Page:English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the nineteenth century.djvu/249

 character of the ambassador gives one the idea of a Spanish Iago, a clever, calculating knave, whom we should credit with the possession of a broad and lofty forehead, indicative of deep and concentrated thought; in the etching, however, before us, he has none at all, a deficiency compensated by puffy cheeks and a preposterous beak. These imperfections, which in another artist would mar the drawing, serve only to throw its excellencies into prominent notice. The lights and shadows are most effectively rendered, and the setting sun throws a broad light upon the features of the warder, who has laid aside his arquebus while conversing with the wily Spaniard. Of the many who have noticed the well-known etching of Born a Genius and Born a Dwarf ["Comic Almanack, 1847"], not one (so far at least as we know) has ever mentioned its origin. The subject was prompted by one of the last entries in the diary of poor Benjamin Robert Haydon, who died by his own hand on the 22nd of June, 1846, his corpse being found at the foot of his colossal picture of Alfred the Great and the First British Jury. The entry runs as follows:—"Tom Thumb had 12,000 people last week, B. R. Haydon 133½ (the ½ a little girl). Exquisite taste of the English people!" In the etching which shows us Randulph and Hilda Dancing in the Rotunda at Ranelagh ["Miser's Daughter"], he brings us face to face with our great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers; wherever he got his authority from, the huge circular hall with galleries and arches running round it, illuminated by a thousand lamps, and the curious orchestra with the old-fashioned sounding-board above, are no freak of the artist's imagination. The etching possesses a wondrous charm of reality. We find ourselves assisting, as it were, at one of the masquerades described in "Sir Charles Grandison"; many of the company are in fancy dresses, and we find it difficult to realize, in these broad-cloth days, that the gentlemen in the velvet coats, with gold-bound embroidered waistcoats, silk stockings, silver gilt rapiers, and laced hats, dancing minuets with Chinamen, harlequins, scaramouches, templars, and other fancifully-dressed persons, are simply wearing the every-day costume of men of fashion of the day.