faithful maid "giggling Betty," in his
print of "Two-penny Whist." Mrs. Humphrey appreciated her client's
genius, and at one time their mutual understanding got so far on the
road to matrimony that they had already reached the door of the church
(their parish church of S. James, Piccadilly) when this eccentric
bridegroom remarked, "This is a foolish affair, Mrs. Humphrey. We live
very comfortably together--better let well alone!"--and walked home to
work on his copper plate. But even if this legend of blighted hopes be
correct, the good spinster in any case devoted herself no less to the
artist's comfort and welfare; and the tragedy of his later years was due
to himself alone. Intemperance weakened his powers; and in the last
years of his life he lapsed, from this cause probably, into a condition
of mental imbecility, which contrasts sadly with those busy and
successful years of his life, from 1777 to close on 1810.

He died upon the 1st of June, 1815, and was buried near the rectory of
S. James, Piccadilly; within reach of the busy roar of that London whose
complex multitudinous life he had lived amongst and loved and studied,
and which still surges around his last resting-place in changed and
ever-changing forms.

V

THE COMEDY OF LIFE

Thomas Rowlandson, the last and in some ways the greatest of the
caricaturists whose work illustrates the eighteenth century, was born in
London in 1756, being thus just six years younger than Bunbury, and one
year older than Gillray; so that all these artists cover very much the
same period, although their work has elements of the greatest diversity.

In Bunbury we have seen the really gifted amateur, who entrusted his
clever sketches to other hands to be engraved, who kept in touch with
social life in London and county society, and pursued his career in the
army and at Court, while throughout devoting himself to art as his
greatest hobby. Again, later, we have traced briefly Gillray's supreme
talent, both as engraver and draughtsman, more especially in his
magnificent series of contemporary political cartoons. But in Rowlandson
we touch a genius as fertile, but of a different order, and, I incline
to think, of a considerably wider grasp; and if I call this chapter,
which I am devoting especially to his work, the "Comedy of Life"--in
contrast to pictorial morals, to society or politics--it is because life
in all its exuberance, all its variety and fertility, seems to str