s (if our information be correct)
a certain M. Philipon, an indifferent artist (painting was his
profession), a tolerable designer, and an admirable wit. M. Philipon
designed many caricatures himself, married the sister of an eminent
publisher of prints (M. Aubert), and the two, gathering about them
a body of wits and artists like themselves, set up journals of their
own:--La Caricature, first published once a week; and the Charivari
afterwards, a daily paper, in which a design also appears daily.

At first the caricatures inserted in the Charivari were chiefly
political; and a most curious contest speedily commenced between the
State and M. Philipon's little army in the Galerie Vero-Dodat. Half a
dozen poor artists on the one side, and his Majesty Louis Philippe,
his august family, and the numberless placemen and supporters of the
monarchy, on the other; it was something like Thersites girding at
Ajax, and piercing through the folds of the clypei septemplicis with the
poisonous shafts of his scorn. Our French Thersites was not always an
honest opponent, it must be confessed; and many an attack was made upon
the gigantic enemy, which was cowardly, false, and malignant. But to see
the monster writhing under the effects of the arrow--to see his uncouth
fury in return, and the blind blows that he dealt at his diminutive
opponent!--not one of these told in a hundred; when they DID tell, it
may be imagined that they were fierce enough in all conscience, and
served almost to annihilate the adversary.

To speak more plainly, and to drop the metaphor of giant and dwarf, the
King of the French suffered so much, his Ministers were so mercilessly
ridiculed, his family and his own remarkable figure drawn with such
odious and grotesque resemblance, in fanciful attitudes, circumstances,
and disguises, so ludicrously mean, and often so appropriate, that the
King was obliged to descend into the lists and battle his ridiculous
enemy in form. Prosecutions, seizures, fines, regiments of furious legal
officials, were first brought into play against poor M. Philipon and his
little dauntless troop of malicious artists; some few were bribed out
of his ranks; and if they did not, like Gilray in England, turn their
weapons upon their old friends, at least laid down their arms, and would
fight no more. The bribes, fines, indictments, and loud-tongued avocats
du roi made no impression; Philipon repaired the defeat of a fine by
some fresh and fur