cloud, because belonging to the too-national party of the province, and suspected of a want of sincere attachment to the 'Aared dynasty.'

Amid the rabble are many other elements, exotic to Riad, though never wholly absent from it. Camel-drivers from Zulphah, who in their frequent intercourse with Zobeyr and Basrah, have alloyed Wahhabee gravity and Nejdean decency with the devil-may-care way of those ambiguous lands half Shiya'ee, half infidel; some ill-conditioned youth, who having run away from his father or the Metow'waa' at Riad, has a while sought liberty and fortune among the sailors of Koweyt or Taroot, and returned with morals and manners worthy of Wapping or Portsmouth, for Jack-tars are much the same everywhere; some thin Yemance pedlar, come up by Wadi Nejran and Dowasir to slip quietly in and out through the streets of the capital and laugh at all he sees; perhaps some Belooch or Candahar darweesh, like those who accompanied us a month ago to Bereydah, and who here awaits companions with whom to cross the eastern arm of the desert on his way to the Persian Gulf; mixed with these, the beggars of Dowasir, more fanatic, more viciously ill-tempered, and more narrow in heart and head than the men of 'Aared themselves, with the addition of a laziness, meanness, and avarice quite their own; close by, some young, lean, consumptive-looking student, who, cursed with a genius, has come to study at Riad, where he lives on the Coran and the scanty alms of the palace; his head full of true orthodox learning, and his belly empty or nearly so; and others less significant, each on "his business and desire, such as it is," might an Arab Hamlet say.'

We had marked for quotation other passages relating to later parts of Mr. Palgrave's journey, and we should gladly have compared his account of the population, military force, and resources of Nejd in 1862 with that which was given by M. Mengin about forty years before; but we must abstain.

We take leave of Mr. Palgrave, thanking him for the amusemen he has afforded us; but we may perhaps be permitted to say, without offence, that a little less anxiety to display his artistic skill, and a little more attention to the truth of history, might have ensured to him more unreserved confidence. His misapprehension as to the condition of Arabia and as to what was already known of Nejd, which gives him throughout the air of a man who expects to get credit for having been the first to discover what other writers had previously made known to the public, tends in like manner to make reliance more hesitating. Then the mystery which he has felt himself obliged or has thought proper to observe with regard to the purposes of his journey while he takes care to inform us of the auspices under which it was performed, has tended, we have reason to believe, to produce in some quarters a feeling of distrust. At the same time we must acknowledge, as we have already said, that,

although

although the colouring may sometimes be too high, we see no sufficient reason to doubt that the outlines of what he depicts from personal observation are for the most part faithfully drawn. We must altogether object, however, to the course which he has pursued with regard to the narratives, especially of historical events, which he says he collected from the Arabs. He gives a general intimation, it is true, that he relates them as they were told to him, and that he is not responsible for their accuracy; but, having done this, he proceeds to embody them in his own narrative, to comment upon and use them as if their accuracy were undoubted. We have pointed out some instances and might have cited many more in which a very moderate acquaintance with the authentic information that was available to him would have enabled him to correct the errors to which he has given currency, and which must prevent his book from ever being regarded as an authority.

ART. VIII.—A History of Caricature and Grotesque in Literature and Art. By Thomas Wright, Esq.; with Illustrations from various sources, drawn and engraved by F. W. Fairholt, Esq.

MONG the many contributions which Mr. Thomas Wright

has made towards English antiquarian research, and, in particular, towards the familiar delineation of the manners and customs of our ancestors, none is, perhaps, so popular or so well known as his two volumes entitled 'England under the House of Hanover, illustrated from the Caricatures and Satires of the day.' The very spirited woodcuts with which this book is adorned by Mr. Fairholt might alone have sufficed to make its fortune. Published only in 1848, it is already difficult to procure a copy. Encouraged by his success in this line, Mr. Wright has now attempted the wider enterprise announced in this title-page. We fear that in doing so he has been somewhat over ambitious. A history of the 'caricature and grotesque in literature and art,' extending over all countries and all time, comprising not only pictorial representations, but poetry, satire, the drama, and buffoonery of all descriptions, is a subject which, if it be attempted at all in a single octavo volume, could only be so in the form of a compact and well-reasoned essay, to which Mr. Wright's entertaining fragmentary sketches bear little resemblance. The immeasurable laughter' of nations, ancient and modern, cannot be reduced within so small a compass. We must therefore content ourselves with thanking Mr. Wright for his desultory but agreeable attempts for our enlightenment. And we propose, on the

present

present occasion, to confine ourselves entirely to the artistic portion of them: enlivened, as it is, by a new series of Mr. Fairholt's excellent illustrations. Our inability to transfer these to our own pages places us, as we feel, at a great disadvantage: many words are required to explain to the reader the contents of a picture, which a few outlines by an able hand impress at once visibly on the recollection. Deprived of this advantage, we must confine ourselves as well as we can to the points on which caricature touches the history of social and political life, rather than those by which it borders on the great domain of Art, properly so called.

The word caricature is not found in the dictionaries, I believe, until the appearance of that of Dr. Johnson, in 1755. Caricature is, of course, an Italian word, derived from the verb caricare, to charge or load; and therefore it means a picture which is charged or exaggerated. ["Ritratto ridicolo," says Baretti's Dictionary, "in cui fiensi grandemente accresciuti i difetti." The old French dictionaries say: "c'est la même chose que charge en peinture."] The word appears not to have come into use in Italy until the latter half of the seventeenth century, and the earliest instance I know of its employment by an English writer is that quoted by Johnson from the Christian Morals' of Sir Thomas Brown, who died in 1682, but it was one of his latest writings, and was not printed till long after his death: "Expose not thyself by fourfooted manners unto monstrous draughts (i. e. drawings) and caricatura representations." This very quaint writer, who had passed some time in Italy, evidently uses it as an exotic word. We find it next employed by the writer of the Essay, No. 537, of the Spectator,' who, speaking of the way in which different people are led by feelings of jealousy and prejudice to detract from the characters of others, goes on to say "From all these hands we have such draughts of mankind as are represented in those burlesque pictures which the Italians call caricaturas, where the art consists in preserving amidst distorted proportions and aggravated features, some distinguishing likeness of the person, but in such a manner as to transform the most agreeable beauty into the most odious monster." The word was not fully established in our language in its English form of caricature until late in the last century.'-p. 415.

This, no doubt, is a serviceable, artistic definition of the word; but its popular meaning is, perhaps, a little more limited. It would be difficult accurately to distinguish caricature' in composition, according to the above description, from what we simply term 'grotesque;' exaggeration, that is, of natural effects for the mere purpose of the ludicrous. In using the word caricature, we generally add to this notion that of satire; and the best definition for our purpose, as well as to suit ordinary apprehension, though not at all originating in the primary meaning of the word, will be, that caricature' implies the use of the grotesque for the

purpose

purpose of satire: satire, of course, of many kinds, individual, moral, political, as the case may be.

Looking at our subject from this point of view, we must never eliminate from it all those amusing details respecting classical 'caricature,' to which Mr. Wright has devoted the first part of his work, and which a clever French writer, M. Champfleury, has just illustrated in a little book, superficial, entertaining, and 'cock-sure of everything,' as the manner of his nation is, entitled 'Histoire de la Caricature Antique.' The ancients were passionately fond of the grotesque: the Greeks intermingled it strangely, but gracefully, with their inimitable creations of beauty: the Romans, after their nature, made it coarse and sensual, where not merely imitative of the Hellenic.

'The discourses of Socrates resemble the pictures of the painter Pauson.' Some one had ordered of Pauson the picture of a horse rolling on the ground. Pauson painted him running. The customer complained that the condition of his order had not been fulfilled. Turn the picture upside down,' said the artist, and the horse will seem to roll on the ground.' From this moderately facetious anecdote of Lucian; from a passage of Aristotle, in which it is said that 'Polygnotus painted men better than they are; Pauson, worse than they are; Dionysius, such as they are;' and, lastly, from a few lines of Aristophanes, in which some Pauson or other is jeered at for his poverty, assumed to be the lot of Bohemian artists in general; M. Champfleury has arrived at the rapid conclusion, that Pauson was the doyen of all caricaturists. And he vindicates him, eloquently, from the aspersions of the Stagyrite. Aristotle,' says he, 'preoccupied with the idea of absolute beauty, has not expounded the scope of caricature, and its importance in society. This thinker, plunged in philosophical abstractions, despised as futile an art which nevertheless consoles the people in its sorrows, avenges it on its tyrants, and reproduces, with a satirical pencil, the thoughts of the multitude.'

Pliny the elder, after mentioning the serious compositions of the painter Antiphilus, informs us that idem (Antiphilus) jocoso nomine Gryllum deridiculi habitus pinxit. Unde hoc genus picturæ grylli vocabantur.' The meaning of this obscure passage-whether Gryllus was a ridiculous personage who had the misfortune to descend to posterity in some too faithful portrait by Antiphilus, or whether Gryllus was a serious personage, perhaps the son of Xenophon and hero of Mantinea, whose portrait was placed by the Athenians in the Ceramicus, whom Antiphilus had the audacity to caricature--has exercised the wits of plenty of antiquaries, and will no doubt give occupation

to

to many more. However, it seems to be from this anecdote of Pliny that grotesque figures engraved on ancient gems have received the name of Grylli' among the curious in modern times. This title has been particularly applied to those which represent figures composed of the heads and bodies of different animals capriciously united, so as to form monstrous and chimerical creatures.' In others, the desired effect is produced, not by these mere fabrications, but by grouping men and animals together in fanciful or ridiculous conjunctions. And these-conceived and executed with a prodigality of imagination amounting in many instances to genius-constitute, perhaps, the favourite, though by no means the only, style of comic art familiar to the classical ancients; one of which the known examples have of late years greatly multiplied, owing to the discoveries of ancient paintings at Pompeii and elsewhere. There is a pretty description of a picture of this sort in the Icones' of Philostratus. It represents a number of Cupids riding races on swans: one is tightening his golden rein, another loosening it; one dexterously wheeling round the goal: you might fancy that you could hear them encouraging their birds, and threatening and quarrelling with one another, as their very faces represent: one is trying to throw down his neighbour; another has just thrown down his; another is slipping off his steed, in order to bathe himself in the basin of the hippodrome.'

*

But, to revert to our original distinction, ancient art, though rich in the grotesque, does not produce on us the effect of caricature; either it has no definite satirical aim, or, if it has such, the satire is lost upon our ignorance. The attempts of antiquaries to explain its productions by giving them a supposed libellous meaning are among the most comical efforts of modern pedantry. A laughable scene on an Etruscan vase, representing a lover climbing a ladder to his mistress's casement, figures, we are told, Jupiter and Alcmena. The capital travestie of Æneas and Anchises as monkeys (Pompeii) is meant to satirise the imitative style of Virgil! The well-known and amusing scene in a painter's studio (ibid.) is an allusion to the decadence of art.' A pigmy and a fox (Gregorian Museum) are a philosopher and flatterer. An owl cutting off the head of a cock is Clytemnestra

*The 'Icones' of Flavius Philostratus, a writer of the age of the Flavian Emperors, contain a rhetorical description of a series of pictures which he saw, or feigns himself to have seen, in a 'stoa,' or colonnaded building, of four or five stories,' situated in a suburb of the city Neapolis.' The subjects described are partly mythological, partly landscape. Some of them are identical with those of frescoes of Pompeii, overwhelmed at the same period; and the general description of the style of treatment such as to remind the reader closely of those beautiful and singular specimens of the art of a world gone by.

murdering