ROWLANDSON THE CARICATURIST.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A SHIPPING SCENE.

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

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

THE QUAY.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love in Caricature, with eleven plates by Thomas Rowlandson.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have also to notice:—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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