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CARICATURE
AND
OTHER COMIC ART
IN ALL TIMES AND MANY LANDS
By JAMES PARTON
_WITH 203 ILLUSTRATIONS_
[Illustration: Editor's logo.]
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS
FRANKLIN SQUARE
1877
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1877, by
HARPER & BROTHERS,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
PREFACE.
In this volume there is, I believe, a greater variety of pictures of a
comic and satirical cast than was ever before presented at one view.
Many nations, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, are represented
in it, as well as most of the names identified with art of this nature.
The extraordinary liberality of the publishers, and the skill of their
corps of engravers, have seconded my own industrious researches, and the
result is a volume unique, at least, in the character of its
illustrations. A large portion of its contents appeared in _Harper's
Monthly Magazine_ during the year 1875; but many of the most curious and
interesting of the pictures are given here for the first time; notably,
those exhibiting the present or recent caricature of Germany, Spain,
Italy, China, and Japan, several of which did not arrive in time for use
in the periodical.
Generally speaking, articles contributed to a Magazine may as well be
left in their natural tomb of "back numbers," or "bound volumes;" for
the better they serve a temporary purpose, the less adapted they are for
permanent utility. Among the exceptions are such series as the present,
which had no reference whatever to the passing months, and in the
preparation of which a great expenditure was directed to a single class
of objects of special interest. I am, indeed, amazed at the cost of
producing such articles as these. So very great is the expense, that
many subjects could not be adequately treated, with all desirable
illustration, unless the publishers could offer the work to the public
in portions.
There is not much to be said upon the subject treated in this volume.
When I was invited by the learned and urbane editor of _Harper's
Monthly_ to furnish a number of articles upon caricature, I supposed
that the work proposed would be a relief after labors too arduous, too
long continued, and of a more serious character. On the contrary, no
subject that I ever attempted presented such baffling difficulties.
After ransacking the world for specimens, and collecting them by the
hundred, I found that, usually, a caricature is a thing of a moment, and
that, dying as soon as its moment has passed, it loses all power to
interest, instantly and forever. I found, too, that our respectable
ancestors had not the least notion of what we call decency. When,
therefore, I had laid aside from the mass the obsolete and the improper,
there were not so very many left, and most of those told their own story
so plainly that no elucidation was necessary. Instead of wearying the
reader with a mere descriptive catalogue, I have preferred to accompany
the pictures with allusions to contemporary satire other than pictorial.
The great living authorities upon this branch of art are two in
number--one English, and one French--to both of whom I am greatly
indebted. The English author is Thomas Wright, M.A., F.S.A., etc., whose
"History of Caricature and the Grotesque" is well known among us, as
well as his more recent volume upon the incomparable caricaturist of the
last generation, James Gillray. The French writer is M. Jules
Champfleury, author of a valuable series of volumes reviewing satiric
art from ancient times to our own day, with countless illustrations. No
one has treated so fully or so well as he the caricature of the Greeks
and Romans. Many years ago, M. Champfleury began to illustrate this part
of his subject in the _Gazette des Beaux Arts_, and his contributions to
that important periodical were the basis of his subsequent volumes. He
is one of the few writers on comic matters who have avoided the lapse
into catalogue, and contrived to be interesting.
It has been agreeable to me to observe that Americans are not without
natural aptitude in this kind of art. Our generous Franklin, the friend
of Hogarth, to whom the dying artist wrote his last letter, replying to
the last letter he ever received, was a capital caricaturist, and used
his skill in this way, as he did all his other gifts and powers, in
behalf of his country and his kind. At the present time, every week's
issue of the illustrated periodicals exhibits evidence of the skill, as
well as the patriotism and right feeling, of the humorous artists of the
United States. For some years past, caricature has been a power in the
land, and a power generally on the right side. There are also humorous
artists of another and gentler kind, some even of the gentler sex, who
present to us scenes which surprise us all into smiles and good temper
without having in them any lurking sting of reproof. These domestic
humorists, I trust, will continue to amuse and soften us, while the
avenging satirist with dreadful pencil makes mad the guilty, and appalls
the free.
There must be something precious in caricature, else the enemies of
truth and freedom would not hate it as they do. Some of the worst
excesses and perversions of satiric art are due to that very hatred.
Persecuted and repressed, caricature becomes malign and perverse; or,
being excluded from legitimate subjects, it seems as if it were
compelled to ally itself to vice. We have only to turn from a heap of
French albums to volumes of English caricature to have a striking
evidence of the truth, that the repressive system represses good and
develops evil. It is the "Censure" that debauches the comic pencil; it
is freedom that makes it the ally of good conduct and sound politics. In
free countries alone it has scope enough, without wandering into paths
which the eternal proprieties forbid. I am sometimes sanguine enough to
think that the pencil of the satirist will at last render war
impossible, by bringing vividly home to all genial minds the ludicrous
absurdity of such a method of arriving at truth. Fancy two armies "in
presence." By some process yet to be developed, the Nast of the next
generation, if not the admirable Nast of this, projects upon the sky, in
the sight of the belligerent forces, a picture exhibiting the enormous
comicality of their attitude and purpose. They all see the point, and
both armies break up in laughter, and come together roaring over the
joke.
In the hope that this volume may contribute something to the amusement
of the happy at festive seasons, and to the instruction of the curious
at all times, it is presented to the consideration of the public.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. Page
Among the Romans 15
CHAPTER II.
Among the Greeks 28
CHAPTER III.
Among the Ancient Egyptians 32
CHAPTER IV.
Among the Hindoos 36
CHAPTER V.
Religious Caricature in the Middle Ages 40
CHAPTER VI.
Secular Caricature in the Middle Ages 50
CHAPTER VII.
Caricatures preceding the Reformation 64
CHAPTER VIII.
Comic Art and the Reformation 76
CHAPTER IX.
In the Puritan Period 90
CHAPTER X.
Later Puritan Caricature 105
CHAPTER XI.
Preceding Hogarth 120
CHAPTER XII.
Hogarth and his Time 133
CHAPTER XIII.
English Caricature in the Revolutionary Period 147
CHAPTER XIV.
During the French Revolution 159
CHAPTER XV.
Caricatures of Women and Matrimony 171
CHAPTER XVI.
Among the Chinese 191
CHAPTER XVII.
Comic Art in Japan 198
CHAPTER XVIII.
French Caricature 208
CHAPTER XIX.
Later French Caricature 230
CHAPTER XX.
Comic Art in Germany 242
CHAPTER XXI.
Comic Art in Spain 249
CHAPTER XXII.
Italian Caricature 257
CHAPTER XXIII.
English Caricature of the Present Century 267
CHAPTER XXIV.
Comic Art in "Punch" 284
CHAPTER XXV.
Early American Caricature 300
CHAPTER XXVI.
Later American Caricature 318
INDEX 335
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Page
Pigmy Pugilists, from Pompeii 15
Chalk Drawing by Roman Soldier in Pompeii 15
Chalk Caricature on a Wall in Pompeii 16
Battle between Pigmies and Geese 17
A Pigmy Scene--from Pompeii 18
Vases with Pigmy Designs 19
A Grasshopper driving a Chariot 19
From an Antique Amethyst 19
Flight of AEneas from Troy 20
Caricature of the Flight of AEneas 20
From a Red Jasper 21
Roman Masks, Comic and Tragic 22
Roman Comic Actor, masked for Silenus 22
Roman Wall Caricature of a Christian 25
Burlesque of Jupiter's Wooing of Princess Alcmena 29
Greek Caricature of the Oracle of Apollo 30
An Egyptian Caricature 32
A Condemned Soul, Egyptian Caricature 33
Egyptian Servants conveying Home their Masters from
a Carouse 33
Too Late with the Basin 34
The Hindoo God Krishna on his Travels 37
Krishna's Attendants assuming the Form of a Bird 37
Krishna in his Palanquin 38
Capital in the Autun Cathedral 41
Capitals in the Strasburg Cathedral, A.D. 1300 41
Engraved upon a Stall in Sherborne Minster, England 43
From a Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century 43
From a Mass-book of the Fourteenth Century 44
From a French Prayer-book of the Thirteenth Century 45
From Queen Mary's Prayer-book, A.D. 1553 46
Gog and Magog, Guildhall, London 50
Head of the Great Dragon of Norwich 51
Souls weighed in the Balance, Autun Cathedral 51
Struggle for Possession of a Soul between Angel and
Devil 52
Lost Souls cast into Hell 53
Devils seizing their Prey 54
The Temptation 55
French Death-crier 56
Death and the Cripple 57
Death and the Old Man 58
Death and the Peddler 58
Death and the Knight 58
Heaven and Earth weighed in the Balance 60
English Caricature of an Irishman, A.D. 1280 62
Caricature of the Jews in England, A.D. 1233 63
Luther inspired by Satan 64
Devil fiddling upon a Pair of Bellows 65
Oldest Drawing in the British Museum, A.D. 1320 66
Bishop's Seal, A.D. 1300 67
Pastor and Flock, Sixteenth Century 70
Confessing to God; and Sale of Indulgences 72
Christ, the True Light 73
Papa, Doctor Theologiae et Magister Fidei 77
The Pope cast into Hell 77
"The Beam that is in thine own Eye," A.D. 1540 78
Luther Triumphant 79
The Triumph of Riches 81
Calvin branded 83
Calvin at the Burning of Servetus 84
Calvin, the Pope, and Luther 85
Titian's Caricature of the Laocooen 89
The Papal Gorgon 90
Spayne and Rome defeated 94
From Title-page to Sermon "Woe to Drunkards" 97
"Let not the World devide those whom Christ hath
joined" 99
"England's Wolfe with Eagle's Clawes," 1647 102
Charles II. and the Scotch Presbyterians, 1651 103
Cris-cross Rhymes on Love's Crosses, 1640 105
Shrove-tide in Arms against Lent 107
Lent tilting at Shrove-tide 108
The Queen of James II. and Father Petre 109
Caricature of Corpulent General Galas 115
A Quaker Meeting, 1710 116
Archbishop of Paris 118
Archbishop of Rheims 118
Caricature of Louis XIV., by Thackeray 119
"Shares! Shares! Shares!" Caricature of John Law 120
Island of Madhead 122
Speculative Map of Louisiana 126
John Law, Wind Monopolist 129
The Sleeping Congregation 134
Hogarth's Drawing in Three Strokes 137
Hogarth's Invitation Card 137
Time Smoking a Picture 138
Dedication of a Proposed History of the Arts 140
Walpole paring the Nails of the British Lion 142
Dutch Neutrality, 1745 142
British Idolatry of the Opera-singer Mingotti 143
The Motion (for the Removal of Walpole) 144
Antiquaries puzzled 146
Caricature designed by Benjamin Franklin 147
Lord Bute 152
Princess of Wales--Bute--George III 152
The Wire-master (Bute) and his Puppets 153
The Gouty Colossus, William Pitt 156
The Mask (Coalition) 157
Heads of Fox and North 158
Assembly of the Notables at Paris 161
Mirabeau 162
The Dagger Scene in the House of Commons 164
The Zenith of French Glory 165
The Estates 166
The New Calvary 166
President of Revolutionary Committee amusing
himself with his Art 168
Rare Animals 169
Aristocrat and Democrat 170
"_You_ frank! Have confidence in _you_!" 171
Matrimony--A Man loaded with Mischief 173
Settling the Odd Trick 174
"Who was that gentleman that just went out?" 176
"Now, understand me. To-morrow morning he will
ask you to dinner" 177
"Madame, your Cousin Betty wishes to know if you
can receive her" 179
A Scene of Conjugal Life 180
A Splendid Spread 181
American Lady walking in the Snow 183
"My dear Baron, I am in the most pressing need
of five hundred franc" 184
"Sir, be good enough to come round in front and
speak to me" 185
"Where are the diamonds exhibited?" 185
Evening Scene in the Parlor of an American
Boarding-house 186
"He's coming! Take off your hat!" 188
The Scholastic Hen and her Chickens 189
Chinese Caricature of an English Foraging Party 191
A Deaf Mandarin 196
After Dinner. A Chinese Caricature 197
The Rat Rice Merchants. A Japanese Caricature 206
Talleyrand--the Man with Six Heads 209
A Great Man's Last Leap 210
Talleyrand 211
A Promenade in the Palais Royal 213
Family of the Extinguishers 214
The Jesuits at Court 215
Charles Philipon 218
Robert Macaire fishing for Share-holders 221
A Husband's Dilemma 223
Housekeeping 224
A Poultice for Two 226
Parisian "Shoo, Fly!" 227
Three! 228
Two Attitudes 230
The Den of Lions at the Opera 231
The Vulture 233
Partant pour la Syrie 234
Gavarni 236
Honore Daumier 237
Evolution of the Piano 243
A Corporal interviewed by the Major 244
A Bold Comparison 245
Strict Discipline in the Field 246
Ahead of Time 247
A Journeyman's Leave-taking 248
After Sedan 250
To the Bull-fight 251
A Delegation of Birds of Prey 252
"Child, you will take cold" 253
Inconvenience of the New Collar 254
Sufferings endured by a Prisoner of War 255
King Bomba's Ultimatum to Sicily 259
He has begun the Service with Mass, and completed
it with Bombs 260
The Burial of Liberty 261
Bomba at Supper 262
"Such is the Love of Kings" 263
Mr. Punch 264
Return of the Pope to Rome 265
James Gillray 267
Tiddy-Doll, the Great French Gingerbread Baker 268
The Threatened Invasion of England 269
The Bibliomaniac 270
Hope--A Phrenological Illustration 271
Term Time 273
Box in a New York Theatre in 1830 276
Seymour's Conception of Mr. Winkle 278
Probable Suggestion of the Fat Boy 280
A Wedding Breakfast 281
The Boy who chalked up "No Popery!" 284
John Leech 285
Preparatory School for Young Ladies 286
The Quarrel.--England and France 287
Obstructives 290
Jeddo and Belfast; or, a Puzzle for Japan 291
"At the Church-gate" 292
An Early Quibble 294
John Tenniel 295
Soliloquy of a Rationalistic Chicken 298
"I'll follow thee!" 299
Join or Die 304
Boston Massacre Coffins 306
A Militia Drill in Massachusetts in 1832 308
Fight in Congress between Lyon and Griswold 312
The Gerry-mander 316
Thomas Nast 318
Wholesale and Retail 319
The Brains of the Tammany Ring 320
"What are the wild waves saying?" 321
Shin-plaster Caricature of General Jackson's War
on the United States Bank 322
City People in a Country Church 323
"Why don't you take it?" 324
Popular Caricature of the Secession War 325
Virginia pausing 326
Tweedledee and Sweedledum 328
"Who Stole the People's Money?" 329
"On to Richmond!" 330
Christmas-time.--Won at a Turkey Raffle 331
"He cometh not, she said" 332
[Illustration: Pigmy Pugilists--from Pompeii.]
CARICATURE AND COMIC ART.
CHAPTER I.
AMONG THE ROMANS.
Much as the ancients differed from ourselves in other particulars, they
certainly laughed at one another just as we do, for precisely the same
reasons, and employed every art, device, and implement of ridicule which
is known to us.
[Illustration: Chalk Drawing by Roman Soldier in Pompeii.]
Observe this rude and childish attempt at a drawing. Go into any boys'
school to-day, and turn over the slates and copy-books, or visit an
inclosure where men are obliged to pass idle days, and you will be
likely to find pictures conceived in this taste, and executed with this
degree of artistic skill. But the drawing dates back nearly eighteen
centuries. It was done on one of the hot, languid days of August, A.D.
79, by a Roman soldier with a piece of red chalk on a wall of his
barracks in the city of Pompeii.[1] On the 23d of August, in the year
79, occurred the eruption of Vesuvius, which buried not Italian cities
only, but Antiquity itself, and, by burying, preserved it for the
instruction of after-times. In disinterred Pompeii, the Past stands
revealed to us, and we remark with a kind of infantile surprise the
great number of particulars in which the people of that day were even
such as we are. There was found the familiar apothecary's shop, with a
box of pills on the counter, and a roll of material that was about to be
made up when the apothecary heard the warning thunder and fled. The
baker's shop remained, with a loaf of bread stamped with the maker's
name. A sculptor's studio was strewed with blocks of marble, unfinished
statues, mallets, compasses, chisels, and saws. A thousand objects
attest that when the fatal eruption burst upon these cities, life and
its activities were going forward in all essential particulars as they
are at this moment in any rich and luxurious town of Southern Europe.
[Footnote 1: "Naples and the Campagna Felice." In a Series of Letters
addressed to a Friend in England, in 1802, p. 104.]
In the building supposed to have been the quarters of the Roman
garrison, many of the walls were covered with such attempts at
caricature as the specimen just given, to some of which were appended
opprobrious epithets and phrases. The name of the personage above
portrayed was Nonius Maximus, who was probably a martinet centurion,
odious to his company, for the name was found in various parts of the
inclosure, usually accompanied by disparaging words. Many of the
soldiers had simply chalked their own names; others had added the number
of their cohort or legion, precisely as in the late war soldiers left
records of their stay on the walls of fort and hospital. A large number
of these wall-chalkings in red, white, and black (most of them in red)
were clearly legible fifty years after exposure. I give another
specimen, a genuine political caricature, copied from an outside wall of
a private house in Pompeii.
[Illustration: Chalk Caricature on a Wall in Pompeii.]
The allusion is to an occurrence in local history of the liveliest
possible interest to the people. A few years before the fatal eruption
there was a fierce town-and-country row in the amphitheatre, in which
the Pompeians defeated and put to flight the provincial Nucerians. Nero
condemned the pugnacious men of Pompeii to the terrible penalty of
closing their amphitheatre for ten years. In the picture an armed man
descends into the arena bearing the palm of victory, while on the other
side a prisoner is dragged away bound. The inscription alone gives us
the key to the street artist's meaning, _Campani victoria una cum
Nucerinis peristis_--"Men of Campania, you perished in the victory not
less than the Nucerians;" as though the patriotic son of Campania had
written, "We beat 'em, but very little we got by it."
If the idlers of the streets chalked caricature on the walls, we can not
be surprised to discover that Pompeian artists delighted in the comic
and burlesque. Comic scenes from the plays of Terence and Plautus, with
the names of the characters written over them, have been found, as well
as a large number of burlesque scenes, in which dwarfs, deformed people,
Pigmies, beasts, and birds are engaged in the ordinary labors of men.
The gay and luxurious people of the buried cities seem to have delighted
in nothing so much as in representations of Pigmies, for there was
scarcely a house in Pompeii yet uncovered which did not exhibit some
trace of the ancient belief in the existence of these little people.
Homer, Aristotle, and Pliny all discourse of the Pigmies as actually
existing, and the artists, availing themselves of this belief, which
they shared, employed it in a hundred ways to caricature the doings of
men of larger growth. Pliny describes them as inhabiting the salubrious
mountainous regions of India, their stature about twenty-seven inches,
and engaged in eternal war with their enemies, the geese. "They say,"
Pliny continues, "that, mounted upon rams and goats, and armed with bows
and arrows, they descend in a body during spring-time to the edge of the
waters, where they eat the eggs and the young of those birds, not
returning to the mountains for three months. Otherwise they could not
resist the ever-increasing multitude of the geese. The Pigmies live in
cabins made of mud, the shells of goose eggs, and feathers of the same
bird."
[Illustration: Battle between Pigmies and Geese.]
Homer, in the third book of the "Iliad," alludes to the wars of the
Cranes and Pigmies:
"So when inclement winters vex the plain
With piercing frosts, or thick-descending rain,
To warmer seas the Cranes embodied fly,
With noise and order through the midway sky;
To Pigmy nations wounds and death they bring,
And all the war descends upon the wing."
[Illustration: A Pigmy Scene--from Pompeii.]
One of our engravings shows that not India only, but Egypt also, was
regarded as the haunt of the Pigmy race; for the Upper Nile was then, as
now, the home of the hippopotamus, the crocodile, and the lotus. Here we
see a bald-headed Pigmy hero riding triumphantly on a mighty crocodile,
regardless of the open-mouthed, bellowing hippopotamus behind him. In
other pictures, however, the scaly monster, so far from playing this
submissive part, is seen plunging in fierce pursuit of a Pigmy, who
flies headlong before the foe. Frescoes, vases, mosaics, statuettes,
paintings, and signet-rings found in the ancient cities all attest the
popularity of the little men. The odd pair of vases on the following
page, one in the shape of a boar's head and the other in that of a
ram's, are both adorned with a representation of the fierce combats
between the Pigmies and the geese.
There has been an extraordinary display of erudition in the attempt to
account for the endless repetition of Pigmy subjects in the houses of
the Pompeians; but the learned and acute M. Champfleury "humbly hazards
a conjecture," as he modestly expresses it, which commends itself at
once to general acceptance. He thinks these Pigmy pictures were designed
_to amuse the children_. No conjecture could be less erudite or more
probable. We know, however, as a matter of record, that the walls of
taverns and wine-shops were usually adorned with Pigmy pictures, such
subjects being associated in every mind with pleasure and gayety. It is
not difficult to imagine that a picture of a pugilistic encounter
between Pigmies, like the one given at the head of this chapter, or a
fanciful representation of a combat of Pigmy gladiators, of which many
have been discovered, would be both welcome and suitable as tavern
pictures in the Italian cities of the classic period.
[Illustration: Vases with Pigmy Designs.]
The Pompeians, in common with all the people of antiquity, had a
child-like enjoyment in witnessing representations of animals engaged in
the labors or the sports of human beings. A very large number of
specimens have been uncovered, some of them gorgeous with the hues given
them by masters of coloring eighteen hundred years ago. In the following
cut is a specimen of these--a representation of a grasshopper driving a
chariot, copied in 1802 from a Pompeian work for an English traveler.
[Illustration: A Grasshopper driving a Chariot.]
Nothing can exceed either the brilliancy or the delicacy of the coloring
of this picture in the original, the splendid plumage of the bird and
the bright gold of the chariot shaft and wheel being relieved and
heightened by a gray background and the greenish brown of the course.
The colorists of Pompeii have obviously influenced the taste of
Christendom. There are few houses of pretension decorated within the
last quarter of a century, either in Europe or America, which do not
exhibit combinations and contrasts of color of which the hint was found
in exhumed Pompeii. One or two other small specimens of this kind of
art, selected from a large number accessible, may interest the reader.
[Illustration: From an Antique Amethyst.]
[Illustration: Flight of AEneas from Troy.]
The spirited air of the team of cocks, and the _nonchalant_ professional
attitude of the charioteer, will not escape notice. Perhaps the most
interesting example of this propensity to personify animals which the
exhumed cities have furnished us is a burlesque of a popular picture of
AEneas escaping from Troy, carrying his father, Anchises, on his back,
and leading by the hand his son, Ascanius, the old man carrying the
casket of household gods. No scene could have been more familiar to the
people of Italy than one which exhibited the hero whom they regarded as
the founder of their empire in so engaging a light, and to which the
genius of Virgil had given a deathless charm:
"Thus ord'ring all that prudence could provide
I clothe my shoulders with a lion's hide
And yellow spoils; then on my bending back
The welcome load of my dear father take;
While on my better hand Ascanius hung,
And with unequal paces tripped along."
Artists found a subject in these lines, and of one picture suggested by
them two copies have been found carved upon stone.
[Illustration: Caricature of the Flight of AEneas.]
This device of employing animals' heads upon human bodies is still used
by the caricaturist, so few are the resources of his branch of art; and
we can not deny that it retains a portion of its power to excite
laughter. If we may judge from what has been discovered of the burlesque
art of the ancient nations, we may conclude that this idea, poor as it
seems to us, was the one which the artists of antiquity most frequently
employed. It was also common with them to burlesque familiar paintings,
as in the instance given. It is not unlikely that the cloyed and dainty
taste of the Pompeian connoisseur perceived something ridiculous in the
too-familiar exploit of Father AEneas as represented in serious art,
just as we smile at the theatrical attitudes and costumes in the
picture of "Washington crossing the Delaware." Fancy that work
burlesqued by putting an eagle's head upon the Father of his Country,
filling the boat with magpie soldiers, covering the river with icebergs,
and making the oars still more ludicrously inadequate to the work in
hand than they are in the painting. Thus a caricaturist of Pompeii,
Rome, Greece, Egypt, or Assyria would have endeavored to cast ridicule
upon such a picture.
[Illustration: From a Red Jasper.]
Few events of the last century were more influential upon the progress
of knowledge than the chance discovery of the buried cities, since it
nourished a curiosity respecting the past which could not be confined to
those excavations, and which has since been disclosing antiquity in
every quarter of the globe. We call it a chance discovery, although the
part which accident plays in such matters is more interesting than
important. The digging of a well in 1708 let daylight into the
amphitheatre of Herculaneum, and caused some languid exploration, which
had small results. Forty years later, a peasant at work in a vineyard
five miles from the same spot struck with his hoe something hard, which
was too firmly fixed in the ground to be moved. It proved to be a small
statue of metal, upright, and riveted to a stone pedestal, which was
itself immovably fastened to some solid mass still deeper in the earth.
Where the hoe had struck the statue the metal showed the tempting hue of
gold, and the peasant, after carefully smoothing over the surface,
hurried away with a fragment of it to a goldsmith, intending (so runs
the local gossip) to work this opening as his private gold mine. But as
the metal was pronounced brass, he honestly reported the discovery to a
magistrate, who set on foot an excavation. The statue was found to be a
Minerva, fixed to the centre of a small roof-like dome, and when the
dome was broken through it was seen to be the roof of a temple, of which
the Minerva had been the topmost ornament. And thus was discovered,
about the middle of the last century, the ancient city of Pompeii,
buried by a storm of light ashes from Vesuvius sixteen hundred and
seventy years before.
[Illustration: Roman Masks, Comic and Tragic.]
It was not the accident, but the timeliness of the accident, which made
it important; for there never could have been an excavation fifteen feet
deep over the site of Pompeii without revealing indications of the
buried city. But the time was then ripe for an exploration. It had
become possible to excite a general curiosity in a Past exhumed; and
such a curiosity is a late result of culture: it does not exist in a
dull or in an ignorant mind. And this curiosity, nourished and inflamed
as it was by the brilliant and marvelous things brought to light in
Pompeii and Herculaneum, has sought new gratification wherever a heap
of ruins betrayed an ancient civilization. It looks now as if many of
the old cities of the world are in layers or strata--a new London upon
an old London, and perhaps a London under that--a city three or four
deep, each the record of an era. Two Romes we familiarly know, one of
which is built in part upon the other; and at Cairo we can see the
process going on by which some ancient cities were buried without
volcanic aid. The dirt of the unswept streets, never removed, has raised
the grade of Cairo from age to age.
[Illustration: A Roman Comic Actor masked for the Part of Silenus.]
The excavations at Rome, so rich in results, were not needed to prove
that to the Romans of old caricature was a familiar thing. The mere
magnitude of their theatres, and their habit of performing plays in the
open air, compelled caricature, the basis of which is exaggeration.
Actors, both comic and tragic, wore masks of very elaborate
construction, made of resonant metal, and so shaped as to serve, in some
degree, the office of a speaking-trumpet. In the engravings on this page
are represented a pair of masks such as were worn by Roman actors
throughout the empire, of which many specimens have been found.
If the reader has ever visited the Coliseum at Rome, or even one of the
large hippodromes of Paris or New York, and can imagine the attempts of
an actor to exhibit comic or tragic effects of countenance or of vocal
utterance across spaces so extensive, he will readily understand the
necessity of such masks as these. The art of acting could only have been
developed in small theatres. In the open air or in the uncovered
amphitheatre all must have been vociferation and caricature. Observe
the figure of old Silenus, on preceding page, one of the chief
mirth-makers of antiquity, who lives for us in the Old Man of the
pantomime. He is masked for the theatre.
The legend of Silenus is itself an evidence of the tendency of the
ancients to fall into caricature. To the Romans he was at once the
tutor, the comrade, and the butt of jolly Bacchus. He discoursed wisdom
and made fun. He was usually represented as an old man, bald,
flat-nosed, half drunk, riding upon a broad-backed ass, or reeling along
by the aid of a staff, uttering shrewd maxims and doing ludicrous acts.
People wonder that the pantomime called "Humpty Dumpty" should be played
a thousand nights in New York; but the substance of all that boisterous
nonsense, that exhibition of rollicking freedom from restraints of law,
usage, and gravitation, has amused mankind for unknown thousands of
years; for it is merely what remains to us of the legendary Bacchus and
his jovial crew. We observe, too, that the great comic books, such as
"Gil Blas," "Don Quixote," "Pickwick," and others, are most effective
when the hero is most like Bacchus, roaming over the earth with merry
blades, delightfully free from the duties and conditions which make
bondmen of us all. Mr. Dickens may never have thought of it--and he
_may_--but there is much of the charm of the ancient Bacchic legends in
the narrative of the four Pickwickians and Samuel Weller setting off on
the top of a coach, and meeting all kinds of gay and semi-lawless
adventures in country towns and rambling inns. Even the ancient
distribution of characters is hinted at. With a few changes, easily
imagined, the irrepressible Sam might represent Bacchus, and his master
bring to mind the sage and comic Silenus. Nothing is older than our
modes of fun. Even in seeking the origin of Punch, investigators lose
themselves groping in the dim light of the most remote antiquity.
How readily the Roman satirists ran into caricature all their readers
know, except those who take the amusing exaggerations of Juvenal and
Horace as statements of fact. During the heat of our antislavery
contest, Dryden's translation of the passage in Juvenal which pictures
the luxurious Roman lady ordering her slave to be put to death was used
by the late Mr. W. H. Fry, in the New York _Tribune_, with thrilling
effect:
"Go drag that slave to death! You reason, Why
Should the poor innocent be doomed to die?
What proofs? For, when man's life is in debate,
The judge can ne'er too long deliberate.
Call'st thou that slave a man? the wife replies.
Proved or unproved the crime, the villain dies.
I have the sovereign power to save or kill,
And give no other reason but my will."
This is evidently caricature. Not only is the whole of Juvenal's sixth
satire a series of the broadest exaggerations, but with regard to this
particular passage we have evidence of its burlesque character in Horace
(Satire III., Book I.), where, wishing to give an example of impossible
folly, he says, "If a man should crucify a slave for eating some of the
fish which he had been ordered to take away, people in their senses
would call him a madman." Juvenal exhibits the Roman matron of his
period undergoing the dressing of her hair, giving the scene the same
unmistakable character of caricature:
"She hurries all her handmaids to the task;
Her head alone will twenty dressers ask.
Psecas, the chief, with breast and shoulders bare,
Trembling, considers every sacred hair:
If any straggler from his rank be found,
A pinch must for the mortal sin compound.
"With curls on curls they build her head, before,
And mount it with a formidable tower.
A giantess she seems; but look behind,
And then she dwindles to the Pigmy kind.
Duck-legged, short-waisted, such a dwarf she is
That she must rise on tiptoe for a kiss.
Meanwhile her husband's whole estate is spent;
He may go bare, while she receives his rent."
The spirit of caricature speaks in these lines. There are passages of
Horace, too, in reading which the picture forms itself before the mind;
and the poet supplies the very words which caricaturists usually employ
to make their meaning more obvious. In the third satire of the second
book a caricature is exhibited to the mind's eye without the
intervention of pencil. We see the miser Opimius, "poor amid his hoards
of gold," who has starved himself into a lethargy; his heir is scouring
his coffers in triumph; but the doctor devises a mode of rousing his
patient. He orders a table to be brought into the room, upon which he
causes the hidden bags of money to be poured out, and several persons to
draw near as if to count it. Opimius revives at this maddening
spectacle, and the doctor urges him to strengthen himself by generous
food, and so balk his rapacious heir. "Do you hesitate?" cries the
doctor. "Come, now, take this preparation of rice." "How much did it
cost?" asks the miser. "Only a trifle." "But how much?" "Eightpence."
Opimius, appalled at the price, whimpers, "Alas! what does it matter
whether I die of a disease, or by plunder and extortion?" Many similar
examples will arrest the eye of one who turns over the pages of this
master of satire.
The great festival of the Roman year, the Saturnalia, which occurred in
the latter half of December, we may almost say was consecrated to
caricature, so fond were the Romans of every kind of ludicrous
exaggeration. This festival, the merry Christmas of the Roman world,
gave to the Christian festival many of its enlivening observances.
During the Saturnalia the law courts and schools were closed; there was
a general interchange of presents, and universal feasting; there were
fantastic games, processions of masked figures in extravagant costumes,
and religious sacrifices. For three days the slaves were not merely
exempt from labor, but they enjoyed freedom of speech, even to the
abusing of their masters. In one of his satires, Horace gives us an
idea of the manner in which slaves burlesqued their lords at this jocund
time. He reports some of the remarks of his own slave, Davus, upon
himself and his poetry. Davus, it is evident, had discovered the
histrionic element in literature, and pressed it home upon his master.
"You praise the simplicity of the ancient Romans; but if any god were to
reduce you to their condition, you, the same man that wrote those fine
things, would beg to be let off. At Rome you long for the country; and
when you are in the country, you praise the distant city to the skies.
When you are not invited out to supper, you extol your homely repast at
home, and hug yourself that you are not obliged to drink with any body
abroad. As if you ever went out upon compulsion! But let Maecenas send
you an invitation for early lamp-light, _then_ what do we hear? _Will no
one bring the oil quicker? Does any body hear me?_ You bellow and storm
with fury. You bought me for five hundred drachmas, but what if it turns
out that you are the greater fool of the two?" And thus the astute and
witty Davus continues to ply his master with taunts and jeers and wise
saws, till Horace, in fury, cries out, "Where can I find a stone?" Davus
innocently asks, "What need is there here of such a thing as a stone?"
"Where can I get some javelins?" roars Horace. Upon which Davus quietly
remarks, "This man is either mad or making verses." Horace ends the
colloquy by saying, "If you do not this instant take yourself off, I'll
make a field-hand of you on my Sabine estate!"
[Illustration: Roman Wall Caricature of a Christian.]
That Roman satirists employed the pencil and the brush as well as the
stylus, and employed them freely and constantly, we should have surmised
if the fact had not been discovered. Most of the caricatures of passing
events speedily perish in all countries, because the materials usually
employed in them are perishable. To preserve so slight a thing as a
chalk sketch on a wall for eighteen centuries, accident must lend a
hand, as it has in the instance now given.
This picture was found in 1857 upon the wall of a narrow Roman street,
which was closed up and shut out from the light of day about A.D. 100,
to facilitate an extension of the imperial palace. The wall when
uncovered was found scratched all over with rude caricature drawings in
the style of the specimen given. This one immediately arrested
attention, and the part of the wall on which it was drawn was carefully
removed to the Collegio Romano, in the museum of which it may now be
inspected. The Greek words scrawled upon the picture may be translated
thus: "Alexamenos is worshiping his god."
These words sufficiently indicate that the picture was aimed at some
member, to us unknown, of the despised sect of the Christians. It is the
only allusion to Christianity which has yet been found upon the walls of
the Italian cities; but it is extremely probable that the street artists
found in the strange usages of the Christians a very frequent subject.
We know well what the educated class of the Romans thought of the
Christians, when they thought of them at all. They regarded them as a
sect of extremely absurd Jews, insanely obstinate, and wholly
contemptible. If the professors and students of Harvard and Yale should
read in the papers that a new sect had arisen among the Mormons, more
eccentric and ridiculous even than the Mormons themselves, the
intelligence would excite in their minds about the same feeling that the
courtly scholars of the Roman Empire manifest when they speak of the
early Christians. Nothing astonished them so much as their "obstinacy."
"A man," says the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, "ought to be ready to die
when the time comes; but this readiness should be the result of a calm
judgment, and not be an exhibition of mere obstinacy, as with the
Christians." The younger Pliny, too, in his character of magistrate, was
extremely perplexed with this same obstinacy. He tells us that when
people were brought before him charged with being Christians, he asked
them the question, Are you a Christian? If they said they were, he
repeated it twice, threatening them with punishment; and if they
persisted, he ordered them to be punished. If they denied the charge, he
put them to the proof by requiring them to repeat after him an
invocation to the gods, and to offer wine and incense to the emperor's
statue. Some of the accused, he says, reviled Christ; and this he
regarded as a sure proof of innocence, for people told him there was no
forcing real Christians to do an act of that nature. Some of the accused
owned that they had been Christians once, three years ago or more, and
some twenty years ago, but had returned to the worship of the gods.
These, however, declared that, after all, there was no great offense in
being Christians. They had merely met on a regular day before dawn,
addressed a form of prayer to Christ as to a divinity, and bound
themselves by a solemn oath not to commit fraud, theft, or other immoral
act, nor break their word, nor betray a trust; after which they used to
separate, then re-assemble, and eat together a harmless meal.
All this seemed innocent enough; but Pliny was not satisfied. "I judged
it necessary," he writes to the emperor, "to try to get at the real
truth by putting to the torture two female slaves who were said to
officiate at their religious rites; but all I could discover was
evidence of an absurd and extravagant superstition." So he refers the
whole matter to the emperor, telling him that the "contagion" is not
confined to the cities, but has spread into the villages and into the
country. Still, he thought it could be checked: nay, it _had_ been
checked; for the temples, which had been almost abandoned, were
beginning to be frequented again, and there was also "a general demand
for victims for sacrifice, which till lately had found few purchasers."
The wise Trajan approved the course of his representative. He tells him,
however, not to go out of his way to look for Christians; but if any
were brought before him, why, of course he must inflict the penalty
unless they proved their innocence by invoking the gods. The remains of
Roman literature have nothing so interesting for us as these two letters
of Pliny and Trajan of the year 103. We may rest assured that the walls
of every Roman town bore testimony to the contempt and aversion in which
the Christians were held, particularly by those who dealt in "victims"
and served the altars--a very numerous and important class throughout
the ancient world.