nry Seymour, his father, a gentleman
of good family in Somersetshire, meeting with misfortune, removed to
London, and apprenticed him to Mr. Vaughan, a pattern designer of Duke
Street, Smithfield. This Vaughan seems to deserve a passing notice here
by reason of the fact that his father is said to have received proposals
for partnership from the father of the late Sir Robert Peel, which were
rejected, on the ground that the fortunes of the Peel family were not
then considered particularly flourishing. How far this statement may be
correct we know not. Assuming it to be true, the fortunes of the Peel
family afterwards took a turn which probably frequently gave Vaughan
_pere_ (if he lived to ruminate thereon) some serious cause for
reflection as well as of repentance.

Like Hogarth, with whom this artist, like all other comic designers, has
been frequently and improperly compared, young Robert Seymour declined
to waste his abilities as a mere mechanical draughtsman, and used his
technical education as a means of cultivating the artistic gifts with
which nature and inclination had endowed him. He seems at first to have
selected a walk in art which required for its ultimate success a larger
amount of application and patience than he could well spare for the
purpose. Shortly after the expiration of his indentures, he started as a
painter in oils, and executed several pictures, one of which (a Biblical
subject) included, it is said, no less than one hundred figures, whilst
a no less ambitious subject than Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered" was
deemed of sufficient merit to be exhibited on the walls of the Royal
Academy. Other pictorial subjects were taken from "Don Quixote,"
"Waverley," "The Tempest," etc., besides which he executed numerous
portraits and miniatures. These efforts, however, do not appear to have
been sufficiently remunerative to encourage him to continue them, and
after a time he resigned them to follow a branch of art more congenial,
perhaps, to his abilities, and thenceforth very rapidly acquired fame as
a social satirist and caricaturist.

The coloured caricatures of Robert Seymour, besides being comparatively
scarce and little known, seem hardly to call for any particular
description; the titles of some of them will be found mentioned in our
Appendix. One which has survived, and with which the public are probably
most familiar, is one of the worst of the series. It is entitled, _Going
it by Steam_, is signed "