But the merits of Kenny Meadows as an illustrator of books are very unequal. His friend, Mr. Hodder, who gives us in his pleasant "Memories" an occasional note of some of the artists with whom he was thrown in contact, says of him: "The quiet, unostentatious way in which he worked at his art, too often under the most adverse and discouraging circumstances, and the pride which he displayed when he felt he had made a 'happy hit,' was somewhat like the enthusiasm of a youth who had first attained the honour of a prize. As a draughtsman he never cared to be guided by those practical laws which regulate the academic exercise of the pictorial art; for he contended that too strict an adherence to nature only trammelled him, and he preferred relying upon the thought conveyed in his illustrations, rather than upon the mechanical correctness of his outline or perspective." George Cruikshank showed, as we know, a tolerable contempt for nature when he undertook the delineation of a horse, a woman, or a tree; but it was one of the conditions of his genius that it should be left free and untrammelled to follow the dictates of its own inspiration, and the quaint effect which somehow or other he managed to impart to a design which, in its details might offend the educated taste of the art critic, made us forget the contempt too often displayed for those "practical laws" to which Mr. Hodder refers. To constitute a good comic artist, not only is it necessary that he should be a good draughtsman, but certain special gifts are indispensable,—a keen sense of the ridiculous, an inherent appreciation of humour, a quick and ready invention, qualities which no amount of artificial training will bestow. They were possessed in an eminent degree by Gillray, by Cruikshank, by John Leech, but were wholly wanting to Kenny Meadows. He could draw on occasion a queer face—for that matter his faces, intentionally or otherwise, were generally queer—and an eccentric figure, and so can many persons who have a natural taste for drawing, and have learnt to handle the pencil; but the caricaturist, like the poet, nasciiur non fit, and a hundred or even a thousand queer faces or eccentric figures, without the gift of invention or originality, will not of themselves constitute the designer a comic artist. The truth is that with Kenny Meadows mannerism takes the place of genius. You will recognise his hand anywhere without the familiar "K.M." appended to it, for all his faces are chubby (not to say puffy), and their arms and legs look for all the world as if the hand that designed them had been guided by a ruler. The delusion which led him to imagine that his "genius" would enable him to soar superior to nature is no doubt responsible in some degree for this latter eccentricity, for the artist who would be bold enough to despise the laws "which regulate the exercise of the pictorial art," would be prepared to view Hogarth's line of beauty with like indifference and contempt.

Kenny Meadows was one of the early illustrators of Punch, and contributed moreover to the first volume some of the best of the cartoons. Good specimens of his work will be found in Young Loves to Sell, and The Speculative Mama (sic), second vol.; in the third volume he illustrated "Punch's Letters to His Son," and the first of the almanacks contains six of his designs. In the fourth volume we find six of his cartoons, among them The Milk of Poor Law Kindness, and The First Tooth (the Queen and infant Prince of Wales); the doctor's legs and shoes are thoroughly characteristic of his style, and look for all the world as if they had been drawn by a ruler. The cartoon, Punch Turned Out of France in this volume is, if we mistake not, the work of Kenny Meadows. The Christian Bayadere Worshipping the Idol Siva, has reference to the tolerance which "John Company" wisely conceded to Hindoo religious ceremony, so long as its traditions were found consistent with the ordinary dictates of humanity. "The Story of a Feather" in this volume has five illustrations, two of which are very clever. Among the other cartoons we find The Modern Macheath (the Captain being Sir Robert Peel). The fifth volume contains eight of his illustrations, six being cartoons; among them, The Irish Frankenstein (badly imagined and atrociously drawn), The Water Drop and the Gin Drop are characterized by much poverty of invention, but the former is the best of the two. The Battle of the Alphabet (cartoon) is a better specimen of his work, although the legs and arms look as usual, as if drawn with a ruler. The sixth volume contains three of his cartoons, while the almanack of the year (1844) has several of his illustrations. To the seventh volume he contributed no less than thirty-one illustrations, some very good, one of the best being that of the two legal dogs quarrelling over a bone of litigation. Punch at the outset of his career had considerable difficulty in the selection of a graphic satirist, and one of his "right hand men" in those early days was a Mr. Henning, by whose side Kenny Meadows figures as an absolute genius. After his seventh volume, however, he met with artists better fitted to interpret his political and social views, and no trace of Meadows' useful hand appears in succeeding volumes.

In stating that the merits of Kenny Meadows as an illustrator of books are unequal, and in denying to him the possession of genius, we must not be held to imply that he was deficient of talent. An excellent example of the inequality of which we speak will be found in his Shakespeare (Robert Tyas, 1843), a work selected by us for the reason that it was considered by himself and his two favourable friends as his masterpiece. Although we cannot stay to notice all the strange conceptions with which he has enriched this book, we may be permitted to wonder whence he derived his preposterous ideas of Caliban, of Malvolio, of Shylock, of Juliet's nurse, of Launce's unhappy dog, of the Egpytian[ Sphynx in "Antony and Cleopatra." The model of Shylock was evidently some "old clo'" dealer in Petticoat Lane. The figure of Armado ("Love's Labour's Lost") is so wonderfully put together that his anatomy must sooner or later fall to pieces; the ghost of Hamlet's father is the ghost of some colossal statue, certainly not the shade of one who had worn the guise of ordinary humanity. The head of the gentle Juliet might derive benefit from the application of a bottle of invigorating hair wash. The figure of the monk in "Romeo and Juliet" literally cut out of wood, carries as much expression in its face as a lay figure; while the walls of Northampton Castle (in "King John") are so much out of the perpendicular, that the courtiers seem less concerned at finding the dead body of Arthur, than in seeking a place of shelter from the impending downfall. Henry the Eighth, although acknowledged to be a corpulent, was not, so far as we know, a deformed man; the preposterous "beak" of Richard the Third occupies one half of his otherwise remarkably short face, and its owner (in the well-known tent scene) suffers from an attack of tetanus instead of an accession of mental terror. These eccentric realizations, in which he has succeeded in setting all the rules of drawing at defiance, are rendered the more remarkable by reason of the circumstance that the work now under consideration is interspersed with numerous charming drawings, the effect of which is wholly marred by these erratic performances. Meadows was an admirable water-colour artist, and a scarce edition of this work contains some engravings of Shakespearian heroines after his designs. The Germans fancy they understand Shakespeare better than ourselves (an amiable and complimentary weakness), and the work was favourably received in Germany, the artist's conception of Falstaff, in particular, being so highly appreciated that a bronze statuette was modelled after it, which enjoyed a large sale.

His ideas of female beauty were almost as eccentric as those of Cruikshank. A couple of beauties of the Meadows type will be found at page 3 of Henry Cockton's "Sisters" (Nodes, 1844), where one lady is represented to us with a neck like that of a giraffe, whilst her sister beauty is sensibly inconvenienced by a lock of hair which has strayed into her eye,—a favourite device, by the way, of the artist. This book, now scarce (in the illustration of which he was assisted by Alfred Crowquill), is adorned with a portrait on steel, after a painting by Childe, in which the author is presented to us in a white waistcoat and dress coat, with a pen in his hand, leading us to the inference that his clumsily constructed novels (one of which—"Valentine Vox," thanks perhaps to the illustrator, Onwhyn—still holds its ground) were written in evening costume.

But notwithstanding these failures, Kenny Meadows has happily left behind him work of a very much better kind. His Christmas pictures in particular are impressed with the kindly, genial humour which characterized the man; the "Illuminated Magazine," a scarce and valuable work, contains sixty-three very fine specimens of his pencillings, including the illustrations to his friend Douglas Jerrold's "Chronicles of Clovernook," admirable in every respect, probably the finest designs he ever executed. The wood engravings in this charming serial have probably never been surpassed; we seldom see woodcuts in these days which equal the splendid workmanship of E. Landells.[178] After the third volume, the "Illuminated Magazine" passed into other hands, and although Kenny Meadows continued its mainstay for a time, the rest of the excellent artists left, and the literary matter visibly declined.

To the famous "Gallery of Comicalities" Kenny Meadows contributed Sketches from Lavater and Phisogs of the Traders of London. During the last decade of his life his services in the cause of illustrative art were rewarded and recognised by a pension from the Civil List of L80 per annum. Like George Cruikshank he remained hale and vigorous to the last, proud of his age, and fond of asserting there was "life in the old dog yet." That this was no idle boast may be inferred from the fact that within a few months of his death he was engaged in painting a subject from his favourite Shakespeare. At the time of his death (in August, 1874) he had almost completed his eighty-fifth year.

* * * * *

In hunting up materials for the present work, we have come at various times upon editions (specimens, perhaps, might be the better word) of the "Pickwick Papers," which will possess an interest in the eyes of the collector. The first issue, in the original green sporting covers designed by Seymour, is of course exceedingly scarce; we have never indeed seen a perfect copy, which would probably be worth some ten pounds, while the same edition bound may be purchased at prices varying from twenty-four shillings to three guineas, according to the condition of the volume. An Australian edition was published at Launceston, Van Dieman's Land, in 1838, with plates after "Phiz" by "Tiz," facsimiles on stone of the earliest issue of the parts in England. At a West of England bookseller's we met with a first edition bound up with etchings by Onwhyn,[179] "Peter Palette," and others. Then there are the twenty-four etchings from remarkably clever original drawings by Mr. F. W. Pailthorpe in illustration of scenes in "Pickwick," of which the proofs before letters were published at three guineas; and lastly, there is the rare first edition, containing all the plates by Seymour and "Phiz," supplemented by the two "suppressed" etchings, which are credited (wrongly) to the hand of Buss.

Among the etchers of book illustration after 1836, we may name ROBERT WILLIAM BUSS, whose etchings will be found in Mrs. Trollope's "Widow Married" (a sequel to her "Widow Barnaby"), which made its appearance in the "New Monthly Magazine" of 1839, and whose hand will also be found in Marryat's "Peter Simple," "Jacob Faithful," Harrison Ainsworth's "Court of King James II.," etc. Although his designs lack the genius, the artistic power, the finish and the comic invention of Leech or Cruikshank, they show nevertheless that as an etcher and designer he was possessed of exceptional talent and ability. The first experience, however, of this able artist as an etcher was peculiarly unfortunate and vexatious.

When poor Seymour shot himself in 1836, the draughtsman first called in to supply his place was Robert William Buss. He had been recommended to Messrs. Chapman and Hall by John Jackson, the wood-engraver, but does not seem at that time to have had any practical experience of etching, as he himself explained to the member of the firm who called upon him. Mr. Buss, in fact, was decidedly indisposed to undertake the work, being then engaged on a picture he was preparing for exhibition, and he undertook it only after considerable pressure. He immediately began to practise the various operations of etching and biting in, and produced a plate with which the publishers expressed themselves satisfied. Two subjects were then selected for illustration, The Cricket Match, and The Fat Boy Watching Mr. Tupman and Miss Wardle. When, however, Mr. Buss began to etch them on the plate, he found, having had little or no experience in laying his ground, that it holed up under the etching point; and as time was precious, he placed the plates in the hands of an experienced engraver to be etched and bitten in. Had opportunity been given him, his son (from whom we take this account) tells us he would have cancelled these plates and issued fresh ones of his own etching. Designs were prepared by him for the following number, when he received an intimation that the work of illustrating the "Pickwick Papers" had been placed in other hands. The illustrations referred to were suppressed, and the collectors who are so anxious to secure an edition with the two "Buss plates," will be pleased to learn that, although the design was his, not one line of the etchings which bear his name are due to the artist's point.[180]

The father of Robert William was an engraver and enameller, and under his directions he acquired a knowledge of this technical branch of art; but evincing a taste and preference for drawing and painting, he became a pupil of George Clint, A.R.A., under whose direction he studied subject and portrait painting. He painted fifteen theatrical portraits for Mr. Cumberland in illustration of his "British Drama," and a collection of these works was afterwards exhibited at that melancholy monument to past exhibitions, the Colosseum in the Regent's Park. He was employed by Charles Knight in the illustrations to his "Shakespeare," "London," "Old England," "Chaucer," and the now forgotten "Penny Magazine," for all of which publications he executed many designs on wood.

It must not be supposed because Robert William Buss was not considered the right man to illustrate "Pickwick," that he was therefore an indifferent draughtsman. His finest book etchings are probably those which he executed for Harrison Ainsworth's novel of "The Court of James II."; but in a higher and far more ambitious walk in art he was not only more successful, but achieved in his time a considerable reputation. Among his pictures may be mentioned one of Christmas in the Olden Time, which, apart from its merits as a painting, showed that he possessed considerable antiquarian knowledge. Other works of his are, The Frosty Morning, purchased by Lord Charles Townshend; The Stingy Traveller, bought by the Duchess of St. Albans; The Wooden Walls of Old England, the property of Lord Coventry; Soliciting a Vote, and Chairing the Member; The Musical Bore; The Frosty Reception; Master's Out; Time and Tide Wait for no Man; Shirking the Plate; The First of September; The Introduction of Tobacco; The Biter Bit; The Romance; and Satisfaction. For Mr. Hogarth, of the Haymarket, he painted four small subjects illustrative of Christmas, entitled, The Waits; Bringing in the Boar's Head; The Yule Log, and The Wassail Bowl; all afterwards engraved. For Mr. James Haywood, M.P., he executed a series of drawings illustrative of student life at Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, London, and Paris; while two vast subjects, The Origin of Music and The Triumph of Music (each twenty feet wide by nine feet high), were painted for the Earl of Hardwick, and are, or lately were, in the music saloon at Wimpole, in Cambridgeshire. His pictures were seventy-one in number, twenty-five of which were engraved. On the whole, therefore, Robert William Buss might afford to bear the refusal of Charles Dickens's patronage with equanimity.

The paintings and etchings of Robert William Buss evince a strong leaning in the direction of comic art, a taste which prompted him, in 1853, to deliver at various towns in the United Kingdom a course of very successful and interesting lectures on caricature and graphic satire, illustrated by several hundred examples executed by himself. In 1874, the year before his death, he published for the amusement of his friends, and for private circulation only, the substance of these lectures, under the title of "English Graphic Satire and its Relation to Different Styles of Painting, Sculpture, and Engraving." The numerous illustrations to this work were those drawn for his lectures by the artist, and reproduced for his book by the process of photo-lithography. So far as comic art and caricaturists of the nineteenth century are concerned, the author has comparatively little to say; but the work is valuable as regards the subject generally, and might have been published with advantage to the public. The artist delivered also lectures on "The Beautiful and the Picturesque," as well as on "Fresco Painting."

Mr. Buss, if not very original as a comic designer, possessed nevertheless a keen sense of humour. One of his pictures (engraved by H. Rolls), entitled Time and Tide Wait for no Man, represents an artist, sketching by the sea-shore, so absorbed in the contemplation of nature that he remains unconscious of the fast inflowing tide, and deaf to the warnings of the fisherman who is seen hailing him from the beach.

* * * * *

The comic publications which either preceded or ran side by side with Punch had for the most part a somewhat short and unsatisfactory career. Perhaps the most successful of them was Figaro in London, 1831-36, which we have already noticed. The Wag, a long-forgotten publication, enjoyed a very transient existence. In 1832 appeared Punchinello, on the pages of which Isaac Robert Cruikshank was engaged. Punchinello, however, ceased running after its tenth number. Asmodeus in London, notwithstanding the support it derived from Seymour's pencil, was by no means a commercial success. The Devil in London was a little more fortunate. This periodical commenced running on the 29th of February, 1832, and the illustrations of Isaac Robert Cruikshank and Kenny Meadows enabled it to reach its thirty-seventh number. Tom Dibdin's Penny Trumpet ignominiously blew itself out after the fourth number. The Schoolmaster at Home, notwithstanding Seymour's graphic exertions, collapsed at its sixth number. The Whig Dresser, illustrated by Heath, enjoyed an existence exactly of twelve numbers. The Squib (1842) lasted for thirty weeks before it exploded and went out. Puck (1848), illustrated by W. Hine, Kenny Meadows, and Gilbert, died the twenty-fifth week after its first publication. Chat ran its course in 1850 and 1851. The Man in the Moon, under the literary guidance of Shirley Brooks, Albert Smith, G. A. Sala, and the Brothers Brough, enjoyed a comparatively glorious career of two years and a half. Diogenes (started in 1853, under the literary conduct of Watts Phillips, the Broughs, Halliday, and Angus Bethune Reach), notwithstanding the graphic help rendered by McConnell[181] and Charles H. Bennett, gave up the ghost in 1854. Punchinello (second of the name) flickered and went out at the seventh number. Judy (the predecessor of the present paper) appeared 1st February, 1843, but soon died a natural death. Town Talk, edited by Halliday and illustrated by McConnell, lasted a very limited time. London, started by George Augustus Sala in rivalry of Punch, soon ceased running; while the Puppet Show, notwithstanding the ability of Mr. Procter, enjoyed but a very brief and transitory existence. The strong and healthy constitution of Punch enabled him not only to outlive all these, but even a publication superior in some important respects to himself. We allude to the Tomahawk, whose cartoons are certainly the most powerful and outspoken satires which have appeared since the days of Gillray.[182]

Among the draughtsmen whom Punch called in to help him in his early days was a useful and ingenious artist, inferior in many respects to Kenny Meadows, his name was ALFRED HENRY FORRESTER, better known to most of us under his nom de guerre of "Alfred Crowquill." The scribes of the "Catnach," or Seven Dials school, of literature are satirized by Forrester (in the second volume), wherein we see a "Literary Gentleman" hard at work at his vocation of a scribe of cheap and deleterious literature, consulting his authorities—"The Annals of Crime," a "Last Dying Speech and Confession," and the "Newgate Calendar." In The Footman we have a gorgeous figure, adorned with epaulets, lace, and a cocked hat, reading (of all things in the world) the "Loves of the Angels," over a bottle of hock and soda-water! The Pursuit of Matrimony under Difficulties is a more ambitious performance. "Punch's Guide to the Watering Places" (vol. iii.) is illustrated with a number of coarsely executed cuts, wholly destitute of merit; the fourth volume contains a cartoon entitled Private Opinions. But the graphic humour of Alfred Crowquill, although amusing and sometimes bright and sparkling, was unsuited to the requirements of a periodical such as Punch. As better men came forward, he gradually dropped out of its pages, and we see nothing more of him after the fourth volume.



Alfred Crowquill was a sort of "general utility" man, essaying the character of a litterateur as well as that of an artist, and achieving as a natural consequence no permanent success in either. In his literary capacity, Alfred Henry Forrester made his first appearance (we believe) in "The Hive," and "The Mirror," under the editorship of Mr. Timbs; while as an artist he illustrated his own writings, besides those of a host of other authors. An early effort of his pencil is entitled, Der Freyschutz Travestied; this was followed by "Alfred Crowquill's Sketch Books," which were dedicated to the (then) Princess Victoria, by command of the Duchess of Kent. We find him afterwards employed on the pages of the "New Monthly," but on the death of its editor, Mr. Theodore Hook, his useful talents procured him an engagement on the staff of "Bentley's Miscellany," to whose pages he was not only an indefatigable contributor, but rendered it substantial assistance in its difficulties with George Cruikshank. The best of his illustrative works (mostly designs on wood) were executed for this periodical, and selections were afterwards collected and published under the title of "The Phantasmagoria of Fun."



In these days a man like Forrester would be almost at a discount, but at the time when he started there was less competition, and a useful, clever man, like he undoubtedly was, was fortunately not lost. His hands, in fact, were always full, and a list of some of the books to which his pen and his pencil contributed will be found in the Appendix. One of the best of his designs was a title-page he executed for a work published by Kent & Co., under the title of "Merry Pictures by the Comic Hands of Alfred Crowquill, Doyle, Meadows, Hine, and Others" (1857), a rechauffage of cuts and illustrations which had previously done duty for books of an ephemeral character, such as "The Gent," "The Ballet Girl," and even of the superior order of "Gavarni in London."[183] Some excellent designs executed by him on wood will be found in Messrs. Chambers' "Book of Days." In his dual character of a writer and comic artist, Crowquill was an inveterate punster. Leaves from his "Memorandum Book" (1834) will give us a good idea of his style. In "Tea Leaves for Breakfast," Strong Black is represented by a sturdy negro carrying a heavy basket; a tall youth with a small father personating Hyson; a housemaid shaking a hall mat, to the discomfort of herself and the passers-by, is labelled Fine dust; a cockney accidentally discharging his fowling-piece does duty for Gunpowder; while Mixed is aptly personified by a curious group of masqueraders. The vowels put in a comical appearance: A with his hands behind him listens to E, who points to I as the subject of his remarks, which must be of a scandalous character, as the injured vowel looks the picture of anger and astonishment. E finds a ready listener in O, who opens his mouth and extends his hands in real or simulated amazement and horror.

Crowquill was a clever caricaturist, and began work when he was only eighteen. We have seen some able satires of his executed between the years 1823 and 1826 inclusive. One of the best, published by S. Knight in 1825, is entitled, Paternal Pride: "Dear Doctor, don't you think my little Billy is like me?" "The very picture of you in every feature!" Ups and Downs (Knights, 1823), comprise "Take Up" (a Bow Street runner); "Speak Up" (a barrister); "Hang Up" (a hangman); "Let-em-Down" (a coachman); "Knock-em-Down" (an auctioneer); "Screw-em-Down" (an undertaker). The following are given as Four Specimens of the Reading Public (Fairburn, 1826): "Romancing Molly," "Sir Lacey Luscious," a "Political Dustman," and "French a la Mode." Two, in which he was assisted by George Cruikshank, entitled, Indigestion, and Jealousy, will be found in the volume published (and republished) under the name of "Cruikshankiana." The latter shows on the face of it that, while Crowquill was responsible for the design, the etching and a large share of the invention are due to Cruikshank.

If not a genius, the man was talented and clever,—a universal favourite. He could draw, he could write; he was an admirable vocalist, setting the table in a roar with his medley of songs. Even as a painter he was favourably known. Temperance and Intemperance were engraved from his painting in oils, and called forth a letter of thanks from the great apostle of temperance, Father Mathew himself. Other works were The Ups and Downs of Life, the well-known President and Vice President (both engraved), and many others. A clever artist in "black and white," two of his pen-and-ink sketches—The Huntsman's Rest and The Solitary—were honoured with a place among the drawings at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1846. His talents did not end here; most of the Christmas pantomimes of his time were indebted to him for clever designs, devices, and effects. The kindly, genial, gifted man died in 1872, in his sixty-eighth year.

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Some of our readers may possibly remember seeing in one of the comic publications published concurrently with or shortly after the appearance of Mr. Charles Darwin's work, a series of comical designs ridiculing the theory of the "origin of species" in a manner which must have astonished as well as amused the learned philosopher. The origin of the genus footman, and of the dish he carries to his master's table, is traced out as follows: The dish carries a bone, which eventually finds its way into the jaws of a mongrel cur with a peculiarly short tail. The process then goes merrily onwards; the dog gradually develops; his skin turns into a suit of livery with buttons, the dog-collar gradually assumes the form of a footman's tie, until the process is ended and the species complete. In like manner, a cat develops into a spinster aunt; a monkey into a mischievous urchin; a pig into a gourmand; a sheep into a country bumpkin; a weasel into a lawyer; a dancing bear into a garrotter; a shark into a money-lender; a snail into the schoolboy to which Shakespeare likens him; a fish into a toper, and so on. These "developments" (twenty in number), which were dedicated to Mr. Darwin, are signed "C. H. B." and these are the initials of CHARLES H. BENNETT, one of the gentlest, most promising, and withal most original graphic humourists of the century.

Amongst the earliest of the serials which he illustrated was, we believe, Diogenes, a sort of rival of Punch, which made its appearance and ran a brief course in 1853-4. Associated with him in the illustrations were McConnell and Watts Phillips, the latter of whom contributed largely also to the literary matter. We find a clever design of his (in Leech's style) in the second volume: "Now, gentlemen of the jury," says a brazen-faced barrister, "I throw myself upon your impartial judgment as husbands and fathers, and I confidently ask, Does the prisoner [the most murderous-looking ruffian un-hung] look like a man who would knock down and trample upon the wife of his bosom? Gentlemen, I have done!"

There was considerable originality in the designs of Bennett, which is more particularly manifested in the well-known series of humorous sketches in which the effect intended to be produced is effected by means of the shadows of the figures represented, which are supposed to indicate their distinguishing failings and characteristics. Among them may be mentioned a tipsy woman amused at the shadow cast by her own figure of a gin bottle; an undertaker, in his garb of woe wrung from the pockets of widows and orphans, casts the appropriate shadow of a crocodile; a red-nosed old hospital nurse of a tea-pot; a worn-out seamstress of a skeleton; a mischievous street boy of a monkey; an angry wife sitting up for a truant husband of an extinguisher; a tall, conceited-looking parson, with a long coat, of a pump; while a sweep, with his "machine," to his mortal terror beholds his own shadow preceding him in the guise of Beelzebub himself. The series is continued in a work published by W. Kent & Co. in 1860, under the title of "Shadow and Substance," the letterpress of which is contributed to Bennett's pictures by Robert B. Brough. Literary work of this description, like William Combe's "Doctor Syntax," is necessarily unsatisfactory; but the pictures themselves are distinctly inferior to the series which preceded them, the best being Old Enough to Know Better,—a bald-headed, superannuated old sinner behind the scenes, presenting a bouquet to a ballet girl, his figure casting a shadow on the back of the scene of a bearded, long-eared, horned old goat.



We are in no position to give a detailed list of Charles Bennett's work, which was of a very miscellaneous kind, comprising among others a series of slight outline portraits of members of parliament, which appeared in the Illustrated Times, an edition of the "Pilgrim's Progress," edited by the Rev. Charles Kingsley; "John Todd," a work by the Rev. John Allen; "Shadows," and "Shadow and Substance," just spoken of; "Proverbs, with Pictures by Charles H. Bennett," etc., etc. His talent at last attracted the notice of the weekly Punch council, and he received the coveted distinction of being engaged on the permanent staff of that periodical.

His life, however, was a brief one. The diary of Shirley Brooks, who took much personal interest in him, refers with some anxiety to his illness on the 30th of March, 1867. On the 31st of March the report was somewhat more favourable; but the 2nd of April brought a letter from the editor of Punch, Mark Lemon, which said that Charles Bennett had died between the hours of eight and nine o'clock that morning. "I am very sorry," adds Shirley Brooks in an autograph note appended beneath the letter referred to. "B[ennett] was a man whom one could not help loving for his gentleness, and a wonderful artist." The obituary notice by the same hand which appears in Punch records that "he was a very able colleague, a very dear friend. None of our fellow-workers," it continues, "ever entered more heartily into his work, or laboured with more earnestness to promote our general purpose. His facile execution and singular subtilty of fancy were, we hoped, destined to enrich these pages for many a year. It has been willed otherwise, and we lament the loss of a comrade of invaluable skill, and the death of one of the kindliest and gentlest of our associates, the power of whose hand was equalled by the goodness of his heart." Charles Bennett was only thirty-seven when he died.

He left a widow and eight children unprovided for, for his health having precluded it, no life insurance had been effected. The Punch men, however, with the unselfishness which so nobly characterizes them, put their shoulders to the wheel for the family of their stricken comrade. "We shall have to do something," said Shirley Brooks in his diary of the 3rd of April; and they did it accordingly. A committee was immediately started, on which we find the names of Messrs. Arthur Lewis,[184] Wilbert Beale, Mark Lemon, Du Maurier, John Tenniel, Arthur Sullivan, and W. H. Bradbury. Then came rehearsals, and, on the 11th of May, a performance at the Adelphi in aid of the Bennett fund. Mr. Arthur Sullivan had, in conjunction with Mr. F. C. Burnand, converted the well-known farce of "Box and Cox" into an operetta of the most ludicrous description. This was the opening piece—the forerunner of "Pinafore," "Pirates," "Patience," and other triumphs. Arthur Sullivan himself conducted, and the players were Mr. Du Maurier, Mr. Quinton, and Mr. Arthur Blunt. Then followed "A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing," in which Mesdames Kate Terry, Florence Terry, Mrs. Stoker, Mrs. Watts (the present Ellen Terry), and Messrs. Mark Lemon, Tom Taylor, Tenniel, Burnand, Silver, Pritchett, and Horace Mayhew took part. This was succeeded by Offenbach's "Blind Beggars," who were admirably personated by Mr. Du Maurier and Mr. Harold Power. The evening concluded with a number of part songs and madrigals sung by the Moray Minstrels—so called from their chiefly performing at Moray Lodge, the residence of Mr. Arthur Lewis. Between the two portions of their entertainment, Shirley Brooks came on and delivered an address written by himself, which contained the following allusion to him for whose family the generous work had been undertaken:—

"Only some friends of a lost friend, whose name Is all the inheritance his children claim (Save memory of his goodness), think it due To make some brief acknowledgment to you. Brief but not cold; some thanks that you have come And helped us to secure that saddened home, Where eight young mourners round a mother weep A fond and dear loved father's sleep.

Take it from us—and with this word we end All sad allusion to our parted friend— That for a better purpose generous hearts Ne'er prompted liberal hands to do their parts. You knew his power, his satire keen but fair, And the rich fancy, served by skill as rare. You did not know, except some friendly few, That he was earnest, gentle, patient, true. A better soldier doth life's battle lack, And he has died with harness on his back."



The last verse alludes to Kate Terry's approaching marriage:—

"Last, but not least, in your dear love and ours, There is a head we'd crown with all our flowers. Our kindest thanks to her whose smallest grace Is the bewitchment of her fair young face. Our own Kate Terry comes, to show how much The truest art does with the lightest touch. Make much of her while still before your eyes— A star may glide away to other skies."

By this performance, a second which took place at Manchester on the 29th of July, and the efforts of Shirley Brooks and the members of the committee, a large sum was raised.

* * * * *

The Punch volumes, prior to his withdrawal from its pages, are interspersed with numerous mirth-provoking drawings on wood by the late Mr. THACKERAY. Probably the best of these will be found in the "Novels by Eminent Hands," in one of which (in amusing burlesque of Phiz's spirited title-page to "Charles O'Malley") we see the hero flying over the heads of the French army. Charles Lever was nervously sensitive to ridicule, and, although he laughed at and enjoyed the clever jeux d'esprit in which "Phil Fogarty," "Harry Jolly-cur," "Harry Rollicker," etc., put in their respective appearances, he declared nevertheless, with evident vexation, that he himself might just as well retire from business altogether. This, indeed, he proceeded to do; and although we miss from that time the rattling heroes of the Frank Webber and Charles O'Malley school, we are indebted to Thackeray for the striking proof which Charles Lever was thus enabled to afford us of the versatility of a genius which enabled him to change front and alter his style with manifest advantage to his literary reputation.

The fact of his waiting upon Dickens at his chambers in Furnival's Inn "with two or three drawings in his hand, which strange to say he did not find suitable" for "Pickwick," has been told so often that there is no occasion for repeating it again; but the circumstances under which he seems to have sought the interview not being, so far as we know, stated anywhere, we shall now proceed to relate them. Thackeray was in London when Seymour shot himself in 1836. The death of the latter caused a vacancy in the post of illustrator to "Figaro in London," which at that time Seymour was illustrating as well as "Pickwick," and such vacancy was supplied by Thackeray, who, I think, continued to illustrate it until the paper died a natural death. His designs for "Figaro in London" were drawn in pen and ink on paper, and transferred to the wood by the engravers, Messrs. Branstone and Wright, and the remuneration he received for them was very trifling, at most a few shillings each. It was probably this circumstance which put into his head the idea of illustrating "Pickwick." From what we know of the graphic abilities of Thackeray and the fastidious requirements of Dickens, we may readily understand why the post rendered vacant by Seymour's suicide was given to an abler artist.

We wish that from a work dealing with comic art in the nineteenth century the name of Mr. Thackeray might be omitted; for no notice of him, however short, would be just or complete which failed to refer to his book illustrations. To do this we must separate Thackeray the artist from Thackeray the man of letters. Regarding him simply in the character of illustrator of the novels of W. M. Thackeray, we are bound in justice to the memory of that great and sterling humourist, to say that he has undertaken a task which is manifestly beyond his powers. While Thackeray with his pen could most effectively describe a fascinating woman, like Becky Sharp, the illusion vanishes the moment his artist essays to draw her portrait with his pencil. While Thackeray's women are pretty and fascinating, well dressed and accomplished, the artist's women on the contrary are hideous; their waists commence somewhere in the region of their knees; and their clothes look as if they had been piled on their back with a pitchfork. The same remarks apply to the men; while the originals are witty or clever, handsome or well-dressed, those presented to us by the artist are destitute of calf, and their limbs so curiously constructed that the free use of them as nature intended would be a matter of utter impossibility. Those defects are the more noticeable because the artist has shown in his admirable essays on George Cruikshank and John Leech how thoroughly he was alive to the possession of artistic genius in others.

The admiration which we have for Thackeray the man of letters, and the way in which we have already expressed that admiration, render it unlikely that the drift of these remarks will be misunderstood. While rejoicing that the admirable tales and satires of the humourist are uninjured by illustrations which are altogether unworthy of them, we venture to suggest how much better the result might have been had the latter been entrusted, as in the case of "The Newcomes," to other hands, and the artist contented himself with the initial letters and designs on wood with which his writings are pleasantly interspersed. We have seen it somewhere stated (we think in the volume entitled "Thackerayana") that the author's rapid facility of sketching was the one great impediment to his attainment of excellence in illustrative art. Some of his designs indeed bear on their face evidence of the rapidity with which they were thrown off; but no satisfactory explanation appears to be possible of his contempt for what Mr. Hodder has termed the "practical laws which regulate the academic exercise of the pictorial art," and his apparent ignorance of the art of balancing his figures so as to enable them to stand upright, to walk straight, or to move their limbs with the grace and freedom assigned to them by nature. One of the designs to "The Virginians" shows a horseman, who in the letterpress is described as crossing a bridge at full gallop, whereas in the picture both man and horse will inevitably leap over the parapet into the river below. Nothing could possibly avert the catastrophe, and the effect thus produced is due, not to the manifest carelessness and haste with which the sketch is thrown off, but to a palpable defect in the artistic powers of the designer himself. Yet in the face of defects so patent and so palpable we have found it gravely stated, "The world which is loth to admit high excellence in more than one direction, has never fitly recognised Thackeray's great gift as a comic draftsman. Here [i.e. in a work edited by his daughter] he will be found advantageously represented; inferior, it is true to the unjustly neglected Hablot Browne ('Phiz'), but often equalling if not sometimes surpassing the greatly over-rated John Leech."



Ay! "the world is loth to admit high excellence in more than one direction," and experience has taught it that few men, however gifted, are capable of exercising two different arts with an equal measure of success. Thackeray was both a genius and an artist, but the world has long recognised the fact that the former manifested itself only when he laid down the pencil and took up the pen. If called on to prove his incapacity to illustrate his own work, we will refer the reader to his admirable novel of "Vanity Fair." The time selected for the story is the early part of the present century; and on the plea that he had "not the heart to disfigure his heroes and heroines" by the correct but "hideous" costumes of the period, Thackeray has actually habited these men and women of 1815 in the dress of 1848! Cruikshank, Leech, "Phiz," or Doyle, it is unnecessary to say, would have been guiltless of such an absurdity; and the difficulty in which the gifted author found himself, and the confession of his inability to cope with it, afford the clearest possible evidence of his utter incapacity to illustrate the story itself. If any further proof be wanted, look at the designs themselves. Captain Dobbin would be laughed out of any European military service; such a guardsman as Rawdon Crawley could find no place in her Majesty's guards; "Jemima" (at p. 7), "Miss Sharp in the schoolroom" (p. 80), the children waiting on Miss Crawley (p. 89), the figures in the fencing scene (p. 207), "The Family Party at Brighton," "Gloriana" trying her fascinations on the major, "Jos" (at p. 569), and "Becky's second appearance as Clytemnestra," without meaning to be so, are caricatures pure and simple; and yet these are admirable compared with the designs to "The Virginians," which may safely be reckoned amongst the worst in the entire range of English illustrative art. Contrast them with illustrations confessedly not up to the severe standard of excellence required by the art critic, but admirably adapted for their purpose, Mr. Doyle's etchings to "The Newcomes," and remark the immeasurable superiority of the latter.



And yet, in justice to the great humourist of the nineteenth century, let us hear what another great writer has to say upon the very illustrations which seem to us to call for such severe animadversion. After telling us that Thackeray studied drawing at Paris, affecting especially Bonnington (the young English artist who died in 1828), Mr. Anthony Trollope goes on to say, "He never learned to draw,—perhaps never could have learned. That he was idle and did not do his best, we may take for granted. He was always idle, and only on some occasions, when the spirit moved him thoroughly, did he do his best even in after life. But with drawing—or rather without it—he did wonderfully well, even when he did his worst. He did illustrate his own books, and every one knows how incorrect were his delineations. But as illustrations they were excellent. How often have I wished that characters of my creating might be sketched as faultily, if with the same appreciation of the intended purpose. Let any one look at the 'plates,' as they are called, in 'Vanity Fair,' and compare each with the scenes and the characters intended to be displayed, and then see whether the artist—if we may call him so—has not managed to convey in the picture the exact feeling which he has described in the text. I have a little sketch of his, in which a cannon-ball is supposed to have just carried off the head of an aide-de-camp,—messenger I had perhaps better say, lest I might affront military feelings,—who is kneeling on the field of battle and delivering a despatch to Marlborough on horseback. The graceful ease with which the duke receives the message though the messenger's head be gone, and the soldierlike precision with which the headless hero finishes his last effort of military obedience, may not have been portrayed with well-drawn figures, but no finished illustration ever told its story better."[185] We read these remarks with profound astonishment, and can only ask in reply: If, as Mr. Trollope has admitted, Thackeray "never learned to draw,—perhaps never could have learned," how he could manage "to convey" in any of his pictures "the exact feeling he has described in the text"?—how, in the face of the admitted incorrectness of "his delineations," he could be in any way fitted to illustrate a novel of such transcendent excellence as "Vanity Fair"?

It has been assumed, without any sort of authority, that it was only when Thackeray found he could not succeed as an artist that he turned to literature. The statement is altogether unwarranted. At or about the very time he was engaged in drawing the cuts for "Figaro in London," he was—if we are to judge of the sketch of "the Fraserians" in the "Maclise Portrait Gallery," in which young Thackeray may easily be recognised—writing for "Fraser's Magazine." Be this, however, as it may, it seems tolerably certain that the rebuff he received from Dickens had no hand in turning him into the path of letters, towards which his genius and unerring judgment alone most fortunately guided him.

FOOTNOTES:

[177] There is a scarce edition of the "Bon Gaultier Ballads," which contains some unacknowledged tailpieces, etc., by Kenny Meadows; in all subsequent editions these are omitted—why, we know not.

[178] So great was the scarcity of good engravers in 1880, that in September of that year the proprietors of the Graphic newspaper acknowledged the difficulty they experienced in obtaining the assistance of high-class engravers, and stated their intention to found a school of engraving on wood. Specimens of a new style of illustration have lately come from America, which appear in illustrated serials; some are good, but the majority, notwithstanding the song of praise with which they were first received, are nothing less than abominable.

[179] Onwhyn's name occurs frequently in illustrative literature. He etched a set of designs for "Pickwick" and "Nicholas Nickleby;" for Mr. Henry Cockton's "George St. Julian," and a translation of Eugene Sue's "Mysteries of Paris." He is well known as the illustrator of "Valentine Vox," "Fanny the Little Milliner," and other works. Some of his best designs will be found in Mrs. Trollope's "Michael Armstrong." He occasionally displays some ability, but his performances are very unequal.

[180] See Mr. Alfred G. Buss, in "Notes and Queries," April 24th, 1875.

[181] A very clever and promising artist, who died early, of consumption.

[182] As the Tomahawk appeared in 1867, it does not come within the scope of the present work.

[183] A work produced by David Bogue, in 1849, and illustrated by the celebrated French caricaturist, which professes to give sketches of "London Life and Character." Allowing for the unfaithfulness of the portraits, which are wholly Parisian, these designs possess unquestionable merit. The literary contributors were Albert Smith, Shirley Brooks, Angus B. Reach, Oxenford, J. Hannay, Sterling Coyne, and others.

[184] Afterwards married Kate Terry.

[185] "Thackeray," by Anthony Trollope, in "English Men of Letters," p. 7.



CHAPTER XVIII.

CONTEMPORARIES OF JOHN LEECH: RICHARD DOYLE AND JOHN TENNIEL.

We gather from the article in "The Month" which followed his death, and to which we have to acknowledge materials of which we have availed ourselves in the revision of the present chapter,[186] that Richard Doyle's first work was The Eglinton Tournament, or the Days of Chivalry Revived, which was published when he was only fifteen years old. Three years later he produced A Grand Historical, Allegorical, and Classical Procession, a humorous pageant which the same authority tells us combined "a curious medley of men and women who played a prominent part on the world's stage, bringing out into good-humoured relief the characteristic peculiarities of each." Apart from his talent, it was no doubt the fact of his being his father's son—the son of John Doyle, the once famous and eminent HB—which first attracted the attention of the promoters of Punch, and he was only nineteen when, in 1843, he was taken on the regular pictorial staff of that periodical. It was to the cheery, delightful pencil of Richard Doyle that the paper owed much of the popularity which it subsequently achieved.

"It was from his father that he not only inherited his artistic talent, but received, and that almost exclusively, his artistic training." The writer in "The Month" goes on to tell us that John Doyle would not allow his son "to draw from models; his plan was to teach the boy to observe with watchful eye the leading features of the object before him, and then some little time after reproduce them from memory as nearly as he could.... He had no regular training in academy or school of art; he painted in the studio of no master save his father; and it is curious to see how his genius overleapt what would have been serious disadvantages to an ordinary man.... He attached himself to no school; he was not familiar, strange to say, with the masterpieces of foreign artists. He had never been in Paris, or Rome, or Vienna." It will be well for the reader to bear this in mind, because Doyle is one of the few book illustrators or etchers whom the professional art critic has condescended to notice, and it will enable him the better to understand and appreciate the soundness of his criticism. No one, we are told, owed less than Richard Doyle "did to those who had gone before him; and if this rendered his works less elaborate and conventional, it gave them a freshness and originality which might have been hampered if he had been forced into conformity with the accepted canons of the professional studio."[187] The writer of the article from which we have quoted would seem to have read what Mr. Hodder has told us respecting his friend Kenny Meadows, for the following is certainly not new to us: "He was not a self-taught artist, for he was trained by one who had a genius kin to his own, but he was an artist who had never forced himself into the observance of those mechanical rules and canons which to ordinary men are necessary to their correct painting (just as rules of grammar are necessary to correct writing), but hamper and trammel the man of genius, who has in himself the fount whence such rules proceed, and instinctively follows them in the spirit, though not in the letter. So far as they will forward the end he has in view, and no farther."[188] It will be seen by the above that the kindly writer gives Doyle credit for genius, and we who are strictly impartial will cheerfully admit that if he had not positive genius,—which we somewhat doubt,—he was certainly one of the most genial and graceful of comic designers.

It was Punch's practice during the earlier years of his career to produce a new cover with each succeeding volume.[189] Richard Doyle, however, signalized his accession by the contribution of a wrapper which was considered too good to be thrown aside at the expiration of a few months. The well known and admirable design was stereotyped, and still forms, with certain modifications, the permanent cover of Punch's weekly series.

Specially worthy of note amongst his Punch designs may be mentioned The Napoleon of Peace (Louis Philippe), and The Land of Liberty, "recommended to the consideration of Brother Jonathan." In the latter, allusion is made to the Mexican war, rifle duelling and rowdyism, repudiation, Lynch law, and the then but no longer "peculiar institution." These will be found in the thirteenth volume, with a design of great excellence, Punch's Vision at Stratford-on-Avon, supposed to occur in the house of Shakespeare.

A new English (?) party had been growing up and gradually forcing itself into English politics. This was the Peace-at-any-price party, the members of which, oblivious of the fact that the best preservative of peace is to be found in a perpetual state of readiness for war, erased from their minds all remembrance of the position won for the nation by our glorious army and navy, and ruled that national honour and national obligations must now be considered subordinate to the interests of peace, trade, and commerce. Conspicuous among these men of the new school was Mr. Cobden, an able, earnest, but (so far as our foreign policy was concerned) thoroughly mistaken enthusiast. He figures as "Peace" in Doyle's cartoon of John Bull between Peace and War (i.e. the Duke of Wellington). In Gentlemen, make your Game while the Ball is Rolling (1848), the best cartoon ever designed by Richard Doyle, the various European monarchs are engaged at roulette under the auspices of Punch himself. The ball is the world, and the edges of the board are respectively inscribed, "Reform," "Progress," "Republicanism," "Equality," "Constitutional Government." "Anarchy," and "Liberalism." Bomba of Naples having staked a large sum, he and other monarchs follow the erratic movements of the ball with absorbing attention. In the background may be seen the then Queen of Spain and Louis Philippe, who, having staked their all and lost, are just leaving the apartment. Another, following up the same subject, is the political sea serpent of "Revolution" suddenly appearing above the surface of the sea and upsetting, one after another, the cockle-shell boats in which the various European sovereigns are endeavouring to get to shore. The writer in the Catholic "Month" points out the fact that "this picture was drawn in the earlier part of the year, before the Roman revolution, and the Holy Father was still riding safely unharmed by the monster which is working havoc in France and Germany, and Austria and Spain." In The Citizen of the World we find a capital skit upon the "admirable Crichton" delusion which made my Lord Brougham fancy himself in every character he chose to assume, or on any subject to which he condescended to give his attention, facile princeps. Here we find him figuring in turn as an English Lord Chancellor, a German student, a French subject, a French National Guard, an American citizen, a Bedouin Arab, a Carmelite monk, a Chinese mandarin, an Osmanli, a red Indian, a Scottish shepherd, and by the unmistakable nose and self-complacent smirk on his countenance, it is clear that in each and every character Henry Lord Brougham feels himself thoroughly at home. The Sleeping Beauty is a clever composition. "Beauty," by the way, is Lord John Russell, and amongst the sleeping attendants may be recognised the Duke of Wellington, Benjamin Disraeli, Colonel Sibthorpe, and Lord William Bentinck; while the ever indispensable Brougham of course puts in an appearance, this time in the character of a jester.

Richard Doyle, as we have seen, was young when he joined the ranks of the Punch staff. Young men are apt to "dream dreams," and one of Richard Doyle's was in truth a charming one. In Ireland: a Dream of the Future, he shows us our Queen gazing into the depths of an Irish lake, wherein she beholds prosperous towns, smiling fields, a contented peasantry, flourishing homesteads, a land flowing with milk and honey. On the opposite bank sit in dreary solitude a starving cottier and his family. This was Richard Doyle's dream in 1849. He did not live to wake to the reality of 1884: half a dozen "Gladstone" bags filled with American dynamite, the property of subjects of a republic who allows her mongrel murderers to plot the deaths of thousands of the people of a friendly nation without lifting a hand or a finger to restrain them. A home government too weak to pass a law which would stop these outrages by hanging these foreign miscreants as high as Haman. These formed no part of course of the young artist's dream. He delighted in sunshine. The year 1850 was memorable for the repeal of the window tax, one of the most extraordinary impositions which ever crossed the inventive mind of a Chancellor of the Exchequer. "Hollo! old fellow," says a workman to his family, hailing the unwonted appearance of the sunbeams in their dark and dreary apartment, "Hollo! old fellow; we're glad to see you here."

Among the numerous illustrations which Doyle designed for Punch, probably the most original were the series entitled "Manners and Customs of ye Englishe," which, under the title of "Bird's-eye Views of English Society," he afterwards continued in the Cornhill Magazine in a more elaborate form. The "Manners and Customs" form a curious record of the doings of the period, and remind us of "Sam Cowell" and the cider cellars, the Jenny Lind mania, Julien and his famous band, Astleys, the Derby day, and many of the forgotten scenes and follies in which some of us may have mingled in days gone by. They are very clever so far as they go; but none of them, as the writer in "The Month" would have us believe, are at all "worthy of" or in any way remind us of "Hogarth" (why are all the writers on comic art immediately reminded of Hogarth?). "Each face in one of these pictures—A Prospecte of Exeter Hall, showynge a Christian Gentleman denouncynge ye Pope," says the same writer—"deserves a careful study, and tells the tale of bigotry, prejudice, and gaping credulity which has made Exeter Hall a bye-word among men." Although we agree with the writer on this subject, we would at the same time take leave to remind him that the Catholics are singularly fortunate in England compared with the religious freedom or tolerance enjoyed by Protestants in Catholic countries—in Italy for instance, or in Spain. As for "bigotry," let him look only at Catholic France during the reign of priestcraft there, where an actor of the position of Talma, writing with reference to a proposed monument to his English brother, John Kemble, could add by way of shameful contrast, "Je serai trop heureux ici si les pretres me laissent une tombe dans mon jardin!"

When we first completed this chapter, and while the artist was yet living, we deemed it better to say as little as possible in reference to the conscientious motives which induced him to throw up his lucrative position on Punch, and with it the whole of his splendid prospects in comic art; and this course we had decided to follow after Richard Doyle had been removed from us by death. As, however, the Catholic organ has entered fully into the subject, not only is every cause for further reticence removed, but by being placed in a position to understand causes and motives, we are enabled to do justice to the memory of this most generous and unselfish of men.

The Catholics have cause to feel satisfied with the results of what the benighted Protestants of England are apt to term the "Papal Aggression." The conduct of the latter in relation to this portentous event is thus described by "The Month":—"In 1850 the Catholic Hierarchy was established in England, and the Protestant public raved and stormed and talked bigoted nonsense without end respecting this new invasion. Parliament passed the futile and obsolete Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, and Punch took up the popular cry. Cardinal Wiseman was represented as 'tree'd' by the Papal bull, and comic verses and personal ridicule was lavished on the Pope, the new hierarchy, and Catholics generally.

"Doyle remonstrated, but received answer that, as he had been allowed to turn Exeter Hall and its doings into ridicule, it was only fair that his own opinions should have their turn. But those who used this argument little knew, and could scarcely be expected to know, the difference between the devotion of supernatural faith and the bigotry of a self-chosen creed. Doyle was anything but narrow or over-scrupulous. It was not any of the cartoons which was the immediate occasion of the step that he took, nor was it (as some of the notices of him have intimated) any mere personal attachment to Cardinal Wiseman. 'I don't mind,' he said, 'as long as you keep to the political and personal side of the matter, but doctrines you must not attack.' Douglas Jerrold and Thackeray were not likely to appreciate this reversal of the general sentiment, which resents personal attack above all else. 'Look at the Times,' they argued; 'its language has been most violent, but the Catholic writers on its staff do not for that reason resign. They understand, and the world at large understands, that the individual contributor is not responsible for the opinions expressed by other contributors in articles with which he has nothing to do.' 'That is very well in the Times,' was Doyle's answer, 'but not in Punch. For the Times is a monarchy [we believe these were his very words], whereas Punch is a republic.' So, when a week or so later an article, attributed to Jerrold himself, jeeringly advised the Pope to 'feed his flock on the wafers of the Vatican,' it was too much for Doyle. Dignified protest was not sufficient now. To be any longer identified with a paper which could use such language was intolerable to the faithful soul. To ply his skilful fingers and busy inventive brain in behalf of those who scoffed at the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar was out of the question. His connection with Punch must cease. But is he bound in conscience to throw away a good income and congenial work, because there were expressed opinions different from his own in a paper in which, republic though it was, solidarity was scarcely possible? Who would expect that in a comic journal each and all of the contributors should agree with each and every sentiment expressed? Never mind; whatever Richard Doyle might have been strictly bound to do, generosity at least urged him to make the sacrifice—the sacrifice of his career, of his future success it may be. At least he could show that Catholic belief was no empty superstition, no set of mere traditional observances, which sat lightly on the man of culture, even if in his heart he accepted them at all. So he wrote to resign his connection with Punch, stating the reasons plainly and simply. This was in 1850, after he had been contributing for more than six years. Now he must simply start afresh, in consequence of what his Protestant friends regarded as an ecclesiastical crotchet. He must turn aside from the path of worldly success; he must give up all for conscience' sake. But as the Daily Telegraph remarks, in an article respecting him that does it honour, 'He made a wise and prudent choice. The loss was ours, not his; and, apart from the claims of his genius to admiration, such conduct at the critical moment of a career will never cease to command respect.'"

Passing by (as we may afford to do) the assertion that we Protestants "raved and stormed and talked bigoted nonsense without end respecting this new invasion," and the somewhat unnecessary boast that Lord John Russell's Ecclesiastical Titles Bill has been suffered to become a "futile and obsolete" measure, we would recognise the value of the writer's remarks as establishing in the clearest possible manner the perfect honesty and unselfishness of the motives which induced the artist to resign his connection with Punch, and to throw up the chances of an assured and brilliant future. We think however, that the value of his statement does not end here. We may here acknowledge that, while admitting the perfect purity and disinterestedness of Doyle's motives, we ourselves never thoroughly understood them until we had read the article from which we have quoted. We had taken into consideration the fact that when he took this decided step he was but twenty-five years of age, and we suspected (let us honestly own it) that other influences might have been at work independent of the artist himself, of which we as Protestants must always remain ignorant. There are grounds on which Protestant and Catholic writers may meet one another even in connection with religious questions; and although a "bigoted" Protestant, I am glad to admit that the writer's clear and lucid statement has removed an impression that was absolutely without foundation.

With respect, however, to the ultimate consequences of this decisive step, the Catholic writer and ourselves are wholly at variance. "We are inclined to believe," continues the former, "that apart from the respect he earned by his noble sacrifice, Mr. Doyle achieved a higher reputation in consequence of his retirement from comic journalism, than if he had continued to employ his pencil in its services all his life through. It is true that his name was not, towards the end of his life, so familiar to the popular mind of England as was that of John Leech at the end of his career, and as that of Du Maurier at the present time, but the work which he did in his later life was more lasting and more world-wide. Punch is an English periodical; you must be an Englishman to understand the allusions. The humour is essentially and almost exclusively English; it would never attain any great popularity in other English-speaking nations, in spite of its undoubted claim to be the first comic journal in the world. If Doyle had confined himself to the pages of Punch, or directed his energies mainly to the weekly issue of some design in its numerous columns, the limnings of his pencil would scarcely be known outside of England, whereas all over the continent of America, and in the English colonies, the old Colonel Newcome, and the Marquis of Farintosh, Lady Kew, and Trotty Veck meet us with their familiar faces as we turn over the Transatlantic editions of Thackeray and Dickens, not to mention the exquisite paintings, of which we shall have more to say presently, exhibited in the Grosvenor Gallery, and to be found in many a country mansion as a lasting memorial of Dicky Doyle." Does the writer seriously mean to tell us that Doyle could not illustrate Thackeray and Dickens at the same time and side by side with his illustrations for Punch or any other serial of a satirical character? Granted that Punch is a periodical appealing to English tastes and sympathies, yet it was through the introduction obtained by means of its pages that the artist probably obtained employment upon the very works to which the writer refers, and upon which (as he claims) his reputation will rest.

Nor do we, nor can we, admit that, out of the circle of his coreligionists, or the still narrower circle of educated unbiassed minds, Doyle reaped much respect by the "noble sacrifice" of which the writer speaks. English prejudice looks with special coldness on conscientious motives it does not understand, and with which it can have but little sympathy. Doyle was a man of purer motives and finer sympathies than George Cruikshank; but the same insular prejudice which conduced to the ruin of George Cruikshank, wrecked the future prospects of an artist almost as original in some respects as the more brilliant George. From the moment that Doyle retired from Punch, English fanaticism and English prejudice persisted in regarding him as a supporter of the "Papal aggression," and he permanently lost from that moment the ground which his talent and his reputation had so honourably won for him. From the moment he deemed it his duty to retire from the circle of literary and artistic wits and humourists with whom he was then associated, he took himself practically out of the range of comic art, and the public ceased to trouble itself about him, although it had lost (in the expressive language of Mr. Thackeray) "the graceful pencil, the harmless wit, the charming fancy," of one of the most genial and promising of English graphic satirists of the modern time. Before he left Punch he had executed for the periodical upwards of five hundred illustrations, of which nearly eighty are cartoons.

But Richard Doyle manifested the honesty of purpose which was a part of his noble nature by other sacrifices than his retirement from Punch. From the friendly hand which has strewn flowers upon his grave, we learn that at one time he was offered a handsome income to draw for a periodical started some years ago, but declined the engagement because he disapproved of the principles of those by whom it was conducted. "At another he had a similar offer made him by a distinguished statesman on behalf of a political journal, in which the work would have been light and the remuneration excellent." He was offered his own terms to illustrate an edition of Swift's humorous works; but here too he refused, because he did not admire the morality of the witty Dean of St Patrick's. "In these and other cases like them, religion, virtue, high principle, carried the day against interests which would have proved too much for any but a man of Doyle's noble and lofty character." His biographer points out the fact that all this while he had to look to his pencil for bread, and denies the statement, made by one of the leading newspapers at the time of his death, that during the latter part of his life he was independent of his profession.

In one set of illustrations, now very scarce and little known, Doyle has shown that he possessed eminent powers as a caricaturist. We have a set of lithographs before us, entitled, "Rejected Cartoons," a sort of pictorial "Rejected Addresses," supposed to be intended for the then new Houses of Parliament, some of them caricatures of the works of living artists—Maclise, Pugin, etc., whose styles are closely imitated and most amusingly burlesqued. Some of them are irresistibly droll, such as King Alfred sending the Danes into a Profound Slumber with the Sleepy Notes of his Harp; "Canute reproving the Flattery of his Courtiers;" The Faces of King John and his Barons at the Signing of Magna Charta; Perkin Warbeck in the Stocks; The Meeting of Francis and Harry in the Field of the Cloth of Gold, etc. Few people with whom the touch of Richard Doyle is perfectly familiar would recognise his hand in these amazing and amusing cartoons. We met with them at a bookstall twenty years ago, unconscious until lately that they were due to his pencil.

The once celebrated "Adventures of Brown, Jones, and Robinson" would alone secure for this artist an eminent position amongst the number of English comic designers. Graphically relating the experiences of the most ordinary class of continental tourists, they cannot fail to bring to the recollection even of the most commonplace traveller some of the experiences which may have actually happened to himself. Doyle of course enlarges on these experiences as his fancy and imagination suggest; but after all, there is little which might not have actually befallen any ordinary English travellers such as this unlucky trio. The episode of "Jones's Portmanteau undergoing the ordeal of Search" at Cologne; The scene at the "Speise-Saal" Hotel; The Jewish "Quarter of the City of Frankfort, and what they saw there"; The Gambling Scene at Baden: The Descent of the St. Gothard; The Academia at Venice; will appeal to the actual experiences of nearly every continental tourist; and notwithstanding its extravagant drollery, little Browne's adventure at Verona is sufficiently possible to remind one of personal vicissitudes encountered off the track or on the frontiers, which might almost match the experiences of this personally uninteresting little sketcher.



Besides Punch, Mr. Doyle's hand will be found in the following:—"The Fairy Ring," Leigh Hunt's "Jar of Honey," Professor Ruskin's "King of the Golden River," Montalba's "Fairy Tales from all Nations," "Jack and the Giants," "The Cornhill Magazine," "Pictures from the Elf World," "The Bon Gaultier Ballads," Thackeray's "Rebecca and Rowena," Charles Dickens's "Battle of Life," "The Family Joe Miller," Mr. Tom Hughes' "Scouring of the White Horse," "Pictures of Extra Articles and Visitors to the Exhibition," Laurence Oliphant's "Piccadilly," "Puck on Pegasus," PLanche's "Old Fairy Tales," A Beckett's "Almanack of the Month," "London Society," and Mr. Thackeray's "Newcomes." Writing of this last, Mr. Hamerton says, "I never regretted the hard necessity which forbids an art critic to shut his eyes to artistic shortcomings more heartily than I do now in speaking of Richard Doyle. Considered as commentaries on human character, his etchings are so full of wit and intelligence, so bright with playful satire and manly relish of life, that I scarcely know how to write sentences with a touch at once light enough and keen enough to describe them";[190] and then the critic goes on to expose the glaring faults which characterize Mr. Doyle's performances from a purely artistic point of view, his feeble attempts of light, his undeveloped "sense of the nature of material," and his absence of imitative study. It is somewhat singular that whilst Mr. Hamerton is silent on the subject of the book etchings of Leech and Phiz, he should have selected for criticism those of Doyle, who never intended to claim for these sketches the dignity of etchings. The critic, however, is not only just, but remarkably fair. With reference to the illustrations to the "Newcomes," he acknowledges "their all but inestimable dramatic value." "Illustrations to imaginative literature," he continues, "are too frequently an intrusion and an impertinence, but these really added to our enjoyment of a great literary masterpiece, and Doyle's conception of the Colonel, of Honeyman, of Lady Kew, is accepted at once as authentic portraiture. In Ethel he was less happy, which was a misfortune, as she was the heroine of the book; but many of the minor characters were successes of the most striking and indisputable kind." Further on, he says of Doyle's etching, A Student of the Old Masters,—"Colonel Newcome is sitting in the National Gallery, trying to see the merits of the old masters. Observe the enormous exaggeration of aerial perspective resorted to in order to detach the figure of the Colonel. The people behind him must be several miles away; the floor of the room, if judged by aerial perspective only, is as broad as the Lake of Lucerne." The criticism, though exaggerated, is not unfair or unjust; but the people are certainly not miles away. Doyle has perpetuated a mistake common with many English artists, who seem to think, as Hazlitt expresses it, that, "if they only leave out the subordinate parts, they are sure of the general result."[191] Doyle's intention to give us a portrait of Colonel Newcome only has prompted him to treat the subordinates as almost non-existent. His work, however, was never intended to be faultless; it carries out his own intention most thoroughly and admirably, and in a manner very far superior to anything which Thackeray himself could have done.

The closing scenes in the life of this most amiable and unselfish of artists we give in the singularly graceful words of his Catholic biographer: "In the autumn of last year (1883), Mr. Doyle spent some time in North Devon, and while there painted a picture of Lynton churchyard. The view is taken at a distance of some ten or fifteen yards to the south-west of the church, and is looking in an easterly direction. In front of the picture one sees far down below the blue waters of the Bristol Channel, while behind the picturesque little church nestles among the trees. In the churchyard an old man is mowing down the long grass amid the graves, while two or three little children scatter flowers on one of them. This picture was unfinished at the time of his death. A strange coincidence that he should have chosen such a scene for his last picture, when, as far as man can judge, he had no sort of reason for thinking that death was so near; stranger still, that on his return home he chose for the sketch a black frame, as if to clothe it in the garb of mourning for its maker. There it remains on his easel, unfinished still, as if to tell of one cut off so suddenly, not indeed in the summer of life, but in a mellow autumn, which seemed to give promise of many years of good work still to be done. But the time had come when the little sprites who peopled his dreams of earth, were to be exchanged for the angel forms who were to welcome the faithful servant to his reward in heaven. On the 10th of December, as he was preparing to return from the Athenaeum club, Mr. Doyle was struck down by apoplexy. An ambulance was procured, and he was carried home. He never regained the power of speech, and it is doubtful whether he was ever again conscious, though the priest who anointed him for his journey from thence to heaven thought that he detected some traces of a joyful acquiescence in the rite. The next morning, in the home where the last years had been spent in quiet peaceful pursuit of the art he passionately loved, his simple, innocent, loyal soul passed away from earth to heaven."

* * * * *

It will be admitted that Mr. Tenniel joined the ranks of the graphic satirists at the commencement of troublous times. The nations of Europe, with the exception of England, whose slumbers still remained unbroken, were all more or less awake. Prussia, insufficiently avenged (as she herself considered) at Waterloo for the unendurable humiliations which Napoleon had heaped upon her after Jena, had been unostentatiously preparing for another deadly struggle with France, and perfecting the most admirable military machinery of modern times. Russia, under Nicholas, a thorough soldier in theory, had an army so elaborately over-drilled that when the time came it was found practically useless for the purposes of actual warfare. The sleep of England was suddenly awakened by the war with Russia, and afterwards by the revolt of her Indian mercenaries. The Russian was to be followed by a war between France and Austria; the enfranchisement of Italy from the Alps to the Adriatic; the fratricidal struggle between Prussia and Austria, and the rending asunder within six weeks of the famous Germanic Confederation of the Rhine. It is a somewhat singular coincidence that immediately before the commencement of these troubles the great Duke of Wellington died, an event commemorated by two remarkable cartoons of Tenniel, the first of which is entitled September XIV. MDCCCLII. (the day of the great soldier's death), and the other, The Duke's Bequest—for the most Worthy.

The year 1853 opened the eyes of those of us who fancied that war was a thing of the past, and that the reign of Universal Peace had begun. Not only was Turkey at war with Russia, but had given her a tremendous thrashing at Oltenitza, an event alluded to in the artist's cartoon of A Bear with a Sore Head. One of the best of his satires of the same year depicts Aberdeen as he appeared in The Unpopular Act of the Courier of St. Petersburg, wherein the premier attempts the risky feat of driving a team of unmanageable horses. The features of the nervous athlete betray much anxiety; the two fiery leaders, Russia and Turkey, prove wholly beyond his control; while Austria, unsettled by their bad example, is much disposed to be troublesome.

Matters went from bad to worse in 1854. England was not only thoroughly aroused but angry, not only with her enemies, but with the foolish people who had preached peace to her when there was no peace; and, in What it has Come to, we find my Lord Aberdeen vainly trying to hold in the British lion, whose ire has been roused by the Russian bear, who is seen scampering off in the distance. Away goes the lion, with his tail as stiff as a poker and every hair of his mane erect, dragging after him the frightened premier, who exclaims, in the extremity of his terror, that he can hold him no longer and is bound "to let him go." The Russian war showed our singular unreadiness for warfare. Just at its close we had provided ourselves with a fleet of vessels of light draught capable of floating in the shallows which surrounded the Russian fortifications, which, had they been ready at the time they were wanted, might have proved of incalculable service. Britannia disconsolately eyes these gun-boats from the summit of her cliffs. "Ah!" she sighs, "if you'd been only hatched a year ago, what might have come out of your shells!"

Close upon the heels of the Russian war followed the mutiny of our Indian levies. So closely did one event follow the other, that those who have watched and learnt with reason to distrust the odious and insidious policy of Russia towards this country, considered the coincidence a more than singular one. The Franco-Austrian war came next; and the war wave passed onwards to America, where the Northern and Southern states were speedily engaged in fratricidal and deadly strife. Peace, driven from land to land, found no resting place for the sole of her foot, and the artist shows her to us, seated disconsolately pondering over these untoward matters and her own unhappy condition on the breech of a garrison gun.

Punch's low estimate of the character and abilities of the Emperor Louis is patent throughout those of Tenniel's satires in which he puts in an appearance. In 1853 he takes us to an International Poultry Show (in obvious reference to the Boulogne catastrophe) where, amid a variety of eagles—the American eagle, the Prussian eagle—the double-headed Austrian and Russian eagles—we find a wretched nondescript, half eagle half barn-door fowl, labelled the "French eagle." Victoria (a royal visitor) remarks to her astonished companion, "We have nothing of that sort, Mr. Punch; but should there be a lion show, we can send a specimen!!" The approaching marriage of the French Emperor is alluded to in the cartoon of The Eagle in Love, in which the present ex-Empress (then Comtesse de Teba), whose likeness by the way is far from happy, is represented as cutting his talons. The air of mystery which was a part of his character, and was not so well understood in those days as it afterwards came to be, not unnaturally misled Mr. Tenniel, for in his satire, Playing with Edged Tools, we behold him studying (of all things in the world) a model of the guillotine, an instrument of terror to which those of the Bonaparte family who profess to be guided by the policy of the great Napoleon, must always entertain the greatest possible aversion.

Punch not only looked upon the third Napoleon as a treacherous man, but also as a dangerous and inconvenient neighbour. In the cartoon labelled, An Unpleasant Neighbour (1859), we see him in the act of placing outside his firework shop a flaming advertisement, whereon we read in the largest possible type, "Blaze of Triumph! Roman Candles!—Italian Fire!"[192] His neighbour, John Bull, proprietor of "The Roast Beef House" next door, rushes out in a very excited state, "Here have I got," says he, "to pay double insurance, all along of your confounded fireworks!" The next cartoon shows us Louis, alias "Monsieur Walker," after he has closed his establishment and chalked up, "The Business to be disposed of," while incredulous John places his finger to his nose as Louis assures him, "Ah, friend Johnny! I close my shop entirely to please you!" In The Congress Quadrille, Louis vainly essays to make himself agreeable to Miss Britannia (a good example of the artist's handsome women)—"Voulez-vous danser, Mad'moiselle?" says Louis. Britannia, however, having been his partner on more than one memorable occasion, had had quite enough of him and his peculiar style of dancing. "Thanks,—no!" she languidly replies, thinking doubtless of her experiences of the Russian quadrille—of the Chinese country dance, etc., etc. "I'm not sure of the figure—and know nothing of the Finale."

Mr. Tenniel's art training before he joined the Punch staff, combined with his undoubted genius, renders him unquestionably one of the most versatile of modern designers. His satire is something quite apart from his caricature, and the former is characterized by a strong dramatic element particularly noticeable in serious illustrations, such as his designs to "The Pythagorean," in the second volume of "Once a Week." In caricature he resumes in a measure the manner of the older caricaturists, without retaining a trace of their vulgarity, and a good example will be found in his cartoon of What Nicholas heard in the Shell (1854), in which the features and salient points of the figure are intensely overdrawn. His caricature pure and simple seems to us always inferior to his satirical power; as fine examples of the latter we may mention: The British Lion Smells a Rat (an angry lion sniffing at a door, in allusion to the conference which followed the fall of Sebastopol); The British Lion's Vengeance on the Bengal Tiger, which chronicles the ghastly massacre of Cawnpore; Bright the Peace Maker (1860), in which Punch testifies his indignation at the manner in which Mr. Bright endeavoured to create a popular feeling against the House of Lords; Poland's Chain Shot (1863), a stirring and powerful composition, wherein Poland, gallantly struggling once more for freedom, breaks her chains and fiercely rams them into a cannon; Humble Pie at the Foreign Office (1863), and Teucer Assailed by Hector is Protected by the Shield of Ajax (1864), in which Lord John Russell is the subject of satire; and The False Start and Out of the Race (the same year), in the first of which Palmerston endeavours to restrain the leaning of Gladstone towards democracy, the last showing the result of his inattention to the starter's warning. In all these and a host of other admirable satires, the superior art training of Mr. Tenniel is seconded by his strong dramatic power, and above all by his unquestionable genius. It would be a poor compliment to him to deny that he had his failings—which indeed of the admirable satirists who preceded him had not? His failings, when they do occur, are perhaps more noticeable on account of his style and the mode in which he frequently drapes his figures. We have heard it objected to him, for instance, that the beauty of his female figures is occasionally marred by the somewhat disproportionate size of their feet, and this charge seems to us sustainable. Mr. Tenniel displays rare excellence in the drawing of animals—an excellence peculiarly noteworthy in such cartoons as The British Lion Smells a Rat, and The British Lion's Vengeance on the Bengal Tiger.

Embracing a period of only fourteen years, from 1851 to 1864, during which time he worked side by side with his friend and colleague, John Leech, on the pages of Punch, our notice of the cartoons of John Tenniel must necessarily be short. During the last three years of his life, when, as we have seen, the strength of the artist who had been on the pictorial staff from the commencement had been gradually failing, the execution of the weekly cartoons had fallen almost entirely upon Mr. Tenniel. As fellow-labourers, constantly associated on the same periodical, we are enabled to compare their individual merits. The conclusion we have arrived at is as follows: That as a political satirist, Tenniel is the best of the two; while as a delineator of English habits, manners, eccentricities, and peculiarities, Leech finds no equal. After 1864, when the artistic friendship and partnership (so to speak) of these gifted men was dissolved by the untimely death of John Leech, it would be beyond the declared scope and purpose of this work to follow Mr. Tenniel further. Unlike the caricaturists who preceded him, many of whom relied on humour, more or less forced, for the success of their productions, the cartoons of John Tenniel are oftentimes distinguished by a gravity and sternness of purpose which, combined with their artistic excellence, appeals forcibly to the imagination. Unfortunately, as in the case of those of John Leech, these truly admirable examples of nineteenth century satire, apart from the Punch volumes themselves—owing to the material on which they are impressed and the process to which the original drawings are subjected—are practically valueless by the side of an indifferent caricature torn from the scurrilous and worthless pages of "The Scourge" or "The Meteor."

To the persons who charge this artist with want of humour, his cartoon of Britannia Discovering the Source of the Nile—probably the most comical picture in the whole of the Punch volumes—will afford the most conclusive answer, as will also the quaint and mirth-provoking little pictures which he designed for "Alice in Wonderland," its sequel, "Through the Looking-glass," and the 1864 edition of the "Ingoldsby Legends." One of these last, by the way, so closely resembles a scarce design of John Leech's in the "New Monthly," that the coincidence will strike any one who has an opportunity of comparing the two together. During the fourteen years that Mr. Tenniel was a fellow-worker with the late John Leech, he contributed to the pages of Punch about 1,400 designs, of which upwards of 400 are cartoons. We believe we are correct in stating that all these illustrations, and his subsequent and contemporary designs, were drawn at once upon the wood block, not a single preliminary sketch having been made.

* * * * *

Here, in accordance with the plan which we designed when we sat down to write this work, we bring our labours to a close. If we have omitted all mention of two very excellent and talented artists, Messrs. Charles Keene and George Du Maurier, it is not from any lack of appreciation, but because one of them at least began his labours just about the period when those of John Leech were drawing to a close, while the reputation of both were made after their distinguished contemporary was laid to his rest. The merits of both these able men and of those now following after them must be left to be dealt with by another chronicler. Although, as we remarked in our opening chapter, the wood engraver has rung the knell of English caricature, with such clever men as Colonel Seccombe, Mr. Proctor, Mr. Randolph Caldicott, Mr. F. Barnard, the present George Cruikshank, Mr. Chasemore, and others whose names do not at present occur to us, there is happily no prospect of a decline in the art of English graphic satire.

FOOTNOTES:

[186] The present chapter was written before the artist's death; but I have to acknowledge the great assistance I have derived in its revision from the authority indicated.

[187] The Month, a Catholic Magazine, No. 237 (March, 1884), p 315.

[188] Ibid., page 317.

[189] One of these (and a very effective one) was the work of the present Sir John Gilbert.

[190] Hamerton's "Etching and Etchers."

[191] William Hazlitt on "The Fine Arts," p. 51.

[192] An excellent burlesque of the Emperor's theatrical declarations.



APPENDICES.



APPENDIX I.

SOME ILLUSTRATIVE WORK OF ISAAC ROBERT CRUIKSHANK.

Coloured frontispiece to the "Age of Intellect; or, Clerical Show Folk and Wonderful Lay Folk," by Francis Moore, Physician. 1819.

"Lessons of Thrift, published for the general benefit, by a Member of the Save-all Club," eleven coloured full-page etchings. 1820.

"The Total Eclipse, a Grand Politico-Astronomical Phenomenon." (Dolby, Strand.) 1820.

"A Peep at the P. C. N.; or, Boiled Mutton with Caper Sauce at the Temple of Joss." (Effingham Wilson.) 1820.

"The Men in the Moon; or, the Devil to Pay." (Dean & Munday.) 1820.

[With his brother George.] Designs to Nightingale's "Memoirs of Queen Caroline." (J. Robins.) 1820.

"Radical Chiefs." One caricature illustration. 1821.

"The Royal Game of Chess." 1821.

"The Political All-my-knack for the Year of our Lord 1821."

"The Queen and Magna Charta; or, the Thing that John Signed." (Dolby, Strand.) 1821.

"Tales of the Cordelier Metamorphosed." 1821.

[With his brother George.] "Life in London." (Sherwood, Nealy & Jones.) 1821.

"The Commercial Tourist; or, Gentleman Traveller." (A satirical Poem), five coloured plates. 1822.

"Mock Heroicks; or, Snuff, Tobacco, and Gin, and a Rapsody on an Inkstand." Four caricature engravings. 1822.

"Annals of Sporting and Fancy Gazette." (Numerous coloured plates.) 1822-1825.

[With C. Williams.] Frontispiece to George Ramsey's "New Dictionary of Anecdote." 1822.

"My Cousin in the Army; or, Johnny Newcome on the Peace Establishment." Many coloured plates. 1822.

Twenty designs on wood for Charles Westmacott's "Points of Misery." 1823.

A series of drawings on wood to the "Spirit of the Public Journals for 1823 and 1824." (A selection of essays, jeux d'esprit, tales of humour, etc., 2 vols.)

"Life and Exploits of Don Quixote." Twenty-four designs on wood. (Knight & Lacey.) 1824.

Bernard Blackmantle's (Charles Westmacott) "English Spy." 1825.

"Spirit of the Public Journals for 1825."

Charles Westmacott's "Punster's Pocket-book; or, the Art of Punning Enlarged." 1826.

[With his brother George.] "London Characters." (Twenty-four plates, of which nine only are by Robert.) Robins. 1827.

[With George.] Designs on wood for the "Fairy Tales" of Albert Ludwigg Grimm. 1827.

J. Thompson's "New Life of J. Allen." 1828.

Smeeton's "Doings in London." 1828.

"British Dance of Death" (allegorical coloured frontispiece). 1828.

"Spirit of the Age" Newspaper (vignette). 1828.

[With his brother.] The designs on wood for the "Universal Songster; or, Museum of Mirth." (3 vols.) 1828.

"London Oddities; or, Theatrical Cabinet, and Tit-bits of Humour and Eccentricity." 1828.

"The Finish to the Adventures of Tom, Jerry, and Logic." 1828.

The following between 1830 and 1832.

"Cruikshank's Comic Album" (sometimes called "Facetiae"), being a series of little books published by Kidd, Miller, and others, afterwards collected into 3 vols.

"Walks about Town by an Antiquated Trio," three designs.

"The Condition of the West Indian Slave contrasted with that of the Infant Slave in our English Factories."

"Cruikshank and the New Police, showing the great Utility of that Military Body."

"Cruikshank versus Witchcraft"; "Mary Ogilvie"; "Wee Watty."

"Robert Cruikshank versus Sir Andrew Agnew."

W. S. Moncrieff's "March of Intellect," six designs.

[With Kenny Meadows.] "The Devil in London."

"A Slap at the Times."

Illustrations to Foote's "Tailors," and "Mayor of Garratt"; O'Hara's "Midas"; "The Beggars' Opera"; "Katherine and Petruchio," and others.

The following between 1831 and 1836.

Design on wood for "Figaro in London."

[With Seymour and others.] Illustrations to a periodical called "The Thief."

Twenty illustrations to W. R. Macdonald's "Comic Alphabet." (A rival to George Cruikshank's work of the same title.)

Eighty-five designs on wood to Crithannah's "Original Fables." Six designs on wood for "Readings from Dean Swift His Tale of a Tub, with Variorum Notes, and a Supplement for the use of the Nineteenth Century," by Quintus Flestrin Grildrig.

Johann Abricht's "Divine Emblems." And [with his brother] illustrations to J. Thomas's "Burlesque Drama." 1838.

[With Seymour.] The series known as "Cruikshank at Home," and "The Odd Volume."

The following in 1839-1840.

Ten vignettes to "The Lady and the Saints." Twelve designs on wood to "Colburn's Kalendar of Amusements in Town and Country." "Cozi Toobad." [With W. Lee.] Twenty-three steel plates and designs on wood for "Jem Blunt," by Barker (author of the celebrated "Greenwich Hospital").

1842 and 1844.

[With John Leech.] "Merrie England in the Olden Time," by George Daniel. (Since rep. by Warne & Co.) Three illustrations to "James Hatfield and the Beauty of Buttermere." [With R. W. Buss and T. Wageman.] "Cumberland's British and Minor Theatre." Fourteen etchings to Abraham Elder's "Tales and Legends of the Isle of Wight." Nine aqua-tinta plates to Hugo Playfair's "Brother Jonathan, the Smartest Nation in all Creation."