anch of art, he might have
stood in the forefront of English contemporary painting. Instead of this
he preferred to devote his genius and his best years to caricature, and
in doing so, has bequeathed to us a rich and most precious heritage.

He was happy in his friendships. James Gillray was well known to him;
George Morland, that brilliant artist with whom he had so much in
common, Henry Angelo, whom he loved to depict among his pupils of the
foil ("Angelo's Fencing Room" and "Signora Cigali Fencing at Angelo's"),
Bannister, and Ackermann the art publisher were among his intimates. He
was less happy in the conduct of his life. Extravagance and carelessness
were combined with a passion for gambling which made him a frequent
figure in the fashionable playhouses of London; and these habits
placed the fortune, which should have been his by industry and
inheritance, beyond his reach. The legacy of L7000 bequeathed him by his
French aunt, who had treated him so generously in his student days, was
speedily dissipated in this way. Indeed, but for the frequent advice and
assistance of his friend and publisher, Rudolph Ackermann, he might have
found himself in serious difficulties; and the story runs that on one
occasion he sat for thirty-six hours at the cards, and that on another,
after losing all he had, he sat down coolly to his work and (raising
that facile pencil of his) said, "Here is my resource." Thus it was
that, after many years of fertile labour, he died a poor man in lodgings
at the Adelphi, on the 22nd of April, 1827. His faithful friends of
earlier days, Henry Angelo, Bannister, and Rudolph Ackermann, followed
to his grave the last great caricaturist of the bygone century.

=_By Thomas Rowlandson_ OLD JOSEPH NOLLEKENS AND HIS VENUS=

In these pages we have traced together the record of that century in
English Caricature; and if we have been compelled to note but hastily
the lesser men, have, in so doing, at least gained breathing space to
study four great and typical figures. We saw how William Hogarth, when
he handles the graver as humourist and delineator of character, stands
forth immortally great; how, when he sought to place himself at the head
of the nascent English School, he fell beneath his own level. We saw in
Henry William Bunbury the cultured artist, soldier, and man of society,
the welcome guest in many a great country-house, who could bring his
host's pretty daughters into some charming sketch,