timid compared with those
of Bunbury, Gillray, Rowlandson, and their successors, being limited to
a weekly "exaggerated" portrait, instead of composed of many figures.

[Illustration:
JAMES GILLRAY. _May 14th, 1799._

"THE GOUT."]

[Illustration:
W. H. BUNBURY, _etched by_ GILLRAY. _1811, pubd. May 15th, 1818._

"INTERIOR OF A BARBER'S SHOP IN ASSIZE TIME."]

_Face p. 5_]

But caricature was destined to receive its final blow at the hands of
that useful craftsman the wood-engraver. The application of
wood-engraving to all kinds of illustration, whether graphic or comic,
and the mode in which time, labour, and expense are economised, by the
large wood blocks being cut up into squares, and each square entrusted
to the hands of a separate workman, has virtually superseded the old and
far more effective process of etching. Economy is now the order of the
day in matters of graphic satire as in everything else; people are no
longer found willing to pay a shilling for a caricature when they may
obtain one for a penny. Hence it has come to pass, that whilst comic
artists abound, the prevailing spirit of economy has reduced their
productions to a dead level, and the work of an artist of inferior
power and invention, may successfully compete for public favour with the
work of a man of talent and genius like John Tenniel, a result surely to
be deplored, seeing there never was a time which offered better
opportunities for the pencil of a great and original caricaturist than
the present.[3]

MISTAKE OF THOSE WHO COMPARE MODERN CARICATURISTS WITH HOGARTH.

It is a common practice, and I may add mistake, with writers on comic
artists or caricaturists of our day, to compare them with Hogarth. Both
Hogarth and the men of our day are graphic satirists, but there is so
broad a distinction between the satire of each, and the circumstances of
the times in which they respectively laboured, that comparison is
impossible. Those who know anything of this great and original genius,
must know that he entertained the greatest horror of being mistaken for
a _caricaturist_ pure and simple; and although he executed caricatures
for special purposes, they may literally be counted on the fingers. "His
pictures," says Hazlitt, "are not imitations of still life, or mere
transcripts of incidental scenes and customs; but powerful _moral_
satires, exposing vice and folly in their most ludicrous points of view,
and with a profound ins