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CHAPTER XXVIII. GILLRAY’S CARICATURES ON SOCIAL LIFE—THOMAS ROWLANDSON—HIS EARLY LIFE—HE BECOMES A CARICATURIST—HIS STYLE AND WORKS—HIS DRAWINGS—THE CRUIKSHANKS 480

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A HISTORY
OF
CARICATURE AND GROTESQUE.

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CHAPTER I.

ORIGIN OF CARICATURE AND GROTESQUE.—SPIRIT OF CARICATURE IN EGYPT.—MONSTERS: PYTHON AND GORGON.—GREECE.—THE DIONYSIAC CEREMONIES, AND ORIGIN OF THE DRAMA.—THE OLD COMEDY.—LOVE OF PARODY.—PARODIES ON SUBJECTS TAKEN FROM GRECIAN MYTHOLOGY: THE VISIT TO THE LOVER: APOLLO AT DELPHI.—THE PARTIALITY FOR PARODY CONTINUED AMONG THE ROMANS: THE FLIGHT OF ÆNEAS.

It is not my intention in the following pages to discuss the question what constitutes the comic or the laughable, or, in other words, to enter into the philosophy of the subject; I design only to trace the history of its outward development, the various forms it has assumed, and its social influence. Laughter appears to be almost a necessity of human nature, in all conditions of man’s existence, however rude or however cultivated; and some of the greatest men of all ages, men of the most refined intellects, such as Cicero in the ages of antiquity, and Erasmus among the moderns, have been celebrated for their indulgence in it. The former was sometimes called by his opponents scurra consularis, the “consular jester;” and the latter, who has been spoken of as the “mocking-bird,” is said to have laughed so immoderately over the well-known “Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum,” that he brought upon himself a serious fit of illness. The greatest of comic writers, Aristophanes, has always been looked upon as a model of literary perfection. An epigram in the Greek Anthology, written by the divine Plato, tells us how, when the Graces sought a temple which would not fall, they found the soul of Aristophanes:—

Ἁι χάριτες τέμενός τι λαβεῖν ὁπερ οὐχὶ πεσεῖται
Ζητοῦσαι, ψυχὴν εὔρον Ἀριστοφάνους.

On the other hand, the men who never laughed, the ἀγέλαστοι, were looked upon as the least respectable of mortals.

A tendency to burlesque and caricature appears, indeed, to be a feeling deeply implanted in human nature, and it is one of the earliest talents displayed by people in a rude state of society. An appreciation of, and sensitiveness to, ridicule, and a love of that which is humorous, are found even among savages, and enter largely into their relations with their fellow men. When, before people cultivated either literature or art, the chieftain sat in his rude hall surrounded by his warriors, they amused themselves by turning their enemies and opponents into mockery, by laughing at their weaknesses, joking on their defects, whether physical or mental, and giving them nicknames in accordance therewith,—in fact, caricaturing them in words, or by telling stories which were calculated to excite laughter. When the agricultural slaves (for the tillers of the land were then slaves) were indulged with a day of relief from their labours, they spent it in unrestrained mirth. And when these same people began to erect permanent buildings, and to ornament them, the favourite subjects of their ornamentation were such as presented ludicrous ideas. The warrior, too, who caricatured his enemy in his speeches over the festive board, soon sought to give a more permanent form to his ridicule, which he endeavoured to do by rude delineations on the bare rock, or on any other convenient surface which presented itself to his hand. Thus originated caricature and the grotesque in art. In fact, art itself, in its earliest forms, is caricature; for it is only by that exaggeration of features which belongs to caricature, that unskilful draughtsmen could make themselves understood.

Although we might, perhaps, find in different countries examples of these principles in different states of development, we cannot in any one country trace the entire course of the development itself: for in all the highly civilised races of mankind, we first become acquainted with their history when they had already reached a considerable degree of refinement; and even at that period of their progress, our knowledge is almost confined to their religious, and to their more severely historical, monuments. Such is especially the case with Egypt, the history of which country, as represented by its monuments of art, carries us back to the remotest ages of antiquity. Egyptian art generally presents itself in a sombre and massive character, with little of gaiety or joviality in its designs or forms. Yet, as Sir Gardner Wilkinson has remarked in his valuable work on the “Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians,” the early Egyptian artists cannot always conceal their natural tendency to the humorous, which creeps out in a variety of little incidents. Thus, in a series of grave historical pictures on one of the great monuments at Thebes, we find a representation of a wine party, where the company consists of both sexes, and which evidently shows that the ladies were not restricted in the use of the juice of the grape in their entertainments; and, as he adds, “the painters, in illustrating this fact, have sometimes sacrificed their gallantry to a love of caricature.” Among the females, evidently of rank, represented in this scene, “some call the servants to support them as they sit, others with difficulty prevent themselves from falling on those behind them, and the faded flower, which is ready to drop from their heated hands, is intended to be characteristic of their own sensations.” One group, a lady whose excess has been carried too far, and her servant who comes to her assistance, is represented in our cut No. 1. Sir Gardner observes that “many similar instances of a talent for caricature are observable in the compositions of the Egyptian artists, who executed the paintings of the tombs” at Thebes, which belong to a very early period of the Egyptian annals. Nor is the application of this talent restricted always to secular subjects, but we see it at times intruding into the most sacred mysteries of their religion. I give as a curious example, taken from one of Sir Gardner Wilkinson’s engravings, a scene in the representation of a funeral procession crossing the Lake of the Dead (No. 2), that appears in one of these early paintings at Thebes, in which “the love of caricature common to the Egyptians is shown to have been indulged even in this serious subject; and the retrograde movement of the large boat, which has grounded and is pushed off the bank, striking the smaller one with its rudder, has overturned a large table loaded with cakes and other things, upon the rowers