It is evident, then, that the easiest way to write a history of the kind we have spoken of, is to begin at the end and write backwards. At any rate the historian avoids discouragement, at the very commencement, from the paucity of materials. And that is the plan Mr Wright has adopted. Breaking new ground, he naturally selected the spot most likely to reward his toil, and pitched upon the reigns of the first three Georges. He could hardly have chosen a more interesting period; and certainly, without coming inconveniently near to the present day, he could have fixed on none more prolific in the satires and drolleries he has made it his business to disinter and reproduce.
The contents of Mr Wright's book would sort into two comprehensive classes—the social and the political; the former the least voluminous, but the most entertaining. Political satires and caricatures, under the first two Georges, possess but a moderate attraction at the present day; and it is not till the period of the American war—we might almost say not until that of the French Revolution—that they excite interest, and move to mirth. The hits at the follies of society at large have a more general and enduring interest than those levelled at individuals and intrigues long since passed away. The first ten years of the accession of the house of Hanover were poor both in the number and quality of caricatures; and the remoteness of the period has enhanced the difficulty of finding them. Written satires and pasquinades were abundant, but, to judge from those preserved, few were worth preserving. Of these ephemeral publications there exists no important collection, either public or private. Of caricatures, more are to be got at, although, strange to say, the British Museum contains very few. There was far less of humour and spirit in those that appeared during the early part of the eighteenth century than in those produced during its latter portion. In fact, until the reign of George II., the art could hardly be said to be cultivated. In the first hundred pages of the book before us, which comprise nearly the whole reign of George I., we find only fourteen cuts—a small proportion of the three hundred scattered through the two volumes. And scarcely one of the fourteen has the qualities essential to a genuine caricature. They aim at telling a story, or conveying an insinuation, rather than at burlesquing persons. Sometimes the prints or medals (the latter were a favourite vehicle for the circulation of satire) were simply allegories, and as such are incorrectly designated by the word caricature, which, as derived from the Italian caricare, implies a thing overcharged or exaggerated in its proportions. As an instance of these allegories, we may cite a Jacobite medal, where Britannia is seen weeping, whilst the horse of Hanover tramples on the lion and unicorn. The English nation was at that period usually personified by Britannia and her lion, until Gillray, much later—taking the idea, it is said, from Dr Arbuthnot's satire—hit off the humourous figure of John Bull, which has been preserved, with more or less modification, by all subsequent caricaturists. Hogarth, who first attracted notice in 1723-4, by his attacks upon the degeneracy of the stage—then abandoned to opera, masquerade, and pantomime—brought up a broader style of caricature than his predecessors, but still he was too emblematical. Then, for a time, caricature got into the hands of amateur artists—female as well as male. Thus a humorous drawing of the Italian singers, Cuzzoni and Farinelli, and of Heidegger the ugly manager, is attributed to the Countess of Burlington. Then, after an interregnum, during which caricature languished, Gillray arose—Gillray, who, coarse and often indecent as he was, (in which respects, however, he did but conform to the tone and manners of his day,) was unquestionably the ablest of his tribe, the most thoroughly English, and the most irresistibly humorous caricaturist we have had. The refined might tax him with grossness, but his delineations went home to the multitude; and to the multitude the caricaturist must address himself, if he would produce effect, and enjoy influence. For a while, during the war with France, Gillray's active pencil was a power in the state. In his turn he was surpassed in coarseness and vulgarity, but not in wit, by his contemporary Rowlandson.
The sketches before us, of the history of England under the house of Hanover, are not to be considered as dependent on the satires and caricatures used to illustrate them. They form a general narrative of the most prominent events of a very important century, with which are interwoven, when opportunity offers, the most remarkable pen and pencil pasquinades of the day. The latter, however, have not always been obtainable, or are not worth recording. As we have already mentioned, they are scarce at the commencement of the book, which opens at the death of Queen Anne in 1714. When Jacobite plots were rife, and party-feeling ran so high as to produce frequent bloody struggles in London streets, between the Whigs or Hanoverians and the "Jacks," as the adherents of the Pretender were styled by their opponents, there appear to have existed no draughtsmen of much talent for caricature; whilst the poetical satires, judging from the specimens furnished by Mr Wright, are very middling in merit, although exceedingly numerous. If there was little wit, there was much violence and abuse on both sides. On the part of the Jacobites, agitation was the order of the day; and the mob, both in London and the provinces, were incited to many excesses—such as attacking houses, robbing passengers, pulling down Dissenting chapels, and drinking James the Third's health in the open streets. In Manchester, in June 1715, the population were for several days masters of the town. The results were the passing of the Riot Act, and the quartering of cavalry in the places most disaffected. The Whigs, on their part, were not idle, but carried on a brisk war of words, and raked up all the old stories about the Pretender—that he was no king's son, but a miller's offspring, conveyed into the Queen's bed in a warming-pan by the Jesuit Father Petre. Of course such tales as these gave a fine handle to squib and lampoon; and, in reference to the Jesuit's name, the Whigs designated the Pretender as Peterkin or Perkin—an appellation offering a convenient coincidence with that of a previous impudent aspirant to the English crown. To sneers of this kind the Jacobite minstrels manfully and spiritedly replied; and although the muse was less propitious in England than in Scotland, there is no doubt these effusions had a considerable effect upon the people. But the suppression of the rebellion damped their spirits, and with it their poetic fire; whilst the exulting Whigs triumphantly flapped their wings, and crowed a yet louder strain. Perkin and the warming-pan were the burden of every lay, and a peal of parodies celebrated the flight of the Stuart.
"'Twas when the seas were roaring
With blasts of northern wind,
Young Perkin lay deploring,
On warming-pan reclined
Wide o'er the roaring billows
He cast a dismal look,
And shiver'd like the willows
That tremble o'er the brook."
One would think the "Oxford scholars," accounted such fervent Jacobites, might have replied victoriously to such tepid couplets as this. But their hearts were down at their King's repulse. And poor as the verses were, no doubt they took wonderfully at the time,—so much, in such things, depends upon the apropos. And now a large section of the Tories, previously favourable to the Jacobites, broke away from them in their misfortune, made their peace with the ruling powers, and took the oath of allegiance. But long after fighting was over in the North—to be revived only in '45 by the chivalrous Charles Edward—the Jacobite mob kept London in hot water, and, thanks to the inefficiency of the police, might have done serious mischief, but for the Muggite Societies formed at that period. These were simply Whig clubs, meeting at certain public-houses, (the Magpie and Stump, in Newgate Street, was one,) and sallying out upon occasion to fight the Jacobites. The latter had also taverns of rendezvous, but these were few, and it was chiefly the lowest mob that in London still sported the White Rose, and cursed the Hanoverian. In most of the many conflicts that then occurred, the "Jacks" got the worst of it. If they assembled to break windows on an illumination night, or to burn William or George in effigy, they were soon assailed by the Loyal Society, or some other Whig association, who, acting as special constables without having taken the oath, drubbed them with cudgels, and extinguished their bonfires. It would appear that the Jacks did not often venture to impede the Whig mob in the performance of analogous ceremonies; since we read of a certain Fifth of November, when caricature effigies of the Pretender and his chief adherents and supporters were carried in triumph through the streets. "First, two men bearing each a warming-pan, with a representation of the infant Pretender—a nurse attending him with a sucking bottle, and another playing with him by beating the warming-pan. These were followed by three trumpeters, playing Lillibulero and other Whig tunes. Then came a cart with Ormond and Marr, appropriately dressed. This was followed by another cart, containing the Pope and Pretender seated together, and Bolingbroke as the secretary of the latter. They were all drawn backwards, with halters round their necks." The sole opposition made by the Jacobites to this outrageous demonstration, was by the somewhat paltry proceeding of stealing the faggots collected for the Whig bonfire. Four months after this, the Jacobites attempted a procession, and a great fight ensued, in which the Whigs were victorious, after having "made rare work for the surgeons." The government of the day showed little mercy to the rioters. Seditious ballad-singers, and persons holding disloyal discourse, were flogged and pilloried; and at last, the hanging of several of the disaffected for storming a Mug-house, put an end to the disturbances. That the Whigs did not bear their triumph very meekly appears from the following paragraph, extracted from Read's Weekly Journal of June 15, 1717.
"Last Monday being supposed to be the birthday of the Sovereign of the White Rose, in respect to the anniversary, an honest Whig went from the Roebuck to St James's, with a jackdaw finely dressed in white roses, and set on a warming-pan bedeckt with the same sweet-scented commodity, which caused abundance of laughter all the way, to the great mortification of the Knights Companions of that order, and all the other Jacks, to see their sovereign so maltreated in the person of his representative."
The poor crushed Jacobites were fain to grin and bear it.
The suppression of political riots was followed by a great prevalence of highway robberies, in and around the metropolis. The streets of London were not safe, even in the daytime; and ladies went out in their chairs guarded by servants with loaded blunderbusses. The following extracts from newspapers of the time read oddly enough—especially when we remember that not a hundred and thirty years have elapsed since the crimes recorded in them occurred.
"Thursday, 21st January 1720. About five o'clock in the evening, the stage-coach from London to Hampstead was attacked and robbed by highwaymen, at the foot of the hill, and one of the passengers severely beaten for attempting to hide his money."
"Sunday 24. At eight o'clock in the evening, two highwaymen attacked a gentleman in a coach on the south side of St Paul's churchyard, and robbed him."
"Sunday 31. A gentleman robbed and murdered in Bishopsgate street."
"Monday, February 1. The Duke of Chandos, coming from Canons, had another encounter with highwaymen, whom he captured."
"Tuesday 2. The postboy was attacked by three highwaymen in Tyburn road, but the Duke of Chandos, happening to pass that way, came to his rescue."
His grace of Chandos seems to have been a sort of amateur thief-taker. Then we read of stage-coaches stopped and robbed between London and Stoke Newington, and of a certain day, when "all the stage-coaches coming from Surrey to London were robbed by highwaymen." At last a reward of one hundred pounds was offered for the apprehension of any highwayman within five miles of London. Amongst those captured were several persons of good repute in their respective callings. They included a London tradesman, a duke's valet, and the keeper of a boxing-school.