etching--"Angelo's Fencing Room," full of contemporary portraits, "The
Pleasure of the Country," where fine ladies struggling through the mud
find a litter of piglets rushing in among their skirts, were among the
best of these, while a print of "Girls Dressing for the Masquerade," and
the "Dutch Academy," with a fat model posing before solid Dutchmen,
were among those not infrequent prints of our artist whose satire comes
near--if not over--the confines of good taste.

=_By Thomas Rowlandson_ A THEATRICAL CANDIDATE=

Some clever prints of Dr. Syntax himself were here--a subject this
which, published by Ackermann under the title of a "Tour of Dr. Syntax
in search of the Picturesque" in 1809, was republished in 1812, and
occupied the artist in various developments during his later life. To
the same period of Rowlandson's career belonged "The Microcosm of
London" (1808), "A Mad Dog in a Coffee House" (1809), and "In a Dining
Room" (1809), the print called "Exhibition Stare-case, Somerset House"
(1811)--where the visitors of both sexes are tumbling headlong
downstairs, the extraordinary cleverness of drawing scarcely
compensating for the doubtful taste of the subject; and later followed
"The World in Miniature" (1816), "Richardson's Show," "The English Dance
of Death" (1814-16), and "Dance of Life" (1817), which leads on to the
later "Tour of Dr. Syntax in search of Consolation" (1820), and (1821)
"In search of a Wife." Although Fores of Piccadilly seems to have
published many of our artist's prints during the last years of the
eighteenth century, throughout his whole career Rudolph Ackermann
remained his constant friend; to the suggestion of this latter was due
the idea of a monthly publication, which gave Rowlandson regular
employment in his later years, and resulted in the series of prints
which I have just detailed, among which the quaint, angular form of Dr.
Syntax, with his thin legs, black coat and breeches, and hooked nose,
claims a prominent place.

These subjects lead us already into the early nineteenth century, and,
as doing so, fall outside our present limit; but Rowlandson himself
belongs in his art, as much as Bunbury or Gillray, to the earlier age.
An artist of extraordinary genius, we have it on record that two
successive Presidents of the Academy in his day, Sir Joshua Reynolds and
Sir Benjamin West, in expressing their admiration of his drawings, added
their opinion that, had he chosen a higher br