. He adopted this as the mark or signature of his caricatures, and consequently he was always spoken of as H. B. down to the time of his death, which occurred about the year 1869. He, too, shared the spirit of the better time. Collectors number his published caricatures at nine hundred and seventeen, which have been re-issued in eleven volumes; but in none of his works is there any thing of the savage vulgarity of the caricatures produced during the Bonaparte wars. It was a custom with English print-sellers to keep port-folios of his innocent and amusing pictures to let out by the evening to families about to engage in the arduous work of entertaining their friends at dinner. He excelled greatly in his portraits, many of which, it is said by contemporaries, are the best ever taken of the noted men of that day, and may be safely accepted as historical. Brougham, Peel, O'Connell, Hume, Russell, Palmerston, and others appear in his works as they were in their prime, with little distortion or exaggeration, the humor of the pictures being in the situation portrayed. Thus, after a debate in which allusion was made to an ancient egg anecdote,
produced a caricature in which the leaders of parties were drawn as hens sitting upon eggs. The whole interest of the picture lies in the speaking likenesses of the men. An air of refinement pervades his designs. His humor is not aggressive. It was remarked at the time in the Westminster Review that the great hits of Gillray, on being put up for the first time in Mrs. Humphrey's window, were received by the crowd with shouts of approval, but that the kindlier humor of
only elicited silent smiles.
Box in a New York Theatre in 1830.
"I observed in the front row of a dress box a lady performing the most maternal office possible, several gentlemen without their coats, and a general air of contempt for the decencies of life, certainly more than usually revolting."—Mrs. Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans, vol. ii., p. 194.