ANTI-NAPOLEONIC CARICATURE.*

Engiish Carkature and Satire on Napoleon I. By John A.diton. With 115 Illustrations by the Anthem'. 2 vols. London: Chatto and Windus. 1834. Mn. ASHTON is a bookmaker, rather than an author. But he is a proficient in his craft ; he invariably gets hold of a good subject for his searches in libraries, and strong pegs to hang quotations on. His Social Life in Me Reign of Queen Anne was a successful book, to a great extent because the idea which

is the centre of it is one of that attractive kind that occur only to-readers who haunt the by-paths, country hostelries, and old curiosity shops of literature. The subject of Mr. Ashton's new, handsomely got-up, and well-illustrated volumes is also a happy-thought. Materials are only now accumulating for a sound and, final historical judgment on the character

and career of the First Napoleon. It is not yet a hundred • years since he obtained his first opportunity at the siege of Toulon ; and there is much truth in Burns's notion that a century must pass after a man's death be-

fore justice can be done to his memory. But the materials in the form of private memoirs and the like, which are accumu- lating, are mainly French. It is well, therefore, and although Waterloo has left no scars, to be reminded of what "the most powerful, the most constant, and the most generous" of Napoleon's enemies thought of him. It is unquestionable, too, that, since caricature became a recognised feature of party life, nothing has so faithfully reflected market-place opinion upon politics as it manifests itself or developes from week to week.

Mr. Ashton consequently secured another attractive idea when

he determined to reproduce the caricatures in which Gilhay, Rowlaudson, Ansell, the Cruikshauks, and others reflected,---and with which also they sustained—the feeling of England against

the First Napoleon, when he was at the zenith of his power, and the terror of the world. His new volumes are very enter- taining, but from the purely literary point of view they are not

so satisfactory as So.cial Life in the Reign of Queen Anne. They show traces of hurry, if not of " scampiug." Mr. Ashton

is obviously acquainted only with the more popular works on

Napoleon's.career, such as Napoleon in Exile, and the Junot Memoirs. .If he knows, he has not mastered the later revela- tions so damaging to the private character of the man, and

which, unless they can be proved to be merely concoctions, show him to have been not only a colossal genius, but a colossal cad.

Mr. Ashton might have confined the range of his searches in British sentiment about Napoleon to "caricature." If by

" satire " he means dislike or hatred in the form of literature as distinguished from illustration, what he quotes here is of the poorest and coarsest description. In these two volumes there does not appear a single song written with a view to inflaming British patriotism which is not very much below the average of Punch's political poetry. Mr. Ashton gives us far too much of the Hudibrastic doggerel of Doter Syntax. In order to explain the speaking caricatures of George Cruikshank it was not neces- sary to reproduce stuff like this :— " Loretta's statues so pleased Boney, They instantly packed up Madona ; These relies then, without delay, To Paris Boney sent away ;

And there they formed an exhibition, As proof of Papal superstition."

A considerable amount of good-sense and of hearts-of-oak, roast- beef patriotism appears in the hand-bills which were issued at the time when Volunteers were summoned to resist invasion

(Great Britain had 350,000 Volunteers at the height of the Napo- leonic terror, as against some 210,000 now), and in them it is per- petually insisted that faith in the English Navy must not in- duce false security. Certain verses on " Talley " and " Boney " show considerable insight into the characters of the two men who at that time guided the destinies of France, and marred the destinies of each other, but this is all that can be said of them. Even the serious writing against Napoleon was weak. The Times did not attack him with a pen dipped in gall, or with a rapier, but with a butcher's are, describing him as "a wretch," "a villain," "a bloody miscreant," "a creature who ought to be greeted with a gallows as soon as he lauds." Of the able writers of the time who might have taken part in the literary war against Napoleon-, some, like Byron, admired him, and posed in the attitude of Ajax defying the lightning of British public opinion. Others, like Sydney Smith, were confirmed partisans, and thought more of Catholic emancipation than of the Corsican ogre. Others, again, had given their early sympathies to the

French Revolution ; and although its later excesses had alienated them—as, for instance, Burns, who had sent captured guns to the National Convention, and who nevertheless lived to rouse his brother Scots against "haughty Gaul "—yet years brought the philosophic mind, and they contemplated Napoleon less as the enemy of their country or of mankind, than as a tremendous agent employed by an inscrutable Providence.

But a great deal of cleverness was exhibited in the caricature with which Napoleon was pelted from this side of the Clinnel. Mr. Ashton reproduces some of the best work of Gilkey, Row- landson, and George Cruikshank, and not a little of it will bear comparison with present-day art of the same kind. Cari- caturists had not, fifty or sixty years ago, the resources of Mr. Tenniel and Mr. Sambourne ; we are further inclined to believe that they had not more talent. They seldom take any other view of Napoleon than the vulgar, personal "Boney " one,—as a murderer, a brigand, a "bad lot," capable of any crime to advance his own personal ends. Of the artists whom Mr. Ashton reproduces, we like Gillray and Cruikshank most. Gillray's humour is broader than Cruikshank's, much as the late John Leech's humour was broader than Mr. Tenniel's. But when he is at his best, as when he gives a representation of Fox and his wife having an audience of Napoleon, he can provoke a hearty laugh even after so many years. Some of Cruikshank's work is exquisitely careful ; his picture of the defeated usurper appearing on the deck of the 'Bellerophon' as the modern Themistocles, with his barber, cook, and washer- woman trembling behind him, is a wonderful example of what a sound art can do in spite of limited resources. Not Carlyle's Berserkir fury, but good-nature is, according to Mr. Arnold, the essence of the English character, and these volumes seem to prove that he is right. Satirists and caricaturists dealt Napo- leon swasbing blows freely enough while he lived, and was a danger to English liberties. But they bore no malice. He had scarcely landed in St. Helena, than they turned their guns against the Legitimists. When he died, in 1821, not one of any weight was SO wanting in magnanimity as to kick the dead lion.