Chapter I: Preface: 'Tuâ nobis est gratiâ.'--CIC (1)

We have need of your favour.

The Editor recognises that the admirers of Rowlandson's peculiar graphic productions, and those fortunate amateurs who are able to indulge their taste for collecting caricatures and works embellished with humorous illustrations, will not expect any excuse for the preparation and appearance of the present work: he anticipates that--in spite of much that he would improve--the two volumes devoted to a _résumé_ of the great Caricaturist, with the multifarious, ludicrous, and grotesque creations which emanated from his fertile fancy, will be accepted as, in some degree, supplying that which, without being absolutely indispensable, has frequently been instanced as a compilation likely to be acceptable to the appreciators of graphic and literal satire.

To the initiated few this sketch of a famous delineator of whimsicalities, with the review of his works, times, and contemporaries, is offered with the conviction that the intentions of the Author are not liable to be misconstrued by them; nor has he any grounds to dread that the subjects represented run the risk of being questioned at their hands on the grounds of propriety.

Fuller consideration is due to the many to whom the name of Rowlandson conveys no more than a perception of 'oddity' or of license of treatment which approaches vulgarity, to whom the innumerable inventions of the artist represent foreign ground--a novel, strange land, populated with daring absurdities, according to their theories.

It is felt that some justification is needed for the writer's temerity in volunteering as a pioneer to conduct the unsophisticated through the devious and eccentric intricacies which characterise the progress of pictorial satire, as demonstrated in the subject of the work now submitted to the public with all due deference.

The neophyte, it is anticipated, will be somewhat startled at the first glance of the surroundings amidst which he will wander; but it is believed that, in the course of his journey through an anomalous past, he will alight on discoveries, more or less interesting in themselves, which provide abundant food for the student of humanity.

The writer deprecates a hasty conclusion, with the assurance that those who have the moderation to reserve their opinions until they have fully acquainted themselves with the materials, may possibly suffer their critical instincts to be modified in the process.

We have taken the liberty of scrutinising somewhat closely--with a view to the portrayal of its salient features--a generation which was marked with a colouring more intensified than those who live in our time are prepared to adopt. Of this age, diversified with much which has been discarded, we accept Rowlandson as the fitting exponent. His works epitomise a state of being comparatively recent in actual fact, but, from the circumstances of change, so distantly removed in appearance, as to constitute a curious experience to the majority.

With every qualification to ensure success, Rowlandson, as his story indicates, deliberately threw away the serious chances of life, to settle down as the delineator of the transitory impressions of the hour. 'There is wisdom in laughter,' says the sage; and--without precisely regarding life as a 'stale jest'--our artist drew mirth from every situation, and illustrated from his own fecund resources that, while nearly every circumstance has its grotesque as well as its sinister aspect, the ludicrous elements of any given event are often more enduring than the serious ones.

Good-natured pleasantry, we may remind the reader, is held to be wholesome. Rowlandson's shafts, so far as our judgment serves, were never pointed with gall: while he possessed the faculty of seizing the weak or ridiculous side of his subject, he seems, unlike Gillray, his best-known contemporary, to have been an utter stranger to acrimonious instigations. A fuller acquaintanceship reveals the Caricaturist--as he was described in his day--'an inexhaustible folio of amusement, every page of which was replete with fun'--perhaps the most genial travelling companion who could be selected in traversing the ways of life led by our ancestors, for the half-century which witnessed the gradual extinction of the quaint, old-fashioned Georgian era, and inaugurated the less picturesque generation to which our immediate predecessors belong.

Be it recorded, concerning the part played in the world by the satirists, pictorial and literal--'the less they deserve, the more merit in your bounty.' We would modestly suggest the sapient axiom embodied by the great master, 'Fancy's favourite child,' relative to the transient jesters whose lot it has been 'to hold, as't were, the mirror up to nature' upon the mimic stage: 'Let them be well used; for they are the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time: after your death you were better have a bad epitaph, than their ill report while you live.'

CONTENTS

OF

THE FIRST VOLUME.

(1774-1799.)

_BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH._

PAGE

The prevalent taste for pictorial satires--Contributions to the
literature and history of caricature--Collections of caricatures
in national museums--Rowlandson's publishers--Scarcity of his
works and the avidity of collectors--Difficulties in the way of
forming a collection of Rowlandson's engraved plates--Rowlandson
regarded as an artist in water-colours--Examples of his
productions to be found in picture galleries--Establishes
himself as a serious artist, 1777 to 1781--His contributions
to the Royal Academy as a portrait-painter in oils--His
female likenesses--His versatile acquirements and imitative
fidelity--Rowlandson considered as a landscape artist--As a
painter of marine subjects--George Cruikshank's estimation of
Thomas Rowlandson--General review of Rowlandson's caricatures:
Gambling, the Westminster Election, 1784; political struggles
between the Whigs and Tories, Pitt and Fox, the King and the
Prince, fashions, the clergy, the Bar, usures, doctors, quackery,
John Bull, foreigners, cockneys, countrymen, the Universities,
collegians, the military, the navy, seaport sketches, amusements
of the _bon-ton_, Vauxhall, the Opera, theatres, card-playing,
sharpers, drinking, feasting, sport, fox-hunting, horse-racing,
prize-fighting, rural sports, masquerading, picnic revels,
fortune-hunters, elopements, Gretna Green, travesties, parodies,
and burlesques, trials, scandals, housebreaking, highway
robberies, the passions, the Royal Family--Imitations of the old
masters: Female studies, _croquis_ taken in France, Holland,
Belgium, Germany, England and Wales, the metropolis--The Regency
struggle--Admiral Lord Nelson--The miseries of human life--The
Great French Revolution--Napoleon Buonaparte--The Delicate
Investigation--The Royal Academy, &c., &c.--Manifold production
of drawings--Contributions to book illustration--Portraits
of the caricaturist--The artist and his relatives--His
schoolfellows--A student in Paris--At the Academy schools--His
early friends Bannister and Angelo--Tricks on the Royal
Academicians--His friends Pyne and John Thomas Smith--Studies
of Continental character--Between London and Paris--Is left a
fortune--His passion for the gambling-table--The integrity of
his conduct--Successive exhibits at the Royal Academy--Portraits
in oil--His travels at home and abroad; the companions of
his excursions; Mitchell the banker and Henry Wigstead
the magistrate--Congenial spirits--Vauxhall Gardens--Lord
Barrymore--Nocturnal frolics--Play--Successive drawings of social
satires, contributed to the Royal Academy Exhibitions--Rowlandson
robbed--Identifies a thief--Lord Howe's victory--French
prisoners--Sketches of the embarkation of the expedition for
La Vendée--Sojourns in Paris with Angelo, John Raphael Smith,
Westmacott, and Chasemore--Sketching in the Netherlands and
Germany with Mitchell--John Bull on his travels--Night auctions
of pictures, drawings, and prints--Old Parsons, 'Antiquity'
Smith, Edwin, Greenwood, Hutchins, Heywood--Relaxations
of the period--Nights at Mitchell's--Wigstead and 'Peter
Pindar'--Wolcot's stories--Dinners with Weltjé at
Hammersmith--The Prince of Wales--Theatrical worthies, Munden,
Palmer and Madame Banti--Convivialities--The Prince's Maître
d'Hôtel: his cooking and anecdotes--Excursions in England: views
in Cumberland, Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Norfolk, Suffolk,
Kent, Hampshire, &c.--Studies in the Universities: views of the
Colleges of Oxford and Cambridge--Malcolm's 'Historical Sketch
of the Art of Caricaturing'--Wright's 'History of Caricature
and Grotesque in Literature and Art'--Rowlandson as an etcher
of the works of amateur caricaturists: his own spirit lent
to the productions of Wigstead, Nixon, Woodward, Bunbury,
Collings, &c.--Sketches of contemporary caricaturists: William
Henry Bunbury, George Moutard Woodward, Henry Wigstead, the
facetious John Nixon--The Beef-steak Club--The 'well-bread
man'--Collings, artist and editor of the 'Public Ledger'--Caleb
Whiteford--'Ephraim Hardcastle'--James Heath--George
Morland--James Gillray--Allusions to Rowlandson in the 'Life of
James Gillray, the Caricaturist, with the Story of his Works
and Times'--The position of caricaturists in relation to their
contemporaries--Henry Angelo, the fencing master--Personal
characteristics of satirists--Rowlandson's publisher, Rudolph
Ackermann: sketch of his life--_Conversazioni_ at the 'Repository
of Arts'--Special qualities of Rowlandson's productions--Esteem
in which he was held by contemporaries--His death and funeral 1

1774-1781.

_EARLY PRODUCTIONS._

A Rotation Office--The Village Doctor--A Scene at
Streatham--Bozzy and Piozzi--Special Pleading--The Power
of Reflection--E O, or the Fashionable Vowels--Gambling
Tables--Charity Covereth a Multitude of Sins--Bob
Derry--Luxury--Political and social caricatures for 1781 96

1782-1783.

Amputation--The Rhedarium--The Discovery--Interior of a
Clockmaker's Shop--The Times--Political and social caricatures
for 1783 107

1784.

_POLITICAL CARICATURES._

The Pit of Acheron--The Fall of Dagon--The Coalition--Fox and
North Ministries--Britannia Roused--The East India Company--The
Apostate Jack Robinson--The Champion of the People--Master
Billy's Procession to Grocers' Hall--The State Auction--The
Westminster Election--The Hanoverian Horse and the British
Lion--The Canvass--The Rival Duchesses--The Rival Candidates:
Hon. Charles James Fox, Lord Hood, Sir Cecil Gray--The
Devonshire, or most Approved Manner of Securing Votes--The
Poll--Fox, the Westminster Watchman--Honest Sam House--Lords of
the Bedchamber--The Court Canvass of Madame Blubber--Wit's Last
Stake, or the Cobbling Voter and Abject Canvassers--Monsieur
Reynard--The Case is Altered--The Hustings--Procession of
the Hustings after a Successful Canvass--Lord Lonsdale--The
Westminster Mendicant--The Westminster Deserter Drumm'd out
of the Regiment--Court Influence--Preceptor and Pupil--Secret
Influences Directing the New Parliament--For the Benefit of the
Champion--The Petitioning Candidate--Christopher Atkinson, a
'Rogue in Grain'--John Stockdale, the 'Bookselling Blacksmith' 111

_SOCIAL CARICATURES._

A Sketch from Nature--English Curiosity--Counsellor and
Client--La Politesse Françoise--1784, or the Fashions of
the Day--The Vicar and Moses--Money-lenders--Bookseller
and Author--The Historian Animating the Mind of a Young
Painter--Billingsgate--Illustrations of Conveyances--Rowlandson's
imitations of modern drawings 145

1785.

The Fall of Achilles--The Golden Apple, or the Modern
Paris--Defeat of the High and Mighty Balissimo Corbettino
and his Famed Cecilian Forces--The Wonderful Pig--The
Waterfall--Comfort in the Gout--VAUXHALL GARDENS: Vauxhall
Characters--Vincent Lunardi: Aërostation Out at Elbows, or
the Itinerant Aëronaut--Too Many for a Jew--An Essay on the
Sublime and Beautiful--The Maiden Speech--Captain Epilogue--Col.
Topham Endeavouring with his Squirt to Extinguish the Genius of
Holman--Persons and Property Protected by Authority--Intrusion on
Study, or the Painter Disturbed--Courtship--Filial Affection, or
a Trip to Gretna Green--The Reconciliation, or the Return from
Scotland--Lord Eden and Gen. Arnold--Harmony--Sympathy--John
Gilpin--Tastes Differ--Nap in the Country--Nap in Town--Sea
Amusement, or Commander-in-Chief of Cup and Ball on a
Cruise--Opera Boxes 152

1786.

Box Lobby Loungers--Love and Learning--Sketch of Politics in
Europe, January 1786--Uncle Toby (the Duke of Richmond)--An
Ordnance Dream, or Planning Fortifications--Luxury--Misery--The
Morning Dram--Count Boruwloski (the Polish Dwarf) Performing
before the Grand Seigneur--Brewers' Drays--Youth and Age--Sailors
Carousing--A Theatrical Chymist--The Return from Sport--A Box
Lobby Hero--Werter--Covent Garden Theatre--Illustrations to the
poems of 'Peter Pindar' (Dr. Wolcot)--'Picturesque Beauties of
Boswell' 180

1787.

Uncle George and Black Dick--Illustration to Peter
Pindar's poems, 'The Lousiad,' 'Peter's Pension,' 'Odes
for the New Year'--The Triumph of Sentiment--The Triumph
of Hypocrisy--Transplanting of Teeth (Baron Ron)--The
Village Forge--A Brewer's Dray--A Posting Inn--A Rural
Halt--Haymakers--A Sailor's Family--A College Scene, or a
Fruitless Attempt on the Purse of Old Squaretoes--Tragedy
Spectators--Comedy Spectators--Love in the East--The Art of
Scaling--Modish--Prudent--Cribbage Players 199

1788.

Hunting Series--The Meet--The Humours of St. Giles's--Warren
Hastings--Ague and Fever--Lord Hood--The School for Scandal--The
King's Illness--Filial Piety--The Prospect before us--The Regency
Struggle--The Restrictions--The Addresses--The Word-Eater--Blue
and Buff Loyalty--Housebreakers--Love and Dust--Luxury and
Desire--Lust and Avarice--Stage Coach and Basket--An Epicure--A
Comfortable Nap in a Post-chaise--A Fencing Match--The
Pea-Cart--A Print Sale 223

1789.

The Regency Restrictions--The Modern Egbert, or the King
of Kings--The Pittfall--The Propagation of a Truth--Loose
Principles--State Butchers--A New Speaker--Britannia's
Support, or the Conspirators Defeated--Going in State to the
House of Peers--A Sweating for Opposition--Irish Ambassadors
Extraordinary--Address from the Parliament of Ireland to the
Prince of Wales--The Prince's Answer--The King's Recovery--Irish
Ambassador's Return--Rochester Address--Grand Procession to
St. Paul's on St. George's Day, 1798--Sergeant Kite (Duke of
Orleans) Recruiting at Billingsgate--Grog on Board--Tea on
Shore--Interruption, or Inconvenience of a Lodging House--A
Sufferer for Decency--The Start--The Betting Post--The
Course--The Mount--Bay of Biscay--Chelsea Reach--La Place des
Victoires, Paris--A Dull Husband 242

1790.

Tythe Pig--A Roadside Inn--Frog-Hunting--A Butcher--Repeal of
the Test Act--A French Family--Kick-up at a Hazard Table--Who
Tells First for a Crown--Philip Thicknesse--'An Excursion to
Brighthelmstone, made in the year 1789'--Saloon at the Pavilion,
Brighton--Waiting for Dinner--At Dinner--After Dinner--Preparing
for Supper--Four o'clock in Town--Four o'clock in the
Country--Fox-Hunters Relaxing--John Nichols--Miniature groups and
scenes 268

1791.

The Pantheon--The Prospect before us, Nos. 1 and 2--Chaos is
Come Again--Sheets of picturesque etchings--The Attack--Bardolph
Badgered--An Imperial Stride--The Grand Battle between the
Famous English Cock and the Russian Hen--A Little Tighter--A
Little Bigger--Damp Sheets--English Barracks--French
Barracks--Slugs in a Sawpit--The Prince's jockey, Chiffney--How
to _Escape_ Winning--How to _Escape_ Losing--Angelo's Fencing
Rooms--Notorious Fencers--The Inn-yard on Fire--A Squall in
Hyde Park--Illustrations to Fielding's 'Tom Jones'--Smollett's
'Adventures of Peregrine Pickle'--'Délices de la Grande Bretagne' 283

1792.

St. James's and St. Giles's--Work for Doctors' Commons--Six
Stages of Marring a Face--Six Stages of Mending a Face--Ruins
of the Pantheon--Hogarthian Novelist: 'Adventures of Roderick
Random'--Philosophy Run Mad--On her Last Legs--Studious
Gluttons--Cold Broth and Calamity--An Italian Family--The
Hypochondriac--Benevolence--The Contrast: which is Best? British
Liberty, or French Liberty? 306

1793.

Reform Advised: Reform Begun: Reform Complete--New
Shoes--Illustrations to Smollett's novels--Illustrations to a
'Narrative of the War'--Illustrations to Fielding's novels 319

1794.

The Grandpapa--The Foreigner Stared out of
Countenance--Traffic--The Invasion Scare: Village Cavalry
Practising in a Farmyard--A Visit to the Uncle--A Visit to the
Aunt--Bad News upon the Stock Exchange 321

1795.

Harmony: Effects of Harmony: Discord--A Master of the Ceremonies
Introducing a Partner 326

1796.

Sir Alan Gardiner--Portraits--An Impartial Narrative of the War 327

1797.

Theatrical Candidate--Views in the Netherlands--'Tiens bien ton
Bonnet, et toi, defends ta Queue'--Cupid's Magic Lanthorn 330

1798.

The Hunt Dinner--Illustrations to the 'Comforts of Bath,' in
twelve plates--'The New Bath Guide, or Memoirs of the Blunderhead
Family; in a series of poetical epistles,' by Christopher
Anstey--Views of London--The Invasion Panic: Volunteers and
Recruiting--The Hungarian and Highland Broadsword Exercise--The
Glorious Victory obtained over the French Fleet off the Nile,
August 1, 1798, by the gallant Admiral Lord Nelson of the
Nile--High Fun for John Bull, or the Republicans put to their
Last Shift--The Discovery--'Annals of Horsemanship'--The Academy
for Grown Horsemen--'Love in Caricature' 333

1799.

Cries of London--A Charm for a Democracy--An Artist Travelling
in Wales--Nautical Characters--An Irish howl--Etchings
after the old masters--St. Giles's Courtship--St. James's
Courtship--Connoisseurs--Horse Accomplishments--Comforts of
the City--Procession of a Country Corporation--Forget and
Forgive--A Note of Hand--Legerdemain--A Bankrupt Cart, or the
Road to Ruin in the East--Subjects engraved after designs
by Bunbury--Distress--Hungarian and Highland Broadsword
Exercise--Loyal Volunteers of London and the Environs 354

_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.