s chapter.

"Filial Affection," as this is called, depicting a runaway trip to
Gretna Green, speaks so fully for itself that it needs no further
description from my pen; but I may mention here its companion print
(also published by Mr. Hinton on December 15 of 1785), and called "The
Reconciliation, or The Return from Scotland," in which the pair of
fugitives--whom we have just seen presenting their horse pistols at the
parental _poursuivant_--have now returned, all penitence and submission,
and have won their forgiveness. A very curious and somewhat grisly
adaptation of "Filial Affection" is reproduced by Messrs. Bell, to
illustrate the article upon Rowlandson in their new and valuable edition
of _Bryan's Dictionary_. It is a plate from _The Dance of Death_, an
illustrated volume published by Ackermann in 1815, and resembles the
earlier print--save that the figure behind the angry parent is a
skeleton rider mounted on a skeleton steed. At this point, in touching
these two periods (of 1785 and 1815) we may note how far fresher and
more spontaneous is the figure-work in that rich period from 1785
onwards. Rowlandson had gained, perhaps, in what we may call his "Dr.
Syntax period," in the treatment of landscape perspective or the massing
of crowds, but had become more of the caricaturist, had lost the rich
organic beauty which really irradiates some of his earlier prints.

=FILIAL AFFECTION. By Thomas Rowlandson.=

A print in colour from my own collection, published by Fores only
sixteen days earlier (November 30, 1785) than "Filial Affection," may
help here to illustrate my meaning. "Intrusion on Study" or "The
Painter Disturbed," shows a very charming model, attired in nothing but
the prettiest of mob caps, posing for some goddess on the canvas of the
artist, who turns to wave his palette and brushes--a most effective
weapon of defence--in the faces of two unwelcome visitors of his own
sex, who have just broken in open-mouthed upon his study. The details of
the studio, the expressive faces of the artist and his visitors
(especially the second), are in Rowlandson's best mood; but what is more
interesting, because more exceptional, is the exquisite feeling of line,
as subtle as anything Beardsley has recorded, in the girl's recumbent
figure--in the flow of the shoulder into the right arm, and in the sweep
of the right hip, and faultless drawing of the right hand--which touches
a note of purely plastic beauty entire