of which has the features of Dr. Johnson,
while the other is distinguished by the head of
some court writer whose identity cannot now be
traced. Johnson was frequently caricatured.
A print issued in 1782 shows him as an owl,
standing on two of his own volumes, and leering
at the heads of Milton, Pope, and others, which
are surrounded with starry rays. This was in
allusion to the depreciatory remarks contained
in his recently published Lives of the Poets.
The face is powerfully drawn, and is probably
a good likeness of the doctor, from the
exaggerated and unsympathetic point of view.

It would be impossible, in the compass of a
single essay, to follow the complicated politics
of the reign of George the Third, as exemplified
in the comic art of that long era; for the
caricaturists were very busy during the whole of
those sixty years. The love of caricature seems
to have increased as the eighteenth century
wore on towards its close, and a vast number
of pictorial squibs were issued during the days
of the second Pitt and Fox, of Burke and
Sheridan, of Shelburne, North, Warren Hastings,
Grattan, Horne Tooke, and the other eminent
politicians of the time. The faces of all these
men have been rendered familiar to us by the
burlesque artists of the period, who did not
spare royalty itself. Indeed, George and his
consort were frequently made the subjects of
ludicrous pictures, which could hardly have
been flattering to their self-esteem. They were
represented as "Farmer George and his wife,"
a very common-place couple, equally plain in
looks and in costume; as misers hugging their
bags of gold; as frugal, homely people, frying
sprats or toasting muffins; as sordid economisers,
trying to save a few pence in any shabby way;
as perambulators about Windsor and
Weymouth, scraping acquaintance with the
peasantry, and staggering them with rapid and
irrelevant questions; and in other ludicrous
or ignoble relations. Of course, the celebrated
story of the apple dumplings, told by Peter
Pindar in a well-known poem, was illustrated
by the draughtsmen of the time. A caricature
on this subject, depicting his majesty "learning
to make apple dumplings," was published in
November, 1797. The king's passion for hunting,
his coarse features and ungainly figure, his
over-familiarity of manner, and his devotion
to trivial pursuits, were repeatedly satirised by
the artists of the latter part of the last century.
It used to be said—whether justly or not—that
his majesty gave so much time to agriculture
that he neglected the duties of State; and he
was also accused of wasting a good deal of
petty ingenuity in making buttons. But
the avarice of the august pair was what the
caricaturists were most fond of holding up to
popular aversion and ridicule. "A very clever
caricature was published by Gillray, entitled
'Anti-saccharites,' in which the king and queen
are teaching their daughters to take their tea
without sugar, as 'a noble example of
economy.' The princesses have a look of great
discontent, but their royal mother exhorts them
to persevere: 'Above all, remember how much
expense it will save your poor papa.' The
king, delighted with the experiment, exclaims,
'O delicious! delicious!'" Another caricature
by the same artist, published in the same year
(1792), after the arrival of news of the defeat of
Tippoo Saib, shows us Dundas, as the minister
who took charge of Indian affairs, communicating
the intelligence to the monarch and his
consort. The secretary of state announces that
"Seringapatam is taken—- Tippoo is wounded—-
and millions of pagodas secured." George, who
is dressed in the costume of a huntsman,
exclaims, "Tally ho! ho! ho! ho!" while
Charlotte sighs forth, "O the dear, sweet pagodas!"
Gillray, it appears, had a personal cause for
disliking the king, the latter having once
spoken of the artist's sketches with contempt.
Yet in December, 1790, Gillray had published
a very loyal caricature, representing Dr. Price,
the Unitarian clergyman, as a disseminator of
treason, anarchy, and atheism, and Burke as
the illustrious upholder of the crown and
religion. Exactly a year later, we find him
satirising William Pitt as a toadstool springing
out of the royal crown, which is described
as "a dunghill." Price could hardly have been
more revolutionary than that.

The most eminent caricaturists of the later
years of the eighteenth and earlier years of the
nineteenth centuries were Gillray, Rowlandson,
and Sayer. Gillray may be said to have
refashioned and reanimated the art. His best
works are marked by real genius—by great
inventiveness, lively characterisation, considerable
humour, and no mean executive skill. His
later works are not so good as his earlier; some
of them, indeed, he only engraved, without
designing. Rowlandson was coarser, but not
devoid of talent; and Sayer, though less known
at the present day than either of the others,
was ingenious and prolific. The comic art of
the reign of the third George was more varied
and elaborate than that of the two preceding
reigns; but it was also more vulgar in spirit
and design. The astounding ugliness of costume
which set in about 1780, and continued in
several forms for many years, was equalled by
the heavy, debauched, bloated, and mean faces
of the people; and both these facts were made
the most of by the caricaturists.

The profligacy and spendthrift habits of the
Prince of Wales were severely lashed in many
of the caricatures of that period; but in a little
while personal matters gave place to the more
important considerations arising out of the
revolutionary condition of France, the spread
of agitation in our own country, and the great
war which speedily burst out between ourselves
and the newly established republic. The
anti-revolutionary and anti-Gallican feeling of the
upper and middle classes of England is
sufficiently proved by the caricatures reproduced or
described by Mr. Wright, which are almost all
on the national and conservative side. The
French are held up to ridicule in every
conceivable way, and John Bull is made to think
the most of himself. The brilliant achievements
of our army and navy were commemorated