best-known prints, was
engraved by Rowlandson, and has acquired a good deal of his
characteristic drawing in the process; and I may mention briefly here
some prints dealing with Cambridge life--"The Hope of the Family,"
"Admission at the University," and "Pot Fair, Cambridge" (dated 1777),
as well as a series of very interesting original etchings by our artist
in the British Museum collection. Professor Colvin tells me that a
recently acquired collection there of Italian prints included several by
Bunbury; and among these may have been "John Jehu--L'Inghilterra," 1772,
and "The Dog-Barber--La Francia," 1772 (a theme which we have noted in
his print of the "Pont Neuf"), as they by their titles seem to be
evidently intended for the Italian market. By far the most interesting,
in one way, of these etchings by our artist--which date from the
beginning of his career and are often very weak in drawing--is one which
shows two boys, or men, one of whom is riding a pig; and which belongs
to the time when Bunbury was a boy at Westminster School, being thus, as
I believe, his earliest existing caricature. The British Museum is, in
fact, very rich in Bunbury's prints; and his series there of the
"Arabian Nights" (in colour, engraved by Ryder) may be noted here (the
print of "Morgiana's Dance" being especially charming), ere we turn
back to our artist's life story. In 1797 the Bunburys had taken a small
house at Oatlands, near Weybridge, to be near the Duke and Duchess of
York, who were then residing at Oatlands Park; and it was here that in
1798 Henry Bunbury had a terrible blow, in the loss of his wife at the
early age of forty-five years. The beautiful face and figure of
Catherine Horneck had often appeared in our artist's fancy subjects;
their life together seems to have been a very happy one, and we may
believe that he never entirely recovered from this loss, for the next
thirteen years of his life after her decease were spent by him in
comparative retirement. He left Oatlands, and probably also, then or
later, his official post at Court, and came to live in the Lake Country,
where he had Robert Southey as his friend; it was at Keswick that he
died, in 1811, and lies buried there far away from the grave of his wife
in Weybridge Church.

His prints form a link in our knowledge of eighteenth-century social
life in England which we could ill afford to lose. Not always very
strong in drawing, his humour is genuine, wholesome, spont