tuous 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."[5] 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."

GUSTAVE DORE.

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 Dore as a
caricaturist. It may seem strange at first sight to introduce the name
of Dore into a work dealing exclusively with English caricature art,
and I do so, not by reason of the fact that his works are as familiar to
us in England as in France, not because he has pictorially interpreted
some of the finest thoughts in English literature, but because I find
his name so constantly mentioned in comparison with English
caricaturists and comic artists, and more especially with our George
Cruikshank. Now Gustave Dore is, if possible, still less a caricaturist
than our English Hogarth. I have seen the ghastly illustrations to the
licentious "Contes Drolatiques" of Balzac cited in proof of his claims
to be considered a caricaturist. I will not deny that Dore did try his
hand once upon a time at caricature, and if we are to judge him by these
attempts, we should pronounce him the worst French caricaturist the
world ever saw, which would be saying a great deal; for a worse school
than that of the modern French caricaturists (and I do not except even
Gavarni, Cham, or Daumier), does not anywhere exist. That this man of
marvellous genius had humour I do not for one moment deny; but it was
the grim humour of an inquisitor or torturer of the middle ages--of one
that revels in a perfect nightmare of terror.[6] Genius is said to be
nearly allied to madness; and if one studies some of his weird
creations--such, for instance, as _The Judgment Day_ in the legend of
"The Wandering Jew"--the thought involuntarily suggests itself that a
brain teeming with such marvellous and often morbid conceptions, might
have been pushed off its balance at any moment. Gustave Dore delights in
lofty, mediaeval-gabled buildings, with bartizans and antique galleries;
in