Page:English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the nineteenth century.djvu/307



The irritable personage awoke from his slumbers by the music of the waits, certainly does not belong to any of the order of animate or inanimate subjects so softened, soothed, or bent, as aforesaid, for he opens his window and prepares to discharge the contents of his jug on the heads of the devoted minstrels. If the ancient ophicleide player, with the brandy bottle protruding from his great coat pocket, might but know of the impending cataract which more immediately threatens himself, he would convey himself from the dangerous neighbourhood with all the alacrity of which his spindle shanks are capable. A younger neighbour on the opposite side of the street awaits the catastrophe with amused interest, whilst a drunken "unfortunate" executes—under the elevating influences of music and drink—a pas seul on the pavement below. In the etching of Story Telling, the deep shadows of an old baronial hall are illuminated solely by the moonbeams and the flickering flame of the firelight; a door opens into a gallery beyond, and one of the listeners, fascinated by the ghost story to which she is listening, glances fearfully over her shoulder as if apprehensive that something uncanny will presently issue out of the black recesses. The ghostly surroundings have their influences on the very cat, who looks uneasily about her as if afraid of her shadow. Besides the thirty-six etchings on copper, the book contains several charming woodcuts, impressed on paper of a very different quality to that on which the artist was accustomed to behold impressions from his woodblocks.

Of a class entirely different to the foregoing may be mentioned the still rarer series of comicalities executed by the artist under the title of "New Readings of old Authors," of which we may notice the following: Moved in Good Time (Taming of the Shrew, Act 2, Sc. I), a tax-gatherer and other creditors bemoaning themselves outside the premises of a levanted debtor; I am to get a man, whate'er he be (Act 3, Sc. 2), disciples of Burke and Hare providing themselves with a living subject; I do remember when the fight was done, when I was dry (King Henry IV., Part I, Act I, Sc. 3), a