Gustave Doré. English caricature art, and I do so, not by reason of the fact that his works are as familiar to us in England as in France, not because he has pictorially interpreted some of the finest thoughts in English literature, but because I find his name so constantly mentioned in comparison with English caricaturists and comic artists, and more especially with our George Cruikshank. Now Gustave Doré is, if possible, still less a caricaturist than our English Hogarth. I have seen the ghastly illustrations to the licentious "Contes Diolatiques" of Balzac cited in proof of his claims to be considered a caricaturist. I will not deny that Doré did try his hand once upon a time at caricature, and if we are to judge him by these attempts, we should pronounce him the worst French caricaturist the world ever saw, which would be saying a great deal; for a worse school than that of the modern French caricaturists (and I do not except even Gavarni, Cham, or Daumier), does not anywhere exist. That this man of marvellous genius had humour I do not for one moment deny; but it' was the grim humour of an inquisitor or torturer of the middle ages—of one that revels in a perfect nightmare of terror.[1] Genius is said to be nearly allied to madness; and if one studies some of his weird creations—such, for instance, as The Judgment Day in the legend of "The Wandering Jew"—the thought involuntarily suggests itself that a brain teeming with such marvellous and often morbid conceptions, might have been pushed off its balance at any moment. Gustave Dore delights in lofty, mediæval-gabled buildings, with bartizans and antique galleries; in steep streets, dominated by gloomy turrets; in narrow entries, terminating in dark vistas; in gloomy forests, crowded with rocky pinnacles; in masses of struggling, mutilated men and horses; in monstrous forms of creeping, crawling, slimy, ghastly horror. By the side of the conceptions of Gustave Doré—teste for instance the weird pictures of "The Wandering Jew" already mentioned—George Cruikshank sinks at times into
- ↑ We can scarcely call the wonderful series of historical cartoons which he executed at sixteen caricatures, even in the modern sense of the word. Whatever humour they possess is neutralized by the grim irony which, even at this early period, characterized his work.
