We are then told that “this, if not the first, has yet been the chief machine which his enemies have employ’d against the doctor; they have exposed him in the same piece with the pope and the devil, and who now could imagine that any simple priest should be able to stand before a power which had levelled popes and monarchs?” At least one copy of the caricature here alluded to is preserved, although a great rarity, and it is represented in our cut No. 191. Two of the party remained long associated together in the popular outcry, and as the name of the third fell into contempt and oblivion, the doctor’s place in this association was taken by a new cause of alarm, the Pretender, the child whom we have just seen so joyously brandishing his windmill. It is evident, however, that this caricature greatly exasperated Sacheverell and the party which supported him.
It will have been noticed that the writer just quoted, in using the term “print,” ignores altogether that of caricature, which, however, was about this time beginning to come into use, although it is not found in the dictionaries, I believe, until the appearance of that of Dr. Johnson, in 1755. Caricature is, of course, an Italian word, derived from the verb caricare, to charge or load; and therefore, it means a picture which is charged, or exaggerated (the old French dictionaries say, “c’est la même chose que charge en peinture”). The word appears not to have come into use in Italy until the latter half of the seventeenth century, and the earliest instance I know of its employment by an English writer is that quoted by Johnson from the “Christian Morals” of Sir Thomas Brown, who died in 1682, but it was one of his latest writings, and was not printed till long after his death:—“Expose not thyself by four-footed manners unto monstrous draughts (i.e. drawings) and caricatura representations.” This very quaint writer, who had passed some time in Italy, evidently uses it as an exotic word. We find it next employed by the writer of the Essay No. 537, of the “Spectator,” who, speaking of the way in which different people were led by feelings of jealousy and prejudice to detract from the characters of others, goes on to say, “From all these hands we have such draughts of mankind as are represented in those burlesque pictures which the Italians call caricaturas, where the art consists in preserving, amidst distorted proportions and aggravated features, some distinguishing likeness of the person, but in such a manner as to transform the most agreeable beauty into the most odious monster.” The word was not fully established in our language in its English form of caricature until late in the last century.
No. 192. Atlas.
The subject of agitation which produced a greater number of caricatures than any previous event was the wild financial scheme introduced into France by the Scottish adventurer, Law, and imitated in England in the great South Sea Bubble. It would be impossible here, within our necessary limits, to attempt to trace the history of these bubbles, which all burst in the course of the year 1720; and, in fact, it is a history of which few are ignorant. On this, as on former occasions, the great mass of the caricatures, especially those against the Mississippi scheme, were executed in Holland, but they are much inferior to the works of Romain de Hooghe. In fact, so great was the demand for these caricatures, that the publishers, in their eagerness for gain, not only deluged the world with plates by artists of no talent, which were without point or interest, but they took old plates of any subject in which there was a multitude of figures, put new titles to them, and published them as satires on the Mississippi scheme; for people were ready to take anything which represented a crowd as a satire on the eagerness with which Frenchmen rushed into the share-market. One or two curious instances of this deception might be pointed out. Thus, an old picture, evidently intended to represent the meeting of a king and a nobleman, in the court of a palace, surrounded by a crowd of courtiers, in the costume probably of the time of Henri IV., was republished as a picture of people crowding to the grand scene of stock-jobbing in Paris, the Rue Quinquenpoix; and the old picture of the battle between Carnival and Lent came out again, a little re-touched, under the Dutch title, “Stryd tuszen de smullende Bubbel-Heeren en de aanstaande Armoede,” i.e., “The battle between the good-living bubble-lords and approaching poverty.”
Besides being issued singly, a considerable number of these prints were collected and published in a volume, which is still met with not unfrequently, under the title “Het groote Tafereel der Dwaasheid,” “The great picture of folly.” One of this set of prints represents a multitude of persons, of all ages and sexes, acting the part of Atlas in supporting on their backs globes, which, though made only of paper, had become, through the agitation of the stock exchange, heavier than gold. Law himself (see our cut No. 192) stands foremost, and requires the assistance of Hercules to support his enormous burthen. In the French verses accompanying this print, the writer says—
Ami Atlas, on voit (sans conter vous et moi)
Faire l’Atlas partout des divers personnages,
Riche, pauvre, homme, femme, et sot et quasi-sage,
Valet, et paisan, le gueux s’eleve en roi.