Rowlandson the Caricaturist; a Selection from His Works. Vol. 1

ROWLANDSON THE CARICATURIST.

Buyers and readers of books, all admirers of pictures, drawings, and engravings—in a word, the intelligent, and, let us hope, larger proportion of the community—are well aware, if they are inclined to search for information in respect to the celebrities of art, or would inquire into the personal careers of the renowned pioneers and practitioners of the serious branches of the profession, of whatever period, school, or nationality, that numerous sources of reference, tolerably easy of access, are open to the seeker without being driven far abroad in his quest.

There exist, as we are all thoroughly aware, abundant lives of artists, dictionaries of painters, and other prolific sources of information upon the practisers of the sober walks of pictorial art, with rich collections of engravings from their works, in fact, a complete library of delightful literature, which goes far towards proving that the world at least acknowledges a slight interest in individuals as well as works, and that people care to learn some particulars of the men who spent their industrious existences, and devoted the gifts of their admitted genius and application to the humanising walks of life, and to the fitting illustration of the world's universal passions and history, or to the delineation of the ever-varying beauties of nature under picturesque aspects.

Wealthy collectors, the cultivated patrons of material refinement, frequenters of picture galleries, those who love pictures by instinct, art amateurs, and the hopeful and fervent student, have alike a provision prepared for them in this regard, which happily leaves little to be desired. The memoirs of artists—men whose domestic and inner lives in so many instances teach lessons of gentleness, simplicity, and singleness of purpose, of perseverance under difficulties; making manifest to a world which is often slow to give them credit for the gifts that are in them, the strong impulses of talent under untoward conditions—are, for the most part, tender memorials, labours of love, cherished productions of biographers, whose own natural qualifications and trained appreciation of the subtler attractions of art have brought them into more intimate communion with the memorable subjects of their studies.

It has ever been a source of regret to the writer, since his youthful fancies were first won by the marvels of grotesque art, and the pleasant creations of the graphic humourists, that while the names of the designers, familiarly known as caricaturists—who have enriched the more playful branches of the profession—are household words, no fitting memorials are to be found of the careers of these draughtsmen of true genius; they knew their generation, as is instanced in the inexhaustible memorials they have bequeathed their descendants in their works, and while they were themselves thoroughly familiar with the varied aspects and workings of the social life with which they were surrounded, their generation knew them not, and took no care to preserve any record of the capricious wits whose pleasant inventions had often afforded them enjoyment. The humourists, who did so much to contribute towards the amusement of others, have been suffered to pass away, in too many cases, as impersonalities. The works of their fanciful and fertile imaginations have been accepted on all hands and allotted their recognised position among the other agreeable accessories of life, while the gifted professors have, with one or two notable exceptions, which make the reverse the more marked, been pretty generally passed over, if they are thought of at all under the relationship of realistic characters, as mythical beings, less tangible—as regards their connection with the living people of their generations, of whose persons, habits, and follies they have bequeathed animated instances to posterity—than the most weird and fantastic creations of their own pencils or etching-points, emanations of the mind, whose utmost substance amounts to paper, and printing-ink, and ideas.

The whimsical conceptions which owe their origin to Gillray, Rowlandson, Bunbury, Ramberg, Woodward, Dighton, Nixon, Newton, Boyne, Collings, Kingsbury, Isaac Cruikshank, his son, 'the glorious George,' the veteran calcographist, who has just passed away full of years and reputation, Lane, Heath, Seymour, and a bevy of their contemporaries, were in their day tolerably familiar, their etchings and sketches were in the hands of the print-buying public of the period, and they enjoy, as far as these relics of the past are concerned, a posthumous reputation which varies according to the merits of their productions, a generation or two having assigned them their just relative positions on the ladder of fame; all the inimitable amusing travesties which reproduce the manners, and even the sentiments of past celebrities and perished generations, owe their creation to artists who were suffered to labour in partial obscurity; while the creatures of their brains were in the hands of every one, their contemporaries, for the most part, did not trouble themselves sufficiently to reflect whether the designers had any real existence, possibly classing the actual, practical, living, and working men under the category of abstract ideas in their own minds, impalpable atomies, less substantial than their tangible satirical pictures, which enjoyed a popular circulation.

The late Thomas Wright, F.S.A. (with the collaboration of an earnest worker in the same field, the late F. W. Fairholt, F.S.A., who contributed the valuable aid of his pencil), has done a great deal for the subject in his 'History of the Grotesque in Literature and Art,' and still more in his 'Caricature History of the Three Georges.' 'The Caricature History of the Fourth George,' which offers a still wider field of selection, as regards political and pictorial squibs and satires, has yet to appear.

A preliminary contribution to the history of caricature, as an attempt to repair in some measure the oversight of indifferent contemporaries, 'The Works of James Gillray the Caricaturist, with the Story of his Life and Times,' published under the auspices of Messrs. Chatto and Windus, has already met with a favourable reception at the hands of the press and the public; the present writer devoted several years to the completion of the volume, with the solitary end in view of associating the artist more intimately with his works, in the estimation of the public, before it was too late. Mr. Thomas Wright, as an indefatigable pioneer in a comparatively unbeaten track, deserved personal recognition on the strength of his important contributions, bearing on the political history of the House of Hanover, as duly set forth in the present writer's introduction, and to his name was offered such repute as was conferred by the editorship.

The writer, from his gleanings in the same direction, has been able to offer the public a sketch of the 'Life of Henry Bunbury the Caricaturist,' with slighter croquis of his contemporaries. During the interval since the first intention of compiling the present volume as a further contribution to the literature of caricature assumed a definite form, some ten years back, the preparation of the work, imperfect and incomplete as it confessedly must remain—a mere Ébauche at best—has been proceeding by slow and toilsome stages, the self-imposed task being rendered a more difficult one than in the instance of James Gillray,[1] from the disheartening circumstance that it is utterly impossible to arrive at anything approaching a comprehensive view of the works of Rowlandson; no adequate collection being in existence, as far as the writer has discovered, with the possible exception of an accumulation in the hands of Mr. Harvey of St. James's Street, the advantages of which gathering (it has been going on steadily for years) have hitherto remained inaccessible to the editor, the possessor's time having been too occupied by the requirements of his other engagements to permit him to arrange the prints as he wishes. This circumstance is to be regretted, since Mr. Harvey admits the personal interest he feels in caricature, upon which, when communicatively inclined, he is able to furnish very valuable information, in part the results of his own wide experience as a purchaser, and still more, perhaps, of painstaking investigations conducted for his private delectation; as his position and opportunities enable him to gratify his tastes in this direction to the fullest extent, it is hinted that on occasions he may feel disposed to furnish the critic with certain valuable facts of a special nature, drawn from the results of his own practical investigations in directions not generally available. This gentleman is, undoubtedly, an authority, and as, it is believed, he possesses unrivalled opportunities for forming a unique collection of prints by any master whose works he may fancy, the writer has, from season to season for the past six years, deferred the completion of his volume on the faith of a generous-sounding promise that he should be allowed to consult Mr. Harvey's collection of prints by Rowlandson, which, according to his knowledge, must be both interesting and valuable, and may possibly contain a great deal that has escaped his previous researches, however zealously they may have been instituted.

The sacrifice of time, labour, and patience involved in attempting to compile anything approaching a fairly compendious summary of Rowlandson's etchings is simply incredible. The desire to furnish a complete catalogue, though seemingly reasonable in itself at the first glance, is discovered upon experience to be practically impossible, and hence out of the question as regards arrangement; the productions of the artist, multiplied by pen, graver, and etching-point, as supplied by the hand of the master, or reproduced by other engravers, are legion, and where the examples are scattered no amount of application can adequately ascertain.

As far as kindly assistance is concerned, the writer has to acknowledge, with sincere gratitude, that where his previous experience has taught him to anticipate courtesies, he has been gratified in the highest degree, and he is proud to record that he once more finds himself indebted for cordial sympathy to the best qualified experts of the day.

Mr. G. W. Reid,[2] the respected keeper of the prints and drawings in the British Museum, with Messrs. Fagan and Donaghue, urbane members of his staff, have at all times made his access easy to the invaluable collection of social and political caricatures in his department; Mr. George Bullen (whose affability and scholarly acquirements are proverbial), the respected keeper of the printed books in the same magnificent national institution, has been able to facilitate the writer's quest of illustrations and caricatures by Rowlandson, so far as they come within the scope of the important department which that gentleman so efficiently administers; the obliging and accomplished custodian of the superb collection belonging to the BibliothÈque Nationale of France has most readily allowed the writer to avail himself of the select and valuable gathering of caricatures by Rowlandson, which are to be found under his charge. It must be mentioned that the caricature resources of the royal collection in the museum at Brussels were as courteously placed at his service by the well-informed custodian, who, it may be added, takes a considerable individual interest in this branch as illustrative of men and manners under special aspects. The writer has pursued his perquisitions as far as the national state collection of engravings contained in the Trippenhuizen Museum, Amsterdam. These magnificent national institutions are all, more or less, rich in caricatures of an historical description, but unfortunately, as regards the success of the present undertaking, the works of Rowlandson, numerous as they are, happen to be the reverse of the strong features of their collections of satirical prints, either political or social. The writer has accordingly been thrown back, to a dispiriting extent, on his own necessarily restricted resources; and the numerous illustrations which accompany this volume are for the most part unavoidably drawn from his own folios.

The principal source from whence it was hoped the best information could be detached proved utterly and exceptionally valueless; the writer refers to the important publishing establishments (and the successors who carry on the firms at the present day), whence the far-famed caricatures were originally issued. The firms of the Humphries, Hollands, Jackson, J. R. Smith, and others under whose auspices the artist's earliest, and in several instances most finished and ambitious works, first secured their lasting reputation, have long become extinct, as far as the editor is informed. But three leading print-publishing houses, established by Rowlandson's principal patrons, to whom the publication of the major part of his works was due, are still flourishing, under conditions modified to harmonise with the requirements of the present age, by descendants and successors of the well-known founders. These resources have proved, however, a disappointing failure, as far as assistance towards the compilation of a catalogue of the artist's productions is concerned. To Mr. Rudolph Ackermann, the respected inaugurator of the 'Repository of Arts,' a truly liberal and enterprising gentleman, who will be referred to at greater length in the course of this volume, Rowlandson (with many other professional artists and authors) was deeply indebted both for business-like co-operation, for the pains he took to sell the artist's countless original drawings, for personal encouragement, untiring friendship, and pecuniary accommodation. Messrs. Ackermann have unfortunately preserved no account of the numerous publications due to the hand of the caricaturist, and issued for half-a-century by their respected firm, nor have they any collection of impressions from the plates they gave to the public.

The same observation applies to Mr. William Tegg, whose father, the indefatigable and well-known Thomas Tegg of Cheapside, published hundreds of the satirist's later and cruder caricatures, which were more generally familiar in the windows of printsellers, &c., since copies were multiplied to a larger extent than was practicable in the case of delicately finished aquatints, which gave fewer impressions, and commanded higher prices. Consequently, Rowlandson is better known to the public by his least desirable prints, and under his most common-place aspect. Mr. S. W. Fores seems to have issued an important proportion of Rowlandson's larger and more valuable plates, with the addition of an immense number of small subjects etched by Rowlandson, and finished by clever aquatinters, published in a more costly form than was generally the custom of the time. The successors of this gentleman have mentioned that the firm has not preserved any list of the publications issued under its original and well-recognised standing, in respect to satirical production, as Fores' Caricature Museum, but it is understood that, at the present writing, there still remains in the house a collection, in huge volumes, of early impressions from the multitudinous plates issued from the establishment under its earlier auspices—a publisher's summary, in short, such as, it is to be regretted, is rarely preserved for any length of time. Unfortunately, owing to the exigencies of their modern print business, the writer has not been permitted to consult this highly interesting collection; he has, however, been informed, as an equivocal sort of consolation for his discomfiture, by the member of the firm to whom his application was addressed, that the major part of the prints, as far as the works of Rowlandson are concerned, are of a political character, and that the interesting and valuable social engravings are wanting; he also learns that nothing of importance by Rowlandson is to be found in this collection.

It is worthy of note, that the majority of the caricatures described in the present work, as published by S. W. Fores, belong almost entirely to the more attractive order of social satires, and pictorial skits at home and abroad, or cartoons levelled at the leaders of fashion, holding up the prevalent follies of the hour to legitimate ridicule. The writer confesses that he is inclined to feel a deeper regret at his inability to describe these political prints, presuming his informant, who certainly ought to know, is correct in this conclusion, since he is unable to account for their existence, as amongst the immense number of caricatures published by S. W. Fores, he has not hitherto lighted upon the series in question. Rowlandson's political prints—which, as the reader will realise in the progress of this compilation, are numerous enough in all conscience—were mostly published, as regards the early examples, by Humphries (a few of the somewhat hackneyed Westminster Election set, 1784, were due to S. W. Fores, it is acknowledged); while his later productions in this field, such as the succession of plates attacking Buonaparte, were issued from Ackermann's Repository of Arts, or circulated by Thomas Tegg (like the series treating of that Delicate Investigation, the Clarke scandal), according to the circumstances of the artist's employment or the cost of the plates. Popular prices being a requisition in the case of the sets published from the City, a coarser method of execution, with unmistakable instances of haste, detract in an unqualified degree from the interest of these prints, as instances of the artist's ability, which is exhibited to greater advantage in productions where his skill was allowed a more liberal exercise, as is evidenced in the capitally executed plates published by the West End print-selling firms.

The hopeful chances of aid from fountain-heads, upon experience, diminished to zero; and, while obstacles multiplied, the writer found it necessary to redouble his energy. As it proved that his own collection must, in the end, serve as the main source of reliance, fresh efforts were made to increase his gathering, and valuable additions were gradually secured. The process was somewhat tedious and costly withal, but it was the only course left open, unless the intention was renounced after the work had been advertised in progress.

Print-sellers' shops, at home and abroad, were ransacked, and auctions of engravings were attended, whenever the alluring word caricatures occurred in the catalogue. The supply was remarkably limited, the demand considerable and increasing; and prices, from the nature of the request, shortly became unreasonable. Choice caricatures, or those in fairly good condition, were pushed up to nearly the prices of the original drawings, and even at these enhanced rates but few examples were forthcoming. In Paris, Brussels, and London, a five-pound note became about a fair equivalent for a moderately fine impression after Rowlandson, if the plate were large and the subject important or curious, while for certain of the more sought-after examples, this rate was doubled; for such plates as Vauxhall Gardens, dealers expect a still larger price—indeed, five-and-twenty pounds have been demanded in many instances. The chances of fresh examples by Rowlandson coming into the market have decreased, and possibly the competition will relax when there is no longer a chance of exciting it.

The writer has necessarily made the acquaintance of several gentlemen who are fervent collectors of Rowlandson's works, and he by no means ignores his obligations to those happy possessors of rarer specimens, who have frequently carried them off with an air of conquest from discomfited rival amateurs, the condition of their purses, and the artistic enthusiasm aroused at the moment, rendering similar triumphs comparatively facile, when incidental questions as to actual worth are too insignificant to engage the attention.

Certain collectors of eminence, who are discriminating selectors of caricatures, well qualified to judge of their technical merits, and who, further, are well posted up in curious and out-of-the-way points of the political and social histories of the times thus illustrated, have volunteered the results of their researches; these good-natured offers have arrived too late to be available, but the writer is not the less indebted to the kindness which prompted the action; in an earlier and preparatory stage, these advances would have been of considerable value and assistance.

So much for the materials; perhaps too much stress has been laid, as far as the reader's patience is concerned, on the preliminary difficulties which have hindered and weakened the execution of the writer's desire to reproduce, by pencil and pen, a fair gathering of the works of our greatest humorous designers, an idea long cherished, and tardily carried out, as regards the first part of his task, James Gillray; and beset, as he has recounted, in respect to Thomas Rowlandson, the concluding portion, by unforeseen impediments and technical difficulties which it would be tedious to enumerate; they may, however, in a minor degree, be taken into consideration as a plea for the obvious shortcomings of this laborious compilation, and, while inclining rigid specialists to be less exacting, induce critics to regard the unavoidable faults of the performance with lenient forbearance.

For the space of a century, Rowlandson's caricatures, which are more properly croquis of the life which surrounded him, have continued to afford delight to the appreciators of graphic humour, from the date, 1775, when he sent his first contribution to the Royal Academy. It was only this year (1878) that a pair of his remarkably spirited drawings, Faro Table at Devonshire House, and A Gaming Table, attracted considerable praise and attention on the walls of the Grosvenor Gallery. Although the artist was master of the most elegant refinement, both of delineation and colouring, and produced the most delicious female heads with that lightness and daintiness of touch which was his peculiar gift, bringing all the graces, sparkle and animation of the French school to bear upon the models of winsome female beauty our own favoured isles produced for the exercise of his pencil, we are constrained to admit, thus early in our summary, that too many of his productions are strongly tinctured by that coarseness of subject and sentiment which has been held to disfigure the works of contemporary humorists; his wit, it must be remembered, was of the jocose school of Smollett and Fielding, and in justice it must be taken into consideration that his designs, even in their most uncompromising and grosser aspects, simply reflect the colour of a period which was the reverse of squeamish, and, as has been pertinently observed by the late Thomas Wright, 'of a generation celebrated for anything rather than delicacy.'

The artist was pretty generally recognised as the famous illustrator of Doctor Syntax and The Dance of Death, and in this relation he is fairly acknowledged by posterity; this limited view, as the present volume is designed to demonstrate, being far indeed from an adequate acknowledgment of his proper artistic standing. Rowlandson's higher qualifications, as a draughtsman in water-colours of remarkable merit, a portrait-painter of felicitous promise, and the originator of countless witty and pointed conceptions, were discovered more tardily. His surprising facility for representing the human figure, with knowledge and freedom of execution, his marvellous power of combining groups and crowds of figures in active movement, his grasp of expression, and fluency of colour and handling, were more particularly admitted (though in a sense they have since been lost sight of) after the Exhibition of 1862, where two of his truly characteristic subjects, of considerable size, made their appearance on the walls, to the amazement and delight of the spectators, who had no previous acquaintance with his whimsical genius. These two drawings, which opened the eyes of the world to his gifts for a little season, are entitled An English Review and A French Review; they originally formed a very noticeable feature on the walls of the Royal Academy in 1786; it is believed that eventually they came into the possession of the Prince of Wales, and, with the rest of George IV.'s collection, have remained in keeping of the royal family ever since, her gracious Majesty, the Queen, being pleased to lend them, with other fine representative examples of art, to the Exhibition Commissioners of 1862.

The English Review, and its companion drawing, a French Review, hang at Windsor Castle, where we are informed there is a very large accumulation of caricatures, drawings and prints, put away in a closet, in the order of their appearance; which, it is likely, have remained undisturbed for generations. It is not impossible that, hidden away in this mass of satirical productions, may be found the series of drawings, notoriously of a free tendency as regards subject, which Rowlandson is understood to have produced for the delectation of George IV. A collection of a similar description was, as we learn from the same authority, destroyed by a nobleman well known for his princely liberality, on the death of the patron who had selected the subjects.

In the unrivalled collection of water-colour drawings of the English school, which are found on the walls of the sumptuous permanent Museum of Art at South Kensington, are exhibited three characteristic examples of Rowlandson's talents in the caricature direction. The Parish Vestry, 1784, a humorous and spirited drawing, belonging to the artist's best time, formed part of the munificent gift made by Mr. William Smith to the nation; as did the second example, entitled Brook Green Fair, which we should assign to about the year 1800. The third drawing, representing The old Elephant and Castle Inn, Newington, is also due to a liberal donor, being the gift of G. W. Atkinson, Esq.

As has been related, the caricaturist produced thousands of capital drawings, delicately tinted, excelling in all styles; and from these original designs, he executed in turn thousands of spirited etchings with his own hand, which were frequently coloured to reproduce the first sketches, or aquatinted by engravers (sometimes by himself), in imitation of drawings tenderly shaded in Indian ink, to which, in some instances, the resemblance is sufficiently faithful to deceive the eye of anyone who is not familiar with this method of reproduction.

It must be borne in mind—and we insist the more earnestly on this point, as, from some incomprehensible wilfulness, it has seemingly been suffered to sink out of sight for a time—in treating of Rowlandson, that the man was essentially an artist; it is undoubtedly true that he was gifted (perhaps we might consider fatally as far as his proper estimation is concerned) with the faculty known as caricature, and he excelled in burlesque, but his successes were sufficiently high in other branches of the artist's profession to indicate that he was equally qualified by original talents, by academic training which he might have turned to the best advantage, by a sense of the beautiful unusually keen, and a happy power of expressing his first impressions, to take a foremost place amongst the best recognised masters of the early English school, to whose body he might have been an ornament, if he had not preferred his chosen calling of 'a free-lance' with a roving commission to work mischief. His remarkable gifts of originality, ever fertile, and apparently exhaustless, and facile powers of invention, either pleasant or terrific, which seemed spontaneous, were in his case insurmountable hindrances, instead of promoting his advancement and reputation as a painter of acknowledged value and eminence. He had the calamity—so fatal, in his and many other instances, to serious application—to succeed without sensible effort; from the very first his progress was a series of triumphs; none of the students of the Academy could draw such ludicrous and yet life-like figures, and thus his popularity with his fellow-labourers was assured; his studies from the nude, both in London and in Paris, were wonderful for the rapid ease and talent with which they were executed, and hence arose another source of glorification, and although personal vanity has never been mentioned in connection with the artist (he being thoroughly blind to everything but his own particular hobbies), the professors at home and abroad, and the members of the Academy themselves, were proud to patronise in their classes such precocious ability, which could accomplish the most difficult delineations without effort, and thus reflected credit on their schools; and the prodigy who drew from the life, in his youth, as vigorously and well as the most painstaking adepts in their maturity, could not fail to receive a dangerous amount of admiration, which tempted him to depend upon trifling exertions, and left his ambition without a spur.

While yet in his boyhood he was recognised as a genius, and was unhappily flattered into becoming a wayward one; the very fluency of his pencil, and the fidelity of his memory towards the grotesque side of things proved his stumbling-blocks. It is with more than a passing shade of regret that we reflect, with his far-seeing colleagues at the Academy and elsewhere, how eminent a painter was lost in the development of a caricaturist, admirable and unsurpassed in his own branch as Rowlandson must admittedly remain. The gifts which were in the man were marvellous, and beyond this he possessed nerve to persevere, and manly resolution to sustain his exertions, as he proved in his youth, and subsequently demonstrated when past life's meridian, times then being less prosperous, since fortunes and legacies had long ceased to fall in adventitiously, but the very excitement of setting the little world wondering, and making the public smile, while his tickled audience accorded him the cheapest popularity by crowding in admiration round his travesties, turned the wilful artist away from serious application, where no immediate fun was to be secured for either the limner or his following.

Rowlandson's sense of feminine loveliness, of irresistible graces of face, expression, and attitude, was unequalled in its way; several of his female portraits have been mistaken for sketches by Gainsborough or Moreland, and as such, it is possible, since the caricaturist is so little known in this branch, that many continue to pass current. From 1777 to 1781, five years of Rowlandson's residence in Wardour Street, with all the freshness of his academic studies, and the laurels unfaded he had won in the schools, with golden opinions, as a youth of paramount promise, indulged by the most eminent of the Royal Academicians and the French professors, the artist practised the more laborious and prosaic, but surer branch of portrait-painting with success, and his pictures were duly received by his patrons and well-wishers amongst the omnipotent Forty, and found their place on the walls of the Royal Academy Exhibition without a break—no barren compliment when it is remembered that his compeers were Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Hoppner, and that of the two or three hundred works selected for the gallery at the period referred to, the superb canvases of the artists named constituted an average of over ten per cent. of the entire exhibits.

If we but think for a passing instant over the winsome portraitures of fair women, whose faces live, for the delectation of all time, on the canvases of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Gainsborough, Romney, and a few lesser luminaries, it is cruel to realise that Rowlandson, from sheer wantonness (promoted by what seemed a happy hit in 1784),[3] neglected his opportunities in the direction of portraiture, with an indifference which, while proving his disinterestedness and superiority to mere profit, is the more exasperating when we are frequently told, as every one of Rowlandson's contemporaries who has mentioned the caricaturist never fails to reiterate, that the successive presidents of the Royal Academy, the great Reynolds, the royally patronised West, the courtly and fashionable Lawrence, the very men we have mentioned who were, it must be conceded, the most competent judges on the point, pronounced their conviction that his abilities entitled to acceptance, as one of themselves, a brother artist whose addition to their ranks they would have gloried to acknowledge, since he had the undoubted genius to reflect a lustre on the Academy, if he had exerted his talents in the recognised channels, and withstood the impulse of his notoriety for producing irresistibly droll novelties, which, as they foresaw, must infallibly prove pernicious to the practice of sober portraiture.

The versatile acquirements of our artist may, in a sense, be looked upon as an infirmity, a theory which had been thoroughly established while the subject of it remained in the flesh, and enjoyed a certain perverse gratification in contributing to support its soundness and perspicacity.

In landscape art we discover Rowlandson successfully rivalling the most respected practitioners in water-colours amongst his contemporaries, and helping the younger professional generation, that carried the art to perfection, to discard the obsolete theories of blackness for clear translucid colouring. His studies after nature are much esteemed, and are to be occasionally recognised in galleries and collections. It is a sufficiently capricious circumstance which has come within our experience—we have heard it asserted confidently more than once—that Rowlandson, the simple harmonious colourist and ready draughtsman, whose brush with limpid tints so deftly translated on paper the charms of sylvan scenes; the truthful artist who pictured the forest, fall, and glade, the distant hamlets amidst the foliage, the picturesque windings of the silver stream, the rustic cottages, the cattle wending leisurely through the fertile pastures, the mellow atmosphere, and the far-extending horizon, is often held a distinct individual from that other universally known Rowlandson—of equivocal reputation, it is hinted—whose daring reed-pen produced grotesques which perhaps were inimitable, but which, it is certain, were often indefensibly vulgar.

The artist's facility was so considerable that, had he been less scrupulous (his horror of fraud and imposition, especially in their pecuniary reference, was implacable, in spite of, or perhaps in contradistinction to, his other levities), he could have allowed his own productions, in the manner of his reputable contemporaries, and even of deceased celebrities, whose subjects and method he chose to imitate as a question of pure ingenuity—(while his own style is above all difficult to reproduce)—to pass current as veritable originals by the masters. A book of etchings consisting entirely of these imitations is described in the course of this work, and he has managed to assume, without copying any particular picture, the modus operandi of the artists, and has varied his own manner of execution and disguised his salient individualities with such subtlety, that, even to the etching-point, slight trace of Rowlandson remains to betray the acknowledged imposition.

In his sketches after nature, as we have ventured to advance in respect to his female portraits and delicious studies from life, in many instances it is difficult to distinguish between the artless rustic groupings and charming pastoral drawings by George Moreland and Thomas Gainsborough, let alone those of Barrett, Hills, Howitt, Pugh, and other of his associates (who executed pictures lightly outlined with a reed-pen, shaded with a warm tint and delicately washed with transparent water-colours, as was then the process),[4] and the acknowledged contributions of our versatile genius to this department, in the earlier stages of the captivating art of water-colour drawing.

The writer, in the course of his preparation for this work, has been at the pains to consult more than one well-recognised artist of reputation and authority; seeking for hints from professors whose celebrity extended well back towards the beginning of the nineteenth century; these respected ancients, who are now nearly all gathered to the shades to join the subject of this volume, being from their age, knowledge, and experience, as well as from the traditions of their earlier masters, most likely to know and remember circumstances of a special character bearing upon the subject. Some of these worthies were actually working as contemporaries of the caricaturist who departed fifty years ago. The last time the writer met George Cruikshank, a few months before that truly splendid old gentleman passed away, full of years and honour, to his well-earned repose, he took occasion to allude to the veteran's acknowledged admiration for the works of his extraordinarily endowed predecessor, James Gillray, in whose footsteps he had very literally commenced his career, being selected during the lifetime of the gifted caricaturist (when Gillray's genius had proved too exacting for the tension of his faculties, and his reason had unhappily departed, never to be restored beyond an occasional lucid flitter) to complete several plates which the attacks of his malady had suspended. George Cruikshank, the most deservedly popular of the name, was not a little proud of having been thought worthy, while still a very young man (Gillray's faculties were deranged in 1811), to take up the plates of the first genius that has adorned his art. With the earnestness of his disposition, and perhaps with characteristic partiality, he regarded the unfortunate Gillray as the greatest man, in his eyes, who ever lived, indisputably 'the prince of caricaturists,' as he has appropriately christened him, and this title, won from a loving disciple, who, in his turn, became still more famous, is likely to last as long as the great caricaturist is remembered.

George Cruikshank voluntarily called on the writer to express the interest he good-naturedly felt in certain slight records of past caricaturists then publishing, and to communicate some valuable facts about the works of his father, a meritorious artist whose reputation would be widely increased if his pictures, exhibited at the Royal Academy, were better known. On a subsequent occasion the cheery veteran imparted various anecdotes on the subject within his knowledge, but confessed that he had never been admitted to terms of personal familiarity with either Gillray or Rowlandson in the flesh. It was his father, Isaac Cruikshank—for whose graphic powers in the same walk he expressed the best deserved and truest filial respect—who enjoyed their intimacy, and it was he who related (with a genial force happily done justice to by his descendant) to his deeply interested son the circumstances with which George was acquainted.

The writer was naturally eager to gather, while there was yet time, any facts which might be of importance for the furtherance of his contemplated sketch of Rowlandson's career, which was then occupying all his energies, from the last representative of the famous caricaturists, who formed, in himself, so desirable a link with the generation of the Georgian epoch, which had been dissolved into the thinnest elements for three-fourths of a century back. Cruikshank expressed the most cordial interest in the undertaking, and genially declared, by way of an encouragement, which is the writer's most appreciated reward, that he should look forward to its successful completion, and further promised that if, in revising his notes, and the personal memoirs, touching upon such kindred topics (which, as he imparted, had long employed his leisure), he could discover any allusions of an interesting description to his gifted contemporary Rowlandson, or any similar memoranda left by his father, he would communicate them for the benefit of the present volume. His death has unfortunately prevented the accomplishment of this valued service, which was volunteered spontaneously with his well-known readiness to confer favours.

The point about Rowlandson which had most impressed George Cruikshank is somewhat original, and properly belongs to this part of our subject; hence we have been glad to have an opportunity of quoting the trustworthy authority of the aged caricaturist. 'Rowlandson,' said George, 'was a remarkable man in most respects;' the waywardness of his youth and the notoriety of his gambling days seemed to have rather prejudicially influenced the mind of his simpler successor, who had taken his place in 1827, as he had, almost of right, succeeded to the working-table and unfinished plates of James Gillray, many years before. Cruikshank, moreover, considered that Rowlandson's academical successes, his successful rivalry of Mortimer in depicting the nude, the knowledge of his art and the fluency he had acquired, were altogether exceptional features in the profession of a caricaturist, to his English views; but, according to his kindly creed, mellowed by age—his steel a trifle tempered since his own youth, when his shafts too were not without poignancy—'Rolley' was somewhat unreflecting, and reckless in exposing the infirmities of others, having but scant regard for his own reputation or the feelings of society, and further he had suffered himself to be led away from the exercise of his legitimate subjects, to produce works of a reprehensible tendency, which respectable dictum will probably find numerous subscribers.

A SHIPPING SCENE.

Strangely as it may sound, it was not as a caricaturist that Rowlandson had gained Cruikshank's admiration; he appreciated the artist enthusiastically as an accomplished water-colour painter, the equal in his opinion of most of the founders of our special school. Rowlandson's masterly power over the delineation of the figure, and his happy gift, amounting almost to inspiration, of portraying female charms of face and person, deserved high regard in Cruikshank's estimation; his peculiarly felicitous pictures of quaint Continental life, and the examples his free and scholarly handling held out, as admirable models of style to the French caricaturists of his day; the social sketches produced in Paris at the beginning of the century, though remarkable for neatness and delicacy, being laborious, formal, timid, and wanting in that racy comicality, and dashing power of expression, characterising the drawings under consideration, to which George accorded unqualified praise.

It was chiefly for his skill in landscape delineation that Cruikshank respected the artist under discussion, and more especially, as he declared, warming with his reminiscences of the drawings he called to mind, he had never seen anything superior, in his estimation, to Rowlandson's water-side and maritime sketches, for their clear freshness and simple air of fidelity to nature; the banks of the river, the 'pool' filled with vessels, wharves, landing-places, ports, and naval stations, with the noble men-of-war lying off; and the bustling craft, travelling between the fleet and the shore; the groups of busy figures, far and near, happily introduced in a state of seeming activity; the shipping, which he drew with picturesque ease and dexterity, his far-spreading landscapes and distant horizons, the treatment of the water, the movement of his skies, and the general sense of expanse and atmosphere, were beautiful in the extreme, all noted down, as they were, without apparently a second thought, with the slightest possible labour, recalling in a forcible degree the drawings of William Vandevelde, who was, in Cruikshank's opinion, the only artist whose marine studies could be quoted in comparison with those of Rowlandson.

THE QUAY.

We are necessarily anxious to avoid the suspicion of attempting to prove too much, and it must be admitted that we do not pronounce Rowlandson a Rubens, a William Vandevelde, a Reynolds, and a Moreland, all at once; any more than we can be deluded into the belief that his landscape drawings might be claimed by Turner, Girtin, De Wint, Fielding, or David Cox. In treating of our artist in relation to the truly great names which have been frequently put into contrast with his own, it must not be forgotten that his works are spoken of, as they exist, under their modest condition of sketches manipulated in the very slightest manner possible, and, if considered at all in juxtaposition with those of the higher luminaries, it is only by the side of studies executed under similar circumstances; it would be a piece of pretension, entirely out of character on our part, to even suggest submitting Rowlandson's attempts in the most respectable exercise of his talents in competition with the more substantial finished and ambitious pictures bequeathed us by the select few of really eminent painters, whose unrivalled works cannot fail to afford the most unqualified delight to all cultivated lovers of art of whatever school. Their productions are admitted to stand alone, even though there exist diversities of opinion, schisms, and heresies in regard to the generality of the profession.

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In resuming our summary of Rowlandson's conceptions in the caricature branch, we must notice, while contemplating his strongly characterised works, that, while the rest of his competitors in the grotesque walk have in most examples left no record of their prints beyond the plates on which they were executed, for every subject he has produced of his own designing, at least one corresponding drawing has existed, and frequently three or four variations of leading ideas are worked out as completed pictures, without, however, any appearance of experimentalising under difficulties of execution—technical points never puzzled his skill; and such daring flights as Rubens ventured with the brush, in the way of foreshortened and difficult attitudes, Rowlandson's reed-pen accomplished right merrily, as if by its own volition, and without a thought on the part of its highly-trained wielder, about such common-place requirements as the posing of living models or preparatory sketches. The original notions of Rowlandson's whimsical inventions are in the generality of instances far worthier of attention than the most spirited etchings he thought fit to circulate after them; and it is well to keep in mind that the artist has produced some thousands of humorous conceptions (placing his more serious studies out of the question), of which no engraving has ever appeared; and amongst these unpublished delineations may be included several of the most ingenious and attractive pictures executed by his hand, especially from the year 1790, that is to say, for more than two-thirds of his professional life—a circumstance with which every collector of original drawings by this artist is thoroughly conversant.

The career of Rowlandson may be divided into periods; the work belonging properly to the several stages is tolerably distinctive as to general characteristics. An adept can positively determine, within a year or two, the particular section to which his designs, when the date happens to be wanting, may be justly assigned, and, as his manifold sketches and etchings extend over the space of half a century, this circumstance is a trifle remarkable in itself.

The first period, as far as his published plates are concerned, includes his smaller social and political satires; the execution, though free and fluent, as his productions uniformly were, exhibits indications of care which is not so traceable as his method grew mellower, and practice confirmed the facility which came to him as a gift. These juvenile etchings bear more affinity to Gillray's manner of manipulation than is traceable in his subsequent cartoons. A view of A Hazard Table and its frequenters (E.O. or the fashionable Vowels, October 28, 1781) offers perhaps the best indications of his growing powers, between 1774 and 1783. His publishers were Humphrey, Holland, Jackson, and a few others; and he further appears, in conjunction with J. Jones, to have gone into the publishing way himself, at 103 Wardour Street.

In 1784 the excitement of the famous Westminster Election seems to have carried him more thoroughly into political satires, and, as we observe, his humour discovered an unflagging source of impulse round the parliamentary candidates, Fox, Wray, and Hood; the fair Duchess of Devonshire, Lady Duncannon, and honest Sam House, the Whig canvassers, and their opponents on the ministerial side, the Hon. Mrs. Hobart (Lady Buckinghamshire), and the Duchess of Gordon; together with the whimsicalities of the polling-booth. If we were asked to select his most noticeable social and satirical effusions, we should incline to particularise English Curiosity, or the Foreigner stared out of countenance; 1784, or the Fashions of the Day; and A Sketch from Nature (January 24, 1784).

In 1784, Rowlandson realised the full extent both of his powers of fancy and his mastery of the art of water-colour delineation. He discontinued the practice of sending portraits to the Exhibition of the Royal Academy, in which he had persevered for five years, and contributed in their places three mirth-provoking drawings, which must have produced no little sensation amongst the visitors, who were unaccustomed to such works. These were the inimitable Vauxhall Gardens, which reveals his talents at their best, An Italian Family, and The Serpentine River.

In 1785 appeared some of John Raphael Smith's graceful publications after Rowlandson's more refined originals, notably Vauxhall, Opera Boxes, Toying and Trifling, An Italian Family, A French Family, Grog on Board, Tea on Shore; Filial Affection, or a Trip to Gretna Green; Reconciliation; Intrusion on Study, or the Painter disturbed; Comfort in the Gout; and several other excellent subjects in his most finished manner, besides an animated scene after Henry Wigstead, John Gilpin's Return to London.

Rowlandson sent five important and highly humorous drawings, displaying advanced qualities in the direction of execution, to the Royal Academy in 1786; those of the first consequence were An English Review, A French Review, the pair exhibited at the International Exhibition 1862; Opera House Gallery, under which designation, as we suspect, we recognise his Box Lobby Loungers, published the very same year; A French Family (published the year previous); and A Coffee House, of which we can discover no further record.

Among the engraved works for the same year we must refer to the print of Box Lobby Loungers, already mentioned, and Covent Garden Theatre, as the most noticeable as to size, subject, and the numerous figures introduced.

Rowlandson sent four known works to the Royal Academy, the season following (1787). They were French Barracks, a superlative drawing, Grog on Board a Ship, Countrymen and Sharpers (engraved by Sherwin as Smithfield Sharpers), and The Morning Dram, or Huntsman rising, engraved as Four o'clock in the Country, S. W. Fores (October 20, 1790). All Rowlandson's contributions for this year have been published; indeed, it is very possible, from the popularity of the caricaturist's novel exhibits, that all the pictures he sent to the Royal Academy were straightway issued on copper. There are two exceptions, The Serpentine and A Coffee House, of which the writer has never succeeded in meeting impressions, but it by no means follows that sooner or later they may not come to light, and it does not seem unlikely that the first named, The Serpentine River, may be another version of Cold Broth and Calamity (published in 1792).

Amongst the engraved works of 1787, the writer instances Baron Ron's Dental Surgery, or Transplanting of Teeth, and a series of five Hunting Scenes, The Morning, The Meet, The Run, The Death, and The Dinner, published in a folio size, and now somewhat rarely met with as a set.

In the two succeeding years Rowlandson again threw his etching-point into party conflicts, and came out with a shower of political squibs on the amenities of the Regency Struggle. Nothing very ambitious in the way of social satires appeared in 1788. Among minor subjects we may allude to Housebreakers, A Cart Race, The School for Scandal, A Fencing Match, A Print Sale, Lust and Avarice, and Luxury and Desire, as being slightly above the average. In 1789 and 1790 but few works of exceptional character were issued to gratify Rowlandson's devoted admirers or the general public. She don't deserve it! Don't he deserve it? A Racing Series, The Course, The Betting Post, The Mount, The Start, and A Fresh Breeze, take the lead. La Place des Victoires À Paris belongs to 1789, and, in the writer's estimation, it is perhaps one of the most attractive subjects due to the artist's pencil, exhibiting, as it does, the quaint surroundings of Parisian life, as noted by the caricaturist before the Revolutionary era—delineations of feminine beauty, and studies of real character, such as no effort of the imagination could fabricate, unless assisted by travel, a familiar acquaintance with the locality, and keen observation. A fitting companion is given to this delightful subject in another important drawing, crowded with diversified life and animated groups, produced in 1800; The Thuilleries in Paris, a reminiscence of previous studies in the French metropolis, of manners noted anterior to the destruction of antiquated fashions; the dainty belles of ton, and the picturesque society which might be discovered flourishing under the reign of Louis XVI., before the inauguration of the all-devouring Republic, which worked more change in a few feverish months of turbulence, in which all the recognised phases of the past were lost, than many sober decades had effected in their better regulated courses.

The best of Rowlandson's publications for 1790 were A Kick-up at a Hazard Table, in which, as may be supposed, he was perfectly at home; Four o'clock in the Morning in Town, which was also in the artist's way, and its companion, Four o'clock in the Morning in the Country; Frog-hunting (Gallic gourmets fins), and Tythe Pig, a fine old English equivalent.

The year 1791 was richer in those more ambitious plates, which the writer is seeking to identify, and several of the caricaturist's choicer subjects appeared, etched by his hand, and finished in aquatint, to facsimile the meritorious original drawings. A Squall in Hyde Park is one of the score or two of delineations of the highest type, which adequately demonstrate the exceptional qualifications of the artist; and these, we have no hesitation in averring, have never been excelled in their walk, as far as executive ability, sense of loveliness, grouping, movement, grasp of character, powers of observation, and diverting qualities are concerned. Another remarkable subject of extraordinary ability, founded on Rowlandson's Continental studies, entitled French Barracks (exhibited in 1787), and its pendant, English Barracks, were issued this year. An Inn Yard on Fire, belonging to the same important series; The Attack; The Prospect before us; The Pantheon; Chaos is Come Again, in allusion to the dilapidated state of Drury Lane theatre condemned by the surveyors; Toxophilites; House breakers; Damp Sheets and Slugs in a Saw Pit, among the numerous lesser subjects, bring up the total of the truly estimable works which gratified the public in 1791.

Cold Broth and Calamity, a skating scene representing disasters in the park, from a ludicrous point of view; A Dutch Academy, drawn from the caricaturist's experiences in the Netherlands; and Studious Gluttons were the leading plates published in 1792.

New Shoes, a small, but delicate subject, belongs to 1793.

In 1797 appeared the admirable plates published after Rowlandson's studies in the Netherlands; we cannot too highly commend such inimitable originals as Fyge Dam, Amsterdam; Stadt House, Amsterdam; Companion View, Amsterdam; and Place de Mer, Antwerp.

Admiral Nelson Recruiting with his Brave Tars after the Glorious Battle of the Nile, was published in 1798; a series of London Views, of considerable merit and importance, entrances to the great metropolis from the four leading turnpikes; and a series of twelve plates portraying the Comforts of Bath, are most worthy of attention in the same year, as were some large studies of reviews of the Volunteer Forces, held under the threat of the anticipated French invasion.

Distress, from a large picture, indicating the horrors of shipwreck with tragic impressiveness, is assigned to 1799.

Summer Amusement, a Game at Bowls; Doctor Botherum, the Mountebank; Preparations for the Academy; and A French Ordinary, were among the noticeable features of the artist's publications in 1800; the peculiarly interesting panorama of the Parisian world anterior to the French Revolution, entitled The Thuilleries in Paris was also produced this year.

Rowlandson's skill as an etcher had further, about this time, provided him with abundance of work in executing the humorous conceptions of Woodward and Bunbury after his own characteristic fashion.

Rowlandson's plate of The Brilliants, and a long series of subjects designed by Woodward, with many originals of his own, sufficiently excellent in their order, but not of the first consequence, found their way to the public in 1801. The leading print-publishers at the West End, Rudolph Ackermann, S. W. Fores, Williamson, and Rowlandson himself,[5] at his residence, 1 James Street, Adelphi, issued an inexhaustible collection of highly ludicrous social satires, and numerous patriotic and political subjects, during intervening years; and in 1807 the name of Thomas Tegg of Cheapside was added to the print-publishers who employed the remunerative talents of the indefatigable caricaturist. Rowlandson also continued to execute the whimsical conceptions of less qualified draughtsmen, and swarms of comicalities—by Woodward, Bunbury, Wigstead, Nixon, and other fashionable amateurs, who possessed the humorous vein, but lacked the skill to give their ideas a fitting form for presentation to the public—were put into acceptable shape, and etched by our artist at this period.

In 1808 appeared the long succession of Miseries of Human Life, of which examples occur in previous years; and Rowlandson settled down, somewhat grimly, under worthy Mr. Ackermann's auspices, to take up the gauntlet against the dreaded Buonaparte, the great little Corsican, against whom Gillray had waged such savage warfare until his powers dwindled into vacancy, and George Cruikshank stepped valiantly into the place of the colossus of caricaturists, and carried on the combat with unflagging zeal and whimsicality on his own account. Rowlandson's ludicrous attacks upon the ambitious 'disturber of the peace of Europe' were duly appreciated by his audience, and the demand for these blood-and-thunder caricatures increased monthly, to the extreme delectation of the great British public, whose antipathies to the conquering general were, at least, founded on sound and excusable principles, and if the overflowing excess of their detestation sometimes blinded the people to points of detail, and wilful misrepresentations passed current, and rather swamped their more generous sentiments—which were put out of sight for awhile—it must be remembered that this patriotic zeal was well directed against the man who had announced his august intention of subjugating England, and was, by accord, considered as the common enemy, and anyone who had indulged the temerity of openly acknowledging the grander elements of his character, since pretty tolerably established, would have been flouted by acclamation, and we are not sure but the national scorn would have fittingly signalised such an unpatriotic enormity.

It is certain that the caricaturist's travesties of the little emperor, his burlesques of his great actions, and grandiose declarations (which, in themselves, occasionally overdid the heroic, and trenched hazardously on the ludicrous), his figurative displays of the mean origin of the imperial family, with the cowardice and depravity of its members, won the popular applause; as did the satirist's representations of the hollowness of Boney's vaunted victories, and the treachery of his designs in the days of his success; and, when disasters began to cloud the career of the mighty Napoleon, and cherished projects were met with sickening failures—as army after army, collected for the slaughter by schemes, lies, fraud, and force, melted away, and the prostrate powers of the Continent plucked up courage, singly at first and finally in legions, until the end of the Corsican's glory arrived—the artist lent his skill to celebrate the delight of the public, and the rejoicings over the discomfiture of the traditional bugbear; glib cartoons were hurried off by Ackermann and often by Tegg—the City competing with the West End in the loyal contest of proving the national enmity to Buonaparte, by buying every caricature—the more extravagant the better relished—that the artists, who toiled like Trojans while the harvest lasted, could contrive to furnish in season for the demand.

A suspicion crosses our mind that, in too many cases, the incentive was to gratify the hatred of the Corsican, rather than any remarkable inherent merit that could be discovered in the satires; the best of which were but feeble vehicles for the exhibition of the jovial abilities of the designers; who, we dare venture to hint, found themselves a little out of their element, plunged, as it were, in the 'blood and iron' theory, striking out with their etching points with the most approved pantomimic vengeance! Very few of these mock-heroic sallies imprint themselves on the recollection by the sheer force of their own brilliancy, as was the case in the single instance of James Gillray, in the past, and as happened—an undeniable test of the veritable fire of genius—frequently with the cartoons of John Tenniel within our own experience, when the magnitude of the occasion has conjured up the inspiration, and rekindled the latent flame.

Our reflections upon the bellicose creations of Rowlandson and Cruikshank, while their hostile vapourings continue irresistibly droll, never stir the more passionate emotions or reach impulses which lie below the surface; being risible, it is true, but the reverse of inspired; and although many a hearty laugh may be enjoyed over the ludicrous turn the twain caricaturists have, in spite of themselves, given to situations of an avowedly tragic tendency, their very fury seems an unctuous jest, their simulated earnestness takes a farcical turn, and the result of a careful review, as the writer has made quite recently, of their prolific slaughterous sallies, is the conviction that, often unconsciously to themselves, they have chiefly succeeded, from the inevitable bent of their innate humoristic impulses, in burlesquing the fiery feeling abroad, which the public were contented to gratify in pictorial guise.

It is certain that those discriminating critics best qualified to appreciate the talents of Rowlandson and Cruikshank, who worked up the anti-Corsican crusade contemporaneously, are continually disposed to regret that the wondrous inventive abilities of these fertile designers were not exercised in a more congenial field.

Our caricaturist worked away, fierce and implacable, following every turn of Boney's fortunes with a show of savage ardour, until the idol fell in 1815. Rowlandson, in addition to the immense mass of caricatures which he fabricated with unflagging energy, came out brilliantly with several large transparencies, painted for public exhibition, outside Ackermann's Repository, on the occasion of the general illuminations, which fittingly signalised the successes of the allied armies after Leipsig, the final downfall of the Emperor after Waterloo, and the subsequent peace rejoicings.

A fresh subject for the exercise of Rowlandson's caricature capabilities was furnished in 1809 by the scandalous revelations which were disclosed, as evidence at the bar of the House of Commons, during the 'inquiry into the corrupt practices of the Commander-in-Chief, in the administration of the army.' With ill-advised weakness the popular Duke of York seems to have transferred the exercise of the patronage legitimately invested in his department, to Mrs. M. A. Clarke, a clever and unscrupulous mistress, whose extravagances he had for awhile contributed to support at Gloucester Place. The demand for this exciting pabulum was sufficiently eager to induce the caricaturist to bring out a fresh pictorial satire almost daily, and sometimes two or more appeared on the same day, while the 'delicate investigation' was proceeding, and the public interest in the circumstances remained at a boiling heat. We are not inclined to argue that any of these ephemeral compositions, superior as they were to the ruck of contemporaneous productions, were worthy, in any degree, of the artist's graphic powers, or were likely to contribute to his celebrity. For some time Rowlandson's ambition seemed to cool down, and although he was working hard, and producing a fair average of results, he appeared satisfied to turn his skill to the most prosaic account, as the means of earning a livelihood. He made no fresh efforts to astonish his admirers, or to sustain his fame by novel efforts of genius, such as we have particularised as appearing before the commencement of the nineteenth century.

Among the countless caricatures, good, bad, and indifferent, according to the circumstances of their publication, produced between 1809 and the close of the designer's career, nearly twenty years later, we cannot direct the reader's attention to many subjects above the generality of similar productions by Rowlandson's hand. It must be borne in mind that the artist's opportunities for graceful delineation had been considerably curtailed; the fair leaders of the old picturesque generation, whose effigies beam so charmingly on Reynolds's canvases, and the days of powder, flowing locks, silk coats, laces, lappels, and their accompaniments, had gradually disappeared, and left a prosier people, of sober exterior, in their stead. The difference between the exteriors of Rowlandson's lively personages, at the earlier part of the career, is so distinct from the outward appearance of his surroundings, and of the world which continued to exercise his pencil, at the close of his years, that it is extremely difficult, with the evidence before our eyes, to credit that such extreme changes could take place within the lifetime of one individual. The wanton cruelty of time in dealing thus harshly with the delicious models, which at one period seemed expressly constituted for the exercise of Rowlandson's pencil, may have discouraged the artist, and given him a distaste for exertions of ambition in which his heart had no part, while his fancy still hovered round his retrospects of the brilliant scenes, at home and abroad, that had met his sight in his gallant youth.

A few of Rowlandson's plates in 1811 recall his best days, but we are not too confident that the originals veritably belong to the year which is engraved upon the plates; indeed, in two cases at least, Exhibition Stare Case, Somerset House, and Royal Academy, Somerset House, the caricatures are most probably reprints, with the dates altered. This practice, common enough in his day, is productive of no slight confusion; all Rowlandson's most popular conceptions, 'the palpable hits' which held their own in the public favour, and were eagerly secured, were republished from year to year, to meet the demand, and, in most cases, the plate was freshly dated, as if the print had only then appeared for the first time. This principle has complicated our task, as it is most difficult to secure even a solitary impression of the finer works, and but scant means exist of tracing them back to the actual date, in the absence of any considerable collections to which the student may apply for purposes of reference and comparison. If the reader will be at the pains to consult the 'Appendix,' containing the nearest approach to an arrangement of Rowlandson's works, under the years of publication, the writer could arrive at under existing circumstances, it will be seen that the same caricatures frequently reappear, with altered dates, for successive years.

In the latter part of the artist's career, although he executed a great many works of interest in themselves, and his inexhaustible social satires are often meritorious, and always ingenious, his best talents were devoted to the production of original drawings for immediate sale. They were chiefly disposed of through the assistance of Rudolph Ackermann, 101 Strand; and S. W. Fores, Piccadilly. Both these steady patrons of the declining years of a genius, who must, in a sense, have found the close of his life exposed to somewhat chilling influences, are reported, on good authority, to have held hundreds of Rowlandson's original drawings, scrap-books, and portfolios, filled with his admirable sketches at the time of his death; but these collections have of course been since dispersed.

In addition to the immense gathering of water-colour drawings left by Rowlandson, which had accumulated in the possession of those respected gentlemen with whom he held business relations, there were several fine collections, formed about the same period, to be found in the possession of his intimates. Mitchell the banker, his constant friend in town, with whom Rowlandson frequently travelled on the Continent, had secured the most remarkable gallery of the artist's diversified views abroad, and particularly his sketches of life and character in France and the Netherlands, the latter being the most remarkable for broad humour. Henry Angelo, the fencing-master, and Bannister, the comedian, ancient school-fellows of the caricaturist, and, as will be seen, faithful comrades through life, were also steady collectors of his picturesque eccentricities, and many noblemen, and celebrities of the day—among them is mentioned the name of the dashing, and somewhat irrepressible, Lord Barrymore—took a pride in filling their folios with his works, which, as we are told, they justly esteemed 'an inexhaustible fund of amusement.'

A few later collections, with the names of the owners, and the titles of the leading subjects, are mentioned at the end of this volume, with a view to completing the interest of the subject, and affording a slight indication of the whereabouts of many of his productions.

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It appears from the statements of Rudolph Ackermann, Rowlandson's industry was such that the considerate owner of the fashionable Repository—favourite lounge of the dilettanti as it was—at last found it difficult, as regards the selling department, to keep pace with his friend's creative abilities. In short, the artist produced drawings faster than the public, as it seems evident, felt inclined to purchase them for the time being, and it became a perplexing problem how to increase the demand proportionately to the supply; for the multiplication of the sketches for awhile—probably under the spur of some emergency, or the pressure of apprehensions for the future—became so overwhelming that the worthy publisher, in his relation as a practical man of business, fancied he foresaw the approaching depreciation of the value of Rowlandson's drawings making such strides, on the strength of an overstocked market, he was afraid, in the end, the artist's remuneration would be so seriously diminished, that it would not be worth his while to persevere, unless a new line could be successfully struck out.

These anticipations were probably well founded, and we cannot but acknowledge that our artist had discarded prudence, and become thoroughly reckless—at least, as far as we can judge by appearances, for possibly he had more confidence in the ultimate request for his studies than was entertained by his friendly employers, and time has proved the soundness of his judgment. If the story we are told of his novel method of multiplying his drawings is serious, it will strike the reader that Mr. Ackermann had reason to feel anxious, on his protÉgÉ's account. It is related that Rowlandson would saunter from his neighbouring lodgings in the Adelphi, round to the Repository of Arts, and, as the title of Mr. Ackermann's establishment was no misnomer, every possible appliance was therein found ready to hand. The artist would then order a saucer of vermillion, and another of Indian ink, ready ground, from the colourist's room, with reed pens, and several sheets of drawing-paper; he would then combine his inks in the proportions he thought proper, in the flesh lines vermillion predominated, in draperies Indian ink, shadows were a warm mixture of the two, and distant objects were faintly rendered in Indian ink alone. The outline was filled in on this principle, but, as the designer's own manual and dexterous rapidity had ceased to satisfy him, he had ingeniously discovered an expeditious method of multiplication sufficient for his purpose, without resorting to the sister art of engraving. The drawing was made on the principle essential in any engraving which has to give impressions, that is, the subject was reversed, right being changed to left—the only extra care required; the outline was somewhat stronger, and the reed-pen more fully charged than was the usual practice, and when the design was completed it formed the matrix from which, before the ink became fixed, by means of a press, and paper damped to the proper consistency, it was easy to print off duplicates as long as the ink held out. We are rather inclined to speculate that, ingenious as the process seems, in description, it would by no means turn out a perennial flowing fountain, and two or three decent replicas would exhaust the original, however judiciously manipulated. The copies obtained by this manifold contrivance were corrected and strengthened, according to their requirements; the series of impressions were then shaded with Indian ink, so as to lend the figures contour and solidity, and express the lighter distance; and then came the final tinting, in delicate washes of colour, and the completed works were ready for introduction to the public. The writer does not believe that this modus operandi was ever followed up systematically; that it has been resorted to on occasions, his own observations have demonstrated; and he confesses to a passing acquaintance with a collection of drawings by the artist (belonging to a gentleman of distinction, who is quite satisfied as to their merits), which are for the most part the results of this system, and he has more than once, in the course of his peregrinations, come across the matrix design, very spread and mysterious as to outline, having been exhausted in the working, but shaded with spirit, coloured, and sent into the world, a shameless left-handed production, craftily smuggled into circulation to confuse collectors, and throw discredit on its dexter counterparts. This accounts for a certain proportion of the duplicates after Rowlandson, which are of frequent occurrence; and often have purchasers felt their self-esteem lowered, when another possessor of the same design in a firmer outline has assured them that they have been deceived into buying a mere copy, oblivious that the guilty pair are both due to the hand of the master, and that possibly other members of the same illicit family are lurking in the folios of rival amateurs. A grand central gathering of works by Rowlandson, presuming a person of sufficient enterprise could be found to prosecute the scheme of a comprehensive exhibition of the artist's works, would reveal some curiosities in the way of reproductive capability.

For the credit of our artist, and the comfort of collectors, we can record our assurance that this crafty method was never persevered in, the replicas issued under this illegitimate contrivance are confined to a brief period, the temptation to flood the market was kept within restricted limits, and Mr. Ackermann's business aptitude quickly discovered a method of enhancing the caricaturist's reputation and augmenting his means, without the necessity of resorting to tricks of ill-advised ingenuity. The successful projection of a series of monthly publications allowed the indefatigable projector—who exercised a princely liberality in his dealings, as publishers go—to pay his friend, the artist, so handsomely, that he was relieved from the necessity of multiplying his sketches in any inordinate profusion, and enabled him to take more time and pains, both in seeking his subjects, and working them out at his ease. The results of this happy conception, The Poetical Magazine, the three Tours of Doctor Syntax, and The Dance of Death, enjoyed unqualified popularity. They were followed by other works of a corresponding description, which were also well received. The publisher had his reward; we have every reason to believe that Rowlandson enjoyed his fair share of these successful ventures; and continued to furnish book-illustrations, steadily following up the new branch he had discovered for the exercise of his abilities. Mr. Ackermann's enterprise provided him ample occupation. These octavo prints were produced on the same principle as the superior plates after his chefs-d'oeuvre of the Academy period: a neat and carefully finished drawing of the original design was first prepared (these studies were afterwards purchased by Mr. Ackermann), and Rowlandson etched the outline sharply and clearly on the copper plate, an impression from the 'bitten-in' outline was printed on drawing-paper, and the artist put in his shadows, modelling of forms and sketchy distance, with Indian ink, in the most delicate handling possible; the shadows were then copied in aquatint on the outlined plate, sometimes by the designer, but in most cases by an engraver who practised this particular branch, which a few experts were able to manipulate with considerable dexterity and nicety. Rowlandson next completed the colouring of his own Indian ink shaded impression in delicate tints, harmoniously selected; his sense of colour being of a refined order as regarded the disposal of tender shades agreeable to the eye. His aptitude in this respect is quite as remarkable as his ease of delineation; and, if his outlines can be copied with any approach to deceiving the eye of a connoisseur, an attempt to imitate his colouring, simple as it remained in its characteristics, is tolerably certain to betray the fraud.

The tinted impression, which was intentionally finished with greater delicacy and elaboration than the artist generally displayed, served as a copy for imitation, which was handed to Mr. Ackermann's trained staff of colourists, the publisher finding constant employment for a number of clever persons whom he had educated expressly for this skilled employment. These artists had worked under his auspices and personal supervision for years, until, by constant practice, and the pains which were taken by the publisher to improve their abilities, they attained a degree of perfection and neatness never arrived at before, and almost beyond belief in the present day, when the system has fallen into comparative disuse. The assistants did their best to reproduce the effect of the original drawings, and the number of impressions required to satisfy the public must have kept them constantly at work, and occasionally jeopardised their high finish.

There is an amazing contrast between the plates issued from the Repository, worked out like elaborate water-colour drawings, in subdued, well-balanced tints, with the utmost lightness and skill of touch, and the lurid chromatic daubs which pass current to the present day, as Rowlandson's caricatures were issued from Cheapside 'price one shilling coloured,' after a school of vulgarity to which the panorama of the Lord Mayor's Show at one penny, with its four yards of florid tenuity, is quite a refined work of art.

We are not inclined to offer uncharitable reflections on Rowlandson's City publisher; the caricatures—excepting always certain rougher specimens, loosely executed enormities after designs by some of the amateurs of the period, which indubitably belong to the slip-shod order—are fair enough in their way, when one is lucky enough to meet with uncoloured copies; it is the bad taste of his customers, the respectable dealer evidently stooped to flatter, with which we are inclined to disagree, and we think justifiably; for although it was very good of the gentleman in question to issue so many copies of his plates, with a providential eye to the future, that impressions are sufficiently numerous to this day, all print-buyers must deplore the waste of staring colour expended in making his publications abominable to the sight of modern purchasers, and ruinous to the fair fame of the designer, by the uncompromising use of three positive pigments, red, blue, and yellow, to which, with an occasional brown, the colour-box seemed restricted, in most cases liberally plastered over the etchings-figures, sky, buildings and background being treated to the same smart hues in undiluted garishness, which utterly confuses the mind as to the meritorious qualities of the subjects so bespattered, and has the sinister effect, deplorable in itself, of compelling persons of chaste dispositions to dread caricatures as being on the surface something worse than scarlet abominations, fiendishly aggravated with additional lurid iniquities of a depraving tendency.

We have introduced Rowlandson in his later relation to the arts, as a skilful and popular contributor of book illustrations; we cannot leave this portion of our subject without offering a cursory review of his various labours in this capacity, since the wider circulation of printed publications has made his name more familiar to the great world than the finest masterpieces already alluded to, which seem doomed to remain unknown and inaccessible to the bulk of the public.

The first independent publication we have to notice was simply a gathering of subjects, extending over three or four years, collected in 1788, and issued as Rowlandson's Imitations of Modern Drawings, folio; including imitations of the styles of Gainsborough, Wheatley, Mortimer, Barrett, Gilpin, Bartolozzi, Zucchi, Cipriani, &c.

In 1786, Rowlandson supplied G. Kearsley, the publisher of those well-known satirical effusions of Dr. Wolcot, The Poems of Peter Pindar, with illustrations to the first volume of the quarto edition of these familiar works. This publication was continued the next year. In a burlesque strain, Rowlandson also came out with twenty illustrations, the drawings suggested by Collings,[6] caricaturing passages in Boswell's Journal of a Tour in the Hebrides, published by E. Jackson, small folio (1786). Our artist further supplied certain plates in parody of incidents in the Sorrows of Werther, also from suggestions by Collings, who designed a capital series of drolleries in travesty of passages literally extracted from Lord Chesterfield's Polite Letters.

G. and J. Robinson, in 1790, published the results of a trip to Brighton, which the artist had enjoyed in company with his friend, the frequent companion of his wanderings and frolics, Henry Wigstead, Esq., the sitting magistrate at Bow Street—An Excursion to Brighthelmstone made in the year 1782, by Henry Wigstead and Thomas Rowlandson, with eight engravings by Thomas Rowlandson, oblong folio.

There also appeared, in this and the following years, a series of Miniature Groups and Scenes, published by M. L., Brighthelmstone, and H. Brookes, Coventry Street, London; and a series of Sheets of Picturesque Etchings, published by S. W. Fores. Rowlandson also furnished numerous book-plates, octavo, to the series of novels published by I. Siebbald, Edinburgh; among the works thus illustrated we must particularise the novels of Fielding and Smollett.

The succeeding year (1792) our artist also contributed illustrations, in large size folding plates, designed after suggestions by Henry Woodward, to a quarto edition of Smollett's Novels. Cupid's Magic Lantern, with illustrations, etched by Rowlandson, also after designs by Henry Woodward, was published in 1797.

The Comforts of Bath, and the folio Views of London, belong to 1798. The same year the name of W. Wigstead, Charing Cross, appears as the publisher of the following works:—

Annals of Horsemanship, with seventeen copperplates by Henry Bunbury, Esq. Engraved by Thomas Rowlandson.

The Academy for Grown Horsemen, with twelve copperplates, by Henry Bunbury, Esq. Engraved by Thomas Rowlandson.

Love in Caricature, with eleven plates by Thomas Rowlandson.

The handsome and expensively got-up publications inaugurated by Mr. Ackermann, began to occupy our artist in 1799. The first of this well-executed series, with which Rowlandson was connected, was a set of plates, accurately coloured in fac-simile of the original drawings, in square folio, described as,

The Loyal Volunteers of London and Environs, with eighty-seven plates, designed and etched by Thomas Rowlandson.

Martial ardour being the key-note this year, when foreign invasion menaced our shores, Henry Angelo and Son, who were appointed fencing-masters to the Light Horse Volunteers of London and Westminster, collected a series of subjects which the artist had prepared under their direction, and issued the results of their joint ingenuity as a supplement to the elder Angelo's Treatise on Fencing, under the title of, Hungarian and Highland Broadsword Exercise, with twenty-four plates designed and etched by Thomas Rowlandson, oblong folio.

Another publication, issued by Ackermann in 1799, appeared as Delineations of Nautical Characters, in ten plates by Thomas Rowlandson.

In 1800, the results of an excursion to North and South Wales, undertaken in concert by the author and artist, were given to the public under the following description: Remarks on a Tour to North and South Wales in the year 1797, by Henry Wigstead, with plates by Thomas Rowlandson, Pugh, Howitt, &c. Published by W. Wigstead, Charing Cross.

Rowlandson also supplied some illustrations to The Beauties of Sterne, a selection of choice passages from the works of that author.

A series of Views in Cornwall, Dorset, &c., appeared as a separate publication in 1805. The artist contributed serious book-plates to an edition of the Sorrows of Werther, in 1806. A smaller edition of the witty Annals of Horsemanship and Academy for Grown Horsemen (portions of which are attributed to the pen of the convivial Captain Grose, the well-known antiquary, author of The Military Antiquities, etc.—the original design of the work with the illustrations belonged to Henry Bunbury) was issued in a cheap form by Thomas Tegg in 1800, the etchings being executed in a reduced form by Thomas Rowlandson, and published under the title of An Academy for Grown Horsemen and Annals of Horsemanship, by Geoffry Gambado, octavo. A collection of plates portraying The Miseries of Human Life, consisting of fifty etchings by Thomas Rowlandson, small folio, was published in a reduced form the same year.

The principal work, however, which appeared in 1808, was, and must remain, a fitting instance of the enterprise and good taste of Rudolph Ackermann, his liberal employment of artists whose abilities were of the first order; while demonstrating the popularity of his publications, which could guarantee the most considerable outlays, with a successful return of the capital invested.

We refer to the splendid Microcosm of London, or London in Miniature, with 105 illustrations by Pugin and Rowlandson, in three volumes, quarto. A more extended notice of this valuable series is given in its proper place in this volume, under the description of works for 1808; although we believe the actual preparation of the plates extended over some years.

We have also to notice:—

The Caricature Magazine, or Hudibrastic Mirror, published by Thomas Tegg, and continued to 1810, 386 plates, in five volumes, oblong folio.

The Art of Ingeniously Tormenting, with illustrations by Rowlandson and Woodward, octavo; published by Thomas Tegg, Cheapside, 1808.

A Lecture on Heads, by George Alexander Stevens, with twenty-five illustrations by Rowlandson and Woodward, octavo, published by Thomas Tegg, Cheapside, 1808.

Chesterfield Travestie; or School for Modern Manners, with ten caricatures engraved by Rowlandson from drawings by H. Woodward (who supplied the letterpress), duodecimo, was also published by Thomas Tegg, Cheapside. 1808.

In 1809, appeared numerous book-plates supplied by the artist to publishers. Thomas Tegg issued an edition of Sterne's Sentimental Journey, and The Beauties of Sterne, in a separate volume; both embellished with caricatures by T. Rowlandson. This gentleman also published an edition of The Surprising Adventures of the renowned Baron Munchausen, with numerous original engravings by Thomas Rowlandson; The Annals of Sporting by Caleb Quizem, with illustrations by Rowlandson and Woodward; Advice to Sportsmen, selected from the Notes of Marmaduke Markwell; with sixteen illustrations by Rowlandson; The Trial of the Duke of York, with Rowlandson's collected caricatures on the subject, in two volumes; Investigation of the Charges brought against H.R.H. the Duke of York, &c., with fourteen portraits by Rowlandson, two volumes; and Butler's Hudibras, with five illustrations by William Hogarth, engraved by Thomas Rowlandson.

Beresford's Antidote to the Miseries of Human Life, octavo, is also advertised in 1809.

The Pleasures of Human Life, by Hilari Benevolus & Co., with five plates by Thomas Rowlandson, &c., was published by Longmans, 1809.

It was in 1809 that Ackermann projected his Poetical Magazine, royal octavo, which, it was arranged, should appear in consecutive monthly parts, as a means of affording his friend, the artist, substantial and progressive employment. The generous thought which prompted this enterprise was fittingly rewarded by the successful reception this venture secured at the hands of the public, and the patrons of Ackermann's 'Repository of Arts.' The Poetical Magazine was quite a feature amongst novel publications; the famous plates supplied by Rowlandson (two monthly), and the verses felicitously written up to the caricaturist's designs by William Coombe, under the title of The Schoolmasters' Tour, and introducing the highly popular Doctor Syntax, formed the only important contributions to the Magazine, which came to a conclusion (at the fourth volume), with the end of the first Picturesque Tour.

The success which attended the appearance of the familiar Tour was altogether beyond the expectations of either publisher, artist, or author. The etchings on the plates to The Poetical Magazine were worked fairly away and renewed. In 1812, The Tour of Doctor Syntax in Search of the Picturesque, with thirty-one illustrations by Thomas Rowlandson, was published in a separate form in royal octavo, a fresh set of the much-admired plates, with but the slightest variations, being prepared expressly, and these in turn proved insufficient to supply the number of copies demanded by the delighted public. The Tour had a still larger success in its independent form, and several editions appeared in one season; the request continued for years, and was sufficiently encouraging to induce the projectors to follow it up with a new series, The Second Tour of Doctor Syntax, in Search of Consolation, with twenty-four illustrations by Thomas Rowlandson, which also appeared in monthly parts, and was issued in a collected form in one volume, royal octavo, in 1820. A third tour, in Search of a Wife, was ventured in 1822, but this was evidently intended to be the final sequel, as the hero, 'Doctor Syntax,' is removed from life's scene at the close.

Returning to Rowlandson's successive contributions of book-illustrations, we find a satirical work, Munchausen at Walcheren issued in 1811; and a Tale of the Castle (Dublin), published by Stockdale in 1812, as Petticoat Loose, a Fragmentary Poem, illustrated with four plates by Thomas Rowlandson, quarto.

The artist also issued a series of Views of Cornwall in the form of an independent volume the same year.

Mr. Ackermann had introduced, some years before, an illustrated Miscellany to his subscribers, which ran a long and highly successful career, under the title, borrowed from the circumstances of its publication, of Ackermann's Repository of Arts, Literature, Fashion, and Manufactures.

In the pages of this admirable magazine were given many continuous contributions of a valuable and interesting character, the contents being as diversified as the description of the undertaking. Among the serials were numerous essays of merit, which, in the projector's opinion, were entitled to the distinction of separate publication, and, at intervals, the discriminating proprietor of the Repository selected various series of articles by his best qualified and most respected colleagues in the work, and re-issued their contributions, with the enhanced attraction of fresh pictorial embellishments, as separate publications. In this manner a succession of Letters from Italy, which had appeared in the Repository, between 1809 and 1813, furnished by Lewis Engelbach (who supplied reviews of music; it has been said his criticisms may be usefully studied by the most successful living contributors to the press), were republished in 1815 in one volume, royal octavo, as Letters from Naples and the Campana Felice, with seventeen illustrations by Thomas Rowlandson.

Another deserving work, published by R. Ackermann, in the same finished style, with coloured engravings in aquatint, delicately completed by hand to resemble water-colour drawings, as were the major part of the illustrations to this series, appeared under the title of Poetical Sketches of Scarborough, with twenty-one illustrations by J. Green; etched by Thomas Rowlandson, 1813.

In 1815 was published The Military Adventures of Johnny Newcome, with fifteen illustrations by Thomas Rowlandson, royal octavo, printed for Patrick Martin, 198 Oxford Street. This work is written in Hudibrastic metre, by 'An Officer' in imitation of the flowing lines supplied by Coombe to the Tours of Doctor Syntax. Another volume (1815 and 1816) was published by Thomas Tegg, Cheapside, also composed after the model of the same easy versification, under the description of The Grand Master, or Adventures of Qui Hi in Hindostan, a Hudibrastic poem in eight cantos, by Quiz, illustrated with twenty-eight engravings by Thomas Rowlandson.

The principal triumph of our artist's later years appeared in 1815 and 1816, Rowlandson inventing the subjects, and Coombe supplying the descriptive versification, as was their usual method of proceeding in the entire succession of publications, undertaken under this artistic and literary co-partnership, and issued by R. Ackermann.

We refer to the Dance of Death, which had first been offered the public in monthly parts under the old and highly successful system, between 1814 and 1816. This production, which repays the most careful consideration, received a flattering reception, and, in spite of the grim nature of the subject, enjoyed surprising popularity, and added considerably to the reputation of those concerned in its appearance. We have no hesitation in recording our impression that the ingenuity and invention displayed in the seventy-two plates illustrative of the Dance of Death are considerably in advance, in point of invention, of the pictures supplied to its more genial and popular rival Doctor Syntax. Both artist and author had arrived at a period of mature experience, which qualified and disposed them to bring their finest faculties to the treatment of this melodramatic theme, in which they must have discovered morbid fascinations; since it has enabled them to rise above their average efforts. As we have noticed, although the conception is monumental, not to say sepulchral, in its characteristics, and on occasions, ghastly in its humour, the result is a masterpiece to the memories of Rowlandson and Coombe; the fires of their early inspirations were rekindled from their decline; and the Dance of Death has always impressed us as the last flicker of expiring genius; a fitting memorial of the vast and almost forgotten faculties of the projectors.

A fuller account of this impressive and truly remarkable work, will be found under the year 1810, where we have endeavoured to do justice to the exceptional qualities of a performance which, in our modest conviction, surpasses any previous treatment of the same subject.

In 1816 Rowlandson commenced a series of charming little pictures designed in outline, avowedly intended as an assistance to landscape-artists in the direction of suggesting, and supplying animated groups of figures, suitable for introduction into drawings. The etchings were executed with exceptional neatness, ease, and spirit, and the entire collection is highly interesting; it appeared under the title of The World in Miniature, figure subjects for Landscapes, Groups, and Views, and was published by Mr. Ackermann at 'The Repository.' A series of a similar description was commenced under the same designation by Rowlandson in 1821, and finished by W. H. Pyne in 1826; the set was somewhat diffusive, if it extended to 637 parts, as we are told.

Our artist's illustrations to the Beauties of Tom Brown belong to 1809.

Rowlandson also contributed a frontispiece to another of Tegg's publications in 1816, The Relics of a Saint, by Ferdinand Farquhar.

Rowlandson found a congenial exercise for his skill, taste, and mirth-imparting qualities in the illustration of Oliver Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, in 1817, when the famous tale re-appeared, embellished with twenty-four designs by the artist. Mr. Ackermann was induced to republish this delightful story as a vehicle for the display of the delicate humoristic, and more refined qualifications of the caricaturist (who, by the way, had almost ceased to deserve this epithet). Nothing could be more artless than the pathos of this fiction, its simple humour is ever fresh, and Rowlandson has executed his portion of the undertaking in a congenial spirit, indeed the happy impulses of the author seem spontaneously embodied in the picturesque designs.

The success of the Dance of Death was so considerable that the publisher endeavoured to share its popularity with a successor. The two volumes constituting the first work were, however, executed in a superior manner; and more pains were taken to bring the plates to the utmost perfection, as reproductions of the original drawings, than was the case with later publications. The Dance of Life, illustrated with twenty-eight coloured engravings by Thomas Rowlandson, published by R. Ackermann, royal octavo, appeared in 1817, and although fairly executed, neither the conceptions of Rowlandson, nor the verses of Coombe, rose above the commonplace; it is evident that the sentiment which had inspired their gifted faculties in the former subject found no revival in the present volume, which is somewhat disappointing after the talent which is manifested in its predecessor.

A pendant to the Military Adventures of Johnny Newcome was issued in 1818 as The Adventures of Johnny Newcome in the Navy, a poem in four cantos, with sixteen plates by Rowlandson from the author's designs, by Alfred Burton, published by Simpkin and Marshall, Stationers' Hall Court, Ludgate Hill. More attention was paid to the artistic preparation of the succeeding portion of The Second Tour of Doctor Syntax in Search of Consolation, with twenty-four illustrations by Thomas Rowlandson, royal octavo, which Mr. Ackermann introduced to the public in a collected form as the companion to the popular first volume in 1820.

Rowlandson also furnished illustrations to certain pamphlets or chapbooks in 1819; we may particularise one under the title of Who killed Cock Robin?—a tract on the Manchester Massacre, published by John Cahnac. We have also to notice his contribution to a chapbook which appeared the same year, as, Female Intrepidity, or the Heroic Maiden.

The same year appeared Rowlandson's Characteristic Sketches of the Lower Orders; intended as a Companion to the New Picture of London containing fifty-four coloured plates, printed by S. Leigh, 18 Strand, 1820.

Another contribution, A Tour in the South of France, drawn from the excellent serial publication, 'Ackermann's Repository of Arts, Literature, Fashion, and Manufactures,' originally supplied to its pages in instalments between the years 1817 and 1820, was republished in a completed form in 1821, with additional attractions, in the way of fresh embellishments, by the unflagging hand of our artist, under the title of A Journal of Sentimental Travels in the Southern Provinces of France, illustrated with eighteen coloured engravings from designs by Thomas Rowlandson, royal octavo, published by R. Ackermann, 101 Strand.

A French version of 'Doctor Syntax's Tour in Search of the Picturesque,' Le Don Quichotte Romantique, ou Voyage du Docteur Syntaxe À la Recherche du Pittoresque et du Romantique, also appeared in Paris this year, with twenty-eight illustrations, drawn on stone, after the original designs of Rowlandson, by Malapeau, lithographed by G. Engelmann.

The final complement of 'The Tours,' prepared under the same auspices as the earlier peregrinations, reached completion as an additional volume in 1822, and the monthly instalments were then reissued in a collected form to join the two predecessors as The Third Tour of Doctor Syntax in Search of a Wife, with twenty-five illustrations by Thomas Rowlandson, royal octavo, published by R. Ackermann.

A further instance of the universal popularity enjoyed by The First Tour of Doctor Syntax in Search of the Picturesque was afforded, in 1822, by the appearance of an edition translated into German and freely adapted as Die Reise des Doktor Syntax um das Malerische au Frusuchen with Rowlandson's famous illustrations imitated on stone and lithographed by F. E. Rademacher, Berlin.

The interest which it was found, on experience, still surrounded the grotesque prototype Dr. Syntax, induced the energetic projectors—publisher, artist, and author—under their old, well-defined relations, to venture on a farther extension of the familiar framework, and a fresh volume, which had, like the preceding publications, found its way to the public in monthly instalments, was inaugurated in 1822 under the description of The History of Johnny QuÆ Genus: The Little Foundling of the late Doctor Syntax—a poem by the author of The Three Tours (William Coombe)—embellished with twenty-four coloured engravings by Thomas Rowlandson.

The same year our artist issued another distinct volume of landscape subjects of his execution under the title of Rowlandson's Sketches from Nature; a collection of seventeen plates, drawn and etched by the artist and aquatinted by Stradler. Crimes of the Clergy, an octavo volume, with two plates by our artist, also appeared in 1822.

As a further proof that the numerous editions in royal octavo of the illustrious schoolmaster's wanderings were insufficient to satisfy the requirements of his patrons, Mr. Ackermann offered the public a fresh copy, in three volumes 16mo. of The Three Tours of Dr. Syntax, Pocket Edition, with all Rowlandson's plates, executed on a smaller scale to suit the convenience of enthusiasts, who might require to carry the volumes about with them ready for immediate reference, or for perusal on their travels and at odd moments, if such an opportunity should be in request.

In 1825 Charles Molloy Westmacott, an intimate friend of the caricaturist, in whose company we learn he visited Paris, thought proper to edit a publication under his pseudonym of 'Bernard Blackmantle,' a collection of whimsical extracts from the press, which had appeared in print in the previous season. The description of his production is as follows: The Spirit of the Public Journals for the year 1824, with Explanatory Notes. Illustrations on wood by T. Rowlandson, R. and G. Cruikshank, Lane, and Findlay. London; published by Sherwood, Jones, and Co., Paternoster Row, 1825. Our artist contributed eleven highly humorous cuts to this publication, his drawings being engraved on wood—a novel process as far as the designs usually supplied by Rowlandson are concerned.

A notable plate was furnished by the caricaturist in 1825 to The English Spy, a work also produced under the auspices of 'Bernard Blackmantle,' after the description of the better-known Life in London. The major part of the plates are due to the hand of Robert Cruikshank. Rowlandson's name is given on the title-page as having contributed a portion of the illustrations on wood, but the only example of his skill we have been able to identify is an adaptation of his drawing (now the property of Mr. Capron), The Life School at the Royal Academy, which he originally presented to his old friend John Thomas Smith, of the British Museum. Plate 32.—R. A—ys of Genius Reflecting on the True Line of Beauty at the Life Academy, Somerset House, by Thomas Rowlandson; and this illustration is undeniably the most interesting to be found in the entire contents of the two octavo volumes of which Mr. Westmacott's English Spy is composed; further particulars of this subject are given under the year 1825.

After the caricaturist's death in 1827 the admirable publications, of which his coloured plates formed the principal attractions, were discontinued; the taste of the public had changed. Wood blocks and steel plates came into fashion. Cheap annuals illustrated with woodcuts came into favour for a season, until the appearance of the more elaborately prepared 'Gift Books,' with fine steel engravings, 'Keepsakes,' 'Gems,' &c., subsequently took their place. The folios of Mr. Ackermann were still sufficiently rich in studies by Rowlandson to furnish the framework for a fresh publication. A choice was made from the large collection of original drawings, published and unpublished, which still remained, after the artist's decease, in the possession of the indefatigable proprietor of the 'Repository'; and these sketches, which of necessity, for the most part, are assignable to Rowlandson's declining period, when his drawings became looser in execution and less picturesque in point of subject, were selected as the materials for a new venture, with a departure from the old popular style of reproduction in facsimile of the artist's pictures coloured by hand.

The subjects culled from Mr. Ackermann's portfolios were redrawn on a reduced scale, either as a whole, or striking portions of caricatures, and prominent figures or groups were adapted, transferred to wood-blocks, and put into the hands of an engraver. In cutting the designs a considerable amount of the original spirit, with the individuality of execution peculiar to the master, have unfortunately been sacrificed; the engravings are heavy and poor; however, they offer a rough idea of the nature of the studies which happened to remain in the hands of the publisher, and some interest attaches to this circumstance, as the major part of these designs have never been issued on copper.

Mr. W. H. Harrison was engaged to write up to the pictorial sketches, and he has constructed various small fictions founded on the suggestions offered by the engravings; but the entire work is somewhat clumsy in contrivance, both as respects the illustrations and the literary setting intended to assist their interest in the eyes of the public; the editor's inventions are neither original nor brilliant. The title of the annual produced on this compound principle was The Humourist, a Companion for the Christmas Fireside, embellished with fifty engravings, exclusive of numerous vignettes after designs by the late Thomas Rowlandson: published by R. Ackermann, 96 Strand, and sold by R. Ackermann, junior, 191 Regent Street, 1831. The Humourist contained sixty-seven illustrations in all; the titles of these, and a brief description of the various subjects, will be found at the close of the present volume, under the year 1831.

* * * * *

Although Rowlandson was so well known as an artist, no fitting memorials of his career are extant; and while, as we have related, the task of discovering a collection of works by the artist, worthy of illustrating his exceptional abilities, is surrounded by unforeseen difficulties, the operation of culling personal traits, or records of the life and adventures of the caricaturist, demands even greater extensions of patience. Nothing short of sincere appreciation for the vast talents of the man, and of a lasting conviction of the original qualities of his works, could have encouraged the writer to prolong his researches, the chances in this case of alighting on any discoveries of note being so problematical.

The person of Rowlandson was familiarly recognised amongst his contemporaries from his youth, when he was first admitted as a student at the schools of the Royal Academy (about 1770), through his diversified fortunes, till his death, which occurred on April 22, 1827.

His figure, we learn, was large, well set-up, muscular, and above the average height—in fact, his person was a noticeable one; his features were regular and defined, his eye remarkably full and fearless, his glance being described as penetrating, and suggestive of command; his mouth and chin expressed firmness and resolution; the general impression conveyed to a stranger by his countenance, which was undeniably fine and striking in its characteristics, was that of the inflexibility of the owner.

SMITHFIELD SHARPERS; OR THE COUNTRYMAN DEFRAUDED

Old Trusty, with his Town-made Friends, To gentle sleep himself commends, With Tray upon his knees; Whilst Tom, his son, all eager, gaping, Expects each moment he'll be scraping The treasure up he sees.

Meanwhile the Harpy Tribe are plotting, By forcing liquor, winking, nodding, To cheat the youth unlearn'd; Who, to his cost, will quickly find Nor watch, nor money, left behind, And Friends to Sharpers turn'd.

Two or three portraits of the caricaturist are traceable, besides numerous burlesque transfers of his own effigy to his imaginary personages. In common with Cruikshank, Thackeray, and many other humorists of the brush and etching-needle, he was prone to introduce the presentment of his own lineaments in whimsical juxtapositions. The most generally recognised likeness, from which a separate plate has been published by Mr. Parker, occurs in a clever eccentric drawing, exhibited by the artist at the Royal Academy Exhibition in 1787, under the title of Countrymen and Sharpers (No. 555).

This subject was subsequently engraved by J. K. Sherwin, whose portrait also figures therein, in the person of the pigeon, while Rowlandson has chosen to represent himself as the leading sharper, he who, with blustering front, is fleecing the simple youth at cards, in defiance of his well-accepted reputation for rigid integrity; for although the gaming table long held the caricaturist an enslaved votary, ready to make the most reckless sacrifices to tempt the fickle favours of the gambler's fortune, it is recorded by those of his acquaintances who have mentioned this disastrous failing (which by the way he shared with all the wealthy, distinguished, and witty celebrities of his day), and deplored the havoc it made with his means, and professional pursuits, that his sense of honour was ever of the keenest, his word was always regarded as sufficient security, and he possessed a delicacy of feeling, and a sense of independence, which would not allow him to remain under a debt or an obligation.

At the time Rowlandson sent his drawing of Countrymen and Sharpers[7] for exhibition, he was 31 years of age, and according to the portrait, looks manhood personified, with a fine comely figure, and a face that imprints itself on the recollection, his hair in a profusion of wavy tresses, worn long, and 'clubbed' as was the fashion of the period. His bold and piercing eyes set under massive and somewhat prominent brows.

The next attributed portrait belongs to 1799, when Rowlandson was 43 years of age. In the design, An Artist travelling in Wales, the result of a journey he made with his friend, the convivial Henry Wigstead, he has represented himself, with a due allowance for burlesque, looking older than his years; the long hair is still there, but its curls are thinned, time and a struggle with seasons less rosy than his youth of many fortunes, are telling on the outward man, but the brows, eyes, mouth and chin have diminished nothing of their resolute characteristics—indeed, they are more marked—and the strong nervous figure is beginning to look gaunt.

The Chamber of Genius appeared in 1812 with the appropriate quotation:—

Want is the scorn of every wealthy fool; And genius in rags is turned to ridicule.—Juv. Sat.

The head of the caricaturist is strongly defined on the shoulders of the gifted occupant of a garret, and the likeness is just what might be supposed from the countenance, as given in 1787, viewed through the intervening quarter of a century of struggles, and disenchantments, when cares of the hour, and incidental anxieties, touching provision for the future, had commenced to take the place of the artist's original careless hardihood.

The last portrait to which we shall at present refer is by another hand; and was sketched when the health of the caricaturist was a grave source of apprehension, since we learn that during the last two years of his life he was a severe sufferer. It represents the figure of a large and powerful-looking old gentleman, of impressive presence; the main characteristics, and the marked profile have gathered force with increasing years, the brows are even firmer, and the features more defined; this croquis of the veteran was drawn by his old friend, and erst fellow-pupil, John Thomas Smith, the keeper of the drawings and prints in the British Museum, and the study was taken while the caricaturist was looking over some prints, on one of his visits to the treasures in his friend's department. The sketcher, who has written the circumstances under which it was taken, below the portrait, has given Rowlandson's age at seventy,—within a year, in fact, of his death. The caricaturist's flowing locks are considerably shorn by the hand of the inevitable mower, and his penetrating eyes do not disdain the assistance afforded by a pair of huge tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles, in which they are framed; but as far as the visible flight of time goes, regarding the outward man, he might be assumed to possess powers of vitality sufficient to carry him over another score years.

If our memory does not deceive us, a sketch of the caricaturist's figure, from the life, and drawn in chalks, was exhibited some time ago at Bethnal Green, in the Loan Collection, formed under the auspices of the Science and Art Department.

* * * * *

We learn that our artist, who is perhaps the most popularly recognised practitioner of the caricature branch, was born in the Old Jewry, in July 1756, that is to say, just a year before his remarkable compeer James Gillray. The members of the Rowlandson family, according to the little we can trace of their personal history, seem to have been highly respectable people of the middle class in life. The name is not of common occurrence. There is a tract relating certain misfortunes which attended two bearers of this cognomen; a pious and worthy couple who in the seventeenth century went evangelising to New England, where they suffered incredible persecutions, and escaped all sorts of dismal tortures amongst the aboriginal Indians, in whose hands they had the mischance to fall; the succession of hardships which they encountered, and their final miraculous deliverance, are duly recorded for the encouragement of the faithful. The narrative, which is simple and circumstantial, forms an item of 'improving reading' not without its interest in the present age. There is nothing to prove the relationship of this faithful and much-enduring pair to our caricaturist, beyond the circumstance of the similarity of name. Rowlandson the elder was assuredly at one time a man of fair substance, as we are informed—'some say a city merchant,' but his disposition, like that of his son, seems to have been tinctured with recklessness. Mention is made of an uncle Thomas Rowlandson, who was godfather to the subject of our notice; also, as far as we can discover, connected with mercantile pursuits. This relationship was destined to serve the caricaturist in good stead, if he had only exercised the commonest prudence in husbanding the resources which he derived from this connection. We discover that, before Rowlandson had arrived at man's estate, his chances of inheriting a provision to help him on his way, together with the prospect of any future support, so far as the paternal resources were concerned, had melted away; the elder Rowlandson's 'speculative turn' had taken a sinister bent, considerable sums had been sunk, and still more portentous liabilities had been incurred, 'by experimenting on various branches of manufacture,' which were attempted on too extensive a scale for the means at his command; and, his resources becoming exhausted, before the fruition of his schemes, pecuniary embarrassments involved his career, and he failed to realise the considerable fortune which his sanguine temperament had anticipated. The natural talents of the son, and the professional training which had cultivated his gifts, were the only contributions he received, on attaining manhood, towards his future maintenance, as far as the help he could derive from his father was concerned. Other adventitious aids came to the artist's assistance, indeed, in spite of the untoward direction which the previous prosperity of the elder had taken, Rowlandson was to a large degree the spoiled child of fortune throughout his early career.

HOW TO TREAT A REFRACTORY MEMBER.

We are not informed whether the paternal estate was restored to solvency. Among the various 'valuable legacies' which, it is related, fell to the caricaturist's share (only to be scattered broadcast), it is very possible that, in some sort, an inheritance from his father formed part of these unexpected 'good gifts.' It seems, although we have no direct records of the remaining relatives, that Rowlandson had a sister, since we learn that his brother-in-law was Howitt, famous as an artist for his delineation of animals, for his spirited hunting subjects, being eminent as a sportsman, rider, and angler; and, like the caricaturist, somewhat of a spoiled child—a wayward genius—of a congenial soul, and vivacious impulses, a trifle too given to yield to careless convivial company, or the allurements which the hour might hold forth, oblivious of sober consequences to follow.

Thomas Rowlandson, the uncle, had married a certain Mademoiselle Chattelier, who was, it is evident, a lady with some command of wealth; and from the partiality and indulgence of this aunt, our artist, we are told, 'derived that assistance which his father's reverse of fortune had withheld.'

Another reference to the family name further occurs amongst the announcements of marriages for September 1800 (Gentleman's Magazine, vol. 70, p. 898), where we find that Thomas Rowlandson, Esq., of Watling Street, espoused Miss Stuart, daughter of George Stuart, Esq., of the Grove, Camberwell, Surrey. It is obvious that Rowlandson senior intended to give his son a sound training. As a school-boy, the future celebrity wandered into the precincts of that Soho district to which he afterwards clung in his varying fortunes with the persistence developed by habit.

The caricaturist began to draw his first instalments from the fount of knowledge at the scholastic symposium of Doctor Barvis in Soho Square, 'at that time, and subsequently, an academy of some celebrity.' We are told this establishment was kept by Doctor Barrow when young Rowlandson was pursuing his studies. The respectability of the school, and its soundness as an educational institution, is satisfactorily demonstrated to our mind from the circumstance that the great Edmund Burke had elected to confide his beloved son, with whose training, it is well known, the philosopher took especial pains, to the charge of Doctor Barrow; and Richard Burke, the gentle gifted youth whose untimely death hastened the decease of his patriotic father, was a school-fellow of our artist. J. G. Holman, who was destined to acquire reputation as a dramatic writer and performer, was another school-fellow. It appears that, within the walls of this academy, Rowlandson made the acquaintance of John Bannister, whose inimitable talents were afterwards to delight the town, and whose name is a lasting ornament to the histrionic profession; it was, further, in Soho Square that young Rowlandson and young Angelo, the son of the well-known Henry Angelo (one of the best recognised and most respected foreigners domiciled in London of his day), fencing-master to the Royal Family, became fast and firm friends. The intimacy existing between this worthy trio, dating from these early days, continued steadfastly through life. All these lads were, in different degrees, enthusiasts of the graphic art; Angelo and Bannister had strong predilections for the arts, and both drew as amateurs in their subsequent careers, although, with Rowlandson, they originally meditated following up the artist's profession seriously. As to our friend Rolley, like all beginners gifted with the pictorial vein, he could make sketches intuitively before he had learnt to do anything else, as seems the rule with youths who possess the artistic faculty and an imaginative temperament; his powers of fancy directed his hand at a precociously juvenile age to the practice of exercising his abilities with pencil and pen. 'From the early period of his childhood,' it is recorded, 'Rowlandson gave presage of his future talent;' he could make sketches before he learned to write, and, according to the usual course, 'he drew humorous characters of his master and many of his scholars, before he was ten years old. The margins of his school-books were covered with these his handiworks.'

Rowlandson's genius was of the rapid order, his powers were matured before the average of students have sounded the direction of their inclinations. Young Henry Angelo left Doctor Barrow's and Soho Square, for Eton, while Bannister and Rowlandson quitted the seminary of polite learning to follow the arts at the Schools of the Royal Academy; here our artist made rapid strides, and gave convincing proofs of his ability, dexterity, and quickness of parts, during the short interval his name was entered as a probationer.

In his sixteenth year, somewhere about 1771, Rowlandson had the advantage of being sent to Paris to continue his education; we learn that he 'spoke French like a native.' It was his aunt, nÉe Mademoiselle Chattelier, residing in the French metropolis, a widow with what would have then been considered, in that capital, a handsome fortune, who invited her hopeful nephew over to the very centre of gaiety, dissipation, and luxurious refinement—Paris in the latter days of Louis the Fifteenth's reign being a very Capua for a youth of light and picturesque disposition such as our artist possessed. The impulse for purposeless frivolities, so deleteriously nourished amidst the gaieties of Parisian life, seems to have been kept in tolerable subjection by his earnest intentions to work hard at his adopted profession, which certainly must have sustained Master Rolley during his earlier residence on the Continent, until the cup of pleasure was raised to his lips by an unexpected accession of means. The student did a wonderful deal of real solid work and thoroughly steadfast application, before, like Moreland, he allowed himself to be whirled into the eddy of fashionable distractions; in Paris he was inscribed as a student in one of the drawing-academies there, and his natural abilities, aided by the excellence of the methods practised around him, to which his gifts moulded themselves quite naturally, enabled the probationer to make rapid advances in the study of the human figure, and laid the foundation for his future excellences. During his first sojourn, which lasted for nearly two years, Rowlandson became a perfect French buck, with a decided leaning, however, towards the fine-art section of the condition, and a pride in his professional calling; he learned to draw with fidelity to nature, with the graceful ease, and abandon, and the sparkle of style which marks French pictorial art of the period immediately antecedent to the reign of Louis the Sixteenth, the very ideal of luxury and refinement. It is related that, during his abode in Paris, 'he occasionally permitted his satiric talents the indulgence of portraying the characteristics of that fantastic people, whose outrÉ habits perhaps scarcely demanded the exaggerations of caricature.'

Rowlandson returned to London for a season; and, while still a youth in years, his studies at the Academy were resumed; his progress was now so marked that he was set up as a friendly rival to Mortimer, another talented student, who had won the admiration of professors and pupils alike, by his skilful drawings after the nude figure. Our artist seems to have been highly popular with the two sections of academicians and students; the former appreciated his masterly endowments, the latter were won by his whimsicalities, his spirit of mischief, and the marvellous gift he possessed of turning every situation to comical account in the production of exhaustless graphic satires, which seemed to flow from his pen of their own sweet wilfulness.

John Bannister, who, as we have seen, had evinced an equal predilection for the graphic art, with powers, however, of lesser brilliancy, was then studying in the antique school, their old friendship was renewed, and a fresh alliance for fun and frolic was straightway entered into.

These hopeful aspirants were a great acquisition to the mirth of the schools, but both these eccentric geniuses must have sorely tried the patience of their venerated pastors and masters. The nature of their drolleries, which were incessant, is exposed in an extract from the Reminiscences of Henry Angelo, who formed the third person of this waggish trio.

'At the period when Wilson held the appointment of Librarian to the Royal Academy, the students were accustomed to assemble in the library; Bannister and Rowlandson were students, and both being sprightly wights, Wilson kept a watchful eye upon their pranks. The one was apt to engage the attention of his fellow-disciples by caricaturing the surly librarian, never forgetting to exaggerate his mulberry nose; whilst the other, born to figure in the histrionic art, a mimic by nature, used to divert them, in his turn, by playing off the irritable 'Old Dick.' Michael Moser was keeper at Somerset House while Bannister and Rowlandson were students of the Royal Academy, at which period the drawing-school was held in a part of the old palace, Somerset House, just behind the site of the present institution. Moser, in virtue of his office as keeper, had apartments there, which included accommodations for a housekeeper, and other female domestics.

'Bannister and Rowlandson, as before observed, were prankish youths. The latter once gave great offence by carrying a pea-shooter into the life academy, and, whilst old Moser was adjusting the female model, and had just directed her contour, Rowlandson let fly a pea, which, making her start, she threw herself entirely out of position, and interrupted the gravity of the study for the whole evening. For this offence, Master Rowlandson went near getting himself expelled.

'Bannister, who at this time drew in the plaster academy, not having gained the step that admitted to the drawing from the life, used to amuse Moser with his mimicry, and he was, indeed, a pet of the worthy keeper.

'One evening, observing that the student had vacated his seat at his desk, the keeper went to seek him, and, hearing an unusual giggling and confusion in the basement storey he descended to learn the cause; when he discovered the young artist romping with the servant-maids.

'What are you doing, sir, hey?' inquired the keeper, taking him gently by the ear; 'why are you not at the cast? You are an idler, sir.' Bannister met his reproof with an arch smile, and whispered, 'No, kind sir, I only came down to study from the life!'

In dealing with this part of the subject, every scrap of information has its interest, the resources in this direction being unfortunately most restricted. The task of writing on Gillray, and that within the lifetime of the subject, was likened to the toil 'of bondsmen commanded to make bricks without straw,' a comparison with which we have a lively sympathy, as we have realised to the fullest extent the difficulties which surrounded that undertaking. The obstacles to be surmounted in the instance of the first caricaturist are found to be rather more vexatious in the case of the companion volume, taken up under similar auspices, to elucidate the works of Rowlandson, and to trace the artist's career as far as lies within the writer's capabilities. Sixty years ago it was declared while treating of the first-named genius, in reference to contemporaneous indifference: 'It is a scandal upon all the cold-hearted scribblers in the land to allow such a genius as Gillray to go to the grave unnoticed; and a burning shame that so many of his works should have become ambiguous for want of a commentator. The political squibs have lost half of their point for want of a glossary, and many of the humorous traits of private life, so characteristic of men and manners, are becoming oblivious to ninety-nine hundredths of those who perambulate the streets of this mighty town.' This remark, so appropriately applied to Gillray (before Thomas Wright, and successive elucidators, had contributed to render the reading of these pictorial fables fairly clear, and the solutions easy of access), is equally striking as respects its undoubted truth in its application to Rowlandson—in his instance the pioneering remained to be accomplished—although his works are less complex in themselves, a description of them has hitherto proved too perplexing an attempt, since, how were the subjects to be collected?

We feel a glow of gratitude to that worthiest old authority, The Gentleman's Magazine, which contained a capital obituary notice on the caricaturist's decease, April 22, 1827, written by 'one who had known him for more than forty years;' this article has been copied literally in all subsequent notices of Rowlandson.

W. H. Pyne, the artist, who, under a pseudonym as Ephraim Hardcastle, conducted the earliest of English fine-art reviews, The Somerset House Gazette, 1824, was one of the intimates of the caricaturist, and he has left slight allusions to Rowlandson, both in his Gazette and in another publication of his enterprising, Wine and Walnuts, or After Dinner Chat, by Ephraim Hardcastle, 1823.

John Thomas Smith, as we have shown elsewhere, was on terms of personal friendship with Rowlandson throughout his life; but strangely enough, in his Nollekens and his Times, and his second volume, Memoirs of several Contemporary Artists from the time of Roubiliac, Hogarth and Reynolds, to that of Fuseli, Flaxman, and Blake, no mention is made of his much-esteemed associate. A passing allusion to his 'friend and fellow-pupil' Rowlandson, occurs in 'Antiquity' Smith's Book for a Rainy Day.

Henry Angelo, the early schoolfellow and constant comrade of our artist, a gentleman of varied accomplishments, obliged the reading public with his Reminiscences in 1830, a chatty, interesting, and in some respects highly valuable book, of which we wish there were more, since the two volumes are, as described by the title, filled with memoirs of his friends, including numerous original anecdotes and curious traits of the most celebrated characters that have flourished during the last eighty years. Unlike the author of Nollekens and his Times, Angelo has given due prominence to his recollections of the caricaturist's works and career, and his terms of familiar intimacy have supplied him with many entertaining details, trivial or unimportant in themselves perhaps, but very much to the purpose from a biographical point of view, as aids to the effort of reproducing the subject in his wonted aspect, as he struck the men amongst whom he passed his life. The spirit of Angelo's Reminiscences will not bear dilution, and so we think it better to offer his memoirs of the artist as they were published.

'Thomas Rowlandson, John Bannister, and myself, having early in life evinced a predilection for the study of drawing, we became acquainted whilst boys, and were inseparable companions.

'Everyone at all acquainted with the arts must well know the caricature works of that very eccentric genius, Rowlandson; the extent of his talent, however, as a draughtsman is not so generally known. His studies from the human figure at the Royal Academy were made in so masterly a style that he was set up as a rival to Mortimer, whom he certainly would have excelled, had his subsequent study kept pace with the fecundity of his invention. His powers, indeed, were so versatile, and his fancy so rich, that every species of composition flowed from his pen with equal facility. His misfortune, indeed, was, as I have been assured by capable authorities who noticed his juvenile progress, that of possessing too ready an invention; this rare faculty, strange as it may seem, however desirable to the poet, often proves the bane of the painter. "The poet," as Milton says, "can build the lofty rhyme," even with a dash of his pen. The painter, however easily he may conceive the structure of a mighty building—be it a temple, or be it a ship—must describe the subject perfectly with all its parts; he must set to work doggedly, as the great lexicographer, Johnson, said, and labour at the thing with the patience of the philosopher. Rowlandson was no philosopher, and so his uncontrollable spirit, sweeping over the prescribed pale, took its excursive flights and caught its thema on the wing. Hence I think it may safely be averred that he has sketched or executed more subjects of real scenes in his original rapid manner, than any ten artists his contemporaries, and etched more plates than any artist, ancient or modern.

'Few persons—judging from the careless style of drawing and etching which he so fatally indulged in, too soon, after acquiring the first rudiments of his art—would believe the possibility of his being the author of some of his earlier designs; for although all are too slight, yet there are certain subjects of his composition carried through with a compatibility of style so truly original, and so replete with painter-like feeling, that Sir Joshua Reynolds and Sir Benjamin West pronounced them wonders of art.'

On this same head we have the testimony of Ephraim Hardcastle in the Somerset House Gazette. A certain weight, beyond the mere evidence of partiality, is due to the opinions of such authorities as Henry Angelo and W. H. Pyne, who at least deserve the credit of understanding the subject; both were familiar with the best works of their day, and in the case of the latter we respect the opinion of an artist of wide experience and well-known repute.

'Thomas Rowlandson, the merry wag, he who has covered with his never-flagging pencil enough of charta pura to placard the whole walls of China, and etched as much copper as would sheathe the British navy. Of his graphic fun and frolic we have seen, Heaven knows, full many a ponderous folio.

'Master Roley, so friendly dubbed by many an old convive, would have taken higher flights of art had he so willed, for he could draw with elegance and grace; for the design, no mind was ever better stored with thought—no genius more prolific. Nothing, even allowing for caricature, could exceed in spirit and intelligence some of the off-hand compositions of this worthy.

'Predilections for outline and the pen have ruined many a genius who would have done honour to the arts. Mortimer, Porter, and many other artists have sacrificed their talents and their fame to the indulgence of doing that with the pen (confound both goose-quill, crow-quill, and the reed!) that should have occupied that fitter instrument the pencil, aforetime called the painting-brush.'

Angelo affords us occasional glimpses of Rowlandson in Paris, and frequently alludes to the artist's travels on the Continent. It seems, at various stages of his career, he roved about sometimes in search of subjects, at others, on parties of pleasure. We have seen the young student sent to Paris to pursue art; later on Angelo finds him there, at nineteen, still earnest and hard-working.

'The subjects of his humorous designs were not sought in England alone. He travelled early in life to France, Flanders, and Holland; and stored his portfolios with sketches highly characteristic of the habits and manners of the people, at every town through which he passed. Paris, as viewed under the old rÉgime, opened a prolific source for his imitative powers. Nothing can exceed the fun and frolic which his subjects display, picked up among every class, from the court down to the cabaret. He mixed in all societies, and speaking French fluently, made himself acquainted with the habits of thinking, as well as those of acting, in that city, where everything to an English eye bore the appearance of burlesque.

'Hogarth had already pronounced Paris "all begilt and befouled." Rowlandson found it so; and taking that as a sort of maxim which governed all things, physical as well as moral, in the polite city, he burlesqued even the burlesque.

'His drawings of The Italian and The French Family, from which John Raffael Smith made engravings, had great merit. My friend John Bannister had one of the originals. I remember the last time I saw poor Edwin the comedian (I mean the elder), was on occasion of his wishing me to procure for him these originals. He was too late in his application, and was obliged to solace himself with the coloured prints, which were touched upon by the hand of Rowlandson. They were handsomely framed and hung in his dining-room on the first floor of one of the houses on the north-east piazza, Covent Garden. They subsequently became the property of Lord Barrymore.

'It would be difficult to enumerate the many choice subjects which he depicted even in these first tours to the Continent. Those descriptive of Parisian manners would now be viewed with tenfold interest, as the general external appearance of things was infinitely more original and amusing before the period of the commencement of the Revolution than since. Indeed, I can speak of these changes from my own observation, whilst two years in that city, and in the midst of its ever-varying gaieties, more than half a century ago.[8]

'During my residence there, Rowlandson came over in company with an Englishman of the name of Higginson, whom he got acquainted with at Dover; a pleasant companion, but, as it fell out, one who seemed to live on his wits.

'Their arrival in Paris was immediately after the death of Louis the Fifteenth at the moment of the putting on public mourning (1774). Mr. Higginson had letters of introduction (like Sylvester Daggerwood) to several persons of distinction, and resided at an hotel adjacent to my quarters. He sent the valet de place with a civil note to request the loan of my black suit, which he knew would fit him to a T. On the written assurance that it would be returned in time for me to pay a promised visit in the evening, I readily consented. Rowlandson lost sight of him for two days and nights; on the morning of the third day he returned, and I went, not over well pleased, to demand restitution, when on entering his apartment, he received me with, "Ah! mon ami, is it you?" seated under the frosting powder-puff of a French friseur, having his hair frizzled and powdered À la mode, in my mourning suit. Rowlandson sketched the group, and subjoined a motto, "Free and Easy." I had many of the drawings made by my friend Roly at this time.'

It is most likely that our artist's first contribution to the Royal Academy (it was the seventh exhibition) arrived from Paris; in 1775 there appeared, under the catalogue Number 253, a certain drawing entitled Delilah payeth Sampson a visit while in prison at Gaza, by Thomas Rowlandson; the exhibitor's address is given 'at No. 4 Church Street, St. Ann's.'

This, no doubt, like his contributions up to 1784, was of a serious character.[9]

From 1777 we find Rowlandson settled down to portrait-painting, his address being given at Wardour Street; his contributions to the Academy were as follow:—

It is improbable, however, that the artist's disposition for change would allow him to vegetate in one spot for any length of time, and we are not surprised to discover that his tours to the Continent became frequent; as far as we can judge of his extended travels, it appears it was in 1778—while his youthful ardour was still fresh, when his sprightly faculties had not been jaded by the allurements of fashionable life, and his hand had not been betrayed into the careless execution which determined some time after his decisive rejection of serious art for the indulgence of uncompromising caricature—that he went very earnestly to work; travelling in Flanders and through the cities of Germany; making clever studies and finished pictures of the incidents of his journeys; noting the travellers he encountered, their mode of conveyance, the foreign nobility and their equipages, the townsfolks and the country people, coaches, waggons, and, above all, horses (which he then drew with great fidelity and spirit from life), as far as the figure subjects which enlivened his pictures were concerned; while his views were faithful representations of the places he visited, worked out with the completeness of landscape art.

The drawings of this period evince the excellence of his talents. There is sufficient spice of character introduced into the groups, and incidents which give action to his pictures, to raise his subjects above the average treatment, but the comic element is subordinated to the general harmony of the whole conception; and we have every opportunity of forming our opinion, from the numerous interesting series of studies which have come under our attention, that it was not until about 1782 that our artist began to cut himself adrift from the more legitimate occupation of his vast abilities in the regions of serious art, for the allurements which the readier exercise of his talents as a caricaturist held out for the indulgence of his eccentric and wayward tendencies. As we have seen, his early bias was undoubtedly towards the simply ludicrous; then intervened his academic training in London and Paris, the maturing of his powers necessitating an immense, and indeed almost incredible amount of sterling hard work, such as fitted him to excel in any branch of his calling he elected to pursue; followed by an attempt towards his establishment as a serious artist and portrait-painter, and then a relapse in the direction of his early impulses. This inclination was fostered by the encouragement of his friends, and the influence of their example. His cronies were, as was most natural, the humorous designers. There was the great and gifted Gillray, the prince of caricaturists, whose works created an impression on the public justified by their remarkable qualities. The friendship of this man, whose reputation was so wide, and whose mastery of the situation appeared extraordinary, encouraged Rowlandson to strike out a pathway in the same direction; bringing original qualifications to bear on this impetus, which in no degree clashed with the strongly marked intentions of Gillray's scathing inventions. There was his constant friend Henry Wigstead, a man of social standing, profusely liberal in his house, a jovial companion out of doors; who, richly endowed with the vein of humorous invention allied to powers of observation, and a refined sense of the beautiful, as well as a ready knack of seizing the comic features of a situation, entrusted his sketches to Rowlandson, that they might be produced in fitting form; and to the proper execution of these whimsicalities Rowlandson willingly lent the full force of his own trained skill. Another amateur of distinction, whose example and influence must have had considerable weight with our artist, was Henry Bunbury, the caricaturist, a man of family, of means, and, above all, of high culture. The celebrated Bunbury seemed formed expressly to be courted by the most eminent of his contemporaries; he had married one of the beautiful Miss Hornecks; the Duke and Duchess of York were delighted with his company; amongst the brilliant assemblies at Wynnstay, Bunbury's society was the most relished; Walpole, Garrick, Reynolds, and Goldsmith were constantly laying adulation at his feet, or exchanging gallant little pleasantries with this favoured child of fortune; West and Reynolds were respectfully solicitous that he should send his contributions to the Royal Academy; the writers of the day were given to deplore that the occupations of town and country life, the court, the hunting-field, and the ceremony of receiving company at his country-house or paying visits to the seats of his noble friends, sadly interfered with the exercise of his artistic abilities.

The instance of Bunbury, who was Rowlandson's senior by six years, no doubt had considerable influence upon our artist's career; the praise and adulation lavished upon the amateur sketches of the man of fashion, and the prophecies which writers were in the habit of recording, that, if Bunbury had not, from his birth and station, been indifferent to mere monetary advantages, the pursuit of his talents must have infallibly produced him a large access of fortune (which he did not need, by the way, since his means were ample) possibly helped to turn Rowlandson from quietly persevering in the less congenial study of portraiture, and induced him to show the public what could be done in the grotesque walk. Nor must we forget Mitchell the banker, whose friendship was always at our caricaturist's service, his travelling companion to the Continent, where Rowlandson and his patron passed for the veritable representatives of John Bull. There was 'the facetious Nixon,' the pleasant and witty John, 'a choice member of the celebrated Old British Beef-Steak Club, honorary secretary, and sometime providore to that society of native gourmands;' further, like his friend Bunbury, distinguished as a man of talent and taste, possessed of original gifts in the humorous department of graphic art, he was an honorary exhibitor at Somerset House for many years: this gentleman, who had perfected the study of how to get the largest possible amount of enjoyment out of existence, also came to Rowlandson to put his drawings into acceptable shape, and to introduce his eccentric pleasantries to the public. Nor must the well-known amateurs and choice spirits, Woodward and Collings, be omitted from the list of those familiars of the artist who, by precept and example, encouraged him to devote his accomplishments to the comic branch. It is not surprising that the tendency of this influence, allied to the strong original bias natural to our artist, drew him farther away from the steady pursuit of art, and plunged him into the tempting career of a caricaturist, a pursuit which held out peculiar attractions to an artist gifted with his whimsical inclinations. We must do Rowlandson the credit to admit that, at the outset, he distinguished himself marvellously. His first contributions, under his changed profession, were by no means discreditable to his great qualifications; indeed these drawings, from the successful impression they produced on the public, appeared to justify the resolution the artist had taken, and to prove that he was evidently more at home in the fanciful branch than any of his predecessors or contemporaries. In 1784 Rowlandson contributed three somewhat ambitious subjects to the Royal Academy Exhibition; according to the Catalogue No. 462, An Italian Family; No. 503, Vauxhall; No. 511, The Serpentine River.

Vauxhall Gardens, which is possibly the best recognised of Rowlandson's more aspiring compositions, was engraved by R. Pollard, aquatinted, to resemble the drawing, by F. Jukes, and published under the auspices of John Raphael Smith, also a convivial companion, a leading spirit amongst the careless souls who formed Rowlandson's social surroundings; the well-known printseller, who was 'a jack-of-all-trades' according to his own admission, was celebrated for his liberality to artists; he personally practised the arts both of engraving and painting, and he excelled in executing spirited portrait sketches, in crayons, 'miniatures in large' as they were called, of the fashionable personages of his day.

The Study of Vauxhall is replete with character; the persons of the principal frequenters are, it is believed, portraits of numerous celebrities of the period.

Angelo, in his Reminiscences, which touch upon every topic of the time, among other interesting allusions, recounts the partiality which he and Rowlandson entertained for the popular resort of the past, and the attractions which, according to his admission, its diversions held out to the pair.

'Vauxhall.—I remember the time when Vauxhall (in 1776, the price of admission being then only one shilling) was more like a bear garden than a rational place of resort, and most particularly on Sunday mornings.

'It was then crowded from four to six with gentry, demireps, apprentices, shop-boys, &c. Crowds of citizens were to be seen trudging home with their wives and children. Rowlandson the artist and myself have often been there, and he has found plenty of employment for his pencil.

'The chef-d'oeuvre of his caricatures, which is still in print, is his drawing of Vauxhall, in which he has introduced a variety of characters known at the time, particularly that of my old schoolfellow at Eton, Major Topham, the macaroni of the day. One curious scene he sketched on the spot purposely for me. It was this:—A citizen and his family are seen all seated in a box eating supper, when one of the riffraff in the gardens throws a bottle in the middle of the table, breaking the dishes and the glasses. The old man swearing, the wife fainting, and the children screaming, afforded full scope for his humorous pencil.

'Such night scenes as were then tolerated are now become obsolete. Rings were made in every part of the gardens to decide quarrels; it no sooner took place in one quarter, than by a contrivance of the light-fingered gentry, another row was created in another quarter to attract the crowd away.'

Before taking leave of Rowlandson and Angelo, the most agreeable of companions, at Vauxhall, we must add a further note of another of their holiday jaunts, once more borrowed from the Reminiscences.

'Mrs. Weichsel (Mrs. Billington's mother) was the favourite singer at Vauxhall; upon one occasion she had her benefit at the little theatre in the Haymarket. Her daughter and son added considerably to the entertainment that night; though the former could not have been fourteen years old, her execution on the pianoforte surprised everyone. The son, then a little boy, played a solo on the fiddle in such peculiarly fine style that the audience were both astonished and delighted. Exhibiting his early abilities standing on a stool, I was present that night with Rowlandson the artist, who made a sketch of him playing, which he afterwards finished for me, and which, within these few years, was within my collection.'

We will leave Rowlandson rejoicing in the popular impression his drawings had produced in the Exhibition of the Royal Academy for 1784, where, as his friends were inclined to prophesy, his fame and fortune were both assured, and turn to the subject of another fortune which seems to have come into his possession about this period. We have said that the artist was a spoiled child of prosperity; his contemporaries record their impression that the indulgences of his aunt, the ex-Mademoiselle Chattelier already referred to, as the kindly patroness of her wayward nephew's budding talents, who supplied him incautiously with money, when he would have been better without it, paved the foundation of those careless habits which attended his manhood; and to her injudicious generosity his biographer affects to trace that improvidence for which, says our authority, poor Rowlandson was remarkable through life. After this aunt's decease, she left him seven thousand pounds, much plate, trinkets, and other valuable property. He then indulged his predilections for a joyous life, and mixed himself with the gayest of the gay. Whilst at Paris, being of a social spirit, he sought the company of dashing young men; and among other evils, imbibed a love for play. He was known in London at many of the fashionable gaming houses, alternately won and lost, without emotion, till at length he was minus several thousand pounds. He thus dissipated the amount of more than one valuable legacy. It was said to his honour, however, that he always played with the feelings of a gentleman, and his word passed current even when with an empty purse. Rowlandson assured the writer of the memoir which appeared, on his death, in the obituary of The Gentleman's Magazine for June 1827, that he had frequently played throughout a night and the next day; and that once, such was his infatuation for the dice, he continued at the gaming table nearly thirty-six hours, with the intervention only of the time for refreshment, which was supplied by a cold collation, presumably consumed on the spot and during the intervals of play.

This uncontrollable passion for gambling, strange to say, did not pervert his principles. He was scrupulously upright in all his pecuniary transactions, and ever avoided getting into debt. He has been known, after having lost all he possessed, to return home to his professional studies, sit down coolly to produce a series of new designs, and to exclaim, with stoical philosophy, 'I have played the fool; but,' holding up his pencils or the reed pen with which he traced his flowing outlines, 'here is my resource.' Such was his dexterity of hand, combined with the richest fertility of imagination, and graphic mastery over the movements of the human figure, that in a few hours he produced inimitable pictures, replete with his best qualities of humour, form, and colour, with incredible rapidity; and these ingenious productions, invented in endless variety, were at once put into circulation, and excited the competition of collectors of drawings and caricatures, who eagerly accumulated every sketch which his facile hand designed, too often under the pressure of the actual necessities of the hour, or the careless effusions of the intervals in his pleasures or dissipations.

Rowlandson's contributions to the Academy in the succeeding years were as follows:—

1786.	No.	560.	A French Family.
"	"	566.	Opera House Gallery.
"	"	575.	An English Review.
"	"	583.	A French Review.
"	"	599.	Coffee House.
1787.	"	525.	The Morning Dram, or Huntsman rising.
"	"	529.	Grog on Board a Ship.
"	"	531.	French Barracks.
"	"	555.	Countrymen and Sharpers.

It was about this time that our caricaturist met with a somewhat disagreeable adventure, which is thus related by his friend Angelo:—

'Rowlandson robbed.—Having walked one night with Rowlandson towards his house, when he lived in Poland Street,[10] we parted at the corner. It was then about twelve o'clock, and before he got to his door a man knocked him down, and, placing his knees on his breast, rifled him of his watch and money. The next day he proposed that we should be accompanied by a thief-taker, to try to find him out, as he was certain he should know him again. We first repaired to St. Giles's, Dyot Street, and Seven Dials, but to no purpose. In one of the night-houses, four ill-looking fellows, des coupes-jarrets, so attracted our attention, that whilst we sat over our noggin of spirits, as he always carried his sketch-book with him, he made an excellent caricature group of them for me, introducing a prison in the background. An idea may be formed from the caricature, of the different gradations which lead to the gallows—petty larceny, house-breaking, foot-pad and highway robbery; and he afterwards finished it for me in his best style, superior to the greater part of his works; this was about 1790. The coloured drawing once was included in my collection, in a room crowded with various subjects, the greatest part caricatures by my old friend Rowly—his general appellation among his friends.

'Our first interview originated in Paris (about 1775); he was then studying in the French school. Lately, having to dispose of my collection (I may say unique), my friend Bannister purchased it of me, and it was added to his many choice and valuable drawings of the first masters, which were so very superior that the four thieves ought to have esteemed it an honour to be placed in such good company.[11]

'The next night a gentleman was robbed in Soho Square in like manner. Soon afterwards several suspicious characters were taken to an office then in Litchfield Street, Soho, suspected of street robberies, and Rowlandson and myself went there out of curiosity, accompanied by many others who had been robbed. They were all placed before us, but none were identified. Rowlandson was particularly called upon to look around him, but to no purpose. One man in particular made himself more conspicuous than all the others, treating his curiosity with contempt, saying, "I defies the gemman to say as how I ever stopped him any vare." "No; but you are very like the description of the ruffian," answered Rowlandson, "who robbed a gentleman last Wednesday night in Soho Square." This was a thunderbolt to the man, who instantly looked pale and trembled. The gentleman was immediately sent for, and as soon as he entered the room, though there were several for examination, he fixed directly on the man that had been suspected. At the sessions following he was found guilty of robbery, and hanged. This pleased my friend mightily; "for, though I got knocked down," said he, "and lost my watch and money, and did not find the thief, I have been the means of hanging one man. Come, that's doing something."'

We incidentally learn a few particulars of subjects which found their way into Angelo's gallery, the collection which subsequently came into the possession of his excellent friend Bannister.

'Black and White.—Being fond of the arts and particularly of caricatures, I had by me a great number of Rowlandson's, to one of which I was puzzled to give a name. The subject was an old man, at breakfast, seated near the fire, his gouty leg on a stool, and the kettle boiling over; the water is falling on his leg, and he is ringing the bell. The room door is open behind him, and a black servant is kissing the maid, who is bringing in the toast. I requested Theodore Hook to write a title to it, and he put, "Chacun À son goÛt."'[12]

We are further afforded an opportunity of recording Rowlandson's enthusiasm for his profession. The details of a certain visit he paid, with Angelo, to Portsmouth, and the unflinching nerve he exhibited under circumstances which were calculated to distress a less robust constitution, are thus recounted by his friend and travelling companion:—

'The general rumour, after Lord Howe's action on June 1, 1794, was that he would return to Portsmouth. I was anxious to see the sight, for it was expected he would bring the French prizes with him.

'The evening after my arrival, according to promise, Rowlandson the artist came to join me.

'The morning following we saw, on the Gosport side, the landing of the French prisoners, numbers of different divisions filing off to the different stations allotted them. As for the wounded, previous to their quitting the boats, carts were placed alongside, and when filled, on the smack of the whip, were ordered to proceed. The sudden jolting made their groans appalling, and must have occasioned the wounds of many to produce an immediate hemorrhage. The sight was dreadful to behold: numbers were boys, mutilated, some not more than twelve years old, who had lost both legs. In the evening we went to Forton Prison. Those who were not in the last engagement were in high spirits in their shops, selling all sorts of toys and devices, made from shin-bones, &c. In one of the sick-wards we saw one of the prisoners, who, an officer told us had been a tall, handsome man, previous to the battle; but, having received a shot that had lacerated his side, a mortification had taken place. He was then making his will; his comrades were standing by, consoling him, some grasping his hand, shedding tears.

'This scene was too much for me, and made such an impression on my mind that I hastened away; but I could not persuade Rowlandson to follow me, his inclination to make a sketch of the dying moment getting the better of his feelings. After waiting some time below for my friend, he produced a rough sketch of what he had seen:—a ghastly figure sitting up in bed, a priest holding a crucifix before him, with a group standing around. The interior exhibited the contrivance of the French to make their prison habitable. When finished, it was added to my collection, a memento of the shocking sight I beheld at Forton Prison.

'Our curiosity not stopping here, we entered another sick-ward, but the stench and closeness of the place, crowded as it was, prevented our remaining there more than a very short time. The next day, having seen quite enough, I returned to town. Rowlandson went to Southampton, where he made a number of sketches of Lord Moira's embarkation for La VendÉe. I saw them afterwards, and was delighted, for it appeared he had taken more pains than usual, and he must have portrayed them well, from having been on the spot himself at the time. The shipping and the various boats filled with soldiers were so accurately delineated, that I have often since regretted that I did not at that time purchase them. Mr. Fores of Piccadilly, who had by him many of the very finest drawings executed by Rowlandson in his best days (for latterly they were inferior), fortunately purchased them. He was one of his first and best patrons; and I understand he had twenty-five folio volumes of the most choice caricatures of the last and present centuries, which must have been an invaluable recueil, showing not only what we have been, but the age we lived in. Had Rowlandson gone with the expedition then landing in La VendÉe as a draughtsman, the attack at Fort PenthiÈvre, and the incident that followed, would have furnished us with many eventful scenes of that fatal expedition.'

As we have related, Rowlandson was no stranger to the Continent; in the early part of his career he was constantly abroad. We have shown how he studied in Paris; afterwards we find him wandering farther afield, and taking in Germany and the Netherlands. Then we are introduced to him as a man of fashion, bowling through the legacies which had fallen to his lot, both in the French metropolis and in London, calmly sitting down to gamble away his fortune by the shortest route with the best will in the world. Anon he accompanies his friend Mitchell the banker on a wider tour. Then we hear of his sojourning in Paris with other congenial spirits, and making the most of the passing season with his friends John Raphael Smith, Westmacott, and Chasemore: on all these occasions he produced drawings innumerable; his most frequent travelling companion seems, however, to have been his steadfast patron the banker, and it was this liberal collector who rejoiced in the opportunity of securing the artist's most desirable Continental studies. Our oft-quoted authority Angelo, who, happily for those who entertain an interest in the caricaturist, never tires of telling little anecdotes of his chum Roley, in his own familiar manner relates a few particulars of the figure these worthies made in the eyes of the Monsieurs, amongst whom their visits were favourably received.

'Mr. Mitchell, however, possessed the best collection of Rowlandson's French and Dutch scenes. Among those were many in his most humorous style, particularly a Dutch Life Academy, which represents the interior of a school of artists, studying from a living model, all with their portfolios and crayons, drawing a Dutch Venus (a vrow) of the make, though not of the colour, of that choice specimen of female proportion, the Hottentot Venus, so celebrated as a public sight in London, a few years since.

'This friend and patron of Rowlandson, Mr. Mitchell the quondam banker, of the firm of Hodsol and Co., was a facetious, fat gentleman—one of those pet children of fortune, who, wonderful as it may appear, seem to have proceeded through all the seven ages (excepting that of the lean and slippered pantaloon), without a single visit from that intruder upon the rest of mankind, yclept Care. In him centred, or rather around him the Fates piled up, the wealth of a whole family. He was ever the great gathering nucleus to a large fortune. He was good-humoured and enjoyed life. Many a cheerful day have I, in company with Bannister and Rowlandson, passed at Master Mitchell's.'

Under the auspices of this great banker, Rowlandson subsequently made a tour to France, and other parts of the Continent. 'His mighty stature astonished the many, but none more than the innkeepers' wives, who, on his arrival, as he travelled in style, looked at the larder, and then again at the guest. All regarded him as that reported being, of whom they had heard, the veritable Mister Bull. His orders for the supplies of the table, ever his first concern, strengthened this opinion, and his operations at his meals confirmed the fact.

'Wherever he went he made good for the house.

'On this tour, Rowlandson made many topographical drawings, in general views of cities and towns; amongst others, the High Street at Antwerp, and the Stadt House at Amsterdam, with crowds of figures, grouped with great spirit, though his characters were caricatures.

'The most amusing studies, however, which filled the portfolio of his patron were those that portrayed the habits and customs of the Dutch and Flemish, in the interior scenes, which they witnessed in their nocturnal rambles in the inferior streets at Antwerp and Amsterdam. Some of these compositions, drawn from low life, were replete with character and wit. One of the most spirited and amusing of these represented the interior of a Treischuit, or public passage-boat, which was crowded with incident and humour.'[13]

Another reminiscence of Rowlandson and Mitchell is found in the Somerset-house Gazette, edited by Ephraim Hardcastle (W. H. Pyne), an intimate associate of the caricaturist and a member of the artist's circle of friends.

'I look back with pleasure to former days, when old Mr. Greenwood used to hold the print auctions by candle-light, and have a perfect recollection of his good-humour and upright dealing. I well remember, too, a number of artists and amateurs who constantly attended his room, to purchase etchings of the old masters for themselves and friends.

'Old Parsons, as he was called, and young Bannister, the celebrated comedians, were both collectors and amateur artists: the latter was considered an excellent judge of prints. Rowlandson, the humorous draughtsman, and his friend and patron Mr. Mitchell the banker, of the firm of Hodsols, were also frequently of this evening rendezvous of artists, amateurs, and connoisseurs.'

John Thomas Smith, the whilom pupil of Nollekens the sculptor (with whose life he favoured the public), and one of Mr. Reid's predecessors as Keeper of the Print Room of the British Museum, in his loquacious Book for a Rainy Day rambles into the subject of picture sale-rooms, and notes the eccentric characters, collectors, and their individualities, to be met with thereat in his time. On this subject 'Antiquity Smith's' account tallies with that given by Angelo. We have confined our extract to the paragraph which introduces the caricaturist as a crony and erst fellow-pupil of the versatile chronicler.

'I must not omit to mention another singular but most honourable character, of the name of Heywood, nick-named "Old Iron-wig." His dress was precise, and manner of walking rather stiff. He was an extensive purchaser of every kind of article in art, particularly Rowlandson's drawings; for this purpose he employed the merry and friendly Mr. Seguier, the picture-dealer, a school-fellow of my father's, to bid for him.

'I shall now close this list by observing that my friend and fellow-pupil, Rowlandson, who has frequently made drawings of Hutchins and his print auctions, has produced a most spirited etching, in which not only many of the above described characters are introduced, but also most of the print-sellers of his day.'

The editor of this work has seen a drawing by Rowlandson of this very auction, the cognoscenti gathered round the long tables lighted with flickering candles, and peering over the engravings, glasses on nose, while the auctioneer was endeavouring to excite the interest of the company in the prints brought to his rostrum.

Before we pass on to other contemporaries of the caricaturist, we think it advisable to introduce the reader to the society which Rowlandson shared round the hospitable mahogany of the banker, who, like Wigstead, Nixon, WeltjÉ, and certain other generous hosts of our artist's acquaintance, appears to have kept open house for the entertainment of choice friends, where the enjoyments of social intercourse were prolonged to the verge of dissipation, and the fun, which enlivened their hours of relaxation, was frequently kept up until the next day was well advanced; the associates being loth to interrupt the pleasures of their sitting, protracted as their gaieties might be considered according to the more staid usages of a better regulated age, such as we have been taught to regard our own.

'Mr. Mitchell resided for many years in Beaufort Buildings, Strand, and occupied the house tenanted by the father of Dr. Kitchiner, of eccentric memory. Here, after the closing of the banking-house, he was wont to retire, and pass a social evening, surrounded by a few chosen associates whose amusements were congenial, and whose talent well paid the host for his hot supper and generous wine. Often, even beyond the protracted darkness of a winter's night, he and his convives have sat it out till dawn of day, and seen the sun, struggling through the fog, from the back windows, shed its lurid ray on the rippling waters of the murky Thames.

'Well do I remember sitting in this comfortable apartment, listening to the stories of my old friend Peter Pindar, whose wit seemed not to kindle until after midnight, at the period of about his fifth or sixth glass of brandy and water. Rowlandson, too, having nearly accomplished his twelfth glass of punch, and replenishing his pipe with choice oronooko, would chime in. The tales of these two gossips, told in one of these nights, each delectable to hear, would make a modern Boccaccio.'

Angelo, in his capital chatty Memoirs, relates an anecdote of one of Wigstead's pranks played off on the satirist Peter Pindar, whose trenchant wit spared 'nor friend nor foe;' but, in his turn, Dr. Wolcot did not relish ridicule, especially when it happened to be excited at his own expense. It was discovered that, eminently satirical as was the bard with his pen, he was not emulous to shine as a wit in colloquial intercourse with strangers, or even amongst his most intimate associates. It was asserted, with some fidelity, that 'Dr. Wolcot's wit seemed to lie in the bowl of a teaspoon.' 'I could not guess the riddle,' writes the discursive and cheerful author of the Reminiscences, 'until one evening, seated at Mitchell's, I observed that each time Peter replenished his glass goblet with cognac and water, that, in breaking the sugar, the corners of his lips were curled into a satisfactory smile, and he began some quaint story—as if, indeed, the new libation begot a new thought.

'Determined to prove the truth of the discovery which I fancied I had made, one night after supper, at my own residence in Bolton Row, he being one among a few social guests, I made my promised experiment. One of the party, who delighted in a little practical joke, namely Wigstead, of merry memory, being in the secret, he came provided with some small square pieces of alabaster. Peter Pindar's glass waning fast, Wigstead contrived to slip the fragments of spurious sweetness into a sugar-basin provided for the purpose, when the Doctor reaching the hot water, and pouring in the brandy, Wigstead handed him the sugar-tongs, and then advanced the basin of alabaster. "Thank you, boy," said Peter, putting in five or six pieces, and taking his tea-spoon, began stirring as he commenced his story.

'Unsuspicious of the trick, he proceeded: "Well, sirs,—and so, the old parish-priest.—What I tell you (then his spoon went to work) happened when I was in that infernally hot place, Jamaica (then another stir). Sir, he was the fattest man on the island (then he pressed the alabaster); yes, damme, sir; and when the thermometer, at ninety-five, was dissolving every other man, this old slouching, drawling, son of the Church got fatter and fatter, until, sir—curse the sugar! some devil-black enchanter has bewitched it. By —— sir, this sugar is part and parcel of that old pot-bellied parson—it will never melt;" and he threw the contents of the tumbler under the grate. We burst into laughter, and our joke lost us the conclusion of the story. Wigstead skilfully slipped the mock sugar out of the way, and the Doctor, taking another glass, never suspected the frolic.'

Let us take a further glimpse of the social meetings which Rowlandson shared in company with Angelo, who duly set down the outlines of the evenings' diversions in his Memoirs. As this anecdote introduces a personage who figures somewhat prominently amidst the more lively records of the period, we must be allowed to say a word or two about the giver of the feast, where we are admitted by favour and enabled to watch the proceedings from a distance.

Another excellent friend, occasional host, and boon companion of our caricaturist was, as we have mentioned, WeltjÉ, the Prince of Wales' cook and steward, a German of eccentric proclivities, who was pretty universally recognised as a character in his generation. The huge person of this worthy is frequently introduced into the social satires of the period; the artistic and literary wags alike delighted to make the figure of the old bon-vivant conspicuous; it seems that WeltjÉ was in no wise offended at this popularity, however unflattering might be the intentions of the wicked wights; he was a calm humoristic philosopher, whose composure was not easily deranged, and in return for their mischievous sallies, which only amused him, he made the wits, who grew waggish at his expense, his guests at his residence Hammersmith Mall; where he kept such a table as attracted all classes of society, and to which his friends were ever welcome. WeltjÉ's culinary accomplishments, united with his hospitable proclivities, rendered him a truly remarkable host; his good humour was imperturbable, his store of anecdotes inexhaustible, and his German bluntness rather added to the charm of his pleasantries; even that superfine Sybarite and highly sensitive exquisite, the Heir Apparent, Mr. WeltjÉ's patron and employer, was glad to dissemble his offended dignity when his precious and immovable cook was the assailant. Angelo, who declares he owed many a convivial day to the kindness of this rough diamond, assures us in his Reminiscences: 'Whether at Carlton House or his own, WeltjÉ was always remarkable for singularity. I have been told that when Alderman Newnham was one day dining at Carlton House, the Prince said to him, "Newnham, don't you think there is a strange taste in the soup?" "It appears so to me, your highness." "Send for WeltjÉ." When WeltjÉ made his appearance, the Prince observed that the soup had a strange taste. WeltjÉ called to one of the pages, "Give me de spoone," and putting it in the tureen, after tasting it several times, said, "Boh! boh! tish very goote," and immediately left the room, leaving the spoon on the table, without taking further notice of the complaint.'

It is not, however, with the worthy WeltjÉ at Carlton House, but at his own villa, that we have to deal. Angelo introduces us to a capital dinner-party which took place at Hammersmith Mall, when the old associates, Rowlandson, Bannister, and Munden, were among the guests; Madame Banti the opera-singer, and Taylor, also of the Opera House, with Mr. Palmer of Bath, contributed to make up a tolerably festive party. The dinner was long and bien recherchÉ; the dishes choice, and cooked in superior style; the sprightly conversation, in which the company delighted, had been somewhat suspended during the discussion of a great variety of entremets, which were duly appreciated by all the guests, and especially by Madame Banti, who not only tasted of every dish, but, in addition to a quantity of strong ale, drank a bottle of champagne. The guests were preparing for that flow of wine and conversation which were the agrÉmens of social intercourse at the period. The repast was concluded as everyone imagined, and nobody felt disposed to touch another morsel, when WeltjÉ's grand piece of the entertainment made its appearance—a huge boar's head, at which delicacy everyone stared in consternation.

WeltjÉ plunged into his element, mixing up sauces piquantes at table, of such ingredients as oil, lemon, cayenne, and different concomitants.

The guests, already lavishly regaled, were inclined to expostulate. 'Indeed, WeltjÉ, we have had more than enough.' 'Boh!' responds the entertainer, 'I vill make you all hungry again; two heads gomed to dis gontry, von for me, toder for de Queen, dat de Prince of Bronsvick sent;' and away proceeded the compounding of sauces. The long interval occupied in WeltjÉ's culinary preparations was shortened by droll anecdotes, peculiar to his own description, introduced for the purpose of distracting the attention. Such was his account of his adventure on his return home to Hammersmith, in his carriage, from Carlton House. 'Fon I gote to de fost dumbpike beyond Kensington, from town, de goach stobed some time, fon me say, "Godam, ged on:" fon de dumbike say, "Sir, dere be nobody on de bokes." I was very much fraightened, so I did ged up mine-self. The next day gome de goachman: "Pray, sir, fon am I to ged the carriage ready?" "Tartifle, what become of you last night?"' The coachman, it appears, had fallen off the box in a drunken stupor; unhurt, he had, never troubling himself about his charge, taken a nap all night under a hedge, and attended on his master the next morning to receive orders as coolly as if nothing unusual had happened. The sauce piquante is ready by the time the host has raised a few laughs; clean plates are handed round; a large dish is filled with slices of the boar's head, swimming in provocative mixtures; and the guests fall to again; verifying, as Angelo relates, the French proverb that, l'appÉtit vient en mangeant, or, as Hamlet says, 'As if increase of appetite had grown with what it fed on.' The second repast proved so excellent that the plates were continually replenished. The poets, painters, actors, musicians, and others, who crowded WeltjÉ's liberal entertainments, with 'those whose superior station was more suited to a palace,' then gave themselves up to unrestrained mirthfulness. The dinner Angelo describes will serve as a type of the many similar entertainments at which our caricaturist assisted. With the dessert Madame Banti became somewhat lively, from her repeated libations of champagne, being, as Angelo informs us, 'in higher spirits than any French woman I had ever seen. With the enthusiasm of a true John Bull, she sang "God save the King," that she might have been heard on the other side of the river. Munden, whom she had never seen before, sang the "Old Woman of Eighty;" and to give effect to the song, tied his pocket-handkerchief round his head, though his superior humour needed no addition. When he had finished his song, Banti left her seat in ecstasy, and went to the other side of the table, where he and I were sitting, and was so pleased with his mummery (it could be nothing else, for Joe never was an Adonis), that she came behind his chair and kissed him; which, however, did not excite a blush, but an agreeable surprise. What with the songs, the choice wines, the delicious fruits (from WeltjÉ's hothouse), and the zest given to the entertainment by Banti, it formed such a delightful treat, that the evening passed too quickly, and it was time to depart long before we were sated with "the feast of reason and the flow of soul."'

To return to the working life of our caricaturist: it must be borne in mind that Rowlandson's journeys were not confined to the Continent; from drawings which have come under our attention, we find he must have seen the Lakes; it is highly probable that he paid a visit to Henry Bunbury, who, towards the close of his life, settled at Keswick, where he died in 1811. We also know, from his works, that our artist was familiar with England and Wales: his tours, with his friend Henry Wigstead, have produced many interesting souvenirs; we have described how they travelled to Wales, and how, too, they saw Cheshire, Cornwall, Devon, and Somerset; we find them scampering off to the newly established Brighthelmstone, and to the more old-fashioned watering-places on the coast of Kent. It was at Margate that Rowlandson lost his most congenial associate, who having gone there, in the autumn of 1800, for the benefit of his health, did not live to return; the death of Henry Wigstead was a serious bereavement to the caricaturist, the earliest of those losses of his cherished associates which influenced his spirits considerably.

We can also catch glimpses of Rowlandson on the Scarborough coast, and in Norfolk. Yarmouth seems to have been a favourite spot with him. We find him studying at seaports along the south coast; with Plymouth, Portsmouth, and Southampton he was thoroughly familiar. Of the Thames and the Medway, and the shipping to be encountered thereon in war-time, he has left sketches innumerable; he has visited the fishing spots on the former, and drawn the pretty towns which mark the valley of the river. With London, and its diversified spots of interest, from east to west, and north to south—the centre, and the outskirts alike—he had the most intimate acquaintance. We have already spoken of the drawings he made in the two University cities, and his series of views of the noble colleges.

An Historical Sketch of the Art of Caricaturing was written by the well-known antiquarian J. P. Malcolm, F.S.A., and published in 1813. This book, which might, had the author so willed, have supplied the curious with valuable hints, drawn from personal acquaintance, concerning professors of the art then living, is confined to the briefest recapitulation, as far as concerns contemporary works, the book being retrospective in principle; and it is difficult to discover any allusions of value to those Caricaturists lately deceased or who were still alive. Malcolm's appreciation of grotesque art was somewhat catholic, but he does not seem as familiar as might reasonably be supposed the case, with the masterpieces of the men who were flourishing in his time, or perhaps their chefs d'oeuvre were then so generally familiar as to need no further recognition. The compiler of the Historical Sketch was evidently an amateur of humorous productions, and could describe the progress of grotesques, but he does not seem to have completely carried out the scheme of his treatise.

We have borrowed a paragraph from this excellent antiquarian, as an instance of his criticisms on the subject of the present volume.

'Rowlandson's Views in Oxford and Cambridge, 1810, deserve notice for the slight and pleasing manner with which he has characterised the architecture of the places mentioned; but it is impossible to surpass the originality of his figures; the dance of students and filles de joie before Christ Church College is highly humorous, and the enraged tutors grin with anger peculiar to this artist's pencil. The professors, in the view of the Observatory at Oxford, are made as ugly as baboons, and yet the profundity of knowledge they possess is conspicuous at the first glance; and we should know them to be Masters of Arts without the aid of the background. The scene in Emanuel College Garden, Cambridge, exhibits the learned in a state of relaxation; several handsome lasses remove apples from a tree, and the indolent curiosity with which they are viewed by these sons of ease is very characteristic.'

While considering Rowlandson in relation to his contemporaries, we have chiefly to deal with those gifted gentlemen who were, like himself, generally spoken of in their generation as caricaturists, and to whose works our artist was able, from his more considerable acquirements, to give a presentable form, and put into circulation through the medium of his proficiency with the etching-needle.

Foremost among these we must speak of Henry Bunbury, so many of whose felicitous conceptions have derived additional force and popularity alike through the agency of our artist.

In speaking of the caricaturist's treatment of these amateur works, we are glad to be able to offer our readers the respectable testimony of Thomas Wright in support of our own modest opinion, with which intention we quote a few paragraphs from our late friend's History of Caricature and Grotesque in Literature and Art.

'At various periods certain of Bunbury's designs were engraved by Rowlandson, who always transferred his own style to the drawings he copied. A remarkable instance of this is furnished by a print of a party of anglers of both sexes in a punt, entitled Anglers of 1811 (the year of Bunbury's death). But for the name, "H. Bunbury, del.," very distinctly inscribed upon it, we should take this to be a genuine design by Rowlandson; and in 1803 Rowlandson engraved some copies of Bunbury's prints on horsemanship for Ackermann, of the Strand, in which all traces of Bunbury's style are lost.

'There was much of Bunbury's style in that of Woodward, who had a taste for the same broad caricatures on society, which he executed in a similar spirit. Some of the suites of subjects of this description that he published, such as the series of the Symptoms of the Shop, those of Everybody out of Town, and Everybody in Town, and the specimens of Domestic Phrensy, are extremely clever and amusing. Woodward's designs were also not unfrequently engraved by Rowlandson, who, as usual, imprinted his own style upon them. A very good example of this practice is seen in the print entitled Desire, in which the passion is exemplified in the case of a hungry school-boy, watching through a window a jolly cook carrying by a tempting plum pudding. We are told in an inscription underneath: "Various are the ways this passion might be depicted; in this delineation the subjects chosen are simple—a hungry boy and a plum pudding." The design of this print is stated to be Woodward's; but the style is altogether that of Rowlandson, whose name appears on it as the etcher. It was published by R. Ackermann on January 20, 1800.'

In transferring the works of other caricaturists to the copper, Rowlandson was in the habit of giving his own style to them in such a degree that nobody would suspect they were not his own if the name of the designer were not attached to them.

We cannot take leave of the Caricaturists without offering a few slight particulars concerning the respective careers of the most eminent and appreciated practitioners of the graphic art in its grotesque bearings.

The fecundity of invention displayed in the works of Henry Bunbury entitles him to rank among the first in this class of designers. The happy faculty which he possessed of 'reading character at sight,' and the rare felicity with which he could embody whatever his observation or fancy suggested, with that scrambling style which was entirely his own, evince that he was born with a genius to make a figure in this pursuit. This gentleman may be instanced as a proof, too, that where there is an original faculty for any peculiar art, it will develop itself, though the possessor may be entirely unacquainted with the scientific principles of art. Nothing could be farther removed from legitimate art than the style exhibited in the drawings of Bunbury; yet no one has hit off the peculiarities of character, or expressed with less exaggeration those traits which constitute the burlesque. Bunbury, indeed, may be said to have steered his humorous course between sterling character and caricature. When he appears to outrage nature by representing distortion of figure or form, the fault is not intentional. Those who have not properly studied the drawing of the human figure, must occasionally, in spite of themselves, render their objects preternatural.

It should be added, in honour to the memory of this gentleman, that he never used his pencil at the expense of personal feeling. His satire upon the French people was not individual, but national; and the characters which he introduced in his humorous designs at home, were characteristic of a class, but never the individuals of a species.

Henry William Bunbury, the caricaturist, was born in 1750. He was educated at Westminster, whence he was removed to St. Catherine's Hall, Cambridge. On leaving the university he devoted himself, with some enthusiasm, to the fine arts. He was passionately fond of out-door sports, and, as in the instance of Leech in our own days, the saddle held out attractions superior even to the pleasure of exercising his fancy. His contemporaries were much given to deplore that he preferred the excitement of risking his neck in the hunting field to the cultivation of the profession his skill should have adorned. His taste and invention were admired not only by the most gifted and elevated persons of his time, but artists and critics alike lavished their encomiums on the favoured designer. Horace Walpole coveted the sketches which Bunbury exhibited on the walls of the Academy, while Sir Joshua Reynolds and Sir Benjamin West combined to pay their finest compliments to the artist, and to publish abroad their flattering sense of his merits. Bunbury appears to have spent the greater part of his time on the estates belonging to his family, varied by trips to the Continent and visits to his patrons the Duke and Duchess of York, at Richmond and other residences, with occasional sojourns in Wales, the scenery of which had considerable attractions for his sense of the picturesque. He was a frequent guest of Sir W. W. Wynne, and his pencil has celebrated the theatrical gatherings at Wynnstay. We also meet him in town, surrounded by illustrious friends, and we find Goldsmith, Garrick, and other notabilities corresponding with the kindly and generous caricaturist during his sojourns at his country seat.

Henry Bunbury was married, August 26, 1771, to Catherine, daughter of Kane William Horneck, Esq., lieutenant-colonel of the army of Sicily. This lady bore him two sons, and one of them, Sir Henry Bunbury, we believe, represented the county of Suffolk in Parliament, after the decease of his uncle Sir Thomas Charles Bunbury, who had previously enjoyed the distinction. Bunbury, the artist, was elected lieutenant-colonel of the West Suffolk regiment of militia. His manners were most popular, and it was remarked that he carried his cheerful and vivacious spirit into every society he frequented. He died at Keswick, in Cumberland, where he had settled towards the close of his life, and his sketches of the mountain scenery in his vicinity are said to have displayed the hand of a master, and to have gained universal appreciation for their effect and truthfulness.

As a delineator of character, it is stated 'that his sketches approached nearest to Hogarth of any painter of his period, in the representation of life and manners; his pencil never transgresses the limits of good taste and delicacy, and had he been under the necessity of pursuing art for profit, instead of amusement and pleasure only, he would probably have made a great fortune by the produce of his genius, which the print-sellers have found a lucrative source of gain, engravings and etchings after his works having always been eagerly demanded.'

The high estimation in which the caricaturist was personally held is confirmed by the obituary notice which appeared on his decease in the Gentleman's Magazine; the praise seems to be spontaneous, and its object, from all we can gather, richly merited the friendly testimony.

'May 7, 1811.—At Keswick, Henry William Bunbury, Esq., second son of the Rev. Sir William Bunbury, Bart., of Mildenhall, and of Great Barton, in the county of Suffolk, and brother to the present Sir Thomas Bunbury, Bart. He was distinguished at a very early age by a most extraordinary degree of taste and knowledge in the fine arts. The productions of his own pencil have, from his childhood, been the admiration and delight of the public. The exquisite humour of some of his drawings, and the grace and elegance of the rest, were unrivalled; and he is, perhaps, the only instance in which excellences of such various and almost opposite character have been united in the same subject in an equal degree. But though he possessed in this respect a peculiar genius, he neglected no branch of polite literature. He was a good classical scholar, and "endowed with the love of sacred song." The Muses were to him dulces ante omnia. He was an excellent judge of poetry; and the specimens remaining of his own composition put it beyond a doubt that he would have been as eminent with his pen as with his pencil, if his natural modesty, underrating his own powers, had not prevented him from pursuing it with more application. These accomplishments were conspicuous, and obtained for him universal esteem. His social and moral qualities, while any of those remain who shared his friendship, will continue the objects of fond admiration and regret. No ribaldry, no profaneness, no ill-natured censure, ever flowed from his lips, but his conversation abounded in humour and pleasantry; it was charming to persons of all descriptions. No one was ever in his company without being pleased with him; none ever knew him without loving him. His feelings were the most benevolent, his affections the most delicate, his heart the most sincere. He was void of all affectation, alive to praise, but not obtrusively courting it. Conscious, but not ostentatious of merit; of unblemished honour; full of that piety and liberal-handed charity which influences the heart, and seeks the witness, not of the world, but of his Maker.'

The writer of the obituary notice expressed a conviction, confirmed, as he stated, by an intimacy of fifty years' standing:—

'All who had,' concludes the memorial, 'the slightest acquaintance with him, will bear witness to the extraordinary tenderness of his disposition, to his kind and active friendship, to his universal benevolence, practically displayed through his entire career.'

The name of Woodward occurs so frequently in caricatures to which Rowlandson sculpsit is added, that our readers will probably not consider the following sketch of this eccentric gifted celebrity either out of place, or entirely superfluous.

Recapitulating his recollections of humorous artists, Angelo informs us that—'The inventive genius of one burlesque designer was exhaustless—George Moutard Woodward, commonly designated by his merry associates, Mustard George. This original genius was the son of the steward of a certain wealthy landholder, and resided with his father in a provincial town, where nothing was less known than everything pertaining to the arts. He was, as his neighbours said, a "nateral geni;" for he drew all the comical gaffers and gammers of the country round; and having, to use his own words, "taken off the bench of justices, wigs and all, shown up the mayor and corporation, dumb-foundered the parson of the parish, silenced the clerk, and made the sexton laugh at his own grave occupation," he thought it expedient to beat up for new game in the metropolitan city.

'"A caricaturist in a country town," said George, "like a mad bull in a china-shop, cannot step without noise; so, having made a little noise in my native place, I persuaded my father to let me seek my fortune in town."

'It appears that the caricaturist came not to London, like many another wit, pennyless; his father allowed him an annuity of first fifty, and augmented the sum to a hundred pounds. With this income, and what he obtained by working for the publishers, he was enabled to enjoy life in his own way; and might be met, with a tankard of Burton ale before him, seated behind his pipe, nightly at Offley's; or, if not there, smoking the fragrant weed, at the Cider Cellar, the Blue Posts, or The Hole in the Wall. Latterly, his rendezvous was transferred to The Brown Bear at Bow Street, where he studied those peculiar species of low characters, the inhabitants of the round-house, and the myrmidons of the police. Enamoured with the society of these able physiognomists, he ultimately took up his quarters at the Brown Bear, and there, to the lively grief of these tenderhearted associates, one night died in character, suddenly, with a glass of brandy in his hand.

'The wit and invention of this artist places him above all others in the personification of low scenes of humour. Among his earliest productions were those series of groups entitled Effects of Flattery, Effects of Hope, &c., which were illustrated by scenes of truly dramatic excellence, and upon which might well be built farces for the stage which could not fail to delight the town. His Babes in the Wood, Raffling for a Coffin, The Club of Quidnuncs, as pieces of original humour, have never, perhaps, been equalled. Had this low humourist studied drawing and been temperate in his habits, such was the fecundity of his imagination and perception of character, that he might have rivalled even Hogarth. His style, always sufficiently careless, latterly even outraged the outrÉ. Yet there were those, and men of taste too, who insisted that the humour of his pieces was augmented by the extravagance of this defect.'

The name of Henry Wigstead will be met with pretty constantly in the course of this volume; his designs approach the nearest to those of Rowlandson as far as regards humorous qualities, a cultivated sense of beauty and grace, and a decided grasp of character, without that violent divergence from the semblance of humanity as ordinarily recognised, to which failing the old-fashioned caricaturists were somewhat over-addicted, as we are inclined to suspect; but, like many worthy amateurs of his period, his own hand lacked the skill to express all that his eye saw and his taste appreciated. In the guise of a skilled translator of crude ideas, our Caricaturist, with ready ease, and that dexterity which was peculiarly his own, came to the rescue most efficiently, and his etchings and scrapings have preserved many a capital design, due to the esteemed Wigstead, which otherwise would have been lost; the sterling excellence to be detected in many of these pictorial scenes and satires, renders the action meritorious, which has enabled posterity to judge how far those praises which partial contemporaries lavished upon all these non-professional humourists, were justified by the actual merits of their subjects. We have already recounted certain jocose and whimsical traits in the disposition and career of this genial son of merriment; we have nothing to add but the brief notice from the obituary of The Gentleman's Magazine for October 1800, which informed many a congenial friend of the loss society had sustained, and made many a heart feel saddened by the stroke which had fallen on the kindliest and best of comrades.

'At Margate, where he went for the benefit of his health, Henry Wigstead, Esq., of Kensington, an active magistrate for the county of Middlesex.[14] He was a man of considerable talent, and contributed to the celebrity of the Brandenburgh theatre, both by his pen and his pencil. He was a good caricaturist, which naturally made him more enemies than friends. He was hospitable and generous to a degree of extravagance. He married the daughter of Mr. Bagnal, of Gerard Street, with whom he had a good fortune, and by whom he leaves two children, a son and a daughter.'

Another eminent humourist, in whose praise contemporaries were enthusiastic, but whose biography no one has taken the pains to collect, was John Nixon, the facetious Nixon, as he is generally entitled in the memoirs and scribblings of the period; beyond the kindly appreciative anecdotes of this worthy, set down by Angelo, barely any record exists. Pleasant John Nixon was an Irish factor, and resided for many years in Basinghall Street, where, over his dark warehouses, he and his brother Richard kept 'bachelors' court.' The elder brother, John, however, was the principal mover in all the convivialities and Bacchanalian revels celebrated in this old-fashioned dwelling; 'which was not too large for comfort, and yet sufficiently spacious in the first floor, at least, to spread a table for twelve. Who that were witty, or highly talented of the days that are gone, who, loving a social gossip, over a magnum bonum of capital wine, had not been invited to his hospitable board?' The Nixons were wealthy, and had the felicity to be well enabled to enjoy life according to their own liking.

John Nixon, besides possessing a well-deserved reputation for social qualifications of no ordinary calibre, was a man of taste and talent, and an amateur performer in various arts, his accomplishments being multifarious.

As a man of business he was highly respected, as a man of pleasure universally sought, and as generally esteemed. Sedulous in his commercial pursuits, in the counting-house his maxim was that there is time for all things, and he found leisure daily, when the ledger was closed, to open his heart to the enjoyments of friendly intercourse. 'I have no objection to placing my knees under another man's table,' the social convive would say, 'but I had rather seat him at my own.'

Nixon was at home at the Beef-steak Club, where he was made honorary secretary and providore, a well-bestowed distinction, since he was a first-rate connoisseur of wines, and a capital judge of a rump of beef. 'My lord duke,' he would say to the noble president, 'he who would invite Jupiter to a feast on a steak, should select a prime cut of little more than half-an-inch thick, from a Norfolk-fed Scot,' and this, says Angelo, became statute law in that glorious club.

Among other pursuits for which Nixon obtained notoriety among the haut ton, he was known for his fondness for the stage. An excellent amateur performer, he shone as one of the stars of the celebrated private theatricals held at Brandenburgh House, when in the possession of the Margrave and Margravine of Anspach. It was under the splendid roof of these entertainers, on an occasion when all the amateurs were celebrating their host's anniversary, that Nixon was honoured with his cognomen of 'the well-bred man.' On his late arrival in a piebald uniform, his blue dress-coat, with the gold buttons of the Beef-steak Club, being considerably powdered, the wearer, who was not in the least disconcerted or embarrassed, related, on taking his seat at the table, a droll tale of adventures on the road, to the hearty amusement of the company, while the servants were in convulsions of laughter, as Nixon described how the post-horses were knocked up, and he was obliged to complete his journey and his engagement in the cart of a baker, where he got completely dusted with flour; whence the Margravine facetiously dubbed him the 'well-bread man.'

John Nixon's original talent for the humorous department of the graphic art was well known; as an honorary exhibitor at the Royal Academy for many years, his grotesque scenes such as Bartholomew Fair, and village fÊtes, abounding with character, diverted the public. Angelo, in recording the comical celebrity of his friend, mentions, 'Nixon had the reputation of introducing, through his inventive faculty, that most amusing species of caricature, the converting spades, hearts, clubs, and diamonds into grotesque figures and groups, which he designed with a whimsicality of appropriateness, that Gillray, or even George Cruikshank himself, might have envied.'

The list of amateur artists, who enjoyed Rowlandson's friendship, and whose designs received the advantages which his assistance was able to lend them, will not be complete without the name of Collings, well known in the regions of Covent Garden, and some time editor of the Public Ledger, who was a lively satirist, both with his pencil and his pen. 'When Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides was ushered forth, it was celebrated by as many crackers and squibs as the Burning of the Boot (Lord Bute). Among other assailants, the impenetrable Bozzy had to expose his front to this lampooner's shafts. A whole series of designs were published by this witty wag, the heroes of which, or rather the knight and the esquire of his drama, were Johnson and Boswell. The knight, it is likely, never saw them; and, as for the squire, his love of notoriety rendered him, if not vain of, at least not vulnerable to, these successive attacks. [15]

'The Laird of Auchinlek, indeed, had a large collection of these satires upon "self and company," as he used facetiously to inscribe them, and boasted at the judge's table that his History would be more copiously illustrated than even the Lord High Chancellor, Clarendon's.'

Caleb Whiteford, another crony of the caricaturist, was an excellent judge of paintings (especially works by the old masters) and was generally known as a fervent admirer of George Moreland's pictures; he was the reputed discoverer of 'cross readings,' [16] and a dabbler in verse. It was he who, as everyone will remember, received such a complimentary notice in the postscript to the mock epitaphs known as Goldsmith's Retaliation, that there were not wanting those who contributed to the flattery by suspecting that the additional epitaph was due to Caleb's own pen.

Old Caleb Whiteford, the witty wine-merchant and 'connoisseur in old masters,' knew everyone of any reputation, and was well-received at the various hospitable boards to which allusions have been made in the course of these discursive notes; he was a welcome guest at numerous convivial gatherings of the artistic and literary coteries of the period, whose jovial meetings and good cheer have been suffered to pass into oblivion, unrecorded by the scribes who shared 'the cakes and ale,' in the palmy days of sociable festivities and kindly familiar intercourse.

'Mr. Ephraim Hardcastle, citizen and drysalter,' as he whimsically elected to style himself—in sober fact, W. H. Pyne, the artist to whose literary ventures we have already referred—has on occasions come to the rescue in his Wine and Walnuts, or after-dinner Chit-Chat. Here is the report of a conversation concerning Rowlandson, which is supposed to have taken place between Whiteford and the caricaturist's jolly friend Mitchell, culled from the Chit-Chat in question, which was published in 1823.

'Well, Master Caleb Whiteford [17] was on his way up the hill in the Adelphi to his post at the Society of Arts, and who should he stumble upon at the corner of James Street, just turning round from Rowlandson's, but Master Mitchell, the quondam banker of old Hodsoll's house. He had, as usual, been foraging among the multitudinous sketches of that original artist, and held a portfolio under his arm, and as he was preparing to step into his chariot, Caleb accosted him: "Well, worthy sir; what! more choice bits—more graphic whimsies to add to the collection at Enfield, eh? Well, how fares it with our friend Roly?" (a familiar term by which the artist was known to his ancient cronies).

'"Why, yes, Master Caleb Whiteford, I go collecting on, though I begin to think I have enough already, for I have some hundreds of his spirited works; but somehow there is a sort of fascination in these matters, and—heigh—ha—ho—hoo!" (gaping) "I never go up—up—bless the man, why will he live so high? It kills me to climb his stairs"—holding his ponderous sides—"I never go up, Mister Caleb, but I find something new, and am tempted to pull my purse-strings. His invention, his humour, his—his oddity is exhaustless." "Yes," said Whiteford, "Master Roly is never at a loss for a subject, and I should not be surprised if he is taking a bird's-eye view of you and me at this moment, and marking us down for game. But it is not his drawings alone; why, he says he has etched as much copper as would sheathe a first-rate man-of-war; and I should think he is not far from the mark in his assertion.'

'"Yes," replied the banker, "he ought to be rich, for his genius is certainly the most exhaustless, the most—the most—no, Mister Caleb, there is no end to him; he manufactures his humorous ware with such increasing vigour, that I know not what to compare his prolific fancy to, unless it be to the increasing population....

'"Roly has promised to come down. I would have taken the rogue with me, only that he is about some new scheme for his old friend Ackermann, there, and he says he must complete it within an hour. You know Roly's expedition."'

James Heath, also a caricaturist, and a delineator of sporting sketches, was another of Rowlandson's intimates; a Good-Friday jaunt, or an Easter excursion, was for many years indulged by these worthies, who with genial Bannister, the comedian, and their faithful chronicler, Henry Angelo, the fencing-master, annually kept up the practice of proceeding on a jovial expedition at this season, some distance from town, Staines, Windsor, or some similar starting-point, being the rendezvous selected by these congenial spirits.

The list of Rowlandson's friends would be incomplete without the name of George Moreland, who, with all his eccentricities and shortcomings, was another favoured child of fortune, whose inheritance was natural genius; and though the fairy gift was turned to the very worst account, dragged through the mire of dissipation, and sordidly made to supply the means of that social degradation, which lowered the possessor beneath his worst associates, the power remained in the poor shattered wreck, and did not forsake him until, in a state of premature decay, he perished miserably before his easel.

A sketch of Moreland's career is by no means called for in this place. His erratic disposition was not without its whimsical traits; sufficient anecdotes exist of the wayward painter to prove that, beyond his happy qualifications for his art, there was found in his composition a spice of pleasantry that did not always degenerate into buffoonery or horse-play, with occasional flashes of wit and sprightly allusions which, to say the least of them, were remarkably apposite. Perhaps too much stress has been laid upon Moreland's deficiencies, while his more agreeable traits have been somewhat slighted. Putting aside the numerous anecdotal sketches of the painter, we have only to record, in this place at least, that a friendship existed between the subject of this volume and the man to whose sketches those of our caricaturist frequently offer a suggestive resemblance, it being actually difficult to distinguish between the unsigned etchings and drawings of the two artists, in the walk practised by Moreland. The similarity of their talent is more evident perhaps in the larger hunting scenes, and the studies of female heads, tinted in colours, than in any other direction; although, with the pencil or the chalk, their rustic landscapes, from the freedom of their respective handlings, are remarkably alike, both in the choice of subjects and the spirit of the execution.

As we have already noticed, the most characteristic portrait of Moreland, and the one which appears to offer us the most life-like representation of the capricious painter, is due to the skill of Rowlandson. We are informed, in a note which we gather from Angelo, that Moreland, in his various flittings round the metropolis in dread of creditors, when he took sanctuary with any intimate whose residence he happened to remember, gave his colleague the caricaturist the opportunity of exhibiting his friendship by harbouring him in his lodgings under one of these emergencies, which were of tolerably frequent occurrence. 'Rowlandson, the artist, lodged at Mrs. Lay's printshop, a few doors from Carlton House, Pall Mall. One morning when I called upon him, we heard a loud knock at the street door, and looking out of the window, he said, "There's Colonel Thornton——knock again! He may be at this fun three months longer; he is come for his picture, but Moreland, having touched fifty pounds in advance, is never at home to him now. He's in the next room, which he has for painting. You had better go and do the same with him, and drink gin and water; he'll like your company, and make you a drawing for nothing." This was in the middle of the day.'

We are inclined to think that the most memorable of the caricaturist's associates was James Gillray, whose age was within a year of that of Rowlandson; it is a coincidence that two unrivalled geniuses, and in such eccentric walks, should have been both contemporaries, and steady-going friends, never clashing in the course of their respective careers. In this work various allusions will be noticed to the intimacy which subsisted between these remarkably gifted men, each perfectly original in his fashion, and both possessing singular points of resemblance in their characters.

We content ourselves with mentioning that they occasionally entered into friendly alliances, but that, when pitted against each other, they had more regard for friendship than for party warfare, which they utterly despised, except as an opening for the exercise of their skill.

Gillray and Rowlandson were, perhaps, never properly appreciated in their generation, the higher capacities which distinguished both these spoiled pets and wilful sons of Momus, were comparatively slighted, if not completely ignored; all that was vulgar, wayward, and wild in their dispositions was fostered and enlarged upon; their errors, and their occasional lapses into downright coarseness, were, according to the lights of the day, flattered and encouraged as flights of the raciest humour; the crude, careless, and commonplace, received too frequently a hearty and undeserved recognition, which their ambitious efforts failed to inspire; the very productions they scorned were exalted, while, when they felt the magic fire warming their imaginations, the results were misunderstood too commonly.

Their keen intellects, and their satiric sense of the almost constant unfitness of things as they found them, the gnawing of the vanity of vanities, ever present, must have made their temperaments peculiarly sensitive to such slights as the want of discrimination in their admirers which occasionally shocked and continually disheartened them—evils which the want of culture, or consideration on the part of their audience, continually brought in their train.

It is no matter of surprise that the enchantments which they saw before them at the opening of their careers, vanished all too soon, and left them chilled, and inclined to become misanthropes; the very genius, which promised to be a delight to themselves and to mankind, proving a bitter curse.

When the satirists, who felt alike and were sympathetic on most points, met, it seems their intercourse was the reverse of boisterous—in fact, they were rather inclined to be depressed, or, at least, they shrunk within themselves with a more marked contrast to the conduct which should, it was supposed, distinguish notorious pictorial humourists, and became, perhaps, a trifle more retired and undemonstrative than ordinary—possibly to the disappointment of the less-informed habituÉs, who evidently thought they were defrauded of a diversion, and had a right to anticipate, these gentlemen being in a sort graphic jesters by profession, that in private life they would feel themselves impelled to play off a little whimsical jugglery for the entertainment of the company. These professional tricks belonged to the lesser lights, and we warrant that Woodward, Collings, Newton, and the smaller following of the eccentric art, were infinitely more amusing to the taste of their auditors.

It is certain Gillray was grave and self-contained, and Rowlandson, in his degree, participated in his friend's humour, slightly at first, perhaps, as a passing depression, and, later in life, with an intensified and growing grimness, and a gathering gloom, as friends dropped off, and age crept on, and the caricaturist's world was materially altered for him, as his work seemed over.

'For years Gillray occasionally smoked his pipe at The Bell, The Coal-Hole, or The Coach and Horses; and, although the convives, whom he met at such dingy rendezvous, knew that he was that Gillray who fabricated those comical cuts, the very moral of Farmer George and Boneyparty, of Billy Pitt and Black Charley, he never sought, like that low coxcomb Moreland, to become king of the company. He neither exacted, nor were they inclined to pay him, any particular homage. In truth, with his associates, neighbouring shopkeepers and master manufacturers, he passed for no greater wit than his neighbours. Rowlandson, his ingenious compeer, and he, sometimes met. They would, perhaps, exchange half-a-dozen questions and answers upon the affairs of copper and aquafortis; swear all the world was one vast masquerade, and then enter into the common chat of the room, smoke their cigars, drink their punch, and sometimes early, sometimes late, shake hands at the door, look up at the stars, say "It is a frosty night," and depart, one for the Adelphi, the other to St. James's Street, each to his bachelor's bed.'[18]

Our friend Angelo, a bright chirpy spirit, who retained his liveliness unimpaired, let us hope, to the last of his long days, not having any pretensions to be a genius, was exempt from the sinister tendencies which too frequently attend its possession. Although, as he confesses in his Memoirs, not precisely the 'rose' himself, he had lived near it, and his association with men of an admittedly high type, as far as gifts of fancy and versatile talents were concerned, had taught him to observe the drawbacks not unusually allied to distinguishing attainments; and he records a few sober axioms for the enlightenment of those who have been excluded from his privileges.

'Those who at a distance contemplate characters like these, so professedly eminent for invention, wit, and satirical humour, naturally suppose their society must be universally sought; and that such must, of necessity, be the life and soul of the convivial board. Men, however, who see much and speculate but little, know better. Among the dullest in company could be pointed out those who are "wondrous witty" by themselves; and this not from pride of their superior faculty to please, but from a constitutional shyness or modest desire to avoid notice or applause—or from indolence, or actually from conscious dulness when absent from the study and the desk, when without the pencil and the pen.

'Peter Pindar was witless, even over his bottle, with his most intimate cronies. Anthony Pasquin was sour, and not prone to converse. Churchill was a sulky sot. Butler was lively neither drunk nor sober—a choice companion only when "half gone;" hence, as the witty Duke of Buckingham observed, "he was to be compared to a skittle, little at both ends, but great in the middle!" Burton, who had no less humour than Cervantes, and the learning of a whole university to boot, was neither a cheerful companion, nor endurable to himself. A hundred more could be named, whose aptitude and promptness to discover the ridiculous side of human action, has astonished the grave; and yet, these men who have thus exposed folly to the laughter of mankind, have been themselves the dullest dogs alive. Gillray was always "hipped," and at last sunk into that deplorable state of mental aberration which verifies the couplet, so often quoted, wherein the consanguinity of wit to madness is so eminently proved, to the comfort of those who thank God for their own stupidity.'

Perhaps the most constant friend, and certainly the best adviser, our caricaturist retained to the grave was his principal publisher, Mr. Rudolph Ackermann. We have mentioned this gentleman last among the personal associates of Rowlandson, as his untiring services only ended with the life of the artist.

The name of Rudolph Ackermann, who died March 30, 1834, is worthy of more than a passing mention; he has been cited as one of the first natives of Germany who, by far-sighted and active occupation, accompanied by philanthropic exertions for the benefit of his fellow-creatures, raised the character of his nationality to a high point of esteem in other countries. An account of his energetic and charitable career appeared in the Didaskalia, Frankfurt-am-Main, No. 103, April 13, 1864, and was adopted by the writer (W. P.) of an excellent notice upon the well-known publisher, in the pages of Notes and Queries, (4th S. iv., August 7 and 14, 1869). The son of a coach-builder, Rudolph Ackermann was born April 20, 1764, at Stolberg, in the Saxon Hartz. We are told 'his sympathies with the misfortunes of others were so warmly excited by the misery seen around him in the famine of 1772–73, that he frequently in later years excused the zeal which he showed on other occasions, by pictures of the distress that he experienced when he, at the age of eight years, was employed for hours daily in distributing food and money.' In 1775 his father removed to Schneeberg. Rudolph received his education in the local school till he was fifteen years old, and showed a decided predilection for literary pursuits; but his father's pecuniary position precluding the choice of a profession to more than one of his sons, he entered the paternal factory. An elder brother, Frederick, instructed Rudolph in the use of the drawing instruments, and he busied himself more willingly in the offices than in the workshops, gaining an acquaintance with details, which proved subsequently as important to his advancement as were his visits to Dresden, the towns of the Rhine, and Hueningen near Basle. He afterwards went to reside in Paris, where he became the friend of Carrossi, the most esteemed designer of equipages of his time, and Rudolph, who proved his best pupil, acquired sufficient knowledge as a practical draughtsman to push his way in the world. From Paris he proceeded to London in pursuit of fortune, and to turn his talents to account: he was delighted to find that, in the metropolis, carriage-building was one of the most successful occupations, and that the exercise of his acquirements would be handsomely rewarded; so for several years, until 1795, he was employed in furnishing the principal coachmakers with designs and models for new and improved carriages. The models of the state coach, built at the cost of nearly 7,000l., for the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland in 1790,[19] and that for the Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1791, exhibited his taste and skill. In 1805, the preparation of the car that served as a hearse at the funeral of Lord Nelson was entrusted to him; and during the years 1818–20 the patent for a moveable axle for carriages engaged much of his attention.

It is not, however, in this connection that we have to consider Ackermann, but rather in his relation to the arts as a print-seller and publisher. On his marriage with an English lady, with commendable prudence, he became desirous of establishing a business which would, in case of his own premature decease, prove a suitable provision for his family. He commenced the print trade at 96 Strand, and soon after he secured a large apartment, 65 feet long, 30 feet wide, and 24 feet high, at 101 Strand (erected upon the courtyard of Beaufort House), which had been the drawing academy of William Shipley; it had then passed to Henry Pars, and later passed into the hands of the Radicals, and became notorious as the British Forum, when it was used by John Thelwall for his oratorical lectures. These meetings exceeding the bounds of reasonable political discussion, the Government instituted prosecutions, and the Forum ceased to exist. On the ministerial interference, October 1794, Mr. Ackermann was enabled to secure the lease of the premises, and the room was again used as a school for drawing. In 1796 the entire business was removed to 101 Strand. The drawing academy seems to have flourished; and in 1806 there were three masters engaged for figures, landscape, and architecture, and some eighty pupils were resorting to the school, when the requirements of the founder's business, as a publisher, printseller, and dealer in fancy articles, papers, medallions, and artist's materials, had so increased, that the convenience of this room as a warehouse became of more consideration than the continuance of the school.

During the revolutionary era, and when French emigrants were numerous in this country, Mr. Ackermann was one of the first to find a liberal employment for the refugees; it is said that he had seldom less than fifty nobles, priests, and ladies engaged upon screens, card-racks, flower-stands, and other ornamental work.

His inventive faculties and his disposition to take up with new ideas were marked by many improvements he introduced. At the beginning of the century he was one of the first who arrived at a method of waterproofing paper, leather, woollen stuffs, and felted fabrics, in which he obtained for some time considerable traffic; this branch was conducted in a factory he established at Chelsea for the purpose.

He further contrived an apparatus which was at least ingenious, both in theory and intention. To counteract Napoleon's endeavours, by bridling the newspapers, to keep the French nation in complete ignorance, as was actually the case, of events that were disastrous to him, Mr. Ackermann bethought himself of reviving, for the annoyance of the enemy, the use made by the French in 1794–96 of aËrostation in L'Entreprenant and the TÉlÉmaque; and he contrived a simple mechanism which would, every minute, detach thirty printed placards from a packet of three thousand. Three such parcels were attached to balloons thirty-six inches in diameter, made of gold-beater's skin, and committed to the air in the summer of 1807. The success of the experiment was proved at Woolwich in the presence of a Government commission. With a southerly wind the balloons passed over Salisbury and Exeter, and several of the placards, as a proof of the practical working of the machinery, were returned to London from various parts of the country.

Mr. Ackermann was one of the first inhabitants of London who adopted the use of gas as a means of artificial light to his premises.

The establishment of lithography in England was another example of his patient and persevering expenditure of money and time in the introduction and improvement of a novelty. 'He was not content with translating Alois Senefelder's treatise in 1819, but made a journey to the residence of that inventor, in order to exchange the results of their theory and practice before producing in 1822 a Complete Course. The business relations between leading artists and Mr. Ackermann enabled him to induce them to touch the lithographic chalk; so in 1817, through Prout and others, the process became an acceptable, or rather a fashionable mode of multiplying drawings; lithography, for want of such advantages, when introduced into this country by Mr. AndrÉc, of Offenbach, in its original and rude state, had failed to make its way, and all its subsequent success may be attributed to Mr. Ackermann's personal emulation of the advancement it made in Munich.'

In 1813, upon receiving an authentic account from Count SchÖnfeld of the misery produced in Germany by Napoleon's wars, particularly in Saxony, culminating in engagements at Leipzig (during the 'five days' October 15–19, 1813), 'Mr. Ackermann temporarily abandoned the oversight of his own multifarious occupations, in order to exert all his strength in procuring aid for the sufferers. With the help of the Duke of Sussex, he formed a committee in Westminster and in the City; the first obtained a Parliamentary grant of 100,000l., and the second furnished a larger sum in private contributions. This was the occasion on which the use of Whitehall Chapel was granted for a musical performance in aid of the subscription. For two years, Mr. Ackermann undertook the task of corresponding with the German committees for distributing these sums, examining into the urgency of the appeals for help, and apportioning the fund. The members of "The Westminster Association for the further relief of the sufferers by the war in Germany," were anxious to commemorate their sense of the pains, prudence, and probity Mr. Ackermann had displayed, by presenting him with a testimonial in silver; this costly acknowledgment, together with a vote of thanks proposed to be inscribed on parchment in gold, he had the modesty to decline, begging that all thanks for his services might be comprised in a few autograph lines from the Archbishop of Canterbury.'

In his business relations we are told, 'the discretion which he exercised in choosing his subordinates, and the liberal manner in which he repaid their services, enabled him to produce several books which deserve the notice of all those who know how to appreciate the merit of these illustrated works in colour, relatively to others of similar pretension, both of that time and of the present day.

'A long list might be formed by enumerating the literary, musical, and scientific men of more or less eminence, who appeared as his coadjutors, and who enjoyed his intimacy. Several of them owed to him a helping hand, either in their first efforts or in their declining fortunes. To the end of his days he retained a strongly-marked German pronunciation of the English language, which gave additional flavour to the banters and jests uttered in his fine bass voice; but he wrote in English with great purity on matters of affection and business long before middle life.

'From early in 1813, every Wednesday evening in March and April was given to a reception, half a conversazione and half a family party, in his large room, which then, as at other times, served as an exhibition of English and foreign books, maps, prints, woodcuts, lithographs, drawings, paintings, and other works of art and ornament, besides the leading Continental periodicals. There on those evenings, by annual invitation,[20] amateurs, artists, and authors were sure to find people whom they knew, or wanted to know. Many an introduction grew to an acquaintance; and the value of such evenings to foreigners was often gratefully acknowledged by travellers, who, with any distinction in art or literature, were welcome without any other introduction.

'His active assiduity and his spirited enterprise were suspended by a weakness of sight, commencing from his charitable exertions in 1814, which made his repose at Camberwell, and afterwards at Ivy Lodge in the Fulham Road, first a matter of prudence, and later on of necessity. In the spring of 1830 he experienced an attack of paralysis, and never recovered sufficiently to exert his intelligence in business. He removed for a change of air to Finchley, but a second stroke produced a gradual decline of strength in the honourable old man; and March 30, 1834, saw an end put to the hearty kindness, constant hospitality, and warm beneficence which had been inseparable from his unquestioned integrity. He was interred on April 9 in the family grave, in the burial-ground of St. Clement Danes.'[21]

The little that remains to be recorded of the Caricaturist is best expressed by the kindly writer, a friend of nearly half a century's standing, who contributed an obituary notice of the artist to the Gentleman's Magazine (June 1827).

It is not generally known that, although a considerable proportion of Rowlandson's humorous political and social etchings are in many instances strongly tinctured by an absence of refinement in taste, and are roughly executed—the means simply of tiding over some pressing necessity, or providing funds for further relaxations—his early works were characterised by painstaking and conscientious application; and his studies from the human figure at the Royal Academy were scarcely inferior to the productions of Mortimer, then the most admired and proficient among the Academic professors.

From the versatility of his talent, the fecundity of his imagination, his command of composition, in which he equalled the greatest masters, the grace and elegance with which he could design his groups, added to the almost miraculous despatch with which he supplied his patrons with perfectly original compositions upon every subject, it was a theme of regret at his decease, that he had not sufficiently valued his reputation, to which it has been suspected he was thoroughly indifferent. It was universally admitted in his own days that, had he pursued the course of art steadily, he might have become one of the foremost and most celebrated historical painters of the English school. His style, which was purely his own, was unquestionably original. His bold, fluent, and spiritedly turned outlines were thrown off with easy dexterity, with his famous reed-pen, in a tint composed of vermilion and Indian-ink, the general effect was rapidly washed in, so as to produce an effective chiaro-oscuro, and the whole was coloured in tender tints with a most harmonious arrangement of colour.

His manner, though slight in almost every instance, is highly effective; and it is known on indubitable authority that the presidents of the Royal Academy, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Sir Benjamin West, whose manners were most foreign to those of the Caricaturist, individually asserted their conviction that many of his drawings would have done honour to Rubens, or to the most esteemed masters of design of the old schools.

For many years he was too indolent to seek new employment, and his kind friend, and it may be added with justice, his best adviser, Mr. Ackermann, the respected and leading publisher of Rowlandson's period, supplied him with ample subjects for the exercise of his talent. The many works which his pencil illustrated are existing evidence of this, and books containing impressions from Rowlandson's etchings continue to fetch high prices, and are industriously sought after. Many suggestions for plates to enliven new editions of The Travels of Dr. Syntax, The Dance of Death, The Dance of Life, and other well-known productions of the pen of the prolific Coombe, the Defoe of the eighteenth century, will remain esteemed and lasting mementoes of his graphic humour.

It should be repeated that his reputation had never reached its full maturity in the life-time of Mr. Ackermann, his friend, patron, and publisher. The inimitable water-colour drawings of Rowlandson, of which he had a large collection, were justly appreciated by connoisseurs, and his folios have often been viewed with admiration and delight by the many professional artists and amateurs who frequented Mr. Ackermann's conversazioni at his library at the old house in the Strand. No artist of the past or present school, perhaps, ever expressed so much as Rowlandson, with so little effort, or with so evident an appearance of the absence of labour.

The artist's remains were followed to the grave by the two friends of his youth, John Bannister and Henry Angelo, and his constant friend and liberal employer, Rudolph Ackermann.

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