Page:English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the nineteenth century.djvu/41

 likened to, as they are strong and masculine satires), less mingled with anything of mere fun, were never written upon paper or graven upon copper. They resemble Juvenal, or the satiric touches in Timon of Athens."

Hogarth was a stern moralist and satirist, but his satires have nothing in common with the satires of the nineteenth century; such men as the infamous Charteris and the quack Misaubin figure in his compositions, and their portraits are true to the life. Although his satire is relieved with flashes of humour, the reality and gravity of the satire remain undisturbed. The March to Finchley is one of the severest satires on the times; it shows us the utter depravity of the morals and manners of the day, the want of discipline of the king's officers and soldiers, which led to the routs of Preston and Falkirk, the headlong flight of Hawley and his licentious and cowardly dragoons. Some modern writers know so little of him that they have not only described his portrait of Wilkes as a caricature, but have cited the inscription on his veritable contemporary caricature of Churchill in proof of the assertion. Now what says this inscription? "The Bruiser (Churchill, once the Reverend), in the character of a Russian Hercules, regaling himself after having killed the monster Caricatura, that so severely galled his virtuous friend, the heaven-born Wilkes." Hogarth's use of the word caricatura conveys a meaning which is not patent at first sight; Wilkes's leer was the leer of a satyr, "his face," says Macaulay, "was so hideous that the caricaturists were forced in their own despite to flatter him." The real sting lies in the accuracy of Hogarth's portrait (a fact which Wilkes himself admitted), and it is in this sarcastic sense that Hogarth makes use of the word "caricatura."

Turning from Hogarth to a modern artist, in spite of his faults of most marvellous genius and inventive faculty, I frequently find critics of approved knowledge and sagacity describing the late Gustave Doré as a caricaturist. It may seem strange at first sight to introduce the name of Dore into a work dealing exclusively with