his extreme
breadth of treatment.

Of the victims of his "rudeness" M. Thiers is almost the only one whom
the present generation may recognize without a good deal of reminding,
and indeed his hand is relatively light in delineating this personage
of few inches and many episodes. M. Thiers must have been dear to the
caricaturist, for he belonged to the type that was easy to "do;" it
being well known that these gentlemen appreciate public characters in
direct proportion to their saliency of feature. When faces are reducible
to a few telling strokes their wearers are overwhelmed with the honors
of publicity; with which, on the other hand, nothing is more likely to
interfere than the possession of a countenance neatly classical. Daumier
had only to give M. Thiers the face of a clever owl, and the trick was
played. Of course skill was needed to individualize the symbol, but that
is what caricaturists propose to themselves. Of how well he
succeeded the admirable plate of the lively little minister in a
"new dress"--tricked out in the uniform of a general of the First
Republic--is a sufficient illustration. The bird of night is not an
acute bird, but how the artist has presented the image of a selected
specimen! And with what a life-giving pencil the whole figure is put
on its feet, what intelligent drawing, what a rich, free stroke! The
allusions conveyed in it are to such forgotten things that it is strange
to think the personage was, only the other year, still contemporaneous;
that he might have been met, on a fine day, taking a few firm steps in
a quiet part of the Champs Elysees, with his footman carrying a second
overcoat and looking doubly tall behind him. In whatever attitude
Daumier depicts him, planted as a tiny boxing-master at the feet of the
virtuous colossus in a blouse (whose legs are apart, like those-of the
Rhodian), in whom the artist represents the People, to watch the match
that is about to come off between Ratapoil and M. Berryer, or even in
the act of lifting the "parricidal" club of a new repressive law to
deal a blow at the Press, an effulgent, diligent, sedentary muse (this
picture, by the way, is a perfect specimen of the simple and telling in
political caricature)--however, as I say, he takes M. Thiers, there is
always a rough indulgence in his crayon, as if he were grateful to him
for lending himself so well. He invented Ratapoil as he appropriated
Robert Macaire, and as a caricaturist he never fai