in England, France, and Germany are enumerated as possessing sets of the Dance of Death, that grandiose all-levelling series of caprices in the contemplation of which the Middle Ages found so much consolation. It was reserved for Holbein (1498-1554), seizing the idea and resuming all that his contemporaries thought and felt on the subject, to produce, in his fifty-three magnificent etchings of the Danse Macabre, the first, and perhaps the greatest, set of satirical moralities known to the modern
world.It is in the tumult of the Renaissance, indeed, that carica ture in its modern sense may be said to have been born. The great popular movements required some such vehicle of comment or censure ; the perfection to which the arts of design were attaining supplied the means; the invention of printing ensured its dissemination. The earliest genuine piece of pictorial irony that has been discovered is a caricature (1499) relating to Louis XII. and his Italian War. But it was the Reformation that produced the first full crop of satirical ephemerae, and the heads of Luther and Alexander VI. are. therefore the direct ancestors of the masks that smirk and frown from the "cartoons" of Punch and the C/iarivart. Fairly started by Lucas Cranach, a friend of Luther, in his Passionate of Christ and Anti- fhrist (1521), caricature was naturalized in France under the League, but only to pass into the hands of the Dutch, who supplied the rest of Europe with more or less satirical prints during the whole of the next century. A curious reaction is visible in the work of Peter Breughel (1510- 1570) towards the grotesque diablerie and macaberesque morality of medieval art, the last original and striking note of which is caught in the compositions of Jacques Callot (1593-1635), and, in a less degree, in those of his followers, Stefano della Bella (161 0-1 66 4) and Salvator Rosa ( L615-1673). On the other hand, however, Callot, one of the greatest masters of the grotesque that ever lived, in certain of his Caprices, and in his two famous sets of prints, the Miseres de la guerre, may be said to anticipate certain pro ductions of Hogarth and Goya, and so to have founded the school of ironical genre which now-a-days does duty for caricature.
In England, during the 16th century, caricature can hardly be said to have existed at all, a grotesque of Mary Stuart as a mermaid, a pen and ink sketch of which is yet to be seen in the Rolls Office, being the only example of it known. The Great Rebellion, however, acted as the Reformation had done in Germany, and Cavaliers and Roundheads caricatured each other freely. At this period satirical pictures usually did duty as the title pages of scurrilous pamphlets ; but one instance is known of the employment during the war of a grotesque allegory as a banner, while the end of the commonwealth produced a satirical pack of playing cards, probably of Dutch origin. The Dutch, indeed, as already has been stated, were the great purveyors of pictorial satire at this time and during the early part of the next century. In England the wit of the victorious party was rather vocal than pictorial ; in France the spirit of caricature was sternly repressed; and it was from Holland, bold in its republican freedom, and rich in painters and etchers, that issued the flood of prints and medals which illustrate, through cumbrous allegories and elaborate symbolization, the principal political passages of both the former countries, from the Restoration (1660) to the South Sea Bubble (1720). The most distinguished of the Dutch artists was Romain de Hooghe (1638-1720), a follower of Callot, who, without any of the weird power of his master, possessed a certain skill in grouping and faculty of grotesque suggestiveness that made his point a most useful weapon to William of Orange during the long struggle with Louis XIV.
the Age of Caricature. The spirit is evident in letters as in art ; in the fierce grotesques of Swift, in the coarser charges of Smollett, in the keen ironies of Henry Fielding, in the Aristophanic tendency of Foote s farces, no less than in the masterly moralities of Hogarth and the truculent satires of Gillray. The first event that called forth caricatures in any number was the prosecution (1710) of Dr Sacheverell ; most of these, however, were importations from Holland, and only in the excitement attendant on the South Sea Bubble, some ten years later, can the English school be said to have begun. Starting into active being with the ministry of Walpole (1721), it flourished under that statesman for some twenty years, the "hieroglyphics," as its prints were named, graphically enough, often circulat ing on fans. It continued to increase in importance and audacity till the reign of Pitt (1757-1761), when its activity was somewhat abated. It rose, however, to a greater height than ever during the rule of Bute (1761- 1763), and since that time its influence has extended without a single check. The artists whose combinations amused the public during this earlier period are, with few exceptions, but little known and not greatly esteemed. Among them were two amateurs, the countess of Bur lington and General Townshend ; Goupy, Boitard, and Liotard were Frenchmen ; Vandergucht and Vanderbank were Dutchmen. But it must not be forgotten that this period witnessed also the rise of William Hogarth (1697-1764). As a political caricaturist this great man was not successful, save in a few isolated examples, as in the portraits of Wilkes and Churchill ; but as a moralist and social satirist he has not yet been equalled. The publication, in 1732, of his Modern Midnight Conversation may be said to mark an epoch in the history of caricature. Mention must also be made of Paul Sandby (1725-1809), who was not a professional caricaturist, though he joined in the pictorial hue-and-cry against Hogarth and Lord Bute, and who is best remembered as the founder of the English school of water-colour; and of John Collet (1723-1788), said to have been a pupil of Hogarth, a kindly and indus trious humourist, rarely venturing into the arena of politics. During the latter half of the century, however, political caricature began to be somewhat more skilfully handled than of old by James Sayer, a satirist in the pay of the younger Pitt, while social grotesques were pleasantly treated by Henry William Bunbury (1750-1811) and Woodward. These personalities, however, interesting as they are, are dwarfed into insignificance by the great figure of James Gillray (1757-1815), in whose hands political caricature became almost epic for grandeur of conception and far-reaching suggestiveness. It is to the works of this man of genius, indeed, and (in a less degree) to those of his contemporary, Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827), an artist of great and varied powers, that historians must turn for the popular reflection of all the political notabilia of the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries. England may be said to have been the chosen home of caricature during this period. In France, timid and futile under the Monarchy, it had assumed an immense importance under the Revolution, and a cloud ot hideous pictorial libels was the result ; but even the Revolution left no such notes through its own artists, though Fragonard (1732-1806) himself was of the number, as came from the gravers of Gillray and Rowlandson. In Germany caricature did not exist. Only in Spain was there to be found an artist capable of entering into com petition with the masters of the satirical grotesque of whom England could boast. The works of Francisco Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) are described by Theophile Gautier
as "a mixture of those of Rembrandt, Watteau, and tho