MINOR CORRESPONDENCE.

GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE.

England under the House of Hanover, illustrated from the Caricatures and Satires of the Day. By Thomas Wright, Esq. M.A. F.S.A. With Numerous Illustrations executed by F. W. Fairholt, F.S.A. 2 vols. 8vo.

THE saying of a late eminent lawyer is well known,-" Suffer me to make the songs of a country, and you may make the laws,”—that is, give me the command over the popular feeling, and I should care little for the control of legislative enactment, knowing that the formula of law springs from the heart of the people, and that "Sine moribus nil prosunt leges."* "Every poem," says the moralist, "every history, every oration, every statue, and every picture, is an experiment in human feeling, and therefore is a grand object of investigation. Every work of genius, in every department of art and polite literature, in proportion to the extent and duration of its tendency over the spirits of men, is a repository of ethical facts of which the philosopher cannot be deprived without being robbed of the most precious instruments and invaluable materials of his science. Even of manners however strange and ridiculous, and habits however peculiar and eccentric, it is highly interesting to possess accurate notions and records, as part of the history of the human mind at certain eras of the national existence. If these records, in whatever shape they appear, are delineative of existing manners and accurate pictures of character, though they may be exhibited in an exaggerated form and go somewhat beyond the mark, they will not be devoid of moral benefit, as they will act with stronger impress on the feelings, and their deviations from exact truth will be silently corrected by the knowledge of the observer. And we must recollect that every species of comic humour delights in diversified objects, in violent and glaring colours, and in strongly designed oppositions; and inventive wit is weakened of half its powers if it is not allowed to sport away without restraint. The ingenious author of the "Characteristics" advises that popular passions should be treated in "a Bartlemy-fair mode," or, as he explains, should be subject to a raillery as unrestrained as the drollery of a fair. Personal satire is a strong sword and keen-edged, "magnas secat res. Mademoiselle Scuderi used to say, "Je vous avoue que je suis furieusement pour les portraits, je ne vois rien de si galant que cela." In a country of free institutions, and especially in an agitated age and amid stirring and turbulent times, personal satire will appear under every shape that the state of the arts and the civilization of the community will allow. The

"If the laws deviate from the habitual feelings of the people, so as to produce a struggle between law and sentiment, it is hard to say on which side success is most deplorable."-Sir J. Mackintosh's View of Ethical Philosophy, p. 169. The great moral poet of Roman literature joins the written and unwritten laws whose united influence acts on society,-" Mos et lex, maculosum edocuit nefas."-Vid. Horat. ii. Od. iv. 5, 21. No one can forget the learned dissertation that took place in the highest courts at Westminster on the meaning of the word mores, which was debated at length by the opposing counsel, and brought out Lord Loughborough's classical recollections to decide the controversy, by which Mr. (Archdeacon) Wrangham lost his election, The Chancellor's choice of authorities was both happy and just.-REV.

Caricature of the Painter, we presume, arose in the same country whose free institutions gave rise to the Comedy of the Poet; for the earliest appearance of what are called caricatures we take to be those comic parodies which are seen on the old Greek vases, where the ideal forms of the deities are transposed into figures eminently ludicrous in shape, gesture, and occupation, much assisted by the grotesque appearance of the comic mask, which gives double force to the jesting attitudes of these fantastic personages. The laughable and ludicrous representations appear occasionally in other productions of the chisel or the brush, sometimes descending to exhibitions of the most loose and licentious raillery.

It is not easy to prescribe the exact boundaries in which the licence of satire must be constrained to keep, yet it is not wise to expose the gravity of the law to a conflict with such light and ludicrous opponents; * nor would the suppression of the sportive jests and capricious mirth (the democratic species of painting) be possible, without a dangerous circumscription of general liberty, while the sources of the ludicrous are continually rising up in inexhaustible profusion to mark the follies and infatuations of the age. It is not indeed very agreeable by a lèse-majesté that royalty itself should be exposed in its privacies to the public gaze, nor to aristocratic pride, that the vulgar should be admitted "betwixt the wind and their nobility." But the first step in self-improvement is to gain self-knowledge, and Martinus Scriblerus prescribes for young noblemen a treatment which he considers will work for good in the correction of their judgments: "Let him see himself naked, divested of his artificial charms, with bandy legs, a short neck, a dun hide, and a pot belly, and then see how the portrait would resemble the young Oroondates." As wit, however, is rather a perishable article, and has but a partial, and often temporary, existence (for how flat and poor to our ear are most of the celebrated jokes and witticisms of antiquity !), and mainly depends on living men and living manners, and does not keep beyond a certain time, Mr. Wright has done well and wisely in bringing together in these volumes a certain portion of our best national satires, † in the shape of "Caricatures," which appeared from the pencil of the cleverest artists of the time during successive periods of interest, and in illustrating them, as he has done, by the lights of contemporary history in an entertaining and impartial narrative.

*Yet comedy has been deprived by the hand of power of that unrestrained freedom which was necessary to its execution:

Successit vetus his comedia, non sine multâ
Laude, sed in vitium libertas excidit et vim
Dignum lege regi; lex est accepta, &c.

Hor. de Arte Poetica.

We also can remember the time when that unequalled actor in his line, Charles Mathews, received a hint that his admirable imitation of Lord Ellenborough's charge to the jury had better be omitted on the stage.-REV.

As from a diamond globe with rays condense,
"Tis satire gives the strongest light to sense;
To thought compression, vigour to the soul,
To language bounds, to fancy due control;
To truth the splendour of her awful face,

To learning dignity, to virtue grace;

To conscience stings beneath the cap or crown,
To vice that terror she will feel and own.

But the writer of these lines might be obliged to say with his more illustrious predecessor in the same dangerous and difficult walk of poetry, "Sunt quibus in satirâ, videar nimis acer," &c.-REV.

Mr. Wright gives us in his introduction the reasons for which he has selected a certain portion of history for illustration.

"The period of the reign of the first three Georges is to us interesting, because in it originated all those distinctions of political parties, and that peculiar spirit of constitutional antagonism, which exist at the present day. With it most of the political questions now in dispute took their rise. It consists in itself of two periods; the first, that in which the House of Brunswick was established on the throne of England, upon the ruin of jacobitism and by the overthrow of the political creed of despotism; the second, that in which the same dynasty and its throne were defended against the encroachments of that fearful flood of republicanism which burst out from a neighbouring kingdom, and when they thus gained the victory over democracy. During these periods both the great political parties in this country came into play; in the first, the constitution owed its salvation to the Whigs; in the second, it was in all probability saved by the Tories.

This was the period (the author proceeds to say) during which political caricatures flourished in England-when they were not mere pictures to amuse and excite a laugh, but when they were made extensively subservient to the political warfare that was going on. This use of them seems to have been imported from Holland, and to have first come into extensive practice

after the Revolution of 1688. Before that
time, the art of engraving had not made
sufficient progress in this country to allow
them to be produced with much effect.
The older caricatures, those for instance
upon Cromwell, were chiefly executed by
Dutch artists; and, even in the great in-
undation of caricatures occasioned by the
South Sea Bubble, the majority of them
came from Holland. It was a defect of
the earlier productions of this class, that
they partook more of an emblematical
character, than of what we now under-
stand by the term caricature. Even Ho-
garth, when he turned his hand to politics,
could not shake off the old prejudice on
this subject, and it would be difficult to
point out worse examples than the two
celebrated publications which drew upon
him so much popular odium,
"The

Times."
Modern caricature took its form
from the pencils of a number of clever
amateur artists, who were actively engaged
in the political intrigues of the reign of
George II. ; it became a rage during the
first years of his successor, and then seemed
to be dying away, to revive suddenly in
the splendid conceptions of Gillray. This
able artist was certainly the first carica-
turist of our country; during his long ca-
reer he produced a series of prints which
form a complete history of the age."

Mr. Wright then mentions the difficulties he had to contend with, in labouring in an extensive field where no one had previously cleared the * way. In addition to which he found, on inquiry and examination, that no public collection of political tracts, papers, prints, &c. exists; that the poverty of our national museum was, in works of this class, deplorable; but, as regarded caricatures, he was liberally supplied by private stores. He mentions the most important to be those of Mr. Haviland Burke, nephew of the great statesman; Mr. Hawkins, Keeper of the Antiquities in the Museum, whose collection is probably the largest ever made in this country; Mr. Smith, of Lisle Street; Mr. Diamond; and Mr. Haggard, the President of the Numismatic Society, whose cabinet of satirical and historical medals has been of considerable utility. He at the same time laments that no one, so far as he has discovered, has made any considerable collection of political songs, satires, and other such tracts,† published during the last

*It ought not, however, to be forgotten that "An historical sketch of the Art of Caricaturing" was written by Mr. J. P. Malcolm, F.S.A. author of Londinium Redivivum, and "The Manners and Customs of London," and published in 4to. 1813, with 31 plates copied from the originals by the author. In this work the principal political caricatures are described down to the year 1810.-REV.

+ Our own private collection of these politico-satirical pieces is very limited, and consists chiefly of the following :

1. Rats rhymed to Death, or the Rump Parliat.

2. Rump Songs by eminent Wits; 2 parts, from 1629 to 1661

3. Choice Collection of 180 Loyal Songs, 3d ed.

1660

1662

1685

century and the present; this class of literature too is rapidly perishing, although he thinks the time not yet past when such a collection might be made with considerable success.

Mr. Wright informs us that the impeachment of Sacheverell was the first event of English history in the eighteenth century which furnished a subject for caricatures. Dean Kennett tells us, that," for distinguishing the friends of Dr. Sacheverell as the only true churchmen, and representing his enemies as betrayers of the church, there were several cuts and pictures designed for the mob; among others a copper-plate with a crown, mitre, bible, and common prayer, as supported by that truly evangelical and apostolical, truly monarchical and episcopal, truly legal and canonical, or truly Church of England fourteen," who had supported Sacheverell through his trial. Mr. Wright tells us, that several of the prints here alluded to are in the collection of Mr. Hawkins; in general they are equally poor in design and execution, as the poetry seems much of a par with the sister arts.* Of the first English caricature published during the reign of George the First, which engaged considerable popularity, Mr. Wright says, that he has not been able to ascertain that a single copy is in existence; it was aimed at the ex-treasurer, the Earl of Oxford, and one of his creatures, a Scot named Gregg, who had been engaged in intrigues during the late ministry. At this time, Ned Ward, the publican-poet, whose works amount we think to eight or ten volumes, was the Tory poet; and the political hawkers and ballad singers had become so troublesome in the streets of London that the Lord Mayor was obliged to seize upon many of them and throw them into the House of Correction; and proclamations were issued for the suppression of false and scurrilous libels. It was during the elections of 1710 and 1715 that English elections of Members of Parliament first took that character of angry turbulence which for more than a century destroyed the peace, and even endangered the safety, of our country towns. The Flying Post of Jan. 27, 1715, gives the following

4. Political Monuments (in 3 parts and addition) 5. Tory Pills to purge Whig Melancholy, 2d ed. 6. A Pill to purge State Melancholy

He has also

This copy belonged to Horace Walpole, who has in his MS. notes
filled up many of the blanks, and cleared up many allusions.
written on the fly leaf, "This book is rare, and contains the Whig songs
made during the last four years of Q. Anne.
good."

7. Mug-House Poems, or State Songs, &c.

Some of them are remarkably

8. T. Durfey's Pills to purge Melancholy, 6 vols.

9. The New Ministry. Satirical ballads, &c. scarce

10. Remarkable Satires, as Porcupineade, Pasquinade, &c.

1714

1715

1716

1716

Interleaved and filled with Isaac Reed's MS. notes and interpretations.

1771

1776

no date 1786

11. Foundling Hospital for Wit, 6 vols.

12. Mod". Characters by Shakspere

13. Passages selected by Distinguished Persons from Vortigern and Rowena,

2 vols.

14. Asylum for Fugitive Pieces, 3 vols.

And this brings us down to the time of H. Williams, of Peter Pindar, of Mason's Heroic Epistles, of the Anti-Jacobin, and the Rolliad.-REV.

Mr. Wright tells us that Mr. Roach Smith possesses a tobacco-stopper, bearing the head of Sacheverell, and the reverse of the mitre, and all kinds of ornamented articles were made the means of conveying caricatures; and we even find them on the seals of letters, on buttons for coats, and somewhat later they appear on playing-cards and on ladies' fans, and we may add on ladies' cheeks, according to the number and situation of the patches. The "Flying Post was one of the most violent organs of the Whigs.