SAILORS CAROUSING.
1786 (?). [The Return from Sport].—A bold and well-executed etching, to which a further interest is added by Rowlandson's easy and flowing touch, of a rustic subject in Morland's manner. The results of the morning's sport are chiefly remarkable for their ludicrous insignificance.
THE RETURN FROM SPORT.
May, 1786. A Theatrical Chymist.—We have already seen the genius of Holman, who was, as we have noticed, at school with the Caricaturist, rising like the sun as represented by Rowlandson's pencil and graver: we now find the satirist giving his alliance to the other side, although the former print, Topham endeavouring with his squirt to extinguish the rising genius of Holman, was being reissued. Probably the success on one side induced the artist—who, we presume, sought only to exercise his art, and was not inconvenienced by party prejudices—to try and make as fair a counter-hit as we so often find him doing. The figure of Holman, a mean and by no means imposing-looking personage, is issuing from a still, together with a discharge of 'puffs,' &c. The Theatrical Chymist is a clerical-looking worthy, our old friend Parson Bate, who is employing a decayed military buck, in tattered regimentals, seated on a pile of paper, to fan the furnace Academy with the Morning Post bellows; the materials, from which the actor Holman is being distilled, are Ignorance, Impertinence, Coxcomity, Misconception, Raving, Ranting, Grinning, Snarling, Tortured Attitudes, Envy, Detraction.
1786. A Box-Lobby Hero. The Branded Bully, or the Ass stripp'd of the Lion's Skin.—The incident which forms the subject of this plate is now forgotten, but it appears some overgrown and swaggering personage had constituted himself the tyrant of the box lobbies. The old fable of the Ass in the Lion's skin is verified. Although a head and a half taller than any of those present, the Branded Bully is allowing a mere dwarf to pull his enormous pigtail, and kick him. The ladies are jeering at the discomfitted swaggerer, who, it seems, is in such abject fear that he is suffering all sorts of indignities without attempting to resent them.