CARICATURE.* " 1886." "Therefore Mr. Everitt claims to bring the

nineteenth century ' down to date.' " With this idea in our head, we

• English Caricatorists and Graphic Humouriets of the Nineteenth Century Row they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. By Graham Everitt. London : Swan Sonnengehein, and Co. 18343.

mechanically looked at the end of the volume, and beginning backwards, found, to our great spiritual contentment—as, ourselves, workmen—a very handsome Index and five Appen- dices,—one on Cruikshank and his work, from 1819 down to 1849 ; another on Robert Seymour's work between 1822 and 1836 ; Leech's illustrations, or some of them, from 1835 to 1846; Alfred Henry Forrester (Alfred Crowquill), beginning with "Ups and Downs," 1823, down to Henry Cockton's " Sisters, or, England and France," date not given, but coming after " Little Tiny's Picture-Book," 1871. Then, finally, Appendix V., some works illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne, beginning with Charles Dickens's " Sunday under Three Heads," 1836, and ending with Judy. These appendices, in all the modesty of their splendid typography, are exceedingly valuable and inter- esting, and alone worth the price of the whole volume. But one thing at a time. So, then, harking back behind index, behind appendices, we looked at the final pages of the actual text, quarto page 400, and there find these words :—

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

From this it is clear that Leech engrosses Mr. Everitt's final attention, and Tenniel, in a few pages at the end of the volumes- lets the author's load down gently to the ground. But if Mr. Everitt culminates on John Leech, the meridian of his admira-

tion is devoted to Cruikshank, whom he considers as "the leading caricaturist of the century." It is, in fact, upon Cruik shank that Mr. Everitt has brought all his big battalions to bear, beginning with a retrospective glance at Gilroy, Row- landson, Banbury, and others, and passing up to the Cruik- shanks, through John Doyle, " William Neath," " H. Neath,"

"Theodore Lane," Moutard Woodward, C. Williams, Henry William Bunbury, Robert Dighton, and others.

But what is caricature P On this bead the author seems nervously anxious to "get away" in sporting parlance, and after referring to caricatura in the Italian dictionary, and to the same word in "old Dr. Johnson," he tells us that Dr. Johnson's definition of caricature " expresses exactly what it does mean." We turned mechanically to the sixth, a very old, edition of Dr. Johnson, and found the word wholly absent. Not having the first edition, or access to it, we cannot say if Johnson ever defined the word at all, or only later, or whether Mr. Everitt, in his innocence, is quoting Todd upon Johnson. We mention this only as a curiosity. But still caricature as defined in one of the Johnson's dictionaries we do not possess, means, we are told, an "exaggerated resemblance." No doubt. But then, one would like to know a little more about it. The word itself, " caricature," is related etymologically to our own "cargo," and means, in all Italian simplicity, a loading. So, then, the finely analytical quality of the Italian intellect, disengaging the ultimate (material) element out of all the (spiritual) elements of pictorial distortion and travesty, called it simply a "loading." After all, " exaggeration " only substi- tutes the idea of m mind, or agger for carica,—the heaping-up of a mound,—for the common Italian word "load" or "cartload." One can easily understand how a cold, cynical, and hating Nea- politan, pushed about by the police for a likeness, much too like, would shrug his shoulders, and say, possibly, the likeness was loaded. But when we look at the character of the loading, there may be anything there from diabolical and malignant spite, up to the simplest fun, to say nothing of the almost impossibility of drawing the real truth, and the almost necessary tendency to exaggerate one thing and diminish another. But if the Italian mind, with a head to be chopped off by a despot for a joke, dis-

covered the colourless and impregnable word " load," the French gamin, on his own responsibility, hit upon the identical word in French, namely, " charge,"—one charge, meaning both a pic-

torial or verbal goak or caricature, and a load. When did the word " caricature " first obtain in the Italian language, and how P When did the word " charge " acquire a similar meaning in France, and was it or not suggested by the Italian word ? But the thing caricature goes back to the night of ages, and is in its origin, no doubt, connected with the subjective risible faculty on the one side, and the objective tendency to making faces on the other. Curiously enough, the original German ideas of caricature appear to have hinged precisely upon the distortion

of the countenance, since Fratze, the leading word for carica- ture, signifies originally a grimace. Then we have Posse, buffoonery (Italian, pazzie), which, without original reference to

drawing, would exactly express many of Mr. Sambourne's very exquisite drolleries, diving as they do into the weirdest genius, —conceptions of night and of day, of dawn and of twilight,—the mixture of the terrible, the grotesque, the gigantic, the infinitely little, the animal, the beast, the ethereal, the divinely loving, the diabolically cynical, the crawling, the high-bred, all in a uni- versal salmagundi and lobster nightmare, mixing up the loveliest conceptions with croaking horrors, the eternal aurora with the

everlasting nitschewo of the frozen, blinding steppe. What can we English call it Burlesque ? Burlare, to play the drunken droll? No. Mr. Sambourne's art is, as the French say, insai- eissable, intraduisible ; it is the German Posse, not the Italian (why not say Roman at once?) "caricature," but the German Posse, of the post-prandial Walhalla, of the German gods in

disturbed post-prandial sleep. Then Mr. Sambourne's women,— he has been on the rove lately. For years he was faithful

to one type, always there, and very significant, very pathetic, embodying will, devotion, daring ; latterly, Mr. Sambourne has revealed plastic powers of no common kind, and he very plainly means to illustrate Moliere's great sentence,—Mon amour en vent a Joule la personne.

And if from Mr. Sambourne's ideals of beauty, we turn to George Du Maurier's family interiors, and think of Gilray, and tarn back over Mr. Everitt's very beautiful volume page by page backwards and further back still,—where are we ? Out of curiosity, with this volume before us, we went to our shelves and

turned back over the leaves of Punch with reference especially

to Mr. Du Meunier. What a cordial draught of hope in patience and effort to any honest young struggling artist, who knows he has the stuff in him ! Look at Mr. Da Maurier's creations then, and look at Mr. Du Maurier's creations now. Even then they were fascinating, and new enough. And instead of dete- riorating, Mr. Du Meunier improves. His girls are charming.

And when he chooses to draw a gentleman, with all the light and shade, between the man in fine clothes, and also clothed in society's manner—between him and the gentleman of the old English breed at heart, whose heart is all there,—how wonder- ful is his science ! What patience, what knowledge, what exquisite feet and hands, what science in concealment !- it is no longer caricature ; it is the most refined comedy of manners, translated into a weekly picture such as no other artist in Europe could continue. Does he not raise the general ideal ?

Look at the recent picture of that very gentlemanlike and nice boy, before the chimney-piece, thinking of his possible Indian widow ahead. What European artist among the greatest could beat that picture,—in refinement, in exact truth to those who know the kind of boy and the kind of girl—(and 8115, how

natural, how beautiful !) It is simple perfection. Comedy there is ; caricature, none. Perhaps the boy, in his handsome boots, straddles a trifle,—but all in all, it is not caricature ; it is a very exquisite comedy of manners.

Of course, as a draughtsman, Mr. Charles Keene is far and away the higher artist in atmosphere, luminosity, outdoor vigonr of conception, and masculinity of fun and drollery—but why need they be compared ? For us, who have a definite sub- ject before us, we must either speak or not. To our mind, no two artists were ever more happily married in one paper than Keene and Du Maurier. Not a week passes but one sets the other off. Mr. Keene's late skit on the new working-man's Member's wife receiving her old friends, and assuring them, with white cottoned foot peeping from under her petticoat, that her husband's Membership would never change her manners, already belongs to English history. It can never be dislodged from this generation's brains.

Of Mr. Tenniel we have said nothing. How are we to touch on all his responsibilities,—and what must be to

a man of such infinite directness of vision, all his griefs ? But he is the same man still who drew the Emperor Napoleon with the shadow of another greater Napoleon behind him. Mr. Harry Furnias is a very welcome suc- cessor at a long distance of time from poor, great-hearted

Dickie Doyle. But Mr. Furniss's talent is exceedingly pro mixing, and of very large consequence. His pencil is quite as clean, his draft as clear, as Doyle's. He knows his perspective upside down,—his likenesses are very striking, and never very malicious. Doyle had plenty of malice, but tenderly withal. Where malice comes in at the door, higher civilisation,—any civilisation,---flies out at the window. In conclusion, we entreat Mr. Sambourne to remain Sambourne, and snap his fingers at all the world,—he will remain himself, and an artist. who in his own walk cannot be replaced once in a century, if at all. He is aiming at more ambitious pictures. This may not be a mistake, but liberty of treatment suffers. Let him aim always at satisfying his own ideas. If he does that, he can be extraordinary. If he does not, he will cause his admirers much anxiety.