Part 15 (2/2)

[67] This certainly was not true; both Gillray and Rowlandson were draughtsmen and artists of exceptionable ability.

[68] The article from which this is quoted is variously a.s.signed to Professor Wilson and Lockhart; it matters little which. Meanwhile, we must have a name, let it be Lockhart's.

[69] The editor of ”The Scourge” was one Jack Mitford. He received a cla.s.sical education, was originally in the navy, and fought under Hood and Nelson. Besides ”The Scourge,” he edited ”The Bon Ton”

magazine, and ”Quizzical Gazette,” and was author of a sea song once popular, ”The King is a true British Sailor.” He was an irreclaimable drunkard, thought only of the necessities of the hour, and slept in the fields when his finances would not admit of payment of a twopenny lodging in St. Giles's. His largest work was ”Johnny Newcome in the Navy,” for which the publisher gave him the generous remuneration of a s.h.i.+lling a day till he finished it. He died in St. Giles's workhouse in 1831.

[70] The reader may remember that Napoleon once contracted a skin disease from taking up a weapon which had been wielded by a dead artilleryman, which gave him trouble at various periods of his life.

It may be that this suggested the subject.

[71] See the ”Declaration of the Powers,” from which we have already quoted.

[72] ”Narrative of Captain Maitland,” p. 109.

[73] The Regent's selfish nature and expensive habits may be judged by the following extract from the Greville Memoirs. Under date of 1830, Mr. Greville writes: ”Sefton gave me an account of the dinner in St. George's Hall on the King's [William IV.] birthday, which was magnificent, excellent, and well served. Bridge came down with the plate, and was hid during the dinner behind the great wine-cooler, which weighs 7,000 ounces, and he told Sefton afterwards that the plate in the room was worth 200,000. There is another service of plate which was not used at all. The king has made it all over to the crown. _All this plate was ordered by the late king, and never used; his delight was ordering what the public had to pay for._”--_Greville Memoirs_, vol. ii. p. 42.

[74] See Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Earl of Elgin's Collection ... of Marbles (”Annual Reg.,” 1816, p. 447).

[75] See Chapter III. (1817).

[76] The idea of the letterpress description (a very long one), from which the above is an extract, is borrowed of course from Dr.

Arbuthnot.

[77] See Chapter III. (1817).

[78] See Chapter III. (1817).

[79] She was fond of adopting children, and it was proved that she had adopted a daughter of the man Bergami.

[80] Byron's ”Age of Bronze.”

[81] Lockhart's ”Life of Scott,” vol. v. p. 203.

[82] ”E. O.” was another name for roulette, and forms the subject of one of Rowlandson's early and best caricatures.

[83] The following are the words of the original inscription: ”To Arthur, Duke of Wellington, and his brave companions in arms, this statue of Achilles, cast from cannon taken in the battles of Salamanca, Vitoria, Toulouse, and Waterloo, is inscribed by their countrywomen.”

[84] See Chapter IV.

CHAPTER VIII.

_GEORGE CRUIKSHANK AT HIS PRIME._

ALTERATIONS IN CRUIKSHANK'S STYLE.

Those who have studied the work of George Cruikshank from its commencement to its close (and those only can be said to have done so who are familiar with the satires described in the previous chapter), cannot fail to be struck with the alterations which took place in his style at different periods of the career we have already been considering. George Cruikshank's peculiar style and manner, which enable us to recognise his work at a glance, was the outcome of a very slow and gradual process of development. In the first instance he closely copied Gillray, but soon acquired a manner of his own, blending the two styles after a fas.h.i.+on which is both interesting and amusing to follow. Soon, however, the style of the master was discontinued, and gradually the artist began to discover that the bent of his genius lay in altogether another direction. Unlike Thomas Rowlandson, the moment Cruikshank became an ill.u.s.trator of books, he realized the fact that the style adapted to graphic satire was unsuitable for the purposes of this branch of art, and thenceforth he adopted a style differing from anything which had gone before. The revolution thus accomplished (a singular proof of the genius of the man) was effected without effort, and is strikingly manifest in an early book ill.u.s.tration representing the execution of Madame Tiquet and her accomplice, in 1699. The design to which we refer, which we believe is rare and little known, was engraved by H. R. Cook, from a design by the artist for the frontispiece to a collection of narratives by Cecil, ”printed for Hone,” in 1819, and stands by virtue of its force and character apart from most of the book ill.u.s.trations of the period. From the moment that the new style was adopted, the artist's services were brought into requisition for the purposes of book ill.u.s.tration; and from the time work of this kind began to come in, he relaxed and afterwards discontinued the practice of caricature. It is as an etcher and designer of book ill.u.s.trations we shall henceforth have to consider him, and in this character one of his famous ill.u.s.trations to ”Greenwich Hospital” will be found superior to the whole series of Rowlandson's careless overdrawn designs to the three ”Tours” of Syntax put together.

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