Chapter III: Part 3

After spending a fortnight among the mountains, I retraced my steps to Frankfort. There I discovered that, in the interim, some little change had taken place in the aspect of political affairs. Prussia had at length taken heart of grace, and had remonstrated against the arbitrary refusal of the armistice with Denmark, which she had been expressly empowered, by the authority of the Reichsverweser, to conclude. This tardy recognition of the laws of honour had, of course, given enormous umbrage to the Frankforters, who now considered themselves as the supreme arbiters of peace or war in Europe; the more so, because they were not called upon to pay a single farthing of the necessary expenses. They appeared to think that, _jure divino_, they were entitled to the gratuitous services of the Prussian and Hanoverian armies; and, with that sublime disregard of cost which we are all apt to feel when negotiating with our neighbours' money, they were furious at any interruption of the war unworthily commenced against their small but spirited antagonist. Such, at least, was the feeling among the burghers, in which they were powerfully encouraged by the co-operation of the women. It is a singular fact that, in times of revolution, the fair sex is always inclined to push matters to greater extremity than the other, for what reason it is literally impossible to say. I had the pleasure of spending an evening at a social reunion in Frankfort, and can aver that the sentiments which emanated from the ladies would have done no discredit to Demoiselle Theroigne de Mericourt in the midst of the Reign of Terror.

But other motives than those of mere abstract democracy had some influence with the members of the parliament. Many of them who, in the first instance, had voted for the peremptory infraction of the armistice, were fully aware that they could not afford as yet to affront Prussia, or to give her an open pretext for resiling from the movement party. Such a step would have been tantamount to annihilation, and therefore they were disposed to succumb. Others, I verily believe, thought seriously upon their five florins a-day. Hitherto Prussia had been the only state which had granted a monetary contingent, and to refuse compliance with her wishes would inevitably involve a sacrifice of the goose that furnished the supply of metallic eggs. Therefore, after a long and rather furious debate, the assembly retracted their former decision, and consented to a cessation of hostilities.

A parliament, chosen upon the basis of universal suffrage, is only safe when its opinions coincide with those of the mob. In the present instance they were directly counter to the sweet will of the populace, and of course the decision was received with every symptom of turbulence.

"Professor," said I to my learned friend, on the evening after this memorable debate, "you have given one sensible vote to-day, and I hope you will never repent of it. But, if you will take my advice, you will do well to absent yourself from the parliament to-morrow. There are certain symptoms going on in the streets which I do not altogether like, for they put me forcibly in mind of what I saw in Paris this last spring; and, unless a German mob differs essentially from a French one, we shall smell gunpowder to-morrow. I should be sorry to, see my ancient preceptor fragmentally distributed as an offering to the goddess of discord."

"Don't speak of it, August Reignold, my dear boy!" said the Professor in manifest terror. "I wouldn't mind much being hauled up to a lamp-post, for I am heavy enough to break any in Frankfort down; but the bare notion of dismemberment fills my soul with fear. Well says the poet, _varium et mutabile_; and he might safely have applied it to the people. Will you believe that I, whose whole soul is engrossed with the thoughts of unity and the public weal, was actually hissed and hooted at as a traitor, when I emerged to-day from the assembly?"

"It is the penalty you must pay for your political greatness," I replied. "But, if I were you, I should back out of the thing altogether. Cobbling constitutions is rather dangerous work in such times as these; and it strikes me that your valuable health may be somewhat impaired by your exertions."

"Heaven knows," said the Professor devoutly, "that I would willingly die for my country--that is, in my bed. But I do begin to perceive that I am overworking this frail tenement of clay. Once let this crisis be past, and I shall return to the university, resume my philosophic labours, and finish my inchoate treatise upon the 'Natural History of Axioms.'"

"You will do wisely, Professor, and humanity will owe you a debt: only don't employ that fellow Blum as your publisher. _Apropos_, what is Simon, of Treves saying to this state of matters?"

"Simon of Treves," replied my learned friend, "is little better than an arrogant coxcomb. He had the inconceivable audacity to laugh in my face, when I proposed, on the ground of common ancestry, to open negotiations with the Thracians, and to ask me if it would not be desirable to include the whole of the Peloponnesus."

"He must indeed be a blockhead! Well, Professor, keep quiet for the evening, and don't show yourself in the streets. I am going to take a little stroll of observation before bed, and to-morrow morning we shall hold a committee of personal safety."

On ordinary occasions, the streets of Frankfort are utterly deserted by ten o'clock. This night, however, the case was different. Groups of ill-looking, ruffianly fellows, were collected at the corners of the streets; and more than once, beneath the blouse, I could detect the glitter of a furtive weapon. There were lights and bustle in the club-houses, and every thing betokened the approach of a popular emeute.

"You will do well," said I to the Swiss porter of the _Russischer Hof_ on re-entering, "to warn any strangers in your house to keep within doors to-morrow. Unless I am strangely mistaken, we shall have a repetition of the scenes in Paris to-morrow. In the mean time, I shall trouble you for my key."

I rose next morning at six, and looked out of my window, half expecting to see a barricade; but for once I was disappointed--the Germans are a much slower set than the French. At nine, however, there were reasonable symptoms of commotion, and I could hear the hoarse roar of a mob in the distance whilst I was occupied in shaving.

Presently up came a waiter.

"The Herr Professor desires me to say that, if you have no objection, he would be glad to breakfast in your room." My apartments were on the third story.

"Show him up," said I; and my friend entered as pale as death.

"O August Reignold, this is a horrible business!"

"Pshaw!" said I, "how can you expect unity without a row?"

"But they tell me that the mob are already breaking into the assembly--into the free, inviolable, sacred parliament of Germany!"

"Is that all? They might, in my humble opinion, be doing a great deal worse."

"And they are beginning to put up barricades."

"That's serious," said I; "however, one comfort is, that they expect somebody to attack them. Take your coffee, Professor, and let us await events with fortitude. You are tolerably safe here."

The Professor groaned, for his spirit was sorely troubled. I really felt for the poor man, who was now beginning, for the first time, to taste the bitter fruits of revolution. They were as ashes in his academical mouth.

There was a balcony before my window, from which I could survey the whole of the Zeil, or principal street of Frankfort. The people were swarming below as busy as a disturbed nest of ants. A huge gang of fellows, with pickaxes, took up their post immediately in front of the hotel, and began to demolish the pavement with a tolerable show of alacrity.

"Here is the work of unity begun in earnest!" I exclaimed. "Where is your armed burgher guard now, Professor? This is a glorious development of your national theories! Quite right, gentlemen; upset that carriage--roll out those barrels. In five minutes you will have erected as pretty a fortalice as would have crowned the sconce of Drumsnab, if Dugald Dalgetty had had his will. The arrangement also of stationing sharpshooters at the neighbouring windows is judicious. Have a care, Professor! If any of these patriots should chance to recognise a recusant member, you may possibly have the worst of it. For the sake of shelter, and to prevent accidents, I shall even put my portmanteau in front of us; for damaged linen is better than an ounce of lead in the thorax."

In a very short time the barricade, was completed, but as yet no assailants had appeared. This circumstance seemed to astonish even the insurgents, who held a consultation, and then, with tolerable philosophy, proceeded to light their pipes. They were not altogether composed of the lower orders; some of them seemed to belong to the middle-classes, and were the active directors of the defence. We could not, of course, tell what was going on in other parts of the town, for all communication was barred. Better for us it was so, for about this time Prince Lichnowsky, and Major von Auerswaldt were murdered.

A considerable period of time elapsed, and yet there was no appearance of the soldiery. I had almost begun to think that the insurrection might pass away without bloodshed, when a mounted aide-de-camp rode up and conferred with the leaders on the barricade. From his gestures it was evident that he was urging them to disperse, but this they peremptorily refused. Shortly afterwards a body of Austrian soldiers charged up the street at double-quick time, and the firing began in earnest.

"I am a doomed man!" cried the Professor, and he leaped convulsively on my bed. "As sure as Archimedes was killed in his closet, I shall be dragged out to the street and massacred!"

"No fear of that," said I. "Body of Bacon, man! do you think that those fellows have nothing else to do than to hunt out philosophers? That's sharp work though! The windows are strongly manned, and I fear the military will suffer."

The loud explosion of a cannon shook the hotel, and a grateful sound it was, for I knew that, if artillery were employed, the cause of order was secure. It produced, however, a contrary effect on the Professor, who thought he was listening to his death-knell. On a sudden there was a trampling on the stairs.

"They are coming for me!" groaned the Professor. "_Ora pro nobis!_ I shall never read a lecture more!" And sure enough the door was flung open, and five or six Prussian soldiers, bearing their muskets, entered. Klingemann dropped down in a swoon.

"You must excuse ceremony, gentlemen," said the corporal; "we have orders to dislodge the rioters." And forthwith the whole party stepped out on the balcony, and commenced a regular fusillade. Presently one of them dropped his weapon, and staggered into the room; he had received a bad wound in the shoulder. Immediately afterwards a bullet went plump into my portmanteau.

"Oh confound it!" cried I; "if they are beginning to attack property, it is full time to be on the alert. With your leave, friend, I shall borrow your musket."

Next morning I took a final farewell of the Professor. The good man was much agitated, for, besides his bodily terror, he had been suffering from the effects of a violent purgative attack.

"I have thought seriously over what you said, my dear boy, and I begin to perceive that I have been acting very much like a fool. I shall pack up my chattels this evening, wash my hands of public affairs, and return to lay my old bones in peace beside those of my predecessors in the university."

"You can't do better, Professor; and if, in your prelections, you would omit all notice of Harmodius and Aristogiton, and say as little as possible about the Lacedæmonian code, it might tend to promote the welfare of your students, both in this world and in the next."

"Of that, my dear August Reignold, I am now thoroughly convinced. But you must admit that the abstract idea of unity--"

"Is utter fudge! You see the result of it already in the blood which is thickening in the streets. Adieu, Professor! Put your cockade in the fire, and offer my warmest congratulations to your friend Mr Simon of Treves."

Two days afterwards I experienced a genuine spasm of satisfaction while setting my foot on Dutch ground at Arnheim. The change from a democratic to a conservative country was so exhilarating, that I nearly slew myself by drinking confusion to democracy in bumpers of veritable Schiedam.

SATIRES AND CARICATURES OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.[1]

A Comic History of England would be an exceedingly curious, and even a valuable work. We do not mean a caricatured history, with great men turned into ridicule, and important events burlesqued; such absurdities may provoke pity, but they will hardly extort a smile from any whose suffrage is worth courting. We have had a vast deal of comic literature in this country during the last dozen years; quite a torrent of _facetiæ_, a surfeit of slang and puns. One or two popular humorists gave the impetus, and set a host of imitators sliding and wriggling down the inclined plane leading from wit and humour to buffoonery and bad taste. The majority reached in an instant the bottom of the slope, and have ever since remained there. The truth is, the funny style has been overdone; the supply of jokers has exceeded the demand for jokes, until the very word "comic" resounds unpleasantly upon the public tympanum. It were a change to revert for a while to the wit of our forefathers, at least as good, we suspect, as much of more modern manufacture. And therefore, we repeat, a comic English history, whose claims to the quality should be founded on its illustration by the songs, satires, and caricatures of its respective periods, would be interesting and precious in many ways; particularly as giving an insight into popular feelings and characteristics, and often as throwing additional light upon the causes of important revolutions and political changes. It would certainly be a very difficult book to compile. Instead of beginning at the usual starting-post of Roman invasion, it could hardly be carried back to the first William. The Saxons may possibly have revenged themselves on their conquerors by satirical ditties, and by rude and grotesque delineations; but it may be doubted whether any authenticated specimens of either their poetry or painting are in existence at the present day. It would not surprise us if King John's courtiers had curried favour with their master by lampooning the absent Coeur-de-Lion; and doubtless when there were men sufficiently sacrilegious to slay a churchman at the altar, others may have ventured to satirise in rude doggrel the pride and presumption of Thomas à Becket. But have their graceless effusions survived? Can they be traced in black letter, or deciphered on the blocks of wood and stone referred to in Mr Wright's preface? We fear not; and we believe that, up to the date of the invention of printing, the history suggested would be very meagre, and the task of writing it most ungrateful. For some time after that date the humorous illustrations would be written, and not pictorial; songs and lampoons, perhaps, but of caricatures few or none. For although caricature, in one variety or other, is ancient as the Pyramids, its introduction is recent into the country where, of all others, it seems most at home. Fostered by political liberty, it has naturalised itself kindly on English soil, but its foreign origin remains undeniable. Already, in the sixteenth century, Italy had her Caracci, and France her Callot; whilst in England we vainly seek, until the appearance of Hogarth, a caricaturist whose name abides in our memories, or whose works grace our museums.

It is evident, then, that the easiest way to write a history of the kind we have spoken of, is to begin at the end and write backwards. At any rate the historian avoids discouragement, at the very commencement, from the paucity of materials. And that is the plan Mr Wright has adopted. Breaking new ground, he naturally selected the spot most likely to reward his toil, and pitched upon the reigns of the first three Georges. He could hardly have chosen a more interesting period; and certainly, without coming inconveniently near to the present day, he could have fixed on none more prolific in the satires and drolleries he has made it his business to disinter and reproduce.

The contents of Mr Wright's book would sort into two comprehensive classes--the social and the political; the former the least voluminous, but the most entertaining. Political satires and caricatures, under the first two Georges, possess but a moderate attraction at the present day; and it is not till the period of the American war--we might almost say not until that of the French Revolution--that they excite interest, and move to mirth. The hits at the follies of society at large have a more general and enduring interest than those levelled at individuals and intrigues long since passed away. The first ten years of the accession of the house of Hanover were poor both in the number and quality of caricatures; and the remoteness of the period has enhanced the difficulty of finding them. Written satires and pasquinades were abundant, but, to judge from those preserved, few were worth preserving. Of these ephemeral publications there exists no important collection, either public or private. Of caricatures, more are to be got at, although, strange to say, the British Museum contains very few. There was far less of humour and spirit in those that appeared during the early part of the eighteenth century than in those produced during its latter portion. In fact, until the reign of George II., the art could hardly be said to be cultivated. In the first hundred pages of the book before us, which comprise nearly the whole reign of George I., we find only fourteen cuts--a small proportion of the three hundred scattered through the two volumes. And scarcely one of the fourteen has the qualities essential to a genuine caricature. They aim at telling a story, or conveying an insinuation, rather than at burlesquing persons. Sometimes the prints or medals (the latter were a favourite vehicle for the circulation of satire) were simply allegories, and as such are incorrectly designated by the word caricature, which, as derived from the Italian _caricare_, implies a thing overcharged or exaggerated in its proportions. As an instance of these allegories, we may cite a Jacobite medal, where Britannia is seen weeping, whilst the horse of Hanover tramples on the lion and unicorn. The English nation was at that period usually personified by Britannia and her lion, until Gillray, much later--taking the idea, it is said, from Dr Arbuthnot's satire--hit off the humourous figure of John Bull, which has been preserved, with more or less modification, by all subsequent caricaturists. Hogarth, who first attracted notice in 1723-4, by his attacks upon the degeneracy of the stage--then abandoned to opera, masquerade, and pantomime--brought up a broader style of caricature than his predecessors, but still he was too emblematical. Then, for a time, caricature got into the hands of amateur artists--female as well as male. Thus a humorous drawing of the Italian singers, Cuzzoni and Farinelli, and of Heidegger the ugly manager, is attributed to the Countess of Burlington. Then, after an interregnum, during which caricature languished, Gillray arose--Gillray, who, coarse and often indecent as he was, (in which respects, however, he did but conform to the tone and manners of his day,) was unquestionably the ablest of his tribe, the most thoroughly English, and the most irresistibly humorous caricaturist we have had. The refined might tax him with grossness, but his delineations went home to the multitude; and to the multitude the caricaturist must address himself, if he would produce effect, and enjoy influence. For a while, during the war with France, Gillray's active pencil was a power in the state. In his turn he was surpassed in coarseness and vulgarity, but not in wit, by his contemporary Rowlandson.

The sketches before us, of the history of England under the house of Hanover, are not to be considered as dependent on the satires and caricatures used to illustrate them. They form a general narrative of the most prominent events of a very important century, with which are interwoven, when opportunity offers, the most remarkable pen and pencil pasquinades of the day. The latter, however, have not always been obtainable, or are not worth recording. As we have already mentioned, they are scarce at the commencement of the book, which opens at the death of Queen Anne in 1714. When Jacobite plots were rife, and party-feeling ran so high as to produce frequent bloody struggles in London streets, between the Whigs or Hanoverians and the "Jacks," as the adherents of the Pretender were styled by their opponents, there appear to have existed no draughtsmen of much talent for caricature; whilst the poetical satires, judging from the specimens furnished by Mr Wright, are very middling in merit, although exceedingly numerous. If there was little wit, there was much violence and abuse on both sides. On the part of the Jacobites, agitation was the order of the day; and the mob, both in London and the provinces, were incited to many excesses--such as attacking houses, robbing passengers, pulling down Dissenting chapels, and drinking James the Third's health in the open streets. In Manchester, in June 1715, the population were for several days masters of the town. The results were the passing of the Riot Act, and the quartering of cavalry in the places most disaffected. The Whigs, on their part, were not idle, but carried on a brisk war of words, and raked up all the old stories about the Pretender--that he was no king's son, but a miller's offspring, conveyed into the Queen's bed in a warming-pan by the Jesuit Father Petre. Of course such tales as these gave a fine handle to squib and lampoon; and, in reference to the Jesuit's name, the Whigs designated the Pretender as Peterkin or Perkin--an appellation offering a convenient coincidence with that of a previous impudent aspirant to the English crown. To sneers of this kind the Jacobite minstrels manfully and spiritedly replied; and although the muse was less propitious in England than in Scotland, there is no doubt these effusions had a considerable effect upon the people. But the suppression of the rebellion damped their spirits, and with it their poetic fire; whilst the exulting Whigs triumphantly flapped their wings, and crowed a yet louder strain. Perkin and the warming-pan were the burden of every lay, and a peal of parodies celebrated the flight of the Stuart.

"'Twas when the seas were roaring
With blasts of northern wind,
Young Perkin lay deploring,
On warming-pan reclined
Wide o'er the roaring billows
He cast a dismal look,
And shiver'd like the willows
That tremble o'er the brook."

One would think the "Oxford scholars," accounted such fervent Jacobites, might have replied victoriously to such tepid couplets as this. But their hearts were down at their King's repulse. And poor as the verses were, no doubt they took wonderfully at the time,--so much, in such things, depends upon the _apropos_. And now a large section of the Tories, previously favourable to the Jacobites, broke away from them in their misfortune, made their peace with the ruling powers, and took the oath of allegiance. But long after fighting was over in the North--to be revived only in '45 by the chivalrous Charles Edward--the Jacobite mob kept London in hot water, and, thanks to the inefficiency of the police, might have done serious mischief, but for the Muggite Societies formed at that period. These were simply Whig clubs, meeting at certain public-houses, (the Magpie and Stump, in Newgate Street, was one,) and sallying out upon occasion to fight the Jacobites. The latter had also taverns of rendezvous, but these were few, and it was chiefly the lowest mob that in London still sported the White Rose, and cursed the Hanoverian. In most of the many conflicts that then occurred, the "Jacks" got the worst of it. If they assembled to break windows on an illumination night, or to burn William or George in effigy, they were soon assailed by the Loyal Society, or some other Whig association, who, acting as special constables without having taken the oath, drubbed them with cudgels, and extinguished their bonfires. It would appear that the Jacks did not often venture to impede the Whig mob in the performance of analogous ceremonies; since we read of a certain Fifth of November, when caricature effigies of the Pretender and his chief adherents and supporters were carried in triumph through the streets. "First, two men bearing each a warming-pan, with a representation of the infant Pretender--a nurse attending him with a sucking bottle, and another playing with him by beating the warming-pan. These were followed by three trumpeters, playing Lillibulero and other Whig tunes. Then came a cart with Ormond and Marr, appropriately dressed. This was followed by another cart, containing the Pope and Pretender seated together, and Bolingbroke as the secretary of the latter. They were all drawn backwards, with halters round their necks." The sole opposition made by the Jacobites to this outrageous demonstration, was by the somewhat paltry proceeding of stealing the faggots collected for the Whig bonfire. Four months after this, the Jacobites attempted a procession, and a great fight ensued, in which the Whigs were victorious, after having "made rare work for the surgeons." The government of the day showed little mercy to the rioters. Seditious ballad-singers, and persons holding disloyal discourse, were flogged and pilloried; and at last, the hanging of several of the disaffected for storming a Mug-house, put an end to the disturbances. That the Whigs did not bear their triumph very meekly appears from the following paragraph, extracted from _Read's Weekly Journal_ of June 15, 1717.

"Last Monday being supposed to be the birthday of the Sovereign
of the White Rose, in respect to the anniversary, an honest Whig
went from the Roebuck to St James's, with a jackdaw finely dressed
in white roses, and set on a warming-pan bedeckt with the same
sweet-scented commodity, which caused abundance of laughter all
the way, to the great mortification of the Knights Companions of
that order, and all the other Jacks, to see their sovereign so
maltreated in the person of his representative."

The poor crushed Jacobites were fain to grin and bear it.

The suppression of political riots was followed by a great prevalence of highway robberies, in and around the metropolis. The streets of London were not safe, even in the daytime; and ladies went out in their chairs guarded by servants with loaded blunderbusses. The following extracts from newspapers of the time read oddly enough--especially when we remember that not a hundred and thirty years have elapsed since the crimes recorded in them occurred.

"Thursday, 21st January 1720. About five o'clock in the evening,
the stage-coach from London to Hampstead was attacked and robbed
by highwaymen, at the foot of the hill, and one of the passengers
severely beaten for attempting to hide his money."

"Sunday 24. At eight o'clock in the evening, two highwaymen
attacked a gentleman in a coach on the south side of St Paul's
churchyard, and robbed him."

"Sunday 31. A gentleman robbed and murdered in Bishopsgate street."

"Monday, February 1. The Duke of Chandos, coming from Canons, had
another encounter with highwaymen, whom he captured."

"Tuesday 2. The postboy was attacked by three highwaymen in Tyburn
road, but the Duke of Chandos, happening to pass that way, came to
his rescue."

His grace of Chandos seems to have been a sort of amateur thief-taker. Then we read of stage-coaches stopped and robbed between London and Stoke Newington, and of a certain day, when "_all_ the stage-coaches coming from Surrey to London were robbed by highwaymen." At last a reward of one hundred pounds was offered for the apprehension of any highwayman within five miles of London. Amongst those captured were several persons of good repute in their respective callings. They included a London tradesman, a duke's valet, and the keeper of a boxing-school.

The speculative madness that prevailed in the year 1719-20, the "bubble mania," as it was called, offered a fertile field to the satirist. The contagion was caught from France, where, about that time, John Law projected his celebrated Mississippi Company, and, by his wild financial manoeuvres, first rendered money a mere drug, then plunged Paris and France into the profoundest misery. The outline of Law's history is familiar to most persons. It will be remembered how, having killed a man in a duel in his own country, he broke his prison, and fled to France, met the young Duke of Orleans at the house of a courtesan named Duclos, and, being handsome, accomplished, and graceful, contracted with him an intimacy that led eventually to the hatching of the notable Mississippi scheme. The delusion began to flourish towards the middle of 1718, and was at its apogee at the close of the following year. The market for the shares was in an insignificant street, still existing in Paris under the name of the Rue Quincampoix, where every house was soon subdivided into an infinity of little offices, and a dwelling whose usual rent was of six hundred livres yielded one hundred thousand; where a cobbler gained two hundred livres a-day, by hiring out his shed to ladies who came to share in and look on at the game; and a hunchback earned a handsome income by lending his shoulders as a writing-desk. The five-hundred-livre shares rose to twenty thousand livres--to a premium, that is to say, of four thousand per cent. Money was for the time so abundant, that goods rose immensely, and articles of luxury were all bought up. Cloth of gold, a French writer tells us, became exceeding rare, except in the streets, where it was seen draping the plebeian persons of the newly-enriched speculators. A nobleman and a Mississippian disputed a partridge in a cook's shop: the latter obtained it for two hundred livres, or more than eight pounds! Beranger has devoted a witty stanza to that year of madness.

"C'était la régence alors
Et sans hyperbole,
Grâce aux plus drôles de corps,
La France étoit folle;
Tous les hommes s'amusaient,
Et les femmes se prêtaient
A la gaudriole an gué,
A la gaudriole."

As an essential preliminary to holding the office of Comptroller-general of the French finances, Law allowed the Abbé de Tençin to convert him to the religion of Rome. This apostasy, and its disastrous consequences to France, became the subject of many squibs and satirical verses when the fallacy of the system ultimately appeared. Before the panic came, however, and an attempted realisation on the part of some of the largest holders proved the exaggerated and fictitious value of the bonds, the mania for speculation had crossed the Channel, and raged in this country. The South-Sea bill passed through parliament, and received the royal assent; and on a sudden stock-jobbing seemed to become the sole business of all classes. The Tory papers ridiculed the folly. Sir Robert Walpole published a warning pamphlet, a proclamation forbade the formation of unauthorised companies; but all in vain. Shares in the most absurd bubbles were eagerly caught at. "A company was even announced, and its shares bought, which was merely advertised as 'for an undertaking which shall in due time be revealed.' Among other odd projects were companies 'for planting of mulberry trees, and breeding of silk-worms in Chelsea Park;' 'for importing a number of large jack-asses from Spain, in order to propagate a larger breed of mules in England;' 'for fattening of hogs.' In August, the stock of the various London companies was calculated to exceed the value of five hundred millions." About this time Law's credit balloon began to collapse, which was a hint to the English jobbers of what they might in their turn expect. It was nearly the end of the year when he was compelled to fly from Paris, and take refuge in Venice, where he died, an impoverished gambler, in May 1729, leaving for sole inheritance a diamond worth about 1500 pounds sterling, which he had been in the habit of pawning when hard pushed. Many weeks before his departure from France, however, the London companies were discredited and turned into ridicule by a host of songs and satirical pieces, one of the best of which was the celebrated _South-Sea Ballad; or, Merry Remarks upon Exchange-Alley Bubbles_.

"From the month of October to the end of the year, songs, and squibs, and pamphlets of all descriptions, on the misfortunes occasioned by the explosion of the bubble system, became exceedingly numerous.... The general feeling against the directors was becoming so strong in the month of November, that we are told it had become a practice among the ladies, when in playing at cards they turned up a knave, to cry, 'There's a director for you!'" The period of the South-Sea bubble was particularly prolific in caricatures. A vast number appeared in Holland and France, and for the first time political caricatures became common in England. Those of which copies are given in Mr Wright's book have small claims to wit. Most of the foreign ones were aimed at Law, and those published in this country at the 'Change Alley speculators. Hogarth's first political caricature related to the bubbles of 1720, and appeared the following year.

As in France the temporary glut of wealth produced by Law's financial operations had the most unfavourable effect upon the public morals, so in England "the South-Sea convulsion had hardly subsided, when a general outcry was heard against the alarming increase of atheism, profaneness, and immorality; and an attempt was made to suppress them by act of parliament, but the bill for that purpose was not allowed to pass." Masquerades were especially inveighed against by the upholders of propriety, and were made the subject of much satire. The ugliness of Heidegger, "_le surintendant des plaisirs de l'Angleterre_," as the French called him; the conceit and caprices of the opera-singers, then, as now, notorious for their extortionate greediness and constant bickerings and jealousies; the neglect of Shakspeare and the old dramatists; the prevailing taste for pantomime and buffoonery--were so many targets for the wits and caricaturists of the day. But neither Hogarth's pencil nor the pungent pen of Pope had power to correct the depravity of public taste. Masquerades continued the favourite amusement of the town, and opera and pantomime preserved their vogue. The satirists persevered in their crusade, and as late as 1742 we find Hogarth still working the mine, in a capital caricature of Monsieur Desnoyer and Signora Barberina,--the Taglioni and Perrot of their day whose graceful attitudes he cleverly burlesques. Previously to the year 1737 the stage was used as a political engine, and violent attacks on the government were introduced into farces and pantomimes. Some of these were direct and open pasquinades, and gave great umbrage to the ministry; and amongst them two of the most conspicuous were a lampooning farce called _Pasquin_, and a dramatic satire entitled the _Historical Register for the year 1736_, both by Fielding. A still more abusive piece, to be entitled _The Golden Rump_, was spoken of as forthcoming; but, before it appeared, the matter was brought before the House of Commons; an act was passed "for restraining the licentiousness of the stage," and the office of Licenser of Plays was established. Thus a stop was put to stage-politics: but nevertheless--and although, in an age when parties ran so high, this suppression must materially have diminished the attractiveness of theatrical entertainments--the theatres continued, for many years, and from various causes, to receive a very large share of public attention, and to be made the subject of numerous prose and verse pamphlets, and of occasional caricatures. Pantomime and burlesque were still in vogue, but not to the exclusion of the regular drama; and Shakspeare gained ground, interpreted, as he was, by first-rate actors--by Garrick, Quin, and Macklin, by Mrs Woffington, Mrs Clive, Mrs Cibber, and others. About the middle of the century, the rivalry between Drury and the Garden ran so high as to be a subject of annoyance and inconvenience to the public. "In October 1749 the Covent-Garden company opened the theatrical campaign with _Romeo and Juliet_--a play in which Barry, and especially Mrs Cibber, had shone with peculiar excellence. Garrick had armed himself for the contest: he had prepared a rival actress in Miss Bellamy; and he produced, to the surprise of his opponents, the same play of _Romeo and Juliet_, at Drury Lane, on the very night it came out at Covent Garden. The town was divided for a long time between the two 'Romeo and Juliets,' which produced a mass of contradictory criticism, and finished by almost emptying both houses, for every body began to tire of the monotonous repetition of the same play." There is not much danger, at the present day, of rivalry of this sort. How Garrick and Quin would stare, were they galvanised out of their graves, to see Grisi queen of Covent Garden, and Jullien lord of Drury Lane! Theatrical opposition is a thing nobody now dreams of, unless it be between a French vaudeville company and an English troop of low comedians. And were a contest to arise between the English theatres, it would most likely be of the nature of that which occurred in the reign of George the First, between the rival harlequins, when it was common enough for the two great theatres to bring out pantomimes founded on the same subject--as in 1723, when _Harlequin Dr Faustus_ had great success at both Drury Lane and Covent Garden. That was also the period of the first introduction, on the English stage, of wild beasts, dragons, monsters, and goblins of various kinds, besides mountebanks, tumblers, and rope-dancers. Even Garrick, however, did not disdain the pantomime, when he saw in it the means to annoy and injure a rival. "At the beginning of 1750 he brought out a new pantomime, entitled _Queen Mab_, in which Woodward acted the part of harlequin. The great success of this piece, which drew crowded houses for forty nights, without intermission, gave rise to a very popular caricature, entitled _The Theatrical Steelyard_, in which Mrs Cibber, Mrs Woffington, Quin, and Barry, are outweighed by Woodward's _Harlequin_ and Garrick's _Queen Mab_. Rich, (the Covent-Garden manager,) dressed in the garb of harlequin, lies on the ground expiring." Excepting the two important particulars, that good actors were then as plentiful as they now are scarce, and that the two great theatres were occupied by Shakspeare and Englishmen, instead of by fiddlers and foreigners, there is much coincidence between some recent occurrences in the theatrical world and others a hundred years old. Then, as now, attempts were made to drive French actors from the country. These attempts arose, however, from no apprehension of foreigners injuring or eclipsing native talent, then so superior to such fears, but from the anti-Gallican feeling abroad at the time. During the Westminster election of 1749 a company of French players were performing at the Haymarket, and Lord Trentham, the government candidate, was accused of favouring and protecting them. He spoke French well, and was said to affect French manners; and all this, of course, was made the most of for electioneering purposes. He was lampooned as "the champion of the French strollers;" and the mob, with their usual wisdom and admirable logic, said "that learning to talk French was only a step towards the introduction of French tyranny." A deluge of ballads descended upon the heads of the candidate and his assumed _protégés_; and the quality of the poetry seems to have been on a par with the liberality of the sentiments--to judge, at least, from the following brilliant specimen:--

"Our natives are starving, whom Nature has made
The brightest of wits, and to comedy bred;
Whilst apes are caress'd, which God made by chance,
The worst of all mortals, the strollers from France."

This is wretched enough, even for an election ditty. And we are little disposed to join in the regret expressed in Mr Wright's preface, that no one, as far as he has been able to discover, "has made any considerable collection of political songs, satires, and other such tracts, published during the last century and the present;" since the wit and merit of those he has been able to get together are in general so exceedingly small. He is, very judiciously, sparing of his extracts, except when he stumbles upon a really good song or set of verses, a few of which are scattered through his volumes.

To return to the mob-hatred of the French. After the Westminster election, this feeling was kept up by squib and caricature; and in November 1755, Garrick having occasion to employ some French dancers, in a grand spectacle brought out at Drury Lane under the title of _The Chinese Festival_, a theatre row was the result. It was kept up for five nights; and on the sixth the mob smashed the lamps, demolished the scenery, and did several thousand pounds' worth of damage. This popular antipathy to the French did not, however, extend to the produce of France, or prevent the higher classes from patronising and importing French luxuries of all kinds, as well as a host of milliners, governesses, quacks, valets, and professors of other menial and decorative arts. The Gallomania of the fashionable world offered a fine field to the caricaturists, who made the most of it, to the great delight of the populace. French fashions, cookery, education, and nicknacks, were alternately taken as targets for the shafts of ridicule. Mr Wright transfers to his pages a ludicrous fragment of a print by Boitard, entitled "The Imports of Great Britain from France," in which an Englishwoman of quality is seen embracing and caressing a French female dancer, and assuring her that her arrival is to the honour and delight of England. And the mob of that day went so far as to believe that it was the love of the aristocracy for French perfumes and delicacies, cooks and coiffeurs, which prevented English ministers from properly protecting the national honour, and avenging the insults put upon us by our neighbours. The real evil, far more important than the consumption of French finery and cosmetics, was the importation of French corruption and immorality, so prevalent in England during the whole reign of George II., and during a portion of that of his successor. By this time the masquerades and _ridottos_, which had kept their ground in spite of the moralists, had grown so flagrant in their excesses and indecencies that, about the end of 1755, they were nearly suppressed; the earthquake at Lisbon having come to the aid of the anti-maskers, who took advantage of the panic it caused in London, to represent it as a judgment on the profligacy of the age. Previously to that, masquerades--not only those at public establishments, such as Vauxhall and Ranelagh, but at the private houses of persons of rank and fashion--offered glaring examples of indecorum--to use the very mildest word--until at last Miss Chudleigh, maid of honour to the Princess of Wales, and afterwards Duchess of Kingston, showed herself at the Venetian ambassador's in a close-fitting dress of flesh-coloured silk. We may judge of the court morals of the time from the circumstance, that her royal mistress's sole rebuke was by throwing her own veil over the immodest beauty. The host of caricatures to which this gave rise, and the grossness of many of them, in that day of great pictorial license, are easily imagined. After this there were very few masquerades during ten or twelve years, at the end of which time the court again set the fashion of them, soon after George the Third's accession. Towards 1770, Mrs Cornelys got up her "Harmonic Meetings," at Carlisle House in Soho Square. These subscription balls and masquerades were attended by most of the nobility and leaders of the _ton_; and, at one of them, we learn the presence of "two royal dukes, and nearly all the fashionable portion of the aristocracy. On this occasion, Colonel Luttrell (the same who had opposed Wilkes in the election for Middlesex) appeared as a dead corpse in a shroud, in his coffin." Much used, from the very first, for purposes of intrigue, these assemblies soon became unbearably licentious. The company fell off, both in numbers and respectability, until the only way to fill the rooms was by the admission of bad characters. This made them sink lower and lower, until "we read in the _St James's Chronicle_ of April 23, 1795, the remark that 'No amusement seems to have fallen into greater contempt, in this country, than the masquerades.... They have been lately mere assemblages of the idle and profligate of both sexes, who made up in indecency what they wanted in wit.'" A description that has ever since been applicable to London masquerades, which still continue, we apprehend, to be mere pretexts for debauchery; whilst even in Paris, whose atmosphere, and the character of whose inhabitants, have generally been found more favourable to that class of amusements, the famed opera balls have sunk, within the last twenty years, into the saturnalia of idle students, profligate apprentices, and ladies of uncertain virtue.

It would be unjust to leave out Samuel Foote, in a work treating of the satires and caricatures of the last century. Possessing neither the brush of Hogarth nor the pen of Churchill, he wielded a weapon as formidable in its way--that, namely, of dramatic mimicry, or stage satire; and he is properly named by Mr Wright the great theatrical caricaturist of the age. For a time, the reckless and vindictive wit was the terror of the town: an affront to him, real or imaginary, caused the unlucky offender to be paraded before the world, under some fictitious name, upon the boards of his theatre, which, at first, was the "little" one in the Haymarket. For some time Foote and Macklin had it between them, but, disagreeing, Macklin left, whereupon his ex-partner immediately caricatured him upon the very stage he had so lately trodden. "The Haymarket was an unlicensed theatre, and Foote evaded the law by serving his audience with tea, and calling the performance in the bills 'Mr Foote's giving tea to his friends.' His advertisement ran, 'Mr Foote presents his compliments to his friends and the public, and desires them to drink tea at the Little Theatre in the Haymarket, every morning, at playhouse prices.' The house was always crowded, and Foote came forward and said, that as he had some young actors in training, he would go on with his instructions whilst the tea was preparing." Afterwards he got a license, and rebuilt the theatre. But his bitter wit and gross personalities continually got him into trouble, frequently caused his pieces to be prohibited; exposed him to threatened, if not to actual castigation; and, finally, were the indirect cause of his death, accelerated, it is generally believed, by shame and vexation at the false but revolting charge brought against him by a clergyman he had savagely lampooned.

The fate of Hogarth was not dissimilar to that of Foote, with the difference that the painter was slain literally with his own weapons. Foote's victims had neither the ability nor the opportunity to expose him, as he did them, upon the stage. The Methodists, Dr Johnson, the East India Company, and the Duchess of Kingston, each in turn subjected to his vicious attacks, retorted as best they might by pamphlets and cudgels, but apparently made little impression on the player's tough epidermis, until a disreputable parson devised the poisoned dart with which to inflict a sure and cowardly wound. But Hogarth caricatured others till others learned to caricature him,--with less talent, certainly, but with sufficient malice to annoy and harass the artist, and finally, it is said, to break his heart. "His constant practice," says Mr Wright, "of introducing contemporaries into his moral satires, had procured him a host of enemies in the town; whilst his vain egotism, and the scornful tone in which he spoke of the other artists of the age, offended and irritated them." How seldom do satirists preserve temper and coolness under the retort of their own aggressions! After more than a quarter of a century passed in turning his neighbours into ridicule, Hogarth might be thought able to endure a rub or two in his turn, and even to receive them with good grace and a smiling countenance. But many a veteran has found, to his cost, that a life passed in the field does not render bullet-proof. Hogarth made good fight to the last, but his offensive arms were better than his defensive ones; his enemies' shot fell thick and fast, and all he could do was to die upon his guns. For the last twelve or fifteen years of his life he appears to have been particularly unpopular, and continually caricatured. His _Analysis of Beauty_, published in 1753, drew upon him a great deal of ridicule; and in 1758, his opposition to the foundation of an Academy of Fine Art was the signal for a shower of abuse and caricatures, more or less witty--oftener _less_ than _more_. But the campaign that finished him--the Waterloo of the unlucky humorist--was one he rashly undertook against Wilkes and Churchill, previously his friends. This was imprudent in the extreme; for he might be sure that all the minor curs, who had so long yelped at his heels, would redouble their wearisome assaults when reinforced by such formidable champions as the _North Briton_ and "Bruiser" Churchill. Wilkes warned Hogarth that he would not be kicked unresistingly, but the painter persevered; and Wilkes kept his word. No. 17 of the _North Briton_ was stinging retaliation for No. 1 of _The Times_; and Churchill's "Epistle to William Hogarth" was at least as galling to the artist as his well-known portrait of "A Patriot" could be to Wilkes. The quarrel was kept up with much spirit till the death of Hogarth in October 1764.

The American war, and the ill-advised colonial legislation which brought it on, gave rise to many caricatures, some of them of considerable merit. The first of which a transcript is given us by Mr Fairholt's graver, relates to the Boston tea-riots of 1770. In it Lord North is pouring tea down the throat of America, personified by a half-naked woman with a crown of feathers, who rejects the unwelcome draught in his lordship's face. Britannia weeps in the background, and Lord Chancellor Mansfield, the compiler of the obnoxious acts, holds down the victim. When war actually broke out, and the bloody fight of Bunker's Hill gave a foretaste of its disasters, satires fell thick upon the ministry as well as upon the king, whose will, the Opposition maintained, was law with Lord North's cabinet. In June 1776 a long poem, smart enough, but very violent and unpatriotic, was published under the title of _Lord Chatham's Prophecy_.

"Your plumèd corps though Percy cheers,
And far-famed British grenadiers,
Renown'd for martial skill;
Yet Albion's heroes bite the plain,
Her chiefs round gallant Howe are slain,
On fallow Bunker's Hill."

Subsequent verses foretell all manner of evils to Great Britain, and the whole poem breathes a spirit of exultation at our reverses, which would have been less ungraceful from an American than from an English pen, and which, at the present day, no amount of party feeling would be held to justify. But the shamelessness of Whiggery was then at its height; the pseudo-patriots of the time recked little of their country's misfortunes when these gave them opportunity of triumph over a political antagonist. What cared they for the reverses of British arms, or the lopping off of Britain's colonies, if they thereby saw themselves nearer the possession of the place and power whose emoluments they so greedily coveted? Charles Fox, with his faro-purse empty and an execution in his house, could hardly afford to be particular as to the strict cleanliness of the path to the treasury bench. Then or never was the moment to sacrifice public weal to private advantage. And accordingly, when, "on the 3d December 1777, the Court was thunderstruck with the disastrous intelligence of the surrender of General Burgoyne and his army at Saratoga, the Opposition could hardly conceal their exultation: the disgrace and loss which had fallen on the British arms were exaggerated, and chanted about the streets in doggerel ballads." An "Ode on the success of his Majesty's Arms," written in December, and printed in the _Foundling Hospital for Wit_, celebrates ironically the glorious results of the campaign, and the skill and prudence of the ministers at home; and ends with a congratulation on the old tale of King George's mechanical amusements:--

"Then shall my lofty numbers tell,
Who taught the royal babes to spell,
And sovereign arts pursue;
To mend a watch, or set a clock,
New patterns shape for Hervey's frock,
Or buttons make at Kew."