed by these sons of ease is very characteristic.'

While considering Rowlandson in relation to his contemporaries, we have chiefly to deal with those gifted gentlemen who were, like himself, generally spoken of in their generation as caricaturists, and to whose works our artist was able, from his more considerable acquirements, to give a presentable form, and put into circulation through the medium of his proficiency with the etching-needle.

Foremost among these we must speak of Henry Bunbury, so many of whose felicitous conceptions have derived additional force and popularity alike through the agency of our artist.

In speaking of the caricaturist's treatment of these amateur works, we are glad to be able to offer our readers the respectable testimony of Thomas Wright in support of our own modest opinion, with which intention we quote a few paragraphs from our late friend's History of Caricature and Grotesque in Literature and Art.

'At various periods certain of Bunbury's designs were engraved by Rowlandson, who always transferred his own style to the drawings he copied. A remarkable instance of this is furnished by a print of a party of anglers of both sexes in a punt, entitled Anglers of 1811 (the year of Bunbury's death). But for the name, "H. Bunbury, del.," very distinctly inscribed upon it, we should take this to be a genuine design by Rowlandson; and in 1803 Rowlandson engraved some copies of Bunbury's prints on horsemanship for Ackermann, of the Strand, in which all traces of Bunbury's style are lost.

'There was much of Bunbury's style in that of Woodward, who had a taste for the same broad caricatures on society, which he executed in a similar spirit. Some of the suites of subjects of this description that he published, such as the series of the Symptoms of the Shop, those of Everybody out of Town, and Everybody in Town, and the specimens of Domestic Phrensy, are extremely clever and amusing. Woodward's designs were also not unfrequently engraved by Rowlandson, who, as usual, imprinted his own style upon them. A very good example of this practice is seen in the print entitled Desire, in which the passion is exemplified in the case of a hungry school-boy, watching through a window a jolly cook carrying by a tempting plum pudding. We are told in an inscription underneath: "Various are the ways this passion might be depicted; in this delineation the subjects chosen are simple—a hungry boy and a plum pudding." The design of this print is stated to be Woodward's; but the style is altogether that of Rowlandson, whose name appears on it as the etcher. It was published by R. Ackermann on January 20, 1800.'

In transferring the works of other caricaturists to the copper, Rowlandson was in the habit of giving his own style to them in such a degree that nobody would suspect they were not his own if the name of the designer were not attached to them.

We cannot take leave of the Caricaturists without offering a few slight particulars concerning the respective careers of the most eminent and appreciated practitioners of the graphic art in its grotesque bearings.

The fecundity of invention displayed in the works of Henry Bunbury entitles him to rank among the first in this class of designers. The happy faculty which he possessed of 'reading character at sight,' and the rare felicity with which he could embody whatever his observation or fancy suggested, with that scrambling style which was entirely his own, evince that he was born with a genius to make a figure in this pursuit. This gentleman may be instanced as a proof, too, that where there is an original faculty for any peculiar art, it will develop itself, though the possessor may be entirely unacquainted with the scientific principles of art. Nothing could be farther removed from legitimate art than the style exhibited in the drawings of Bunbury; yet no one has hit off the peculiarities of character, or expressed with less exaggeration those traits which constitute the burlesque. Bunbury, indeed, may be said to have steered his humorous course between sterling character and caricature. When he appears to outrage nature by representing distortion of figure or form, the fault is not intentional. Those who have not properly studied the drawing of the human figure, must occasionally, in spite of themselves, render their objects preternatural.

It should be added, in honour to the memory of this gentleman, that he never used his pencil at the expense of personal feeling. His satire upon the French people was not individual, but national; and the characters which he introduced in his humorous designs at home, were characteristic of a class, but never the individuals of a species.

Henry William Bunbury, the caricaturist, was born in 1750. He was educated at Westminster, whence he was removed to St. Catherine's Hall, Cambridge. On leaving the university he devoted himself, with some enthusiasm, to the fine arts. He was passionately fond of out-door sports, and, as in the instance of Leech in our own days, the saddle held out attractions superior even to the pleasure of exercising his fancy. His contemporaries were much given to deplore that he preferred the excitement of risking his neck in the hunting field to the cultivation of the profession his skill should have adorned. His taste and invention were admired not only by the most gifted and elevated persons of his time, but artists and critics alike lavished their encomiums on the favoured designer. Horace Walpole coveted the sketches which Bunbury exhibited on the walls of the Academy, while Sir Joshua Reynolds and Sir Benjamin West combined to pay their finest compliments to the artist, and to publish abroad their flattering sense of his merits. Bunbury appears to have spent the greater part of his time on the estates belonging to his family, varied by trips to the Continent and visits to his patrons the Duke and Duchess of York, at Richmond and other residences, with occasional sojourns in Wales, the scenery of which had considerable attractions for his sense of the picturesque. He was a frequent guest of Sir W. W. Wynne, and his pencil has celebrated the theatrical gatherings at Wynnstay. We also meet him in town, surrounded by illustrious friends, and we find Goldsmith, Garrick, and other notabilities corresponding with the kindly and generous caricaturist during his sojourns at his country seat.

Henry Bunbury was married, August 26, 1771, to Catherine, daughter of Kane William Horneck, Esq., lieutenant-colonel of the army of Sicily. This lady bore him two sons, and one of them, Sir Henry Bunbury, we believe, represented the county of Suffolk in Parliament, after the decease of his uncle Sir Thomas Charles Bunbury, who had previously enjoyed the distinction. Bunbury, the artist, was elected lieutenant-colonel of the West Suffolk regiment of militia. His manners were most popular, and it was remarked that he carried his cheerful and vivacious spirit into every society he frequented. He died at Keswick, in Cumberland, where he had settled towards the close of his life, and his sketches of the mountain scenery in his vicinity are said to have displayed the hand of a master, and to have gained universal appreciation for their effect and truthfulness.

As a delineator of character, it is stated 'that his sketches approached nearest to Hogarth of any painter of his period, in the representation of life and manners; his pencil never transgresses the limits of good taste and delicacy, and had he been under the necessity of pursuing art for profit, instead of amusement and pleasure only, he would probably have made a great fortune by the produce of his genius, which the print-sellers have found a lucrative source of gain, engravings and etchings after his works having always been eagerly demanded.'

The high estimation in which the caricaturist was personally held is confirmed by the obituary notice which appeared on his decease in the Gentleman's Magazine; the praise seems to be spontaneous, and its object, from all we can gather, richly merited the friendly testimony.

'May 7, 1811.—At Keswick, Henry William Bunbury, Esq., second son of the Rev. Sir William Bunbury, Bart., of Mildenhall, and of Great Barton, in the county of Suffolk, and brother to the present Sir Thomas Bunbury, Bart. He was distinguished at a very early age by a most extraordinary degree of taste and knowledge in the fine arts. The productions of his own pencil have, from his childhood, been the admiration and delight of the public. The exquisite humour of some of his drawings, and the grace and elegance of the rest, were unrivalled; and he is, perhaps, the only instance in which excellences of such various and almost opposite character have been united in the same subject in an equal degree. But though he possessed in this respect a peculiar genius, he neglected no branch of polite literature. He was a good classical scholar, and "endowed with the love of sacred song." The Muses were to him dulces ante omnia. He was an excellent judge of poetry; and the specimens remaining of his own composition put it beyond a doubt that he would have been as eminent with his pen as with his pencil, if his natural modesty, underrating his own powers, had not prevented him from pursuing it with more application. These accomplishments were conspicuous, and obtained for him universal esteem. His social and moral qualities, while any of those remain who shared his friendship, will continue the objects of fond admiration and regret. No ribaldry, no profaneness, no ill-natured censure, ever flowed from his lips, but his conversation abounded in humour and pleasantry; it was charming to persons of all descriptions. No one was ever in his company without being pleased with him; none ever knew him without loving him. His feelings were the most benevolent, his affections the most delicate, his heart the most sincere. He was void of all affectation, alive to praise, but not obtrusively courting it. Conscious, but not ostentatious of merit; of unblemished honour; full of that piety and liberal-handed charity which influences the heart, and seeks the witness, not of the world, but of his Maker.'

The writer of the obituary notice expressed a conviction, confirmed, as he stated, by an intimacy of fifty years' standing:—

'All who had,' concludes the memorial, 'the slightest acquaintance with him, will bear witness to the extraordinary tenderness of his disposition, to his kind and active friendship, to his universal benevolence, practically displayed through his entire career.'

The name of Woodward occurs so frequently in caricatures to which Rowlandson sculpsit is added, that our readers will probably not consider the following sketch of this eccentric gifted celebrity either out of place, or entirely superfluous.

Recapitulating his recollections of humorous artists, Angelo informs us that—'The inventive genius of one burlesque designer was exhaustless—George Moutard Woodward, commonly designated by his merry associates, Mustard George. This original genius was the son of the steward of a certain wealthy landholder, and resided with his father in a provincial town, where nothing was less known than everything pertaining to the arts. He was, as his neighbours said, a "nateral geni;" for he drew all the comical gaffers and gammers of the country round; and having, to use his own words, "taken off the bench of justices, wigs and all, shown up the mayor and corporation, dumb-foundered the parson of the parish, silenced the clerk, and made the sexton laugh at his own grave occupation," he thought it expedient to beat up for new game in the metropolitan city.

'"A caricaturist in a country town," said George, "like a mad bull in a china-shop, cannot step without noise; so, having made a little noise in my native place, I persuaded my father to let me seek my fortune in town."

'It appears that the caricaturist came not to London, like many another wit, pennyless; his father allowed him an annuity of first fifty, and augmented the sum to a hundred pounds. With this income, and what he obtained by working for the publishers, he was enabled to enjoy life in his own way; and might be met, with a tankard of Burton ale before him, seated behind his pipe, nightly at Offley's; or, if not there, smoking the fragrant weed, at the Cider Cellar, the Blue Posts, or The Hole in the Wall. Latterly, his rendezvous was transferred to The Brown Bear at Bow Street, where he studied those peculiar species of low characters, the inhabitants of the round-house, and the myrmidons of the police. Enamoured with the society of these able physiognomists, he ultimately took up his quarters at the Brown Bear, and there, to the lively grief of these tenderhearted associates, one night died in character, suddenly, with a glass of brandy in his hand.

'The wit and invention of this artist places him above all others in the personification of low scenes of humour. Among his earliest productions were those series of groups entitled Effects of Flattery, Effects of Hope, &c., which were illustrated by scenes of truly dramatic excellence, and upon which might well be built farces for the stage which could not fail to delight the town. His Babes in the Wood, Raffling for a Coffin, The Club of Quidnuncs, as pieces of original humour, have never, perhaps, been equalled. Had this low humourist studied drawing and been temperate in his habits, such was the fecundity of his imagination and perception of character, that he might have rivalled even Hogarth. His style, always sufficiently careless, latterly even outraged the outré. Yet there were those, and men of taste too, who insisted that the humour of his pieces was augmented by the extravagance of this defect.'

The name of Henry Wigstead will be met with pretty constantly in the course of this volume; his designs approach the nearest to those of Rowlandson as far as regards humorous qualities, a cultivated sense of beauty and grace, and a decided grasp of character, without that violent divergence from the semblance of humanity as ordinarily recognised, to which failing the old-fashioned caricaturists were somewhat over-addicted, as we are inclined to suspect; but, like many worthy amateurs of his period, his own hand lacked the skill to express all that his eye saw and his taste appreciated. In the guise of a skilled translator of crude ideas, our Caricaturist, with ready ease, and that dexterity which was peculiarly his own, came to the rescue most efficiently, and his etchings and scrapings have preserved many a capital design, due to the esteemed Wigstead, which otherwise would have been lost; the sterling excellence to be detected in many of these pictorial scenes and satires, renders the action meritorious, which has enabled posterity to judge how far those praises which partial contemporaries lavished upon all these non-professional humourists, were justified by the actual merits of their subjects. We have already recounted certain jocose and whimsical traits in the disposition and career of this genial son of merriment; we have nothing to add but the brief notice from the obituary of The Gentleman's Magazine for October 1800, which informed many a congenial friend of the loss society had sustained, and made many a heart feel saddened by the stroke which had fallen on the kindliest and best of comrades.

'At Margate, where he went for the benefit of his health, Henry Wigstead, Esq., of Kensington, an active magistrate for the county of Middlesex.[14] He was a man of considerable talent, and contributed to the celebrity of the Brandenburgh theatre, both by his pen and his pencil. He was a good caricaturist, which naturally made him more enemies than friends. He was hospitable and generous to a degree of extravagance. He married the daughter of Mr. Bagnal, of Gerard Street, with whom he had a good fortune, and by whom he leaves two children, a son and a daughter.'

Another eminent humourist, in whose praise contemporaries were enthusiastic, but whose biography no one has taken the pains to collect, was John Nixon, the facetious Nixon, as he is generally entitled in the memoirs and scribblings of the period; beyond the kindly appreciative anecdotes of this worthy, set down by Angelo, barely any record exists. Pleasant John Nixon was an Irish factor, and resided for many years in Basinghall Street, where, over his dark warehouses, he and his brother Richard kept 'bachelors' court.' The elder brother, John, however, was the principal mover in all the convivialities and Bacchanalian revels celebrated in this old-fashioned dwelling; 'which was not too large for comfort, and yet sufficiently spacious in the first floor, at least, to spread a table for twelve. Who that were witty, or highly talented of the days that are gone, who, loving a social gossip, over a magnum bonum of capital wine, had not been invited to his hospitable board?' The Nixons were wealthy, and had the felicity to be well enabled to enjoy life according to their own liking.

John Nixon, besides possessing a well-deserved reputation for social qualifications of no ordinary calibre, was a man of taste and talent, and an amateur performer in various arts, his accomplishments being multifarious.

As a man of business he was highly respected, as a man of pleasure universally sought, and as generally esteemed. Sedulous in his commercial pursuits, in the counting-house his maxim was that there is time for all things, and he found leisure daily, when the ledger was closed, to open his heart to the enjoyments of friendly intercourse. 'I have no objection to placing my knees under another man's table,' the social convive would say, 'but I had rather seat him at my own.'

Nixon was at home at the Beef-steak Club, where he was made honorary secretary and providore, a well-bestowed distinction, since he was a first-rate connoisseur of wines, and a capital judge of a rump of beef. 'My lord duke,' he would say to the noble president, 'he who would invite Jupiter to a feast on a steak, should select a prime cut of little more than half-an-inch thick, from a Norfolk-fed Scot,' and this, says Angelo, became statute law in that glorious club.

Among other pursuits for which Nixon obtained notoriety among the haut ton, he was known for his fondness for the stage. An excellent amateur performer, he shone as one of the stars of the celebrated private theatricals held at Brandenburgh House, when in the possession of the Margrave and Margravine of Anspach. It was under the splendid roof of these entertainers, on an occasion when all the amateurs were celebrating their host's anniversary, that Nixon was honoured with his cognomen of 'the well-bred man.' On his late arrival in a piebald uniform, his blue dress-coat, with the gold buttons of the Beef-steak Club, being considerably powdered, the wearer, who was not in the least disconcerted or embarrassed, related, on taking his seat at the table, a droll tale of adventures on the road, to the hearty amusement of the company, while the servants were in convulsions of laughter, as Nixon described how the post-horses were knocked up, and he was obliged to complete his journey and his engagement in the cart of a baker, where he got completely dusted with flour; whence the Margravine facetiously dubbed him the 'well-bread man.'

John Nixon's original talent for the humorous department of the graphic art was well known; as an honorary exhibitor at the Royal Academy for many years, his grotesque scenes such as Bartholomew Fair, and village fêtes, abounding with character, diverted the public. Angelo, in recording the comical celebrity of his friend, mentions, 'Nixon had the reputation of introducing, through his inventive faculty, that most amusing species of caricature, the converting spades, hearts, clubs, and diamonds into grotesque figures and groups, which he designed with a whimsicality of appropriateness, that Gillray, or even George Cruikshank himself, might have envied.'

The list of amateur artists, who enjoyed Rowlandson's friendship, and whose designs received the advantages which his assistance was able to lend them, will not be complete without the name of Collings, well known in the regions of Covent Garden, and some time editor of the Public Ledger, who was a lively satirist, both with his pencil and his pen. 'When Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides was ushered forth, it was celebrated by as many crackers and squibs as the Burning of the Boot (Lord Bute). Among other assailants, the impenetrable Bozzy had to expose his front to this lampooner's shafts. A whole series of designs were published by this witty wag, the heroes of which, or rather the knight and the esquire of his drama, were Johnson and Boswell. The knight, it is likely, never saw them; and, as for the squire, his love of notoriety rendered him, if not vain of, at least not vulnerable to, these successive attacks. [15]

'The Laird of Auchinlek, indeed, had a large collection of these satires upon "self and company," as he used facetiously to inscribe them, and boasted at the judge's table that his History would be more copiously illustrated than even the Lord High Chancellor, Clarendon's.'

Caleb Whiteford, another crony of the caricaturist, was an excellent judge of paintings (especially works by the old masters) and was generally known as a fervent admirer of George Moreland's pictures; he was the reputed discoverer of 'cross readings,' [16] and a dabbler in verse. It was he who, as everyone will remember, received such a complimentary notice in the postscript to the mock epitaphs known as Goldsmith's Retaliation, that there were not wanting those who contributed to the flattery by suspecting that the additional epitaph was due to Caleb's own pen.

Old Caleb Whiteford, the witty wine-merchant and 'connoisseur in old masters,' knew everyone of any reputation, and was well-received at the various hospitable boards to which allusions have been made in the course of these discursive notes; he was a welcome guest at numerous convivial gatherings of the artistic and literary coteries of the period, whose jovial meetings and good cheer have been suffered to pass into oblivion, unrecorded by the scribes who shared 'the cakes and ale,' in the palmy days of sociable festivities and kindly familiar intercourse.

'Mr. Ephraim Hardcastle, citizen and drysalter,' as he whimsically elected to style himself—in sober fact, W. H. Pyne, the artist to whose literary ventures we have already referred—has on occasions come to the rescue in his Wine and Walnuts, or after-dinner Chit-Chat. Here is the report of a conversation concerning Rowlandson, which is supposed to have taken place between Whiteford and the caricaturist's jolly friend Mitchell, culled from the Chit-Chat in question, which was published in 1823.

'Well, Master Caleb Whiteford [17] was on his way up the hill in the Adelphi to his post at the Society of Arts, and who should he stumble upon at the corner of James Street, just turning round from Rowlandson's, but Master Mitchell, the quondam banker of old Hodsoll's house. He had, as usual, been foraging among the multitudinous sketches of that original artist, and held a portfolio under his arm, and as he was preparing to step into his chariot, Caleb accosted him: "Well, worthy sir; what! more choice bits—more graphic whimsies to add to the collection at Enfield, eh? Well, how fares it with our friend Roly?" (a familiar term by which the artist was known to his ancient cronies).

'"Why, yes, Master Caleb Whiteford, I go collecting on, though I begin to think I have enough already, for I have some hundreds of his spirited works; but somehow there is a sort of fascination in these matters, and—heigh—ha—ho—hoo!" (gaping) "I never go up—up—bless the man, why will he live so high? It kills me to climb his stairs"—holding his ponderous sides—"I never go up, Mister Caleb, but I find something new, and am tempted to pull my purse-strings. His invention, his humour, his—his oddity is exhaustless." "Yes," said Whiteford, "Master Roly is never at a loss for a subject, and I should not be surprised if he is taking a bird's-eye view of you and me at this moment, and marking us down for game. But it is not his drawings alone; why, he says he has etched as much copper as would sheathe a first-rate man-of-war; and I should think he is not far from the mark in his assertion.'

'"Yes," replied the banker, "he ought to be rich, for his genius is certainly the most exhaustless, the most—the most—no, Mister Caleb, there is no end to him; he manufactures his humorous ware with such increasing vigour, that I know not what to compare his prolific fancy to, unless it be to the increasing population....

'"Roly has promised to come down. I would have taken the rogue with me, only that he is about some new scheme for his old friend Ackermann, there, and he says he must complete it within an hour. You know Roly's expedition."'

James Heath, also a caricaturist, and a delineator of sporting sketches, was another of Rowlandson's intimates; a Good-Friday jaunt, or an Easter excursion, was for many years indulged by these worthies, who with genial Bannister, the comedian, and their faithful chronicler, Henry Angelo, the fencing-master, annually kept up the practice of proceeding on a jovial expedition at this season, some distance from town, Staines, Windsor, or some similar starting-point, being the rendezvous selected by these congenial spirits.

The list of Rowlandson's friends would be incomplete without the name of George Moreland, who, with all his eccentricities and shortcomings, was another favoured child of fortune, whose inheritance was natural genius; and though the fairy gift was turned to the very worst account, dragged through the mire of dissipation, and sordidly made to supply the means of that social degradation, which lowered the possessor beneath his worst associates, the power remained in the poor shattered wreck, and did not forsake him until, in a state of premature decay, he perished miserably before his easel.

A sketch of Moreland's career is by no means called for in this place. His erratic disposition was not without its whimsical traits; sufficient anecdotes exist of the wayward painter to prove that, beyond his happy qualifications for his art, there was found in his composition a spice of pleasantry that did not always degenerate into buffoonery or horse-play, with occasional flashes of wit and sprightly allusions which, to say the least of them, were remarkably apposite. Perhaps too much stress has been laid upon Moreland's deficiencies, while his more agreeable traits have been somewhat slighted. Putting aside the numerous anecdotal sketches of the painter, we have only to record, in this place at least, that a friendship existed between the subject of this volume and the man to whose sketches those of our caricaturist frequently offer a suggestive resemblance, it being actually difficult to distinguish between the unsigned etchings and drawings of the two artists, in the walk practised by Moreland. The similarity of their talent is more evident perhaps in the larger hunting scenes, and the studies of female heads, tinted in colours, than in any other direction; although, with the pencil or the chalk, their rustic landscapes, from the freedom of their respective handlings, are remarkably alike, both in the choice of subjects and the spirit of the execution.

As we have already noticed, the most characteristic portrait of Moreland, and the one which appears to offer us the most life-like representation of the capricious painter, is due to the skill of Rowlandson. We are informed, in a note which we gather from Angelo, that Moreland, in his various flittings round the metropolis in dread of creditors, when he took sanctuary with any intimate whose residence he happened to remember, gave his colleague the caricaturist the opportunity of exhibiting his friendship by harbouring him in his lodgings under one of these emergencies, which were of tolerably frequent occurrence. 'Rowlandson, the artist, lodged at Mrs. Lay's printshop, a few doors from Carlton House, Pall Mall. One morning when I called upon him, we heard a loud knock at the street door, and looking out of the window, he said, "There's Colonel Thornton——knock again! He may be at this fun three months longer; he is come for his picture, but Moreland, having touched fifty pounds in advance, is never at home to him now. He's in the next room, which he has for painting. You had better go and do the same with him, and drink gin and water; he'll like your company, and make you a drawing for nothing." This was in the middle of the day.'

We are inclined to think that the most memorable of the caricaturist's associates was James Gillray, whose age was within a year of that of Rowlandson; it is a coincidence that two unrivalled geniuses, and in such eccentric walks, should have been both contemporaries, and steady-going friends, never clashing in the course of their respective careers. In this work various allusions will be noticed to the intimacy which subsisted between these remarkably gifted men, each perfectly original in his fashion, and both possessing singular points of resemblance in their characters.

We content ourselves with mentioning that they occasionally entered into friendly alliances, but that, when pitted against each other, they had more regard for friendship than for party warfare, which they utterly despised, except as an opening for the exercise of their skill.

Gillray and Rowlandson were, perhaps, never properly appreciated in their generation, the higher capacities which distinguished both these spoiled pets and wilful sons of Momus, were comparatively slighted, if not completely ignored; all that was vulgar, wayward, and wild in their dispositions was fostered and enlarged upon; their errors, and their occasional lapses into downright coarseness, were, according to the lights of the day, flattered and encouraged as flights of the raciest humour; the crude, careless, and commonplace, received too frequently a hearty and undeserved recognition, which their ambitious efforts failed to inspire; the very productions they scorned were exalted, while, when they felt the magic fire warming their imaginations, the results were misunderstood too commonly.

Their keen intellects, and their satiric sense of the almost constant unfitness of things as they found them, the gnawing of the vanity of vanities, ever present, must have made their temperaments peculiarly sensitive to such slights as the want of discrimination in their admirers which occasionally shocked and continually disheartened them—evils which the want of culture, or consideration on the part of their audience, continually brought in their train.

It is no matter of surprise that the enchantments which they saw before them at the opening of their careers, vanished all too soon, and left them chilled, and inclined to become misanthropes; the very genius, which promised to be a delight to themselves and to mankind, proving a bitter curse.

When the satirists, who felt alike and were sympathetic on most points, met, it seems their intercourse was the reverse of boisterous—in fact, they were rather inclined to be depressed, or, at least, they shrunk within themselves with a more marked contrast to the conduct which should, it was supposed, distinguish notorious pictorial humourists, and became, perhaps, a trifle more retired and undemonstrative than ordinary—possibly to the disappointment of the less-informed habitués, who evidently thought they were defrauded of a diversion, and had a right to anticipate, these gentlemen being in a sort graphic jesters by profession, that in private life they would feel themselves impelled to play off a little whimsical jugglery for the entertainment of the company. These professional tricks belonged to the lesser lights, and we warrant that Woodward, Collings, Newton, and the smaller following of the eccentric art, were infinitely more amusing to the taste of their auditors.

It is certain Gillray was grave and self-contained, and Rowlandson, in his degree, participated in his friend's humour, slightly at first, perhaps, as a passing depression, and, later in life, with an intensified and growing grimness, and a gathering gloom, as friends dropped off, and age crept on, and the caricaturist's world was materially altered for him, as his work seemed over.

'For years Gillray occasionally smoked his pipe at The Bell, The Coal-Hole, or The Coach and Horses; and, although the convives, whom he met at such dingy rendezvous, knew that he was that Gillray who fabricated those comical cuts, the very moral of Farmer George and Boneyparty, of Billy Pitt and Black Charley, he never sought, like that low coxcomb Moreland, to become king of the company. He neither exacted, nor were they inclined to pay him, any particular homage. In truth, with his associates, neighbouring shopkeepers and master manufacturers, he passed for no greater wit than his neighbours. Rowlandson, his ingenious compeer, and he, sometimes met. They would, perhaps, exchange half-a-dozen questions and answers upon the affairs of copper and aquafortis; swear all the world was one vast masquerade, and then enter into the common chat of the room, smoke their cigars, drink their punch, and sometimes early, sometimes late, shake hands at the door, look up at the stars, say "It is a frosty night," and depart, one for the Adelphi, the other to St. James's Street, each to his bachelor's bed.'[18]

Our friend Angelo, a bright chirpy spirit, who retained his liveliness unimpaired, let us hope, to the last of his long days, not having any pretensions to be a genius, was exempt from the sinister tendencies which too frequently attend its possession. Although, as he confesses in his Memoirs, not precisely the 'rose' himself, he had lived near it, and his association with men of an admittedly high type, as far as gifts of fancy and versatile talents were concerned, had taught him to observe the drawbacks not unusually allied to distinguishing attainments; and he records a few sober axioms for the enlightenment of those who have been excluded from his privileges.

'Those who at a distance contemplate characters like these, so professedly eminent for invention, wit, and satirical humour, naturally suppose their society must be universally sought; and that such must, of necessity, be the life and soul of the convivial board. Men, however, who see much and speculate but little, know better. Among the dullest in company could be pointed out those who are "wondrous witty" by themselves; and this not from pride of their superior faculty to please, but from a constitutional shyness or modest desire to avoid notice or applause—or from indolence, or actually from conscious dulness when absent from the study and the desk, when without the pencil and the pen.

'Peter Pindar was witless, even over his bottle, with his most intimate cronies. Anthony Pasquin was sour, and not prone to converse. Churchill was a sulky sot. Butler was lively neither drunk nor sober—a choice companion only when "half gone;" hence, as the witty Duke of Buckingham observed, "he was to be compared to a skittle, little at both ends, but great in the middle!" Burton, who had no less humour than Cervantes, and the learning of a whole university to boot, was neither a cheerful companion, nor endurable to himself. A hundred more could be named, whose aptitude and promptness to discover the ridiculous side of human action, has astonished the grave; and yet, these men who have thus exposed folly to the laughter of mankind, have been themselves the dullest dogs alive. Gillray was always "hipped," and at last sunk into that deplorable state of mental aberration which verifies the couplet, so often quoted, wherein the consanguinity of wit to madness is so eminently proved, to the comfort of those who thank God for their own stupidity.'

Perhaps the most constant friend, and certainly the best adviser, our caricaturist retained to the grave was his principal publisher, Mr. Rudolph Ackermann. We have mentioned this gentleman last among the personal associates of Rowlandson, as his untiring services only ended with the life of the artist.

The name of Rudolph Ackermann, who died March 30, 1834, is worthy of more than a passing mention; he has been cited as one of the first natives of Germany who, by far-sighted and active occupation, accompanied by philanthropic exertions for the benefit of his fellow-creatures, raised the character of his nationality to a high point of esteem in other countries. An account of his energetic and charitable career appeared in the Didaskalia, Frankfurt-am-Main, No. 103, April 13, 1864, and was adopted by the writer (W. P.) of an excellent notice upon the well-known publisher, in the pages of Notes and Queries, (4th S. iv., August 7 and 14, 1869). The son of a coach-builder, Rudolph Ackermann was born April 20, 1764, at Stolberg, in the Saxon Hartz. We are told 'his sympathies with the misfortunes of others were so warmly excited by the misery seen around him in the famine of 1772–73, that he frequently in later years excused the zeal which he showed on other occasions, by pictures of the distress that he experienced when he, at the age of eight years, was employed for hours daily in distributing food and money.' In 1775 his father removed to Schneeberg. Rudolph received his education in the local school till he was fifteen years old, and showed a decided predilection for literary pursuits; but his father's pecuniary position precluding the choice of a profession to more than one of his sons, he entered the paternal factory. An elder brother, Frederick, instructed Rudolph in the use of the drawing instruments, and he busied himself more willingly in the offices than in the workshops, gaining an acquaintance with details, which proved subsequently as important to his advancement as were his visits to Dresden, the towns of the Rhine, and Hueningen near Basle. He afterwards went to reside in Paris, where he became the friend of Carrossi, the most esteemed designer of equipages of his time, and Rudolph, who proved his best pupil, acquired sufficient knowledge as a practical draughtsman to push his way in the world. From Paris he proceeded to London in pursuit of fortune, and to turn his talents to account: he was delighted to find that, in the metropolis, carriage-building was one of the most successful occupations, and that the exercise of his acquirements would be handsomely rewarded; so for several years, until 1795, he was employed in furnishing the principal coachmakers with designs and models for new and improved carriages. The models of the state coach, built at the cost of nearly 7,000l., for the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland in 1790,[19] and that for the Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1791, exhibited his taste and skill. In 1805, the preparation of the car that served as a hearse at the funeral of Lord Nelson was entrusted to him; and during the years 1818–20 the patent for a moveable axle for carriages engaged much of his attention.

It is not, however, in this connection that we have to consider Ackermann, but rather in his relation to the arts as a print-seller and publisher. On his marriage with an English lady, with commendable prudence, he became desirous of establishing a business which would, in case of his own premature decease, prove a suitable provision for his family. He commenced the print trade at 96 Strand, and soon after he secured a large apartment, 65 feet long, 30 feet wide, and 24 feet high, at 101 Strand (erected upon the courtyard of Beaufort House), which had been the drawing academy of William Shipley; it had then passed to Henry Pars, and later passed into the hands of the Radicals, and became notorious as the British Forum, when it was used by John Thelwall for his oratorical lectures. These meetings exceeding the bounds of reasonable political discussion, the Government instituted prosecutions, and the Forum ceased to exist. On the ministerial interference, October 1794, Mr. Ackermann was enabled to secure the lease of the premises, and the room was again used as a school for drawing. In 1796 the entire business was removed to 101 Strand. The drawing academy seems to have flourished; and in 1806 there were three masters engaged for figures, landscape, and architecture, and some eighty pupils were resorting to the school, when the requirements of the founder's business, as a publisher, printseller, and dealer in fancy articles, papers, medallions, and artist's materials, had so increased, that the convenience of this room as a warehouse became of more consideration than the continuance of the school.

During the revolutionary era, and when French emigrants were numerous in this country, Mr. Ackermann was one of the first to find a liberal employment for the refugees; it is said that he had seldom less than fifty nobles, priests, and ladies engaged upon screens, card-racks, flower-stands, and other ornamental work.

His inventive faculties and his disposition to take up with new ideas were marked by many improvements he introduced. At the beginning of the century he was one of the first who arrived at a method of waterproofing paper, leather, woollen stuffs, and felted fabrics, in which he obtained for some time considerable traffic; this branch was conducted in a factory he established at Chelsea for the purpose.

He further contrived an apparatus which was at least ingenious, both in theory and intention. To counteract Napoleon's endeavours, by bridling the newspapers, to keep the French nation in complete ignorance, as was actually the case, of events that were disastrous to him, Mr. Ackermann bethought himself of reviving, for the annoyance of the enemy, the use made by the French in 1794–96 of aërostation in L'Entreprenant and the Télémaque; and he contrived a simple mechanism which would, every minute, detach thirty printed placards from a packet of three thousand. Three such parcels were attached to balloons thirty-six inches in diameter, made of gold-beater's skin, and committed to the air in the summer of 1807. The success of the experiment was proved at Woolwich in the presence of a Government commission. With a southerly wind the balloons passed over Salisbury and Exeter, and several of the placards, as a proof of the practical working of the machinery, were returned to London from various parts of the country.

Mr. Ackermann was one of the first inhabitants of London who adopted the use of gas as a means of artificial light to his premises.

The establishment of lithography in England was another example of his patient and persevering expenditure of money and time in the introduction and improvement of a novelty. 'He was not content with translating Alois Senefelder's treatise in 1819, but made a journey to the residence of that inventor, in order to exchange the results of their theory and practice before producing in 1822 a Complete Course. The business relations between leading artists and Mr. Ackermann enabled him to induce them to touch the lithographic chalk; so in 1817, through Prout and others, the process became an acceptable, or rather a fashionable mode of multiplying drawings; lithography, for want of such advantages, when introduced into this country by Mr. Andréc, of Offenbach, in its original and rude state, had failed to make its way, and all its subsequent success may be attributed to Mr. Ackermann's personal emulation of the advancement it made in Munich.'

In 1813, upon receiving an authentic account from Count Schönfeld of the misery produced in Germany by Napoleon's wars, particularly in Saxony, culminating in engagements at Leipzig (during the 'five days' October 15–19, 1813), 'Mr. Ackermann temporarily abandoned the oversight of his own multifarious occupations, in order to exert all his strength in procuring aid for the sufferers. With the help of the Duke of Sussex, he formed a committee in Westminster and in the City; the first obtained a Parliamentary grant of 100,000l., and the second furnished a larger sum in private contributions. This was the occasion on which the use of Whitehall Chapel was granted for a musical performance in aid of the subscription. For two years, Mr. Ackermann undertook the task of corresponding with the German committees for distributing these sums, examining into the urgency of the appeals for help, and apportioning the fund. The members of "The Westminster Association for the further relief of the sufferers by the war in Germany," were anxious to commemorate their sense of the pains, prudence, and probity Mr. Ackermann had displayed, by presenting him with a testimonial in silver; this costly acknowledgment, together with a vote of thanks proposed to be inscribed on parchment in gold, he had the modesty to decline, begging that all thanks for his services might be comprised in a few autograph lines from the Archbishop of Canterbury.'

In his business relations we are told, 'the discretion which he exercised in choosing his subordinates, and the liberal manner in which he repaid their services, enabled him to produce several books which deserve the notice of all those who know how to appreciate the merit of these illustrated works in colour, relatively to others of similar pretension, both of that time and of the present day.

'A long list might be formed by enumerating the literary, musical, and scientific men of more or less eminence, who appeared as his coadjutors, and who enjoyed his intimacy. Several of them owed to him a helping hand, either in their first efforts or in their declining fortunes. To the end of his days he retained a strongly-marked German pronunciation of the English language, which gave additional flavour to the banters and jests uttered in his fine bass voice; but he wrote in English with great purity on matters of affection and business long before middle life.

'From early in 1813, every Wednesday evening in March and April was given to a reception, half a conversazione and half a family party, in his large room, which then, as at other times, served as an exhibition of English and foreign books, maps, prints, woodcuts, lithographs, drawings, paintings, and other works of art and ornament, besides the leading Continental periodicals. There on those evenings, by annual invitation,[20] amateurs, artists, and authors were sure to find people whom they knew, or wanted to know. Many an introduction grew to an acquaintance; and the value of such evenings to foreigners was often gratefully acknowledged by travellers, who, with any distinction in art or literature, were welcome without any other introduction.

'His active assiduity and his spirited enterprise were suspended by a weakness of sight, commencing from his charitable exertions in 1814, which made his repose at Camberwell, and afterwards at Ivy Lodge in the Fulham Road, first a matter of prudence, and later on of necessity. In the spring of 1830 he experienced an attack of paralysis, and never recovered sufficiently to exert his intelligence in business. He removed for a change of air to Finchley, but a second stroke produced a gradual decline of strength in the honourable old man; and March 30, 1834, saw an end put to the hearty kindness, constant hospitality, and warm beneficence which had been inseparable from his unquestioned integrity. He was interred on April 9 in the family grave, in the burial-ground of St. Clement Danes.'[21]

The little that remains to be recorded of the Caricaturist is best expressed by the kindly writer, a friend of nearly half a century's standing, who contributed an obituary notice of the artist to the Gentleman's Magazine (June 1827).

It is not generally known that, although a considerable proportion of Rowlandson's humorous political and social etchings are in many instances strongly tinctured by an absence of refinement in taste, and are roughly executed—the means simply of tiding over some pressing necessity, or providing funds for further relaxations—his early works were characterised by painstaking and conscientious application; and his studies from the human figure at the Royal Academy were scarcely inferior to the productions of Mortimer, then the most admired and proficient among the Academic professors.

From the versatility of his talent, the fecundity of his imagination, his command of composition, in which he equalled the greatest masters, the grace and elegance with which he could design his groups, added to the almost miraculous despatch with which he supplied his patrons with perfectly original compositions upon every subject, it was a theme of regret at his decease, that he had not sufficiently valued his reputation, to which it has been suspected he was thoroughly indifferent. It was universally admitted in his own days that, had he pursued the course of art steadily, he might have become one of the foremost and most celebrated historical painters of the English school. His style, which was purely his own, was unquestionably original. His bold, fluent, and spiritedly turned outlines were thrown off with easy dexterity, with his famous reed-pen, in a tint composed of vermilion and Indian-ink, the general effect was rapidly washed in, so as to produce an effective chiaro-oscuro, and the whole was coloured in tender tints with a most harmonious arrangement of colour.

His manner, though slight in almost every instance, is highly effective; and it is known on indubitable authority that the presidents of the Royal Academy, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Sir Benjamin West, whose manners were most foreign to those of the Caricaturist, individually asserted their conviction that many of his drawings would have done honour to Rubens, or to the most esteemed masters of design of the old schools.

For many years he was too indolent to seek new employment, and his kind friend, and it may be added with justice, his best adviser, Mr. Ackermann, the respected and leading publisher of Rowlandson's period, supplied him with ample subjects for the exercise of his talent. The many works which his pencil illustrated are existing evidence of this, and books containing impressions from Rowlandson's etchings continue to fetch high prices, and are industriously sought after. Many suggestions for plates to enliven new editions of The Travels of Dr. Syntax, The Dance of Death, The Dance of Life, and other well-known productions of the pen of the prolific Coombe, the Defoe of the eighteenth century, will remain esteemed and lasting mementoes of his graphic humour.

It should be repeated that his reputation had never reached its full maturity in the life-time of Mr. Ackermann, his friend, patron, and publisher. The inimitable water-colour drawings of Rowlandson, of which he had a large collection, were justly appreciated by connoisseurs, and his folios have often been viewed with admiration and delight by the many professional artists and amateurs who frequented Mr. Ackermann's conversazioni at his library at the old house in the Strand. No artist of the past or present school, perhaps, ever expressed so much as Rowlandson, with so little effort, or with so evident an appearance of the absence of labour.

The artist's remains were followed to the grave by the two friends of his youth, John Bannister and Henry Angelo, and his constant friend and liberal employer, Rudolph Ackermann.

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1774, 1780–81.

June 8, 1774. A Rotation Office.—A chief magistrate is seated at a table, and three justices, with their hats on, and sticks in their hands, are seated beside him. To the left of the chief is the justice's clerk; and behind the bench is a placard, 'Robbery and Murder. Reward of Justice.'

THE VILLAGE DOCTOR.

June 8, 1774. [The Village Doctor]. Published by H. Humphrey, Bond Street.—This print appears to have been about the earliest recognised specimen of Rowlandson's handiwork. The plate has a wash of aquatint, all over it, and the etching is free and bold. As an early work it evinces certain carefulness and discrimination, which promised well for the artist's future if he persevered in the same direction. The suggestion of the subject, according to the initials, is due to Henry Wigstead, whose name appears on numerous fine examples of Rowlandson's skill. The village practitioner, outside whose cottage is the sign of a gilt pestle, has evidently been disturbed under false pretences on previous occasions, and now a real client has knocked him up, for the benefit of his professional services, his indignation is bursting forth on the wrong object.

1780. Scene at Streatham. Bozzy and Piozzi.

Bozzy.

Madame Piozzi.

The scene of this animated dispute is the Library at the house lately inhabited by the departed Thrale. Mrs. Piozzi (late Mrs. Thrale) and Boswell are in high dudgeon over their respective memoirs of their idol, the defunct Doctor Johnson. In both of their 'Lives' the trifling weaknesses of the great Lexicographer are made ridiculous, under the misguiding impulse of the 'anecdotic itch.' The rival biographers are bouncing and stamping about the study, in a fine rage, ready to pull one another to pieces. The learned lady's second husband, the stout musician, Piozzi, with his violoncello by his side, is seated in an easy chair, regarding the disputants with consternation, while deprecating violence.

Peter Pindar's lines on the subject are appended to the plate; an additional couplet or two are worth borrowing:—

Bozzy.

Madame Piozzi.

* * * * *

Bozzy.

Madame Piozzi.

Bozzy.

March 1780. Special Pleading. Published by A. McKenzie, 101 Berwick Street, Soho.

Lovely Nymph, assuage my anguish, At your feet behold a swain, Begs you will not let him languish; One kind word will ease his pain.

A stout knight (possibly a lineal descendant of Sir John Falstaff) is the Pleader; he is lounging on an elegant sofa of the early Georgian period, making inane love to a pretty girl placed by his side, dressed in a picturesque Watteau-like costume, with a quilted petticoat and a quaint mob-cap added; the amorous old trifler's hand is on the slim waist of the beauty; the damsel is standing up in a negligently easy pose, while she is toying with her antiquated admirer and waving his enormous and elaborately curled double-tailed wig in the air. A dog is at her side. The drawing of this picture is unusually graceful and easy, even for Rowlandson; this is most noticeable in respect to the pretty coquette. The etching is spirited and brilliant, and the background and accessories are delicately aquatinted, to bear out the resemblance to a sketch in Indian ink.

July 18, 1780. The School of Eloquence.—The interior of a fashionable debating society of the period; the members are the quality of both sexes. The design was doubtless admirably worked out in the original drawing; but it has suffered at the hands of an unknown etcher. Published by Archibald Robertson, Savile Passage.

September 1, 1780. Italian Affectation. Pacchierolti.—The figures of two distinguished foreigners, as imported into this country over a century ago, for the delectation of the cognoscendi and the leaders of high taste. A pair of overdressed Italian artists, extravagantly posturing to one another in some operatic scena. A spindle-shanked signor, hat in hand, is pouring out his ardour to an affected and modish prima donna in a love-making situation, outrageously burlesqued.

September 18, 1780. Sir Samuel House.—The full-length portrait of 'Honest Sam House,' famous in his day for his zeal and patriotism, the enthusiastic supporter of Fox, a character familiar to all the electors of Westminster, as an indefatigable canvasser on behalf of the 'Friend of the People;' during the contests for Westminster, Sam kept open house for the friends of the Whig chief, and entertained all the notabilities of the Whig party. Summer and winter, Sam dressed in a clean nankeen jacket and breeches, and brightly polished shoes and buckles; he wore no covering, neither hat nor wig, on a perfectly bald head; his waistcoat was constantly open in all seasons, and he wore remarkably white linen; his legs were generally bare, but when covered, it was always in stockings of the finest silk.

In Rowlandson's spirited portrait old Sam is standing in his sturdy fashion, clean, shaven, and bright, in his eccentric costume, with his shining round poll, a pot with his cipher in one hand, and his pipe in the other. In the rear is shown his public-house, with smokers and customers indicated at the windows. This portrait, which seems to have been deservedly popular, was published with variations. In one impression (printed in sepia), is a barrel inscribed 'No Pope,' and in another, 'Fox for ever! Huzza!' The second plate is crossed with very fine stipple, and an old man is introduced in the background with his hand on his bald head.

The prints are signed with the initials T. R. and J. J., and were published by Thomas Rowlandson and J. Jones at 103 Wardour Street. Under some impressions is the inscription, 'The first man who jumped off Westminster Bridge.'

SAM HOUSE.

Not more the great Sam House, with horror, star'd, By mob affronted to the very beard; Whose impudence (enough to damn a jail) Snatch'd from his waving hand his fox's tail, And stuff'd it, 'midst his thunders of applause, Full in the centre of Sam's gaping jaws; That, forcing down his patriotic throat, Of 'Fox and freedom!' stopp'd the glorious note.

November 13, 1780. Naval Triumph, or Favours Conferred.—Admiral Keppel is riding in triumph through the gates of Greenwich Hospital, mounted on the shoulders of a veteran salt, on crutches, who has lost both an eye and his legs in the service of his country. The Admiral, with his riband and star, is condescending to give a helping hand to another naval commander, who is dancing in merrily by his side.

The shake of the hand with such goodness and grace Shows who is in favour, and who is in place. At Greenwich the invalids poor will proclaim What at present we do not think proper to name.

Poor disabled sailors are limping off on their crutches, disgusted with the results of their sacrifices and the miserable rewards for their services; while a drummer is drubbing in their favoured and well-requited commanders. The composition of this subject is particularly good, and it is worthy of remark that, in the coloured impressions of this print, the tinting is arranged with considerable success; and although, as is the general practice with caricatures, none but the most vivid colours are employed, the arrangement is so good and delicate that the general effect is as harmonious and artistic as in the original drawings by Rowlandson's own hand.

THE POWER OF REFLECTION.

June 30, 1781. [The Power of Reflection]. Published by J. Harris, Sweeting's Alley, Cornhill.—This print is executed in mezzotint by J. Jones, whose name appears several times in connection with that of Rowlandson, on the series of plates which we shall particularise in the progress of this work. The contrast is very marked between the Duenna, the lines of whose face have fallen in under the assaults of time, and the demoiselle, in all the pride of youth and attractiveness, aided by the bravery of a fashionable and piquante toilette. The Power of Reflection is probably intended to suggest a pictorial pun. While the maiden is absorbed in the pleasing reflection of her own figure as thrown back in the mirror, her senior, with a ponderous and probably serious volume before her, is employing her thoughts on contemplations of a more philosophical description.

October 28, 1781. [E O, or the Fashionable Vowels].—It may be noticed, respecting the earlier works of Rowlandson, that his efforts, soon after he left the Academy, were marked with more care and elaboration than his later etchings; while the effects of his training were still fresh in his mind, he evidently took more pains in the direction of finish, and it is particularly in his management of chiaro-oscuro that we detect the superiority of the artistic productions of his first period; although experience alone could give him that special freedom and facility which render his best-known productions remarkable.

In the early and clear impressions of the E O Table, and its surroundings, the artist's skill is even more conspicuous than usual in the spirited grouping; the attitudes and expressions of the several gamblers are distinct with individuality and strongly-marked traits of character. Every variety of emotion—cunning, credulity, confidence, anxiety, stolid indifference, scheming, craft, stupidity, hectoring, exaltation, and despair—we find pictured with an ability which surprises us, contrasting as it does with the indifferent caricatures and the dearth of humorous talent in the years which intervened between the death of Hogarth and the appearance of the more ambitious subjects by Gillray and Rowlandson, works executed while the talents of these masters were at their best, and before they had grown careless of their reputation.

The E O Table[22] was republished at various dates: in January 1786 it re-appeared with a new title, as Private Amusement, and from time to time it was reissued, the date of publication being altered to suit the several occasions.

E O, OR THE FASHIONABLE VOWELS.

E O Tables.—'In the year 1781 there were swarms of E O Tables in different parts of the town, where a poor man with a shilling only might try his luck. They were open to everybody, till at last the Bow Street police began to interfere.'

An attempt was made, at the commencement of 1731, to suppress some of the most considerable gaming-houses in London and the suburbs, particularly one, behind Gray's Inn Walks. The editor of the St. James's Evening Post observed upon this occasion: 'It may be matter of instruction as well as amusement to present our readers with the following list of officers which are established in the most notorious gaming-houses:—

'A Commissioner, always a proprietor, who looks in of a night; the week's account is audited by him and two others of the proprietors.

'A Director, who superintends the room.

'An Operator, who deals the cards at a cheating game called Faro.

'Two Croupees, who watch the cards and gather the money for the bank.

'Two Puffs, who have money given them to decoy others to play.

'A Clerk, who is a check upon the Puffs, to see that they sink none of the money given them to play with.

'A Squib is a Puff of a lower rank, who serves at half-salary while he is learning to deal.

'A Flasher, to swear how often the bank has been stripped.

'A Dunner, who goes about to recover money lost at play.

'A Waiter, to fill out wine, snuff candles, and attend in the gaming-room.

'An Attorney, a Newgate solicitor.

'A Captain, who is to fight any gentleman that is peevish for losing his money.

'An Usher, who lights gentlemen up and down stairs, and gives the word to the porter.

'A Porter, who is generally a soldier of the Foot Guards.

'An Orderly-man, who walks up and down the outside of the door, to give notice to the porter and alarm the house at the approach of constables.

'A Runner, who is to get intelligence of the Justices meeting.

'Link-boys, watchmen, chairmen, drawers, or others, who bring the first intelligence of the Justices' meetings, or of the constables being out—half-a-guinea reward.

'Common-bail, affidavit-men, ruffians, bravoes, cum multis aliis.'

November 27, 1781. Brothers of the Whip. A. Grant, del.: published by H. Humphrey.—In this engraving a good deal of Rowlandson's manner is traceable, and the etching is at least due to his hand. The subject represents a group of four brothers of the whip, whose persons and features are marked with that discrimination for character and faculty for grasping individual peculiarities distinctive of the caricaturist. In the background are figured coach-horses, carriages, saddle-horses, grooms, &c., all depicted in his own marked style.

CHARITY COVERETH A MULTITUDE OF SINS.

November 27, 1781. [Charity Covereth a Multitude of Sins], published by H. Humphrey.—A dashing young officer is roving, in pursuit of pleasure, in a dangerous vicinity. With a generous hand he is dropping a gold-piece into the hat of a reduced sailor. Two Savoyards, a man with an organ, and a girl with a hurdygurdy are soliciting the contributions of the charitable.

December 10, 1781. The State Watchman Discovered by the Genius of Great Britain Studying Plans for the Reduction of America, published by J. Jones.—This subject is engraved within a circle, and, in point of execution, it bears more resemblance to Rowlandson's later style; it is not unlike Gillray's work of the same date.

The somnolent Lord North is fast asleep on his sofa, dreaming, according to the caricaturist, of new theories for the recovery of America.

The figure of Britannia, with her staff and cap of Liberty, is well designed; she is crying, 'Am I thus protected?' A miniature figure is introduced, who is endeavouring to arrest the sleeper's attention—'Hallo, neighbour! what, are you asleep?' This officious person is, it is believed, intended to represent 'Sir Grey Parole.'[23]

No date. [Bob Derry, of Newmarket].

LUXURY.

No date. [Luxury].

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1782–83.

February 1783. Long Sermons and Long Stories are apt to lull the Senses. Published by W. Humphrey.

1783. [Amputation]. Republished by S. W. Fores, October 17, 1793.

AMPUTATION.

1783 (?). [The Rhedarium], for the Sale of all sorts of Carriages, by Gregory Gigg.—The auctioneer is in his pulpit, employed in knocking down an assortment of vehicles to a small but sufficiently eccentric-looking audience. A gouty individual, propped on crutches, is making a bid for an antiquated kind of cabriolet, which the groom is trotting up for inspection; around are curricles, travelling carriages, and a general assemblage of the machines on wheels representative of the past.

The Rhedarium for the Sale of All sorts of Carriages By Gregory Gigg.

1783. The Discovery.—A small political print, a parody on Shakespeare's 'Macbeth.' Lord North, who is the principal agent of the 'Witches' Incantation,' is crying:—

Call Fiends and Spectres from the yawning deep.

Burke.

(who is among the witches).

Mother Wilson.

Jeffery.

Dunstan.

Sam House.

Fox

(who has suddenly entered, and is
standing in his ordinary declamatory attitude).

INTERIOR OF A CLOCKMAKER'S SHOP.

December 22, 1783. Great Cry and Little Wool. Published by Humphrey, Strand.—Somewhat in Sayer's style, the principal figures giving indications of his manner. The personification of Evil, with his horns, hoofs, pointed claws, and forked tail, has a firm hold of Fox, and is shearing the 'Protector's' chest and clawing at his profuse locks. The India Bill, under the Evil One's arm, indicates the source of the satire. The surroundings are more especially in Rowlandson's free handling; the India House is in the background, and the members of the East India Corporation are performing a gleeful dance around a memorable pile—the funeral pyre in effigy of their arch-enemy, treated as a fox roasting on a gibbet.

1783 (?). The Times.—This caricature represents the situation, from a popular point of view, at the period of the struggle for the Regency which occurred on the first illness of the King. According to Rowlandson's print, right is prevailing and everything is to be settled for the future happiness of the kingdom by the Prince of Wales's accession to the throne; as will be remembered, it was for a short period doubtful whether the King's health would ever be sufficiently restored to enable him to resume the control of the State.

The heir-apparent is shown as the virtuous prince we read of in fairy tales, endowed with all the graces both of mind and person. The Prince is supported, at the foot of the throne, by such protection as Liberty and Justice are placing at his disposal; his foot is on the first step, the Voice of the People; the other steps are Public Safety, Patriotism, and Virtue; the crown remains suspended over his head, his right hand is on his heart, and Britannia is leading him to his place, while she is waving back the party which opposed his assumption of an ad interim Regency. The symbolical Ruler of the Waves is declaring: 'I have long been deceived by hypocrisy, but have at last discovered an intention of sacrificing the rights of my people to satisfy a private ambition.' The Queen and her German friends, Madame Schwellenberg and others, are represented as disconcerted Furies, waving hissing snakes, and begirt with Falsehood, Envy, &c.

Queen Charlotte combined with Pitt to oppose, by every stratagem within their power, the assumption of the Regency by her eldest son. The Queen is brandishing the torch of Rebellion; Pitt is thrown into despair, and he is 'bidding a long farewell to all his greatness,' before his retirement from public life, as reasonably might have been his case, if the Prince's party had come into power. Commerce, allegorically represented as a fair female, is applauding the elevation of the Prince to the vacant throne, and a deputation from the Corporation of the City is expressing these encouraging sentiments through the Lord Mayor:—'Whilst we mourn the occasion, we must feel ourselves happy in reflecting that we are blessed by a prince whose wisdom will protect our liberties, whose virtues will afford stability to our empire.'

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1784.
POLITICAL CARICATURES.

A few examples of the caricatures published by Rowlandson during the famous contested election for Westminster in 1784 were included by the present writer in his account of the works of James Gillray the Caricaturist, as certain prints issued on this occasion were doubtless due to a combination on the part of the two caricaturists; however, those plates which bear special indications of Rowlandson's style were set down to their proper author.

January 1, 1784. The Pit of Acheron, or the Birth of the Plagues of England.—This plate bears the initials F. N., 1784, in the right-hand corner, but there is no doubt, judging from the evidence of the style of execution, that the chief merit is due to Rowlandson. During the progress of the struggle, in 1784, plates innumerable were published anonymously, or with varying initials. Collectors who have devoted time and observation to the subject, and such well-qualified writers as the compiler of The History of Caricature and Grotesque in Art, The Caricature History of the Georges, &c., seem agreed upon the proportion of prints which are due to the skill of our artist, whose handiwork is very prominent amongst the series of electioneering and political satires which appeared on the occasion of Fox's renowned campaign at the Westminster hustings, when the Champion of the People contended successfully against the second Ministerial candidate, Sir Cecil Wray, although the latter received all the assistance which Pitt, with the influence of the King as well, unscrupulously exercised as it was, could bring into play, legitimately or otherwise, to defeat the popular Whig chief, and to inflict the mortification of a lost election upon 'the party' and on their leader, who was at that time the pet aversion of George the Third and idol of the people.

It will be remembered that Rowlandson was by no means a party satirist; unlike Sayer, who was notoriously in the Ministerial pay, he lavished his satire on both sides alternately, utterly regardless of partisanship, and, often at the expense of consistency, we find his cartoons alternately espousing and ridiculing the same section, Whig or Tory, Ministerialist or Opposition, in plates of whimsically opposite tendencies, which not infrequently bear the same date.

The Pit of Acheron, if we may trust the satirist, is not situated at any considerable distance from Westminster; the precincts of that city appear through the smoke of the incantations which are carried on in the Pit. Three weird sisters, like the Witches in 'Macbeth,' are working the famous charm; a monstrous cauldron is supported by death's-heads and harpies; the ingredients of the broth are various; a crucifix, a rosary, Deceit, Loans, Lotteries, and Pride, together with a fox's head, cards, dice, daggers, and an executioner's axe, &c., form portions of the accessories employed in these uncanny rites. Three heads are rising from the flames—the good-natured face of Lord North, the spectacled and incisive outline of Burke, and Fox's 'gunpowder jowl,' which is drifting Westminster-wards. One hag, who is dropping Rebellion into the brew, is demanding, 'Well, sister, what hast thou got for the ingredients of our charm'd pot?' To this her fellow-witch, who is turning out certain mischievous ingredients which she has collected in her bag, is responding, 'A beast from Scotland called an Erskine, famous for duplicity, low art, and cunning; the other a monster who'd spurn even at Charter's Rights.' Erskine is shot out of the bag, crying, 'I am like a Proteus, can turn to any shape, from a sailor to a lawyer, and always lean to the strongest side!' The other member, whose tail is that of a serpent, is singing, 'Over the water and over the lee, thro' hell I would follow my Charlie.'

January 4, 1784. The Fall of Dagon, or Rare News for Leadenhall Street. Published by William Humphrey, 227 Strand.

And behold Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground before the ark of the Lord, and the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off upon the threshold.

The image of Dagon, which in this case is borrowed to typify the Coalition Ministers, has fallen from the overset Broad Bottom pedestal, and is in the posture described by the quotation; its double-faced head wears the profiles of North and Fox. Tower Hill is represented in the background; a scaffold is erected, and the public executioner is just bringing down his axe on the neck of a traitor—a delicate compliment to the heads of the late Administration. John Bull has changed the sign of his house to The Axe, and he is composedly enjoying his pipe under its shadow.

January 7, 1784. The Loves of the Fox and the Badger, or the Coalition Wedding. Published by W. Humphrey, 227 Strand.—Nine small compartments, very neatly executed upon one plate, are employed to portray the unpopular Coalition Ministry between Fox and North. (1) The Fox beats the Badger in the Bear Garden. The unwieldy form of the Badger (Lord North) lies, apparently asleep, on the floor of 'the House;' the Fox, with his brush erect in triumph, is in command of the situation. (2) The Fox has been throwing dice on Hounslow Heath, and he has a dream; the vision seems to indicate a choice between a prison or a traitor's head on a spike. (3) The Badger, with his riband, tucked up comfortably on a sofa, also indulges in a dream; the objects offered for his selection are seemingly the gallows or an executioner's block. (4) Satan unites them; the arch-fiend, in person, is joining their paws and pronouncing the magic spell, 'Necessity.' (5) They quarter their arms. Their new escutcheon is symbolical; above a scroll marked 'Money' the twin supporters are holding up a well-filled Treasury-bag, borne by John Bull, above whose head flourishes a pair of donkey's ears. (6) The priest advertises the wedding. The Devil, presiding at the pay-table, is enlisting the advocacy of the press, and three editors, in return for substantial considerations, are respectively promising: 'I'll Chronicle the Coalition,' 'We will Post them,' 'Harry will take both sides.' (7) The Honeymoon or Eddystone Lighthouse; the pair are making up a flaming beacon. (8) The New Orator Henley, or the Churching. The happy pair are now in their glory, seated on a throne in the 'Bear Garden,' and surrounded at a respectful distance by the heads (stuck on poles) of the members of their new Parliament, and described as a 'Mopstick majority.' The churching is proceeding; the original pastor is still present, and is prompting Orator Henley, whose tub stands on a block, labelled, 'Honest Jack Lee;' the Orator is holding forth a parchment, and declaring, 'A charter is nothing but a piece of parchment with a great seal dangling to it;' to which pious deduction his clerk mounted on 'A Seat for Portsmouth,' is crying, 'Necessity. Amen.' (9) The Wedding Dance and Song. The pair, now led by the nose by their Satanic friend, are perforce compelled to execute a pretty lively dance, as their conductor wills. They are singing this appropriate epithalamium:—

Come, we're all Rogues together; The people must pay for the play: Then let us make Hay in fine weather, And keep the cold winter away!

It seemed, at the beginning of 1784, as if Fox were completely master of the political situation, and indeed he approached much nearer to an absolute control of the Administration than he was ever destined to reach again during the lifetime of his great opponent. The bold manœuvres of Pitt, backed by the royal favour—the King and his friends condescending to dissimulation and subterfuge where honest policy would not suffice their turn—were crowned with unexpected success, and the Cromwell of the hour fell suddenly from his influential eminence. Up to the famous Westminster Election, Fox was paramount, both in Parliament and out of doors; for although Pitt was actually Crown-Minister, both he and his party were almost powerless when arrayed against the members of the ex-Coalition Ministry, their opponents, led by Fox, and his strong following, who were the real masters of the situation; thus we find a very characteristic portrait of the Friend of Liberty and of the People introduced, with an allusion to Cromwell.

January 19, 1784. His Highness the Protector.—The supplies are kept with a tight hand; and Fox, taking advantage of his power, has put a huge padlock on the door of the Treasury, the key of which he seems determined to retain in his own keeping; a small dagger, held in the popular champion's right hand, indicates that he is prepared to stand on the defensive. His colleague Lord North, with his star round his neck, appears as a bulldog, who is supporting his leader in keeping the supplies inviolate.

The apprehensions of the Pittites (whose chances of retaining the reins of administration in defiance of an Opposition too strong for their policy, now seemed desperate), pictured forth the total subversion of Throne and State; and it was under this influence that the King—whose stubborn will was strengthened by contradiction—indulged his threat of retiring to his German possessions, if he could not secure the return to office of his particular friends, whose hopes of recovering their lost control of the State were somewhat forlorn previous to the election; while Fox, on the other hand, was endeavouring to force the King to accede to the measures he had introduced for the restriction of the royal prerogative. A very complete, but necessarily over-coloured, view of the anticipations of 'the party' is thus pictured forth by Rowlandson.

January 23, 1784. The Times, or a View of the Old House in Little Britain,—with Nobody going to Hanover. Published by W. Humphrey, 227 Strand.—The Old House is seemingly in a bad way; the foundation is Public Credit; the Funds, represented as a grilled gate, are secured with a huge padlock; the Royal Crown and Sceptre are placed on a block, and marked for sale; seated on another block, labelled Protector, sits the fox, guarding the Treasury; round his waist is a chain secured to the Coalition-pillar, which is depicted as rather a twisted support. Lord North has perched his unwieldy person upon a turnstile, and is crying, indifferent to consequences, 'Give me my ease, and do as you please.' The upper part of the Old House is raising more cause for mistrust, since the old building is overweighted and crushed with a mass of Taxes, piled on the roof, the accumulated pressure of 'the accursed ten years' American war, fomented by the Opposition and misconducted by a timid Minister.' A light balcony has been thrown out, and therein things are proceeding in true showman style. Burke is officiating as exhibitor, and blowing through a trumpet; another statesman is doing the harlequin-business; merry-andrew 'Sherry' is flourishing his bottle and dancing round the corner of the balcony, on which is a placard announcing a wonderful combination of attractions: 'The Scarlet Woman of Babylon, the Devil, and the Pope.' 'The Man of the People' is pictured as a feather,—on the flag of the party. The sign of the Old House, Magna Charta, has fallen to tatters, and the board is dropping down; two lawyers, who appear at the window, are repairing the edifice according to their theories; one of the props of the edifice, the Lords, is spared, but the other, prerogative of the Crown, is being lopped off by one of the legal magnates. The King is turning his back on the place, and starting in a state coach on his way to Hanover, deaf and blind to the prayers of some of his subjects, who are imploring the royal compassion on their knees. The Sun of England's Glory is setting in the distance, and an eye of light, piercing through the clouds, is warning the retiring monarch to 'Turn out these robbers and repair the House.'

February 3. The Infant Hercules.—Another caricature was directed against the ex-Coalition Ministers, representing them as twin serpents whose tails ('American War' and 'East India Bill') are entwined; the heads of Fox and North appear on the shoulders of the monster. Pitt is figured as the infant Hercules; he has taken his seat on the 'Shield of Chatham,' and has grasped the throats of the serpents, the tails of which are already lopped off. 'These,' he cries, 'were your Ministers.'

Lord North, for twelve years, with his war and contracts, The people he nearly had laid on their backs; Yet stoutly he swore he sure was a villain If e'er he had bettered his fortune a shilling. Derry down, down; down, derry down.

Against him Charles Fox was a sure bitter foe, And cried that the empire he'd soon overthrow; Before him all honour and conscience had fled; And vowed that the axe it should cut off his head. Derry down, down; down, derry down.

Edmund Burke, too, was in a mighty great rage, And declared Lord North the disgrace of the age; His plans and his conduct he treated with scorn, And thought it a curse that he'd ever been born. Derry down, down; down, derry down.

So hated he was, Fox and Burke they both swore, They infamous were if they enter'd his door; But, prithee, good neighbour, now think on the end— Both Burke and Fox call him their very good friend! Derry down, down; down, derry down.

Now Fox, North, and Burke, each one is a brother, So honest, they swear there is not such another; No longer they tell us we're going to ruin, The people they serve in whatever they're doing. Derry down, down; down, derry down.

But Chatham, thank heaven! has left us a son; When he takes the helm, we are sure not undone; The glory his father revived of the land, And Britannia has taken Bill Pitt by the hand. Derry down, down; down, derry down.

BRITANNIA ROUSED, OR THE COALITION MONSTERS DESTROYED.

February 3, 1784. [Britannia Roused], or the Coalition Monsters Destroyed.—Britannia, the symbolical goddess, is fairly aroused, and her greatness and power are effectually asserted on the persons of the late Ministers. Her strong arm is throttling the lethargic Lord North, and she has seized the body of Fox, whose person she is dashing over her head, in a manner which threatens the extinction of the popular idol.

The East India Company and its Corporation became, for a time, the chief bone of contention. Fox had gone out of office on the rejection of his provisions for the proper regulation of our Eastern Empire,[24] and Pitt, on coming into power, introduced his own motion with the same object. The view of the public on this point was expressed by Rowlandson's satirical summary of the situation.

February 7, 1784. Billy Lackbeard and Charley Blackbeard Playing at Football.—Fox and Pitt are both kicking with a will; the football is the old House of John Company, Leadenhall Street; the edifice is turned upside down, and the rival players are succeeding in keeping the vast concern suspended in the air between them. Billy Lackbeard has just turned from the study of Blackstone,—an allusion to the youth of the Prime Minister. It is interesting to remember that Pitt had resigned his ambitious mind seriously to the study and practice of the law, in case the progress of events should deprive him of Parliamentary significance. The commencement of his career was somewhat troublous, especially during the 'Regency struggle,' when the state of the King's health rendered the accession of the Prince of Wales probable, in which case the governing power would have remained in the hands of his more experienced rival. Behind Fox is a dicebox, and at his feet lie packs of playing-cards, indicating that gambling was the only resource left him, if he could not succeed in regaining office.

The influence which was being brought to bear, through illegitimate channels, to strengthen the party of Pitt's followers, who found themselves in such a minority as to be powerless at first, was recognised and commented on out of doors. The satirists freely exposed the Ministerial manœuvres; it was evident that the Court party, and especially the King, would count no sacrifice too great, could they but contrive to prevent the return of the members of the late Coalition Ministry to power, this hostility being intensified by the prejudices borne in the royal mind against Fox.

So strongly did this influence work that we find in The Morning Post and Daily Advertiser for February 10, 1784, the names of twenty-two members who had fallen under the spell of Ministerial beguilements. The advertisement is quite simple, and appears without either comment or explanation; the heading is pictorial, and represents a string of rats—such as might preface an ordinary rat-catcher's advertisement—it is placed above the name of Jack Robinson, in capital letters. Then follow, in three short columns, the names of the twenty-two Parliamentary rats who had gone over to the good pickings which the King was able to hold forth as a temptation in return for the allegiance of these renegades.

This curious advertisement is repeated in a satirical print which Rowlandson prepared on the same subject.

THE APOSTATE JACK ROBINSON, THE POLITICAL RAT-CATCHER.

March 1, 1784. [The Apostate Jack Robinson], the Political Rat-catcher. N.B. Rats taken alive.—Before the door of the Treasury, from whence the converter of rats draws his supply of baits and lures, travelling cautiously on all fours and feeling his way, the political rat-catcher is slily augmenting his captures. Round the apostate Jack's waist hangs the cestus of corruption, in his pocket is a little aide-de-camp, who is made to cry, 'We'll ferret them out!' On his back is a double trap, baited with miniature coronets, places, &c.; one or two rats have been secured in this; golden pieces strew the floor, and with these the rats to be captured are playing and coquetting. A large bait of pension is held to the nose of one grave old veteran, probably intended for Edmund Burke, and the other rats are watching the bait with longing looks. A placard is pinned on the wall, 'Jack Robinson, Rat-catcher to Great Britain. Vermin preserved.' Under the heading of 'Rats of Note' is given the very list of apostates as published in the Morning Post, beneath Jack Robinson's patronymic.

Second Title.

March 3, 1784. A Peep into Friar Bacon's Study.—A spectacle of conjuration, which discloses matters of some historical moment. In the centre of the picture stands the brazen head which is giving forth its oracles. King George the Third, who has thrown a conjuror's cloak over his star and riband, is holding out two divining-rods, and questioning the head—'What is this?' To this the magic bust is giving forth these oracle-like phrases: 'Time is, Time was, Time is past;' while three luminous circles, each bordered with the word Constitution, help to illuminate the obscurity of the revelation. The first view of the Constitution, 'Time is past,' displays the King on his throne, with a radiance like the sun; the other bodies of the State barely come within the charmed circle; the Houses of Lords and Commons appear mere 'air balloons.' 'Time is' offers another view of the Constitution; the King's circle has diminished, that of the House of Peers is increasing in magnitude and becoming bound up with the royal circle; the House of Commons, without infringing on either, has arrived within the circumference of the Constitution; and in the third view we find the three circles assimilated in size and working one within the other—the Constitution in its perfected form, in fact. Behind the King the members of the late Ministry are appearing at a door. Fox, North, and Burke are in the front rank; they bid the monarch 'Beware!' The King's friends, led by an imp of Satan, or, perhaps, by the Devil in person, are finding their way down the back-stairs. Foremost is a figure bearing a lantern, which is throwing a light on the movements of the Opposition. Lord Temple, and other influential supporters of the Ministry, are making their entry on the scene, and crying, 'We must destroy this coalition,' 'A fig for the resolutions,' &c.

March 8, 1784. [Master Billy's Procession to Grocers' Hall].—Pitt has, according to the picture, supplemented his Parliamentary tactics by flattering the citizens, and bidding for the Corporation influence. He is drawn going to Grocers' Hall in state to receive the freedom of the City in a gold box, which is carried at the head of the procession. Great enthusiasm prevails, as a liberal gentleman, in the uniform of a naval officer, is distributing handfuls of coin amongst the mob. Banners are carried in the procession with the party watchwords, 'Pitt and prerogative,' and 'Youth is a most enormous crime.' The car of Sir Watney, drawn by satyrs comes first; then, in the middle, perched up in a triumphal car, and with a feather in his hat, comes Master Billy, drawn, of course, by King's men. Sir Barney follows, drawn by his admirers, and shouting, 'Pitt and plum-pudding for ever!' The show is passing the shop of 'Tommy Plume, grocer to his Majesty;' this worthy, who is crying, 'O what a charming youth!' is seen at his window, surrounded by shouting spectators. At the sign of the Lord Chatham is gathered another party of sightseers; they are enthusiastically declaring that 'Master Pitt is very like his father!'

MASTER BILLY'S PROCESSION TO GROCERS' HALL.

March 11, 1784. The Champion of the People.—The sturdy figure of Fox, clad in somewhat theatrical armour, and protected by the Shield of Truth, is resolutely combating the overgrown Hydra of patronage, whose growing and unconstitutional power—it was hinted—would shortly destroy the liberty of the subject. The monster, a compound of the Pittite party and its royal supporter, is hissing and spitting venom with all its various heads, Tyranny, Assumed Prerogative, Despotism, Oppression, [Secret Influence], and Scotch Politics; while three heads have been already lopped off by the champion's sword, Duplicity and Corruption are laid in the dust. The foreign Powers are represented in alliance, and dancing round the Standard of Sedition. Natives, of the subject East Indian races, are kneeling and blessing their champion; and a compact array of English and Irish supporters is drawn up under the standard of 'Britannia and Universal Liberty.' Fox's followers are respectively declaring, 'While he protects us, we will support him;' and 'He gave us a free trade, and all we asked; he shall have our firm support!'

March 26, 1784. The State Auction.—This print illustrates the pass to which, as it was assumed, the Constitution was coming under the evil effects of the undue extension of the royal prerogative. The 'State Auction' is held, under high patronage, in the 'Commission warehouse; money advanced on all sorts of useless valuables, by Pitt and Co., Auctioneers. N.B. Licensed by Royal Authority.' Pitt, seated on his rostrum, under the royal arms, is knocking down 'State property' in the capacity of auctioneer. The first lot is, it seems, the most interesting one in the sale: 'The Rights of the People, in 558 volumes.' Pitt's friend Dundas is acting as sale porter. 'Show the lot this way, Harry,' cries the auctioneer. 'Agoing, agoing; speak quick, or it's gone. Hold up the lot, ye Dund ass!' To which invitation the Scot, Dundas, who has been doing his best to help Master Pitt, responds, 'I can hould it na higher, sir!' Pitt is favouring the biddings of the 'Hereditary Virtuosi,' a compact knot of Peers and 'the King's friends;' at their head stands Lord Chancellor Thurlow, who is disparaging the Opposition. 'Mind not the nonsensical biddings of those common fellows.' The 'chosen representatives' of the people are standing by themselves, apart from the bidders; their backs are turned upon the entire proceedings, and they are apparently leaving the sale-room en masse, by way of protest, at the same time exclaiming, 'Adieu to Liberty!' 'Despair not!' and 'Now or never!' Fox alone is making a resolute stand; he cries, 'I am determined to bid with spirit for lot 1—he shall pay dear for it that outbids me.' The lots are of general interest. Lot 2 is Magna Charta; lot 3 is 'Obsolete Public Acts;' lot 4, the Sword of Justice; lot 5, the Mace; lots 6 and 7, legal wigs and gowns, &c. The sale-clerk, recording the biddings on the parchments of 'sundry Acts,' is declaring gleefully, 'We shall get the supplies by this sale!'

March 29, 1784. The Drum-Major of Sedition.—The portrait of Major John Cartright, one of the most energetic and disinterested Reformers, is given under this title. The Major is firmly grasping a pole of Liberty in his right hand, and is holding forth in front of the hustings erected for the election, round which are gathered numerous voters and a crowd of others, who are being addressed from the platform. Admiral Lord Hood is introduced, shouting, 'Two faces under a Hood!' The speech made by the Drum-Major of Sedition has a strong ironical tendency. 'All gentlemen and other electors for Westminster who are ready and willing to surrender their rights and those of their fellow-citizens to secret influence, and the Lords of the Bedchamber, let them repair to the prerogative standard, lately erected at the Cannon Coffee House, where they shall be kindly received—until their services are no longer wanted. This, gentlemen, is the last time of asking, as we are determined to abolish the power of the House of Commons, and in future be governed by Prerogative, as they are in France and Turkey. Gentlemen, the ambition of the enemy is now evident. Has he not, within these few days past, stole the Great Seal of England, while the Chancellor[25] was taking a bottle with a female favourite, as all great men do? I am informed, gentlemen, that the enemy now assumes Regal Authority, and, by virtue of the Great Seal (which he stole), is creating of peers and granting of pensions. A most shameful abuse, gentlemen, of that instrument. If you assist us to pull down the House of Commons, every person who hears me has a chance of becoming a great man, if he is happy enough to hit the fancy of Lord Bute and of Mr. Jenkinson. Huzza! God save the King!'

March 30, 1784. Sir Cecil's Budget for Paying the National Debt.—Sir Cecil Wray, in spite of his Ministerial friends, does not seem to have been a popular candidate after he had deserted the Liberal party; indeed, he became the mere puppet of the hour, the Ministerial struggles of the 'King's friends' being not so much directed to bringing in their nominee, as to inflict the mortification of a defeat on Fox. Two unfortunate projects, which Sir Cecil Wray had originated, were perpetually used against him by his opponents; these were his proposals to abolish Chelsea Hospital and to tax maid-servants. In the print 'Sir Cecil's Budget for paying the National Debt' has been accepted, and Chelsea Hospital is brought to the ground, involving in its destruction all the disabled veterans for whom the country was bound to provide. Sir Cecil is shown in the distance, exposed to very humiliating treatment; a pensioner, who has escaped the downfall of the Hospital, is whipping him forward with his crutch, while a group of female servants, with pails and brooms, are visiting on his person, the injustices they anticipated. 'Tax servant-maids, you brute, and starve poor old soldiers—a fine Member of Parliament!' While in office Fox had proposed a tax upon receipts, which was loudly cried down by his Tory opponents; it was now written of Wray:—

For though he opposes the stamping of notes, 'Tis in order to tax all your petticoats; Then how can a woman solicit your votes For Sir Cecil Wray?

For had he to women been ever a friend, Nor by taxing them tried our old taxes to mend, Yet so stingy he is, that none can contend For Sir Cecil Wray.

The gallant Lord Hood to his country is dear; His voters, like Charlie's, make excellent cheer; But who has been able to taste the small beer Of Sir Cecil Wray?

Then come, ev'ry free, ev'ry generous soul, That loves a fine girl and a full flowing bowl, Come here in a body, and all of you poll 'Gainst Sir Cecil Wray!

In vain all the arts of the Court are let loose, The electors of Westminster never will choose To run down a Fox, and set up a goose Like Sir Cecil Wray.

THE HANOVERIAN HORSE AND BRITISH LION.

March 31, 1784. [The Hanoverian Horse and the British Lion]. A scene in a new play, lately acted in Westminster with distinguished applause. Act ii., scene last.—The faithful Commons are still suffering from the aggressive tendencies of the White Horse of Hanover, which is trampling on 'Magna Charta,' 'Bill of Rights', and 'Constitution,' kicking, rearing, and driving the members of the 'faithful Commons' forth with his heels. The brute is neighing out 'Pre-ro-ro-ro-ro-rogative;' while Pitt, a remarkably light jockey, is encouraging the excitement of the brute: 'Bravo! go it again; I love to ride a mettle steed. Send the vagabonds packing.' The sturdy person of Fox is safely astride the British Lion; the royal beast has quitted his place in the army of England, leaving the notice, 'We shall resume our situation here at pleasure.—Leo Rex.' He is keeping a watchful eye on the Hanoverian Horse, and protesting, 'If this horse is not tamed he will soon be absolute king of our forest.' Fox has come on the scene prepared to render efficient assistance; he is provided with a bit and bridle, and a stout riding-whip, to tame and control the high-mettled Hanoverian steed. 'Prithee, Billy,' he is crying to Pitt, 'dismount before ye get a fall—and let some abler jockey take your seat!'

April 3, 1784. The Two Patriotic Duchesses on their Canvass; requesting the favour of an early poll.—The zealous canvassers for 'the Champion of the people' are enlisting the sympathies of possible voters. Their mode of procedure is shown at a butcher's stall, according to the satirist's view of their patriotic exertions. The Duchess of Devonshire, wearing the Prince of Wales's plume in her hat, above an immense favour for Fox, has placed one arm round the waist of a young butcher, and, with her left hand, is pushing a well-filled purse into his pocket; at the same time she is cementing the compact with a chaste kiss. Farther on is seen the Duchess of Portland, who is attempting to beguile another butcher's apprentice; but she is less successful, probably because her personal attractions will not bear comparison with the graces of the winning Georgiana.

April 4, 1784. The Incurable.—Fox, in a strait-jacket, with straw disposed in his hair, is represented as mad beyond recovery; he is singing in forlorn despair:—

My lodging is on the cold ground, and very hard is my case, But that which grieves me most is the losing of my place.

Doctor Munro, the King's physician, in his court-dress, is examining the patient through his eyeglass, and attesting, 'As I have not the least hope of his recovery, let him be removed amongst the Incurables.' Below the print the following lines occur:—

Dazzled with hope he could not see the cheat Of aiming with impatience to be great. With wild ambition in his heart, we find, Farewell content and quiet of his mind; For glittering clouds he left the solid shore, And wonted happiness returns no more.

The poll was opened on April 1, and continued without intermission until May 17.

April 8, 1784. [The Rival Candidates].—The three candidates who were contesting the 'great fight' for the representation of Westminster are represented according to their supposititious characteristics. Fox, with his hand on his heart, and his arm held out in a declamatory attitude, stands for Demosthenes; Hood is introduced as Themistocles; and Wray is less flatteringly served up in the character of Judas Iscariot. It must be remembered that 'the Knight of the Back-stairs' had been nominated for the previous Parliament by Fox, with whom he had shared the representation of Westminster, but Wray thought fit to desert to the Tories and oppose his political leader, forsaking his friends and his principles for the sake of promised Ministerial patronage.

RIVAL CANDIDATES.

April 10, 1784. The Parody, or Mother Cole and Loader. (See Foote's 'Minor,' page 29.)—The broad-spread figure of Lord North, with a capacious hood round his head, is parodied as the sanctimonious Mother Cole; a bottle of 'Constitution Cordial,' to sustain her sinking spirits, is placed by her side. Fox, as Loader, with his dicebox thrown to the ground, is listening, handkerchief in hand, to Old Moll's lamentations. 'Ay, I am going, a-wasting, and a-wasting. What will become of the House when I am gone Heaven knows. No, when people are missed, then they are mourned. Sixteen years have I lived in St. Stephen's Chapel comfortably and creditably; and, tho' I say it, could have got bail any hour of the day! No knock-me-down doings in my House—a set of regular, sedate, sober customers—no rioters. Sixteen did I say? Ay, eighteen years have I paid Scot and Lot, and during the whole time nobody has said, "Mrs. North, why do you say so?"—unless twice that I was threatened with impeachment, and three times with a halter!' Fox is moved to respond, 'May I lose deal, with an honour at bottom, if Old Moll does not bring tears in my eyes.'

April 12, 1784. [The Devonshire], or most approved method of securing votes.—The Duchess of Devonshire has taken to her arms the person of a fat and greasy butcher, whom she is favouring with a salute in the zeal of patriotism; another fair canvasser (possibly the Duchess of Gordon), rejoicing in proportions more expanded than those of the beautiful Georgiana, is seconding the proceeding; while, shouting 'Huzza, Fox for ever!' a lusty butcher, with his tray under his arm, is cheering and hurrying up to share his possible reward.

THE DEVONSHIRE, OR MOST APPROVED MANNER OF SECURING VOTES.

April 12, 1784. [The Westminster Watchman].—Charles James Fox is represented as the trusty guardian, standing unmoved and at his ease amidst the 'Ministerial thunderbolts;' he wears on his head the cap of Liberty, and his support is the staff of 'uprightness;' his dog, the faithful companion of his rounds, is Vigilance; and his lamp, which sheds its light on everything around, is Truth. A pair of superannuated and useless watchmen are shuffling off—Hood 'for Greenwich,' and Wray 'for Chelsea.'

The plate is inscribed to Fox's supporters—'To the independent Electors of Westminster this print of their staunch old watchman, the guardian of their rights and privileges, is dedicated by a grateful Elector. N.B. Beware of counterfeits, as the Greenwich and Chelsea Watchmen are upon the look-out!'

THE WESTMINSTER WATCHMAN.

April 12, 1784. The Poll.—The scene is still the polling-booth, Covent Garden; the canvassers, committees, and mobs are giving their entire attention to the performance carried on for their entertainment between the fair rival advocates, who are balanced at either end of a plank laid across a stone post. The Duchess of Devonshire is sent up into the air; her end of the poll is carried over Fox's head; 'Duke and no Duke, a play,' is placarded above her.

The opposite extreme of the poll is weighed down effectually by the weight of a corpulent lady, described in these election squibs as Madame Blubber, the Honourable Mrs. Hobart (Lady Buckinghamshire), of Pic-Nic notoriety. Hood is cheating by kneeling down and clinging to the skirts of the Ministerial championess, he lends an additional weight to his side of the balance; behind them is Wray, defying his opponent. Over the heads of this group flutters a placard, 'The Rival Candidates, a farce.'

The Opposition party dwelt mainly upon Sir Cecil Wray's renegade want of principle in turning against his leader, Fox. His liberality was severely called in question, and there was a satirical story of his keeping nothing in his cellar but small beer. The old symbolism of slavery and France—wooden shoes—was revived for the occasion; much stress was laid on the extensive polling of soldiers for Hood and Wray at the beginning of the election, when on one occasion two hundred and eighty of the Guards were sent in a body to give their votes as householders. This, Horace Walpole observes, was legal, 'but which my father (Sir Robert) in the most quiet sessions would not have dared to do.' All dependents on the Court were commanded to vote on the same side as the soldiers. The following placard, which was put out early in the canvass, is a fair example of the courtesies with which the Ministerial manœuvres were acknowledged by their opponents:—

'All Horse Guards, Grenadier Guards, Foot Guards, and Black Guards that have not polled for the destruction of Chelsea Hospital and the tax on maid-servants are desired to meet at the Gutter Hole, opposite the Horse Guards, where they will have a full bumper of knock-me-down and plenty of soapsuds, before they go to the poll for Sir Cecil Wray or eat.

'N.B. Those that have no shoes or stockings may come without, there being a quantity of wooden shoes provided for them.'

LORDS OF THE BEDCHAMBER.

April 14, 1784. [Lords of the Bedchamber].—The Duchess of Devonshire, in her morning gown and cap, is favouring two privileged visitors with a cup of tea in her boudoir.

The Duchess is attending to the tea urn; above her head hangs the Reynolds portrait of her liege lord. Sam House, in his publican's jacket, is seated, stirring a cup of tea, on the sofa beside Fox, who is familiarly patting his friend and indefatigable ally on his bald head by way of friendly encouragement.

Sam House was one of the most popular figures of his day, and he came into especial prominence, as we have seen, during the Fox's canvass. He is said to have kept open house during the Westminster Election at his own expense, and was honoured by entertaining the great Whig nobility. He was an indefatigable supporter of Fox, and his assistance was, as may be supposed, of no trifling moment to the cause.

See brave Sammy House, he's as still as a mouse, And does canvass with prudence so clever; See what shoals with him flocks to poll for brave Fox; Give thanks to Sam House, boys, for ever, for ever, for ever! Give thanks to Sam House, boys, for ever!

Brave bald-headed Sam, all must own, is the man Who does canvass for brave Fox so clever; His aversion, I say, is to small beer and Wray! May his bald head be honour'd for ever, for ever, for ever! May his bald head be honour'd for ever!

April 20, 1784. The Covent Garden Nightmare.—This subject is a parody on a painting by Fuseli. Rowlandson has taken the idea and fitted it to the purpose of an electioneering squib. Fox is represented stretched in an uneasy slumber, nightmare-ridden. An unearthly incubus oppresses his body and haunts his repose; a corpulent imp is crouched on his hams pressing the great man's chest, while the head and shoulders of a supernatural mare are shown making their appearance through the bed-curtains. On a table by Fox's side are shown the dice and dicebox, the satirist's inevitable resource when dealing with the frailties of the 'man of the people,' who, it must be confessed, had in his day committed sufficient excesses in the way of gambling; a vice he absolutely renounced in after-life, but not before it had ruined his purse, imperilled his reputation, and proved a fruitful source of recrimination in the mouths of his enemies.

April 22, 1784. Madame Blubber on her Canvass.—We find the Duchess of Devonshire and the Honourable Mrs. Hobart—the most prominent of the fair electioneering agents who threw the power of their personal charms into the political arena—scandalised alternately; her Grace the fascinating Georgiana was represented as a softening influence by which the votes of the butchers were secured; we find Pitt's fair champion, Madame Blubber (Lady Buckinghamshire), endeavouring to cajole the same classes in identical fashion. The lady, who, it must be acknowledged, was somewhat stout, is trying her hand amongst the rough sellers of meat; she is holding out a purse as a bait, saying, 'Hood and Wray, my dear butcher;' the butcher's dogs are regarding the canvasser suspiciously; their master, at ease in his armchair, without moving his pipe from his mouth, is puffing out bluntly, 'I'm engaged to the Duchess!' 'Pho! give her a glass,' suggests the butcher's friend, who is drinking punch with him from a bowl on which is the figure of a fox, the chopping-block serving as their table. Madame Blubber has a train of appreciative butcher's men in her wake; one is declaring that she is 'the fattest cattle he ever handled!' a drover is observing, 'Lincolnshire, dammee!' and a lad with a tray pronounces her a 'plumper!'

THE COURT CANVASS OF MADAME BLUBBER.

To the Tune of 'The First Time at the Looking-glass.'

A certain lady I won't name Must take an active part, sir, To show that Devon's beauteous dame Should not engage each heart, sir. She canvass'd all, both great and small, And thunder'd at each door, sir; She rummaged every shop and stall— The Duchess was still before her.

Sam Marrowbones had shut up shop, And just had lit his pipe, sir, When in the lady needs must pop, Exceeding plump and ripe, sir. 'Good zounds,' says he, 'how late you be! For votes you come to bore me; But let us feel are you beef or veal— The Duchess has been before you.'

A fishmonger she next address'd With many a soothing tale, sir, And for his vote most warmly press'd, But all would not prevail, sir. 'The finest cod's-head sure in town, Of oysters send two score too.' 'Extremely, madame, like your own— The Duchess has been before you.'

A grocer next, to make amends, The dame with smiles accosted: 'You grocers all to Pitt are friends,' Of her connection boasted! 'For plums and raisins, ma'am,' said he, 'I'm willing for to score you: In politics we shan't agree— The Duchess was here before you.'

Sly Obadiah was at prayers With many pious folk, sir; His pretty maid on the back-stairs She found, and thus bespoke her: 'This riband take, all interest make; Your master will adore you, For Hood and Wray pray kiss and pray.' 'Now, Duchess, I'm once before you.'

A stable-keeper to engage She then her talents tried, sir; He fell into a monstrous rage, And all her smiles defied, sir. 'Are you a full moon or Court balloon? Get out, you female Tory; Tho' Courts prevail I'll not turn tail— The Duchess was here before you.'

However courtiers take offence, And cits and prudes may join, sir, Beauty will ever influence The free and generous mind, sir. Fair Devon, like the rising sun, Proceeds in her full glory, Whilst madame's duller orb must own The Duchess moves before her.

April 22, 1784. [Wit's Last Stake], or the Cobbling Voter and Abject Canvassers.—Every stratagem which could secure the popular voice for either candidate was freely put in practice; but while the Pittites resorted to threats and force, Fox and his adherents relied mainly on persuasion and good humour. Wit's last Stake shows the exertions made in the canvassing department. Fox is in the centre of the picture, giving his knee as a seat for his fair advocate, the Duchess of Devonshire, who is resorting to a subterfuge commonly employed as a precaution against actions for bribery at elections, by the stall of a cobbler, who happens to be a voter: her Grace has discovered that her shoe requires a stitch; the cobbler, with his tongue thrust out at the side of his mouth, is working at the supposititious repairs with pantomimic energy; meanwhile his wife is receiving in payment for the job a handful of sovereigns from her Grace's purse. The scene takes place in Peter Street, and the cobbler's board announces, 'Shoes made and mended by Bob Stichett, cobbler to her Grace the tramping Duchess.' A fox's brush is being waved overhead out of the first-floor window by a supporter, who has been provided with pipe and pot at the Whig expense. Fox is giving his right hand to another voter, a tattered and stupified-looking scavenger, to whom Sam House is also administering comfort in the shape of a pot of porter. Among other followers of the 'Man of the People' Rowlandson has introduced a chimney-sweeper and his boy.

WIT'S LAST STAKE, OR THE COBBLING VOTER AND ABJECT CANVASSERS.

Fox's canvass was enlivened by the rough humours of the various classes whose favour he required to enlist; his own good-nature was equal to every emergency. One blunt tradesman, whose vote he solicited, replied, 'Mr. Fox, I cannot give you my support; I admire your abilities, but d—— your principles!' To which the candidate smartly responded, 'My friend, I applaud you for your sincerity, but d—— your manners!'

In another instance Fox's application to a saddler in the Haymarket for his interest was met with a practical joke—the man produced a halter, with which he expressed his willingness to oblige the statesman. Said Fox, 'I return you thanks, my friend, for your intended present; but I should be sorry to deprive you of it, as I presume it must be a family piece.'

April 22, 1784. King's Place, or a View of Monsieur Reynard's Best Friends.—Another gathering of Fox's fair adherents. The Prince of Wales, surrounded by fashionably-dressed nymphs, wearing one of Fox's favours below his plume, and with a fox-brush in his hand, is speaking in his friend's favour: 'He supported my cause!' A pleasingly-drawn female—probably intended to suggest Mrs. Robinson, the Perdita of the Prince's early love-story—is asserting, 'He is as generous as a prince, and a prince should not be limited!' A group of Lady Abbesses are also saying 'good things' in their candidate's favour: 'He introduced his Royal Highness to my house!' 'I have taken many a pound of his money. Fox for ever. Huzza!'

April 22, 1784. Political Affection.—The Duchess of Devonshire is still slandered by the satirists; according to the present unjust version her 'political affection' is causing her to neglect her infant, the heir of the Cavendishes, to lavish her tenderness on a hybrid prodigy, a fox dressed up in the robes of an infant. By the side of a neglected cradle is seen a cat, forgetting her kitten to lick the face of a poodle.

This coarse hostility to the Duchess was probably popular in its day, as we find a long series of allusions conceived in the same spirit.

April 23, 1784. Reynard put to his Shifts.—The artists always took care to draw the Duchess of Devonshire as handsome and graceful as possible, even when their satires were most reckless and unsparing; while they descended to outrage the lady's fair reputation by innuendoes which were utterly unwarrantable. The beauteous Devon is standing in the middle of the picture, filled, as usual, with animation for the Whig cause; she is offering the shelter of her protection to a panting and frightened fox, whose pursuers are following fast on his brush. A huntsman is encouraging his hounds: 'Tally O! my good dogs!' 'No Coalition,' 'No India Bill,' and other party utterances are put into the mouths of the pack.

April 29, 1784. [The Case is Altered].—The election has gone against Sir Cecil Wray, and he has to turn elsewhere; Fox, it will be remembered, in addition to his return for Westminster, was elected for Kirkwall (Scotland), and in the print he is shown driving his discomfited opponent to Lincoln.

The Ministerial candidate is not travelling with a flourish of trumpets, but is smuggled off in the 'Lincolnshire caravan for paupers;' the knight is reflecting over his reverses: 'I always was a poor dog, but now I am worse than ever.' Fox is acting as charioteer; he is saying, over his shoulder, 'I will drive you to Lincoln, where you may superintend the small beer and brickdust.'

Lord Hood, who has come upon this conveyance suddenly, is moved with pity for his late colleague; he cries, 'Alas! poor Wray.'

THE CASE IS ALTERED.

As the increasing number of votes gave fresh spirit to the Foxites, satirical squibs, and songs exulting over Wray's possible downfall and his future fate, were plentifully put forth by the wits of the Opposition. The following specimen will illustrate the nature of some of the placards which were scattered about towards the close of the election:—

Oh! help Judas, lest he fall into the Pitt of ingratitude!!!
The prayers of all bad Christians, Heathens, Infidels, and Devil's agents are most
earnestly requested for their dear friend,
Judas Iscariot, Knight of the Back-stairs,
Lying at the period of political dissolution, having received a dreadful wound from the lovers of
liberty and the Constitution, in the poll of the last ten days at the Hustings, nigh unto the
Place of Cabbages.

April 29, 1784. Madame Blubber's Last Shift, or the Ærostatic Dilly.—This caricature pictures the hustings at Covent Garden, with a distant view of Richmond Hill. Madame Blubber has patriotically contrived to convert herself into an air-balloon, for the collection and conveyance of outlying voters, crying, 'This may save him,' an allusion to some incident in the canvass. A brace of voters have been secured in the parachute of this novel Ærostatic Dilly; these favoured gentlemen are enabled to take a flying view from their elevation of the hustings below. Wray and Hood are anxiously looking forward to the arrival of their balloon. According to the inscription given on the plate, in the artist's hand, the print represents 'The grand political Balloon, launched at Richmond Park, on the—March, 1784, and discharged by secret influence with great effect in Covent Garden at 12 o'clock on the same day.

'As it may be necessary to explain to the public upon what principles a body was conveyed twelve miles with so great velocity, it must be understood that the lady, though ponderous, being of a volatile disposition, out of decency sewed up her petticoats, which, being filled with gas, immediately raised her to a considerable height in the atmosphere, and, by the attraction of secret influence, was conveyed to her desired object—the support of Hood and Wray and the Constitution—and descended happily to the hustings with two outlying and dependent voters.'

Tho' in every street All the voters you meet The Duchess knows best how to court them, Yet for outlying votes, In my petticoats, I've found out a way to transport them!

Eight trips in this way, For Hood and for Wray, I'll make poll sixteen in one day. Dear Wray, don't despair, My supplies by the air Shall recover our losses on Monday!

April 30, 1784. [Procession to the Hustings] after a Successful Canvass. (No. 14.)—Fox's supporters, a body of highly respectable householders, wearing huge Fox favours in their hats, are walking in procession to the hustings, cheered by the mob, and preceded by a marrowbone-and-cleaver accompaniment. At the head of the train marches the famous Duchess, with a somewhat novel standard; the other fair canvassers, whose portraits occur in the previous prints, are following in the footsteps of their illustrious leader; one is carrying a placard, 'Fox and the Rights of the Commons;' another has a mob-cap and an apron, borne fluttering on a pole, with the words, 'No tax on Maid-servants.' Behind follows a monster key—the key of the back-stairs—carried to deride the defeated candidate and the Court influence which had vainly been brought into play for his support.

PROCESSION TO THE HUSTINGS AFTER A SUCCESSFUL CANVASS.

May 1, 1784. Every Man has his Hobby-horse.—The successful candidate is chaired in a novel and agreeable fashion; his noble supporter, the Duchess of Devonshire, has taken him 'pick-a-back,' and, with staff and scrip, is bearing the victor on his triumphant progress; she is pausing at the door of Mungo's Hotel, dealer in British spirits, and soliciting the hospitality of the proprietor, a black man: 'For the good of the Constitution, give me a glass of gin!'

Various bacchanalian revels are proceeding around, on the strength of Fox's triumphant return; the mob are huzzaing around two monster standards, which are topped by the cap of Liberty, and inscribed, 'Rights of the Commons. No prerogative,' 'Fox and Liberty all over the world.' An ensign is introduced, as appropriate to the occasion, significantly figuring forth a pair of executioner's axes, bound with a wreath of laurel.

May 6, 1784. Wisdom Led by Virtue and Prudence to the Temple of Fame.—This print is ascribed to Rowlandson, and in various points it offers a close resemblance to his style of execution. Wisdom in the present case is personified by the successful candidate for Westminster; the Duchess of Devonshire and Lady Duncannon, wearing Fox cockades in their head-dresses, are represented as Virtue and Prudence. The former lady is also carrying a fox's-brush; she is crying:—

Let Envy rail and Disappointment rage, Still Fox shall prove the wonder of the age!

To which Lady Duncannon is adding:—

Triumph and Fame shall every step attend His king's best subject and his country's friend!

Britannia is seated, in an attitude of expectation, at the portal of the Temple of Fame; she is bidding her patriotic son 'welcome to her arms.' Sir Cecil Wray, represented as a disappointed Fury, is seen in the distance; he is soliloquising:—

Now, by the ground that I am banish'd from, Well could I curse away a winter's night.

May 11, 1784. A Coat of Arms. Dedicated to the Newly-created Earl of Lonsdale.—There is no publisher's name to the plate, which offers a fanciful and by no means flattering design for an appropriate coat of arms and supporters, gratuitously presented for the use of Sir James Lowther, the newly-created Earl of Lonsdale. Two ragged and semi-clad Volunteers, the one minus his culottes, the other without shoes, with the initials W. M. on their crossbelts, form the supporters of a shield, above which figures the earl's coronet. There are six quarterings, each filled in with paper scrolls: 'False Musters,' 'False Certificates for Volunteer Companies,' 'False Returns,' 'Retention of Clothing,' 'Contract for building a man-of-war (cancelled and money returned),' and 'Retention of Bounty.' The motto of this suggestive escutcheon is, 'Who doubts it?'

Pitt had obtained his first seat in Parliament (1781) through the influence of Sir James Lowther, described by 'Junius' as 'the contemptuous tyrant of the North.' In 1784, when the King and his Prime Minister deemed it prudent to reward the adherents of their party, and at the same time strengthen the Court influence, by creating a new batch of peers, Pitt repaid his obligation to Lowther (the Duke of Rutland, Pitt's fellow-student at Cambridge, had enlisted Lowther's influence in his favour), by raising him to the House of Peers, under the title of the Earl of Lonsdale, thus overleaping the two inferior stages of the peerage. It might be supposed that this reward would have been commensurate with his pretensions, but Earl Lonsdale's name appearing at the bottom of the list of the newly-created earls published in the Gazette, he threatened to reject the earldom, and means were with difficulty found to appease his irritation.

The wits of the 'Rolliad' made the most of the circumstance: 'Hints from Dr. Prettyman to the Premier's Porter.—Let Lord Lonsdale have my Lord and your Lordship repeated in his ear as often as possible; the apartment hung with garter blue is proper for his reception.'

My lords, my lords, a whisper I desire— Dame Liberty grows stronger—some feet higher; She will not be bamboozled as of late— Aristocrate et la Lanterne Are very often cheek by jowl, we learn, Within a certain neigh'b'ring bustling State: I think your lordships and your graces Would not much like to dangle with wry faces.

Peter Pindar's Ode to Lord Lonsdale.

May 11, 1784. The Westminster Mendicant.—The rejected candidate for Westminster has been sent forth a wanderer. The figure of Sir Cecil Wray is represented as a blind beggar; he is resting his head and shoulders on a long staff; under his left arm is held a Subscription Scrutiny Box, in allusion to the vexatious scrutiny set on foot by his party; and he holds a spaniel by a string; a second begging-box is attached to the dog's collar. The mendicant is issuing a doleful appeal to the public:—

Pity the weak and needy, pray; Oh! pity me; I've lost the day.

Above the head of the blind man's dog is the following:—

See here the dog, of all his kind The fittest for a beggar blind: The beast can bark, or growl as hog; His name is Churchill,[26]—oh, the dog!

Below the title is engraved:—

Ye Christians, charitable, good, and civil, Pray something give to this poor wandering devil. By men cast out, perhaps by God forgiven, Then may one Judas find a road to heaven.

The Irish chairmen—who had played such a conspicuous part in the early riots, where they routed the sailor-mob brought up by Hood to intimidate Fox's voters—had a fling at their discomfited enemy in a 'new' ballad, 'Paddy's Farewell to Sir Cecil':—

Sir Cecil be aisy, I won't be unshivil; Now the Man of the Paple is chose in your stead; From swate Covent Garden you're flung to the Divil; By Jasus, Sir Cecil, you've bodder'd your head. Fa-ra-lal, &c.

To be sure, much avail to you all your fine spaiches; 'Tis nought but palaver, my honey, my dear; While all Charlie's voters stick to him like laiches, A friend to our liberties and our small beer. Fa-ra-lal, &c.

Ah, now! pray let no jontleman prissent take this ill; By my truth, Pat shall nivir use unshivil werds; But my varse sure must praise, which the name of Sir Cecil Hands down to oblivion's latest records. Fa-ra-lal, &c.

If myshelf with the tongue of a prophet is gifted, Oh! I sees in a twinkling the knight's latter ind! Tow'rds the verge of his life div'lish high he'll be lifted, And after his death, never fear, he'll discind. Fa-ra-lal, &c.

May 18, 1784. [The Westminster Deserter] Drumm'd out of the Regiment.—This caricature brings the election scenes in Covent Garden to an end; the Court party is defeated, and the Man of the People has triumphed. Sir Cecil Wray is handcuffed as a deserter, and is being drummed away from the hustings; he is exclaiming, 'Help, Churchill! Jackson, help! or I am lost for ever!' It is worthy of record that Sir Cecil Wray's figure disappears from the caricatures until 1791, when we meet him again with a barrel of small-beer under his arm, assisting the members of the Opposition (whose ranks he rejoined) to carry out the 'hopes of the party,' as set forth in a famous pictorial satire by Gillray (July 14, 1791).

In the Westminster Deserter 'honest Sam House' is drumming away with a will, and Wray is obliged to run the gauntlet of a line of exasperated Chelsea Pensioners, who are expressing a wish that 'all public deserters may feel public resentment;' a body of maid-servants are marching in the rear, with shovels, mops, and brooms, brought out in readinesss to sweep forth their antagonist. The electioneering mob is divided between hooting the 'Deserter' and applauding the success of the 'Champion of the People,' who is planting the standard of Britannia and manfully acknowledging his gratitude to his supporters: 'Friends and fellow-citizens, I cannot find words to express my feelings to you upon this victory.'

Fox's difficulties, as regarded his seat for Westminster and the hostilities of his opponents, the Court party, did not end with the election; the Ministerialists had from the first declared their intention of demanding a scrutiny if Fox succeeded, because it was known that, under the circumstances, this would be a long, tedious, and expensive affair. The returning officer acted partially, and upon Sir Cecil Wray's application for a scrutiny declined to make his return pending the investigation. Fox had secured a seat for Kirkwall, so that he was not hindered from taking his place in the House; and after some months' delay, and a great deal of fighting on both sides, the High Bailiff, Thomas Corbett, was ordered to duly return Charles James Fox as Member for Westminster, as is set forth in a caricature by Rowlandson (see [March 1, 1785]). Fox subsequently thought proper to bring an action against the High Bailiff, and that functionary in return for his perfidy was cast in heavy damages—a fresh triumph for the Opposition.

THE WESTMINSTER DESERTER DRUMM'D OUT OF THE REGIMENT.

May 18, 1784. [Secret Influence] Directing the New Parliament.—King George III. is complacently seated on his throne; once more reassured on the subject of his Parliament, he is remarking, with self-congratulation, 'I trust we have got such a Parliament as we wanted.' Secret Influence is represented on one side by a huge serpent whispering secret counsel to the monarch. The head of the reptile is that of Lord Temple. Lord Thurlow, on the other side of the throne, still wearing his Chancellor's wig, his body represented as that of a monstrous bird of prey, is observing, with his usual overbearing roughness, 'Damn the Commons! the Lords shall rule,' while the Scotch influence, in the person of Lord Bute, partially concealed behind the throne, is echoing, 'Very gude, very gude; damn the Commons!'

Britannia, unconscious of her danger, is calmly reposing, with her elbow resting on her shield, while Fox, who has recognised the dangers which are threatening the liberty of the people, is trying to rouse the slumberer, and crying, 'Thieves, thieves! Zounds, awake, madam, or you'll have your throat cut!'

SECRET INFLUENCE DIRECTING THE NEW PARLIAMENT.

May 18, 1784. Preceptor and Pupil.

Not Satan to the ear of Eve Did e'er such pious counsel give.—Milton.

The Prince of Wales, wearing his plumed hat, has fallen asleep; Fox, now represented as a toad, with a fox's brush for a tail—who has crept from the concealment of some neighbouring sedges—is insinuating pernicious counsel into the ear of the slumberer—

Abjure thy country and thy parents, and I will give thee dominion over Many powers. Better to rule in hell than serve on earth.

May 18, 1784. The Departure.—This affecting scene is taking place outside the Prince of Wales's residence; his Royal Highness is watching the departure of his friend from the window. Fox is mounted on a patient ass, ready to ride the road to 'Coventry;' the High Bailiff, having unlawfully refused to make his return until the conclusion of the scrutiny which Sir Cecil Wray thought proper to instigate, the caricaturist hints that, for the time, the Whig leader will be 'left out in the cold' until the question of his return is finally settled. Fox has accordingly rolled up his India Bill, and is taking a doleful farewell of his fair champions, the Duchess of Devonshire and Lady Ducannon, on either side of his steed; the sorrowing ladies are grasping his hand and crying—

Farewell, my Charley!—let no fears assail. Ah, sister, sister, must he, then, depart? To lose poor Reynard almost breaks my heart.

Fox is observing, before his departure—

If that a Scrutiny at last takes place, I can't tell how 'twill be, and please your Grace!

Burke is standing, equipped as a postilion, in readiness to drive off his ally, with a plan of economy under his arm.

May 25, 1784. Liberty and Fame Introducing Female Patriotism to Britannia.

She smiles— Infused with a fortitude from heaven. Shakespeare's Tempest.

This print has nothing of the caricature about it, excepting, perhaps, the unusual spirit, lightness, and ease of execution. All the figures are graceful and elegant, and the attitudes leave nothing to be desired. Britannia is on her throne, the British lion is at her feet, and the ocean, with her ships riding triumphant, is extending as far as can be seen; the figures of Liberty and Fame, with their respective attributes, are tripping up to the throne, leading the beautiful Georgiana forward to receive the laurels of victory.

May 20, 1784. [For the Benefit of the Champion]. A catch, to be performed at the New Theatre, Covent Garden. For admission apply to the Duchess. N.B. Gratis to those who wear large tails.

FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE CHAMPION.

The 'catch' is performed by the Duchess of Devonshire, Fox, and Lord North; the grief expressed by the singers is, of course, apocryphal. The Duchess is leading; she wears a Fox favour in her hat, which is further garnished with a fox's brush; she is pointing to a tombstone topped with the death's head and crossbones, and inscribed, 'Here lies poor Cecil Ray.' 'Look, neighbours, look! Here lies poor Cecil Wray.' 'Dead and turned to clay,' sings Fox; to which Lord North adds, 'What! old Cecil Wray?' The sharp profile of Burke is thrust through the door. The pictures hanging round the room are appropriate to the subject: a committee of foxes are wondering over 'The Fox who has lost his tail;' 'The Fox and the Crow,' in which sly Reynard is represented as gazing longingly at the cheese held in the crow's beak; 'Fox and the Grapes,' and 'Fox and Goose.'

May 28, 1784. The Petitioning Candidate for Westminster.—Designed according to a note on the plate, by Lord James Manners, and executed by Rowlandson. As we stated in an earlier caricature, due precautions were employed that Fox should not be left without a place in the newly-constituted Parliament, and accordingly in the present print—nearly the last of the series put forth on the Westminster Election for 1784—Fox, with a fox's head and brush, completely dressed in a suit of tartan, is speeding along, on a Highland pony, away from Kirkwall (for which he took his seat) back to London, flourishing his plaid, and crying, 'From the heath-covered mountains of Scotia I come.'

We can now take leave of the caricatures called forth on the Westminster Election and continue our review of the remainder of the satirical prints issued by Rowlandson in the course of 1784.

November 2, 1784. The Minister's Ass. Vide Gazetteer, November 11, 1784. Published by S. W. Fores, 3 Piccadilly.—Three mounted figures are shown crossing Wimbledon Common; one gentleman's donkey is speeding along briskly; a gallant lady, mounted on a grey horse, is riding between the two cavaliers and their donkeys; she is giving a friendly cut with her whip at the animal bestridden by her left-hand neighbour—the minister's ass, in fact, which is refusing to gallop forward; the rider is wearing his blue riband. A figure in the rear is endeavouring to reduce the refractory beast to reason with a scientifically administered kick.

December 10, 1784. Anticipation of an intended Exhibition, with an excellent new ballad to be sung by a High Character, to the tune of 'The Vicar and Moses.' Mark Lane, delin. and fecit. Published by T. Harris, High Street, Marylebone.—This caricature sets forth by anticipation the fate of Christopher Atkinson, M.P., who was sentenced on November 27, 1784, and pilloried November 25, 1785. A print by Gillray (August 12, 1782) gives a view of the trial under the title of 'The Victualling Committee Framing a Report.' Peter Pindar also makes a poetical allusion to the circumstances. Christopher Atkinson, M.P. for Heydon, Yorkshire, was convicted of peculation in his semi-official capacity as corn-factor to the Victualling Board. He was finally tried at the King's Bench for perjury, found guilty, and expelled from the House of Commons.

In Rowlandson's view of the novel situation of the contractor the pillory is raised on the Corn Exchange, and the criminal is standing with his head and hands enclosed in a board, with two dwarf corn-sheaves on either side; the Sheriffs, with a numerous crowd of citizens, are attending the exhibition, which Atkinson does not find to his taste. The sentiments of the pilloried contractor are expounded in a ballad:—

Here stand I, poor soul, With my head in a hole, To be gazed at by all passers by; And what's this about, This racket and rout, But for swearing a mercantile lie!

They say that for gain I've a rogue been in grain But what is all that to the point? If all were so serv'd Who, like me, have deserv'd, The State would be soon out of joint.

Many agents, I fear, Would have their heads here, And, like me, be expos'd to detractors; What would you do then, For Parliament men, Should any of them be contractors?

For my part I rejoice, And with loud, grateful voice Proclaim it to all my beholders; Notwithstanding your scoff, I think I'm well off, That my head is still left on my shoulders.

I know it full well, And for once truth will tell, Tho' my speech in this d—d place may falter: Not a session goes by But much less rogues than I Their last contract make with a halter.

But as I am quitting I think it is fitting My future pursuits you should know: When I leave the King's Bench I will live with the French; To the devil my country may go.

1784. John Stockdale, the Bookselling Blacksmith, one of the King's New Friends. (See Intrepid Magazine.)—Old Stockdale, the somewhat notorious publisher of his day, who, like the hero of the last picture, had the honour of standing in the pillory, is shown at his forge, surrounded by hammers and horseshoes, and with a tethered jackass waiting his attentions, as soon as the Bookselling Blacksmith shall have completed the work he has in hand, the somewhat incongruous occupation of hammering out folio volumes on an anvil.

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