Page:English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the nineteenth century.djvu/407

 Britannia (a stout elderly woman who looks suspiciously on) that his intentions were of the most honourable description.

In the sketch entitled The Next Invasion, Landing of the French (Light Wines), and Discomfiture of Old General Beer (vol. xxxviii.), we have a pictorial prophecy which has not borne fulfilment. Although the so-called vin ordinaire made some progress among us for a time, it was soon discovered that a low class of wine, which the French themselves would not drink, was being manufactured for the English market, and that good sound claret remained (as might have been anticipated) as dear, if not dearer, than ever. The climate and constitution of John Bull do not enable him to appreciate the merits of "red ink" as a table beverage, and in the end old General Barleycorn rallied and drove the invaders out of the popularity they had for a time achieved.

And here we break off—for reasons which will be apparent in our next chapter—the further consideration of the graphic satires of the late John Leech. Before passing on to other matters, we are bound to say that we regard them rather for what they might have been than for what we actually find them. Had they been executed with the same materials and under the same conditions as the graphic satires of Gillray or Cruikshank, or still better, in the manner in which the sporting pictures to the late Mr. Surtees' novels were produced, we have no hesitation in saying that they would have distanced anything in the nature of caricature which had gone before. Unfortunately, the productions of the modern caricaturist (if, indeed, we may term him one) have no reasonable chance, it being apparently taken for granted that a modern public will not invest in caricatures of an expensive character. Moreover, he has no longer any hand in the completion of his picture, the wood-block being cut up into segments, each entrusted to a different hand, and executed with materials with which the older caricaturists had nothing to do, and under conditions of pressure