The History of the Nineteenth Century in Caricature

ally a product of modern conditions and methods. As with the campaign song, its success depends upon its timeliness, upon the ability to seize upon a critical moment, a burning question

f the printing press, the caricaturist was as one crying in a wilderness. And it is only with the modern co-operation of printing and photography that caricature has come into its full inheritance. The best and most telling cartoons are those which do not merely reflect current public opinion, but guide it. In looking back over a century of caricature, we are apt to overlook this distinction. A cartoon which cleverly illustrates some important historical event, and throws light upon the contemporary attitude of the public, is equally interesting to-day, whether it anticipated the event or was published a month afterward. But in order to influence public opinion, caricature must contain a certain element of prophecy. It must suggest a danger or point an interrogation. As an example, we may compare two famous cartoons by the English artist Gillray, "A Connoisseur Examining a Cooper

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eration, and publisher of the greater part of Rowlandson's cartoons, adopted as an expedient for spreading political news a small balloon with an attached mechanism, which, when liberated, would drop news bulletins at intervals as it passed over field and village. In this country many people of the older generation will still remember the widespread popularity of the patriotic caricature-envelopes that were circulated during the Civil War. To-day we are so used to the daily newspaper cartoon that we do not stop to think how seriously handicapped the cartoonists of a century ago found themselves. The more important cartoons of Gillray and Rowlandson appeared either in monthly periodicals, such as the Westminster Magazine and the Oxford M

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intelligence in a nation, an awakened civic conscience, a sense of responsibility for the nation's welfare. The cleverest cartoonist would waste his time appealing to a nation of feudal vassals; he could not expect to influ

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shed in England at the close of the seventeenth century, when cartoonists of Gillray's rank were content to represent Lord Bute as a pair of boots, Lord North as Boreas, the north wind, and the elder Fox with the head and tail of the animal suggested by his name. Yet personification of one kind and another, and notably the personification of the nations in the shape of John Bull and Uncle Sam and the Russian Bear, forms the very alphabet of political caricature of the present day. Some of the most memorable series that have ever appeared were founded upon a chance resemblance of the subject of them to some natural object. Notable instances are Daumier's famous series of Louis Philippe represented as a pear, and Nast's equally clever, but more local, caricatures of Tweed as a money-bag. It would be interesting, if the material were accessible, to trace the development of the different personifications of England, France, and Russia, and the rest, from their first appearance in caricature, but unfortunately their earlier developmen

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act that some of the cleverest political satire ever written, as well as the best examples of the applicat

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