If we noticed at the same time a certain coarseness of fibre come to the surface in much of their work, finding expression often both in subject, and still more in treatment and in type, we must remember that this quality belongs not to the men alone, but to the age. The more sensitive modern may feel himself at first repelled rather than attracted, and many a print of Rowlandson or Gillray find a place in his _Index Expurgatorius_; but the brutality of these men is the brutality of Nature in some of her moods, and their work, like Nature, fertile, fresh, and vigorous, attracts us (as all strong work will and must) the more we study it by its masterly drawing, its free, open humour, and often its high imaginative grasp. Behind these men, these Masters of English Caricature, appears, never entirely absent from our thought, the history of the century, with its magnificent record of English achievement. Behind them, too, a corrective and a stimulant to their best effort, is that wonderful revelation of English eighteenth-century pictorial art. For just as when, in years to come, men think on that stirring epoch, the two words _England_ and _Liberty_ will leap unbidden to their thought; so, too, in the record of the greatest epoch of our country's art, a place must be found for the English Caricaturists of the Eighteenth Century. Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. London & Edinburgh Footnotes: [1] A fine collection of lithographs of Honore Daumier (1808-1879) has this year been exhibited in the Victoria and Albert Museum. [2] "The Works of William Hogarth, elucidated by Descriptions." By T. Clerk. London, 1810. [3] "William Hogarth," by Austin Dobson; with a valuable technical introduction by Sir W. Armstrong. London, 1902. [4] "Bartolozzi and his Pupils in England" (Langham Series). By Selwyn Brinton. London, 1903. [5] "History of Caricature and of Grotesque in Art." By Thomas Wright, M.A., F.S.A. London, 1863. [6] His "Englishman at Paris" even predates this by four years (1767). The British Museum etchings, to which I allude later, are early work, one even dating from his schooldays at Westminster! [7] _Op. cit._ p. 63. [8] I give a plate of this beautiful Eliza Farren (painted by Lawrence, engraved by Bartolozzi) in my work on Bartolozzi in this Series (facing p. 63). Gillray has an amusing print of the diminutive Lord Derby, standing on his coronet to admire himself in the glass. [9] They are all enjoying their new diet under similar conditions. In Italy (perhaps the cleverest hit of all) the old Pope, seated, is having the bread shot into his open mouth from a French soldier's blunderbuss, while an assistant at the same moment neatly removes from his head the triple crown. [10] Mme. Vigee le Brun, in her delightful memoirs, gives some justification to Gillray's severe treatment. Visiting Lady Hamilton soon after Sir William's death she found "this Andromache" draped in black, and extremely fat.