Page:English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the nineteenth century.djvu/233

 are respectively inscribed, "Verdict, wilful murder," and "Verdict, manslaughter"; a group of life guardsmen grin and point at the body, and one of them jeeringly remarks, "Shake not thy bloody locks at me; ye cannot say who did it." Another satire on the same subject bears the title of The Horse Chancellor obtaining a Verdict, or Killing no Murder.

Other subjects of this year are the following: And when Ahitophel saw that his Counsel was not followed, he Saddled his Ass, and arose and went and Hanged himself; O! O! there's a Minister of the Gospel; The Royal Extinguisher, or the King of Brobdingnag and the Liliputians (etched after the design of Isaac Robert). Six subjects, La Diligence and La Doriane, Venus de Medici and Mer de Glace, Visit to Vesuvius and Forum Boarium, and Nosing the Nob at Ramsgate, a coarsely executed satire aimed at his Majesty and his eccentric subject, Alderman Sir William Curtis.

Sir William Curtis, alderman, trader, and formerly member for the city, is one of the most prominent figures in the satires of his time. Making every allowance for caricature drawing, the likeness must have been on the whole a faithful though an exaggerated one; for in all the numerous comical sketches in which he makes an appearance, we never fail to recognise his ruby nose and ponderous figure. We have already seen him figuring by way of ludicrous contrast with Claude Ambroise Seurat, the "living skeleton," and we shall now find him associated by the caricaturists with no less a person than the king himself. When his majesty, in 1822, paid his visit to Scotland, and by way of compliment to the country and her traditions assumed the "garb of old Gael," Alderman Sir William Curtis, who followed his sovereign at a respectful distance, out of compliment to the country, her traditions, "his most gracious majesty," and himself, put his own corpulent form into fancy costume, and likewise donned the Highland garb. The absurdly ludicrous result is told us by Lockhart. "The king at his first levee diverted many, and delighted Scott by appearing in the full Highland garb—the same brilliant Stewart tartans, so-called, in which certainly no Stewart, except Prince Charles, had ever before