of Music_ (each twenty feet wide
by nine feet high), were painted for the Earl of Hardwick, and are, or
lately were, in the music saloon at Wimpole, in Cambridgeshire. His
pictures were seventy-one in number, twenty-five of which were engraved.
On the whole, therefore, Robert William Buss might afford to bear the
refusal of Charles Dickens's patronage with equanimity.

The paintings and etchings of Robert William Buss evince a strong
leaning in the direction of comic art, a taste which prompted him, in
1853, to deliver at various towns in the United Kingdom a course of very
successful and interesting lectures on caricature and graphic satire,
illustrated by several hundred examples executed by himself. In 1874,
the year before his death, he published for the amusement of his
friends, and for private circulation only, the substance of these
lectures, under the title of "English Graphic Satire and its Relation to
Different Styles of Painting, Sculpture, and Engraving." The numerous
illustrations to this work were those drawn for his lectures by the
artist, and reproduced for his book by the process of photo-lithography.
So far as comic art and caricaturists of the nineteenth century are
concerned, the author has comparatively little to say; but the work is
valuable as regards the subject generally, and might have been published
with advantage to the public. The artist delivered also lectures on "The
Beautiful and the Picturesque," as well as on "Fresco Painting."

Mr. Buss, if not very original as a comic designer, possessed
nevertheless a keen sense of humour. One of his pictures (engraved by H.
Rolls), entitled _Time and Tide Wait for no Man_, represents an artist,
sketching by the sea-shore, so absorbed in the contemplation of nature
that he remains unconscious of the fast inflowing tide, and deaf to the
warnings of the fisherman who is seen hailing him from the beach.

* * * * *

The comic publications which either preceded or ran side by side with
_Punch_ had for the most part a somewhat short and unsatisfactory
career. Perhaps the most successful of them was _Figaro in London_,
1831-36, which we have already noticed. _The Wag_, a long-forgotten
publication, enjoyed a very transient existence. In 1832 appeared
_Punchinello_, on the pages of which Isaac Robert Cruikshank was
engaged. _Punchinello_, however, ceased running after its tenth number.
_Asmodeus in London_, notwithstanding