[Illustration: ROWLANDSON. _January 1st, 1796._
"Do with him? Why, make an officer of him!"
CHANGE IN THE SPIRIT OF ENGLISH CARICATURE.
Since the commencement of the present century, and more especially during the last fifty years, a change has come over the spirit of English caricature. The fact is due to a variety of causes, amongst which must be reckoned the revolution in dress and manners; the extinction of the three-bottle men and topers; the change of thought, manners, and habits consequent on the introduction of steam, railways, and the electric telegraph. The casual observer meeting, as he sometimes will, with a portfolio of etchings representing the men with red and bloated features, elephantine limbs, and huge paunches, who figure in the caricatures of the last and the early part of the present century, may well be excused if he doubt whether such figures of fun ever had an actual existence. Our answer is that they not only existed, but were very far from uncommon. Our great-grandfathers of 1800 were jolly good fellows; washing down their beef-steaks with copious draughts of "York or Burton ale," or the porter for which Trenton, of Whitechapel, appears to have been famed,[1] fortifying themselves afterwards with deeper draughts of generous wines--rich port, Madeira, claret, dashed with hermitage--they set up before they were old men paunches and diseases which rendered them a sight for gods and men. Reader, be assured that the fat men who figure in the graphic satires of the early part of the century were certainly _not_ caricatured.
[Illustration: T. ROWLANDSON. _April 13th, 1807._
The "Broad-Bottom Administration," known as "All the Talents," showing the several qualifications of the Ministry.
THE THREE GREAT CARICATURISTS OF THE LAST CENTURY.
In connection with the subject of graphic satire, the names of the three great caricaturists of the last century--Gillray, Rowlandson, and Bunbury--are indispensable. The last, a gentleman of family, fortune, and position, and equerry to the Duke of York, was, in truth, rather an amateur than an artist. Rowlandson was an able draughtsman, and something more; but his style and his tastes are essentially coarse and sensual, and his women are the overblown beauties of the Drury Lane and Covent Garden of his day. George Moutard Woodward, whose productions he sometimes honoured by etching, and whose distinguishing characteristics are carelessness and often bad drawing, follows him at a respectful distance. The genius of James Gillray has won him the title of the "Prince of Caricaturists," a title he well earned and thoroughly deserved. The only one of the nineteenth century caricaturists who touches him occasionally in _caricature_, but distances him in everything else, is our George Cruikshank.