amongst the ranks of a generation that did not know him. So little was he known or regarded, that when his works were first exhibited, no one took the trouble to see them; and when a small circle of admirers, with the great English critic, John Ruskin, at their head, started a subscription for the forgotten artist, "the attempt was a failure-hundreds being received when thousands were expected." It will be remembered that in his best days the artist had executed a memorable etching, Born a Genius and Born a Dwarf: I wonder whether, in the bitterness of his spirit and the righteousness of his anger, George Cruikshank ever thought of that etching? CHAPTER X. ROBERT SEYMOUR. DECIDEDLY next in order of merit to George Cruikshank, amongst his own contemporaries, if we except only Theodore Lane, comes Robert Seymour. With a style and manner peculiar to himself, and a power of invention and realization which amounted almost to genius, Seymour was superior in every respect to Robert Cruikshank, with whom we find him not unfrequently associated in comic design. This style and manner were clearly founded on those of George Cruikshank; and when he selected (as he not unfrequently did) subjects which had been treated by the latter, the work of this most able draughtsman will bear even favourable comparison with that of the great original whom he chose as his master. That he drew his inspiration from and sought even to emulate Cruikshank, is shown by the fact that to some of his earlier caricatures he affixed the name of "Shortshanks," a practice which he discontinued on receiving a remonstrance from the irritable George. Robert Seymour was born in 1798. Henry Seymour, his father, a gentleman of good family in Somersetshire, meeting with misfortune, removed to London, and apprenticed him to Mr. Vaughan, a pattern designer of Duke Street, Smithfield. This Vaughan seems to deserve a passing notice here by reason of the fact that his father is said to have received proposals for partnership from the father of the late Sir Robert Peel, which were rejected, on the ground that the fortunes of the Peel family were not then considered particularly flourishing. How far this statement may be correct we know not. Assuming it to be true, the fortunes of the Peel STARTS AS A PAINTER IN OILS. 209 family afterwards took a turn which probably frequently gave Vaughan père (if he lived to ruminate thereon) some serious cause for reflection as well as of repentance. Like Hogarth, with whom this artist, like all other comic designers, has been frequently and improperly compared, young Robert Seymour declined to waste his abilities as a mere mechanical draughtsman, and used his technical education as a means of cultivating the artistic gifts with which nature and inclination had endowed him. He seems at first to have selected a walk in art which required for its ultimate success a larger amount of application and patience than he could well spare for the purpose. Shortly after the expiration of his indentures, he started as a painter in oils, and executed several pictures, one of which (a Biblical subject) included, it is said, no less than one hundred figures, whilst a no less ambitious subject than Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered" was deemed of sufficient merit to be exhibited on the walls of the Royal Academy. Other pictorial subjects were taken from "Don Quixote," "Waverley," "The Tempest," etc., besides which he executed numerous portraits and miniatures. These efforts, however, do not appear to have been sufficiently remunerative to encourage him to continue them, and after a time he resigned them to follow a branch of art more congenial, perhaps, to his abilities, and thenceforth very rapidly acquired fame as a social satirist and caricaturist. The coloured caricatures of Robert Seymour, besides being comparatively scarce and little known, seem hardly to call for any particular description; the titles of some of them will be found. mentioned in our Appendix. One which has survived, and with which the public are probably most familiar, is one of the worst of the series. It is entitled, Going it by Steam, is signed "Short Shanks," and was published by King. Among rarer and better ones may be named two very excellent specimens, without date, published by Creed, of Chancery Lane, labelled respectively, A Musical Genius (a butcher boy playing on the Pandean pipes and accompanying himself with marrow bone and cleaver), and A Man of Taste and Feeling (a tramp caught in a trap while helping himself T DEATH in a butler's pantry). Among the best of his coloured political caricatures, we may mention, Greece and her Rough Lovers (ie. Russia and Turkey), published by Maclean, in 1828. Lithography afforded greater facilities of execution than the old process, and much of Seymour's work in political as well as social satire was executed by himself on stone. The year 1830 brought the life and reign of George the Fourth to a close. He had been breaking up for a long time past. The first entry of any moment occurs in Mr. Greville's diary, of 25th August, 1828: "The king has not been well; he goes fishing and dining at Virginia Water, stays out late, and catches cold." A year later, the diarist relates that the king had nearly lost his eyesight, and would be "couched" as soon as his eyes were in a proper state for the operation. On the 7th of December he attended a chapter of the Bath, "looked well," but was so blind that "he could not see to read the list, and begged [Mr. Greville] to read it for him." The Sangrado treatment was then in full force; and we find that in January, 1830, the king, being very ill, "lost forty ounces of blood." He grew at last so much worse that the preparations for the festivities with which the royal birthday was to have been celebrated were obliged to be postponed sine die. A victim to dropsy, the operation of puncturing the legs was resorted to, with the result of giving him temporary relief. The patient, however, became liable to violent fits of coughing, in one of which he ruptured a blood vessel, and expired early on the morning of Saturday the 26th of June, 1830. A more contemptible, selfish, unfeeling being as a man than this king could scarcely have been found, "a mixture of narrow-mindedness, selfishness, truckling, blustering, and duplicity, with no object but self, his own ease, and the gratification of his own fancies and prejudices." "A more despicable scene," continues Mr. Greville, "cannot be exhibited than that which the interior of our Court presents-every base, low, and unmanly propensity, with selfishness, avarice, and a life of petty intrigue and mystery."+ George the Fourth as king and regent was recklessly extravagant, but his expenditure was always upon self or the gratification of self. A hundred examples of his selfish nature might be given, but cui bono? Everything he could get hold of, which could minister to his own personal gratification, he grasped with avidity. In this spirit he appropriated the jewels and spent on himself the whole of the money belonging to his late father's estate, amounting to £120,000. His ministers did not dare to oppose his greed, or tell him that this money belonged to the Crown, and not to himself as an individual. He acted precisely in the same manner with regard to his mother's jewels, of which she possessed a large quantity. Those she received from George III. she left by will to the king; the rest she gave to her daughters; in spite of which bequest, her selfish son appropriated the whole to himself as his own personal private property. An admirable likeness of this most selfish of royal or private personages has been drawn by a master hand. "To make a portrait of him," says Thackeray, "at first seemed a matter of smaħ difficulty. There is his coat, his star, his wig, his countenance simpering under it: with a slate and a piece of chalk, I could at this very desk petform a recognisable likeness of him. And yet after reading of him in scores of volumes, hunting him through old magazines and newspapers, having him here at a ball, there at a public dinner, there at races, and so forth, you find you have nothing-nothing but a coat and wig, and a mask smiling below it-nothing but a great simulacrum. His sire and grandsires were men. One knew what they were like what they would do in given circumstances: that on occasion they fought and demeaned themselves like tough, good soldiers. They had friends whom they liked according to their natures; enemies whom they hated firmly; passions and actions and individualities of their own. The sailor king who came after George was a man; the Duke of York was a man, big, burly, loud, jolly, cursing, courageous. But this George, what was he? I look through all his life, and recognise but a bow and a grin. I try and take him to pieces, and find silk stockings, padding, stays, a coat with frogs and a fur collar, a star and blue ribbon, a pocket-handkerchief pro PORTRAIT OF |