ORIGINAL ESSAYS ON POLITE LITERATURE, THE ARTS AND SCIENCES; POETRY; CRITICISMS ON THE FINE ARTS, THE DRAMA, &c.; BIOGRAPHY; COIRESPONDENCE OF DISTINGUISHED PERSONS; ANECDOTES, JEUX D'ESPRIT, &c.; SKETCHES OF SOCIETY AND MANNERS; PROCEEDINGS OF SCIENTIFIC AND LEARNED SOCIETIES; LONDON: PRINTED BY JMES MOYES, CASTLE STREET, LEICESTER SQUARE: PUBLISHED FOR THE PROPRIETORS, AT THE LIERARY GAZETTE OFFICE, WELLINGTON STREET, WATERLOO BRIDGE, STRAND: AND Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences, &c. This Journal is supplied Weekly, or Monthly, by the principal Booksellers and Newsmen, throughout the Kingdom; but to those who may require its immediate transmission by post, we recommend the LITERARY GAZETTE printed on stamped paper, price One Shilling. No. 937. REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS. M'Lean. CARICATURE. SATURDAY, JANUARY 3, 1835. Political Sketches. By H. B. Vol. I. for 1829, and II., III., IV., V., and VI. for the Years 1830, 31, 32, 33, and 34. Published by THE fertility and celebrity of H. B., the continual effusions of whose talent serve so essentially to enliven and, we may add, inform the Town, having turned our attention more immediately to the subject of Caricature, we trust our readers will not be displeased if, in passing the above volumes in review, we throw together a few desultory observations on the history and by gone practice of this curious compound branch of satire and art. The principle of Caricature is as old as human nature; for a sense of the ludicrous and absurd is as inborn in man as the love of beauty, the appreciation of grandeur, or the feeling for the sad and mournful. Laughter in its antiquity may fairly be reckoned the twin of crying; though it must be confessed that, with our fallen nature, the latter takes the precedency. As some compensation, however, the former is universally acknowledged to be the more agreeable emotion; insomuch that the only crying at all spoken of with liking is that which is the result of much laughing. masqueraders of Callot, furnish abundant mat- PRICE 8d. Rowlandson was a caricaturist; so were Gillray, Bunbury, Nixon, Woodard, Williams, But belonging to this class of art, perhaps, no and many others who flourished during the country has abounded more with examples in reign of George the Third. George Cruikwhich wit, humour, and satire, were the compo-shank, too, is a caricaturist-though we utter nent parts, than England. Indeed, so abundant it not in depreciation; for if the hyperbole of is the catalogue, that the retrospective view art, whether in poetry or painting, be wrought puzzles the brain in the choice to fix either on with the originality and mastery of a Rabelais individuals or their productions. The liberty or a Gillray, we cannot but applaud the imaof the pencil, no less than the liberty of the ginative powers that excite in us such pleapress, has been exercised to its fullest extent, surable sensations as the magic of their inhardly stopping short of treason in some in-ventions produce on our risible faculties. stances, and not at all of libel in others. An What struck the observant glance of Walpole, attempt was at one time made by, we believe, and moved him to open the eyes of the public the late Lord Bateman, to bring some of these to the charm of Hogarth's graphic wit, were a graphic offences, of a political character, before few, very few indeed, happy original points of parliament; but the arguments for and against humour, which told their own tale.* One, the were so interrupted by laughter, that the sub- undisturbed possession of a house-spider, whose ject fell to the ground; and the pencil-shafts web covered the slit of a poor-box in a parish of wit and ridicule have since been permitted church;-an admirable satire upon alms-giving. to fly abroad without a trial to control or Another, chickens roosting upon perpendicular punish them. waves, in the scene behind the scene; and another, that most intelligible and most original frontispiece to "Kirby's Perspective."+ Horace Walpole, in his excellent essay upon the genius of Hogarth, proclaims that great dramatic painter the inventor of graphic We, born in the succeeding age, have lived to wit;" but much as we, in common with all the see a tribe of designers in the same school, the world, have been used, in matters of criticism on pourings out of whose inventions have been as the arts, to submit to his dictum, we cannot as- constant, and seem to be as inexhaustible, as sent to this. For having very carefully exa- the ever varying scenes of that great drama of mined that most curious travestie, by the pencil human life that has been played for the amuseof Jan Stein," Sampson and Dalilah," we are ment of philosophy for the greater part of six in candour compelled to own, that Hogarth, thousand years. original as he was, could not have introduced more point and wit into the same subject, had he been commissioned to make the effort for a prize. great dramatic painter :-one who imagined and - The celebrated "Dance of Death," attributed to Hans We profess to be of that fraternity of philo sophers who own themselves the disciples of Democritus, rather than of Heraclitus; inclined to smile with Thalia, or laugh even with Momus, rather than weep with Melpomene. The facetious, witty Dr. Arbuthnot, whose wise diction was a law at the college, moreover, used to say, "Laughter prolongeth life; and a Merry Andrew's arrival in a town dispenseth more health to its inhabitants than a dozen ass loads of medicine." To trace the entire annals of what is called Caricature, therefore, would be to give the history and development of the human mind, its faculties, perceptions, and passions; since, as we have said, a sense of the ridiculous appears to be equally inherent with mirth itself. Nei- Hogarth is also frequently quoted as "the ther is it confined to individuals, but whole great caricaturist." This is a mistake: he was nations have been found with so great an apti- not a painter of caricatura; but, properly, the tude to the ludicrons, so prone to laughter on almost every occasion, as in some degree to defeat the object of our missionaries when treating them for purposes very different to those of promoting merriment. From accounts Holbein, and that artist's designs illustrative of Erasmus Were we disposed to go deep into the details we have read of these people, we learn that on Folly, are in like manner a species of caricature. of the origin of dramatic graphic design, we there was nothing on board our ships or in the Neither his humour nor satire come under the deno- might trace it to a much earlier period in the mination of caricature; yet he is often placed at the head persons of the crew which had any thing out of of the school, simply because his pencil, like the wit of wood-carving of the monkish ages than in the the way in dress or appearance, which did not Falstaff, was the cause of wit in others; and his day has engravings on metal. The representations of become subjects of mimicry or sources of cachi- been followed by a succession of aspirants, many of Purgatory on the carved remains of our ecclewhom, if they did not reach his powers in the more solid nation. "It is not," said the great apologist and perfect delineations of humorous characters under siastical buildings exhibit many ludicrous ailufor laughter, Sterne, "in the power of every their various emotions, or more powerful display of vonshire," in the corner to the left," Car. Pietro Leeni one to understand humour; it is the gift of passion, have attained a degree of excellence sufficient to Ghezzi, delt.," and on the right, the initials A. P., meanGod." Ghezzi, an Italian artist, was contemporary with Ho-ing Arthur Pond, about the year 1738. The history of the art of painting, in its garth, and, we believe, a resident in this country, as there back we had the pleasure of seeing the paintings in Deearliest state, affords examples of the burlesque in our metropolis found among his works, some of them art, was what may be called a pictorial curiosity, from the are portraits of many characters well known at that time vonshire House, where, among many fine examples of which may be termed caricature. Nor is it con-etched by Arthur Pond; and as there are also drawings number of figures, evidently portraits, truly Hogarthian pencil of Ghezzi a conversazione, in which were a fined to that period; on gems of the remotest in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire of which in their character, and skilfully executed. antiquity are found subjects of droll chara ter; exhibit a contrast of character principally by that distin- this painting, we are sure it would not fail of being acthere are etchings by the same artist. Two of these sent duke were to allow an etching to be executed from such as chimeras, made up of all incongruous, guishing feature in the human countenance, the nose.ceptable to the lovers of graphic humour, as well as to all abortive things. Whether the artist meant to establish a claim to aristhe antiquary and amateur. tocracy by thus exaggerating this feature, or a ludicrous Somewhat in this way Leonardo da Vinci jest on some individual, cannot easily be determined, as produced a set of caricatures; and, indeed, the the prints which have been alluded to have no other title arabesques or grotesques of Raphael, Annibale than, " In the Collection of his Grace the Duke of DeCaracci, and others of the Italian school of art, Where the aged father of a family, together with his may fairly come under the same title. Of more numerous progeny, are represented with a double allowrecent date, the works of Jerom Bos, of Brue-ance of its parrot-like prominence, and, by way of conghel, (for distinction called Hellish,) the in-trast, a female, evidently a drudge, is curtailed of her fair portion of it. The nose has ever been made the cantations of D. Teniers, and the merry handle of a quarrel or object of a jest. insure their names and works to be long remembered. Some years If the pre self to party politics, as it cannot be doubted that the the time, lowered the public estimation of his works. It had been well for Hogarth if he had not lent himbiting satire of Churchill embittered his latter days, and, at Graphic satire is a dangerous weapon, and must be carefully, as well as skilfully used, or it will cut both ways, and injure both sides. The same may be said of the wit and humour exhi"Harlot's Progress," and the escutcheous of the mourningroom of the "Rake's Progress," &c. &c. bited in the armorial bearings in the funeral scene of the |