But certainly this side of art was treated by Henry Bunbury freely, and with marked success, and the list would be a long one if we were to attempt to chronicle all. "Edwin and Ethelinda," "Black-eyed Susan," "Auld Robin Gray" (a charming colour-print, also engraved by Bartolozzi), "Adelaide in the Garden" (by the same engraver), the charming "Songstress," "Charlotte and Werther's meeting," "Margaret's Tomb," "The Girl of Snowdon," "The Girl of Modena," "Marianna," "Cicely," and that sweet "Country Maid" engraved by J. R. Smith in 1782, and whose legend tells us:
"No care but Love can discompose her breast,
Love of all cares the sweetest and the best."
His illustrations to Macklin's Shakespeare come nearer to our subject proper, and here we have the whole Falstaff episode very fully and very humourously illustrated; while Launce and his dog, whom he "would have to behave as a dog at all things," may be compared in our artist's treatment of canine life with his "Black George," the Suffolk gamekeeper.
Was it, we may here ask, in returning to the story of our artist's life, that fatal quality, the artistic temperament, or was it his charming social qualities, his frequent visits to great houses and corresponding expenses, which had brought Henry Bunbury at this time into financial difficulties?
His military connection, which had led to his appointment as A.D.C. to the Duke of York, was too important to be neglected even under these conditions.
Hence it is that in 1788 we find the Bunburys settled in London at Whitehall. Our artist was now, from his Court position and his own tastes, thrown into the midst of London social life; and this new life in all its features begins to reproduce itself in his caricatures. "Hyde Park," "The Coffee House Patriots," "The Chop House," "Richmond Hill," "Bethnal Green," and the large print of a "Fête at Carlton House" (at which no doubt he was present in attendance on the Duke), belong to this period of his life.
Bath he no doubt knew well already from his visits to the West of England, where it was at this time the great rendezvous for fashionable society; he must have himself moved in this society, and enjoyed the study of its follies and foibles, its airs and graces, which the dramatists of the time love to reproduce. For here certainly it was that he gained his inspiration for the "Long Minuet," as danced at Bath, with its line of stately dancers and its classical inscription—
"Longa Tysonum minuit
Quid velit et possit rerum concordia discors."
This is one of Bunbury's most famous prints; and justly so, for nothing could be truer to life, especially to eighteenth-century life, and probably to Bath of the period, than these bowing and pirouetting figures.
In his ["Lumps of Pudding"] we have the same theme, but treated with a coarser note; and yet some of the figures are excellent—notably the stout gentleman in the corner, who has removed his wig to mop his heated brow—the enthusiast near him who is "setting" before a dame with a three-decker and its anchor in her hair, and the group of four who are next the lady dancing with her pet dog. The "Long Minuet" and this last belong to that class of caricatures in which the figures form a continued story—a line of humour which the Germans have developed in Fliegende Blätter, which Caran d'Ache has used with success in France, and which Pick-Me-Up, when it was under the able direction of Mr. Leslie Willson, scored many a good point with.