d which comprised no less than three hundred drawings, were
effaced before the artist's death, and impressions from them are now, of
course, more than difficult to procure. The Shakespeare series were
collected and republished in four volumes, in 1841-2, by Tilt & Bogue,
of Fleet Street, and even these last are very seldom met with.

On the 10th of December, 1831, there started into life a periodical of
decidedly pronounced political bias and opinions, entitled "Figaro in
London." Politics ran high in those days; it was the time of the great
agitation for "reform," which in those days, as we shall presently see,
was both loudly called for and imperatively necessary. A mob of boys and
degraded women had taken complete possession of Bristol,--had driven its
deformed little mayor over a stone wall in ignominious flight,--had
burnt down the gaol and the mansion-house, and laid Queen Square in
ashes, whilst the military and its very strangely incompetent officer
looked on while the city was burning.[103] Every one in those days was
either a rabid Tory or an ultra Radical. It was just the period for an
enthusiastic youth to plunge into the excitement of political life; but
the crude, unformed opinions of a young man scarcely of age are of
little value, and the political creed of the proprietor and originator
of this literary (?) venture does not appear to have been clearly
defined even to himself. In his valedictory addresses written three
years afterwards, when things were not altogether so rosy with him as
when he started his periodical, he confesses that he belongs to no
party, for "we have had," he says, "such a thorough sickener of the
Whigs, that we do expect something better from the new government,
_although it be a Tory one_."

The price of "Figaro in London," one of the immediate predecessors of
the comic publications of our day, was a penny, quite an experiment in
times when the price of paper was dear, and periodical literature was
heavily handicapped with an absurdly heavy duty. "Figaro" consisted of
four weekly pages of letterpress illustrated by Robert Seymour. The
projector, proprietor, and editor, was Mr. Gilbert a Beckett, whose
name--with those of men of vastly superior literary attainments--was
associated in after years with the early fortunes of _Punch_. The
literary part of the performance was indeed sorry stuff,--the main stay
and prop of the paper from its very commencement was Seymour, whose
drawings