a Lie;" representing a long line of well-dressed people, "each in his turn adding something to a rumor, until it finally is swollen into a circumstantial falsehood; every successive face, with a new expression, rising in the scale, from silliness to craft, from craft to mystery, and from mystery to the broad-faced impudence that delighted in a conscious fabrication." In the purely comic line, Bunbury's "Barber's Shop" is so excellent that neither Hogarth nor Cruikshank has surpassed it, either in imagination or execution. It is a show of faces in numerous varieties of being shaved: some, in the torture of beards rough as scrubbing-brushes, harshly dealt with by blunt razors-others with every feature enveloped in soap-suds -some rejoicing in the (perhaps unaccustomed) sensation of a perfectly smooth shave more complacently gazing in the looking-glass at their improved looks. These, one might think, are scanty and intractable materials for the artist. But he has subdued the commonplace, and made it striking as well as real. A line, a dot, sometimes the mere "shadow of a shade," gives a feature or an expression with telling effect.

James Gilray, who flourished from 1780 to 1811, during which time he produced over twelve hundred satirical works, may be regarded as founder and master of personal pictorial satire in England. He was a Scotchman, who went as a journeyman engraver to London. He was a stout, bluff, muscular man, of low stature, in all respects deficient in and negligent of "the Graces," which Lord Chesterfield esteemed more highly than the Virtues. His brow was broad and bold; his eyes deepseated and stormy; his voice harsh and angry; his habits of life the reverse of refined. He had been unfortunate at home, and was scarcely more so in London. Conscious of ability, and angry because it was not recognized, he naturally fell into vigorous satire, and his first performance in that line had certain lords and ladies of the court for their object. They were accidentally seen; and some politician, perceiving how useful such a talent might be for party purposes, gave him employment. Sir T. Erskine May, describing the first administration of the Duke of Portland (known as the Coalition Ministry; it included Lord North and Charles James Fox, political enemies during many years; was formed in April, 1783, and was dissolved by Mr. Pitt's coming into power in December the same year), says: "Nor is it unworthy of remark, that art had come to the aid of letters in political contro

versy. Since the days of Walpole, caricatures had occasionally portrayed ministers in grotesque forms and with comic incidents; but, during this period, caricaturists had begun to exercise no little influence upon popular feeling. The broad humour and bold pencil of Gilray had contributed to foment the excitement against Mr. Fox and Lord North; and this skilful limner elevated caricature to the rank of a new art. The people were familiarized with the persons and characters of public men; crowds gathered round the printsellers' windows; and as they passed on, laughing good-humoredly, felt little awe or reverence for rulers whom the caricaturist had made ridiculous. The press had found a powerful ally, which, first used in the interests of party, became a further element of popular force."*

For more than twenty years, Gilray had no rival in the art which he had almost created. He was consistent, too, in his politics, and, throughout his long career, laughed at the Whigs. He had great facility of invention and execution, and remarkable aptitude for seeing and seizing the salient points of a subject. When the Whigs, between the Revolution of 1789 and the re-establishment of order in France under the Consulate of Napoleon Bonaparte, openly and secretly sympathized with the anarchists, Gilray pursued and exposed them with untiring and relentless satire.

He did not spare even Burke, after he had separated from Fox on that very question. During a debate in the Commons, in January, 1792, on the Alien Bill, Burke declared that three thousand daggers had been bespoken from a Birmingham manufacturer, of which seventy had been delivered; and it had not been ascertained how many of these were to be exported, and how many were intended for home consumption; drew out a dagger, which he had kept concealed in his coat-sleeve, threw it on the floor of the House with much theatrical vehemence, and then, pointing to the weapon, exclaimed :"This is what you are to gain by an alliance with France; wherever these principles are introduced, then practice must follow." What was intended, perhaps previously rehearsed, to be impressive, became ludicrous, and was made almost farcical by one of the members picking up the weapon, and exclaiming, with mock sim

* Constitutional History of England, vol. xi., p. 1234.

plicity:-"Here's the knife. I wonder where the fork can be !"

Within twenty-four hours of Burke's "oratorical acting," as it has been called, his portrait, by Gilray, was in all the printsellers' windows. It represents him in the act of flinging the dagger down, both of his hands tremulously pointing to it, his figure grotesquely drawn, and his very peculiar features most ludicrously represented. Charles Knight has given an engraving of this in his Popular History of England,* and says, "so characteristic a likeness of Burke was never produced as in this sketch."

Gilray's popularity is based upon the fidelity of his portraitures as well as his great talent for presenting persons and incidents in ludicrous points of view.

His

principal works have been rescued from oblivion by republication since his death, in 1815. There was a re-issue in monthly parts, in 1824; another, 1830, by J. McLean, London, containing 304 sheets, with descriptions, and a third, within the last ten years, with a lively volume of letter press, by Mr. H. G. Bohn, London. Some of his best works are given in Wright's "England under the House of Hanover." Pitt, with his nez retroussé; Sheridan, with his beak, fed into a bulb by vinous bibations; Fox, with his round face, low forehead, black, beetling eyebrows, and clumsily rotund figure; Burke, with his hanging lip and eternal spectacles; Lord North, with his plump boyish face; Erskine, in his robes as "Counsellor Ego; the Prince of Wales of that day, handsome even amid his unbounded license; Mrs. Fitzherbert, overgrown in figure, and with a face resembling a full moon; and, above all, the plain, frog-eyed face of George the Third, in which, now that we know him, simplicity and shrewdness seem mingled with obstinacy and insanity. There was one of Gilray's sketches representing George III. as one of the giants of Brobdignag, curiously examining Gulliver, who stands on the ample palm of his hand, which has never been surpassed. The Gulliver of the sketch is Napoleon Bonaparte, who had become formidable about that time. A companion to this was "Bonaparte, chief Baker of Europe," who is shown making gingerbread Kings; breaking up fragments of the Continent into dough, out of which these new potentates are to be formed; taking out of the oven some of

*Vol. vii., p. 254.

these completed, such as Naples, Spain, &c. ; thrusting in some more to be baked; with a little row of future kings on a shelf (Fox, Sheridan, Grey, &c., recognizable among them) scarcely shaped and evidently to be finished another time.

On the death of Mr. Pitt, in January, 1806, the Whigs returned to ministerial office, and were soon known as "All the Talents," from some foolish boastings of their great ability by themselves and indiscreet friends. Gilray immediately produced what many have considered his best work. It is called "Making Decent," and represents Fox, Sheridan, and others of the new Ministry, who were known to be much impoverished by riotous and improvident living, in the act of dressing for the first levee, changing their tattered habiliments for Court suits, the whole group washing, shaving, powdering, and scrubbing. The satire was direct and personal, with strong force of truth; the likenesses were perfect, and the laugh rang throughout England. But Gilray's career was near its close. He took the popular side, against the Duke of York, next brother of the Prince of Wales, who, in 1809, had to submit to a parliamentary inquiry, and popular indignation, on charges of having knowingly permitted Mrs. Mary Ann Clarke, his mistress, to dispose, for money, of his patronage as Commander-inChief of the Army. Gilray's mind gave way in 1811, and he died in 1815, in great poverty. He was a power in his time-vigorous, accurate, and sarcastic; not often grotesque, with only occasional gaiety, but always driving the arrow home.

Thomas Rowlandson, though ranked among the caricaturists, scarcely deserves to be mustered in that corps. He was a Londoner, who had studied drawing at Paris and continued his studies in the Royal Academy, then under the presidency of Sir Joshua Reynolds. He was over seventy at his death, in 1827. He is now known only by his grotesque illustrations of the three series of "Dr. Syntax," "The Dance of Life," and "The Dance of Death." These were published, as gaudily colored engravings, and are chiefly noticeable for their bold extravagance. His men, women, and children are drawn out of nature in figure, feature, and attitude. Some of his back-grounds are tolerable, but when Rowlandson's drawings excite the risible muscles, it is not so much in mirthful admiration as in almost contemptuous ridicule. Whoever will submit to waste an hour in looking at "Dr.

Syntax," will wonder how such a miserable work-the joint production of a worn-out pencil and a feeble pen— could have been popular, in England, half a century ago:-nay, it even was reproduced, in fac-simile, in this country, and had a large sale! The system upon which this work, with others by the same authors, was manufactured, was original, at least. William Coombe, who died at an advanced age in 1823, was a man of great learning and many accomplishments, who, after running through a couple of large fortunes, became a sort of pensioner upon the late Rudolph Ackermann, an enterprising German, who, settling in London, with some taste for, and knowledge of, the Fine Arts, became head of a large establishment, at 96 Strand, for the sale of paintings, engravings, and artists' and amateurs' materials.

He it was who introduced lithography, the accidental invention of Aloys Senefelder, his countryman, into England, as early as the year 1807. He was publisher and founder of The Forget-me-Not," which, as the first English Annual, was "father of a line of Kings;" and he issued a Ladies' Magazine, "La Belle Assemblée," to which Coombe and Rowlandson contributed with pen and pencil. It was in this that "Dr. Syntax in Search of the Picturesque," a rambling, desultory story in octosyllabic verse, first appeared as a serial. Rowlandson having designed and etched a comic exaggeration, a proof would be sent to Coombe, who was always to be found "at home," for he was, in his closing years, under perpetual arrest for debt, and lived within the Rules" of the King's Bench Prison-said rules extending a considerable space around that doleful mansion. Within forty-eight hours after Coombe had received Rowlandson's design, the rhymed letter press to illustrate it would be in the printers' hands, and this would be repeated for months, until, the subject getting exhausted, artist and rhymester would wind up. Rarely, if ever, did Coombe know what scene he would have to write up to, until he had Rowlandson's handiwork for the next month placed in his hands. In this manner " Dr. Syntax" was made, and, from its popularity, two other series were produced -one representing Syntax in search of Consolation, the other showing him in search of a Wife. After Coombe had killed off this clerical hero, in the last volume, so much regret was expressed at his loss, that Coombe wrote "The History of Johnny Quae Genus" (a foundling of the late Syntax), and Rowlandson, as before, supplied