Page:English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the nineteenth century.djvu/172

 the Hostile Press, or Shakespeare in Danger, all of which contain perhaps the best theatrical portraits of the popular tragedian which are extant.

Sir Walter Scott also figures in one of Robert's satires of this year entitled, The Great Unknown lately discovered in Ireland, wherein he is represented in Highland costume, with the Waverley novels on his head, holding by the hand a small figure in hussar uniform, intended for his son, Captain Scott of the 18th hussars, who this year had married Miss Jobson, of Lochore. The pair after their marriage returned to Ireland, where the captain was quartered, and where he and his wife were visited by Sir Walter in August of this year. Although the fact was pretty well known, the authorship of the novels was not avowed until February of the following year, when with Sir Walter's consent it was proclaimed by Lord Meadowbank at a theatrical dinner on the 27th of February.

A very curious personage makes his appearance in Robert's sketches of this year, who would seem at first sight to be the most outrageously caricatured of any of his subjects, and yet this in truth is not the case. This person was the celebrated Claude Ambroise Seurat, "the living skeleton," who was exhibited at the Chinese saloon in Pall Mall, and whose portrait from three different points of view was taken by Robert Cruikshank, and afterwards appeared in the first volume of Hone's "Every-day Book," where a full account of this very singular personage will be found. The repulsive object, who (with the exception of his face) presented all the appearance of an attenuated skeleton, was exhibited in a state of complete nudity with the exception of a fringe of silk about his middle, from which (out of two holes cut for the purpose) protruded his dreadful hip bones. Seurat, as might have been expected, forms the subject of numerous contemporary caricatures; and in one of these, by way of comical contrast, the worthy but corpulent alderman, Sir William Curtis, distinguished by a similar scantiness of attire, figures with the living skeleton in a lively pas de deux. William Heath, in another of contemporary date, represents the fat alderman standing on a map of England, and Seurat on a map of France. Says Sir William: "I