31- 336 .
spiteful, even malignant attack and a great modern daily con siders that " it perhaps speaks well for modern manners that
caricature is almost a lost art.” 27 By comparison with “ the polite cartoon," it may be considered a coarse, vulgar, even brutal way of conveying ideas or administering rebuke. But caricature in its very nature must deal with coarse, brutal sub
jects and inevitably the style is adapted to the subject, - it is impossible to caricature in a courteous, gentlemanly way since caricature and politeness are mutually exclusive terms. Yet even so the caricature becomes for the historian an unimpeach able record of a hard , brutal society of which it has been an outgrowth . If the caricatures of Gillray seem on a low social plane,28 it is because the lives of lords and ladies of high degree of that day left much to be desired and because much was acceptable to the public of his time that would not be tolerated
to -day, however true to life it might be. If, as M . Gaultier has so well shown ,29 caricature is essentially pessimistic ; if it repre
sents, while it distorts but always with an ulterior motive; if
it is exaggerated , grotesque and extravagant as well as brutal, it is because in society itself there exist these same elements of
pessimism , exaggeration , and brutality . The “ characteristic portrait ” is a variant of the personal caricature and, as a softened modification of it, may be of greater
service to the historian in his search for personal material than is given by conventional portrait, or by caricature.30 J. Grand -Carteret in 1885 in Les Mæurs et la caricature en France gave an extended bibliography and history of journals of caricature, pp . 555 -618 , and biographies of caricaturists, pp . 619 -673 ; in Les Meurs et la caricature en
Allemagne he gives a bibliography of journals of caricature, pp . 427 - 449, and a list of caricaturists, pp . 451 - 482.
These illustrate fairly well the extent of thematerial available. 37 New York Tribune, November 8 , 1916 .
28 T . Wright, ed ., The Works of James Gillray, the Caricaturist. W . S . Jackson cites a contemporary of Gillray who wrote : “ The period of
dread of foreign and domestic enemies has passed away, and we verily be lieve it is due to the satiric pencil of Gillray.” He himself points out that “ a Gillray, tremendous as hewas, could become the valued ally of a Pitt and the
particular joy and encouragement of a nation in its struggle.” — “ Wanted — a Gillray, ” Nineteenth Century and After , September, 1910 , 68 : 522 -531.
29 P . Gaultier, Le Rire et la Caricature, 1911. 30 Leslie Ward developed this form of illustration in an interesting way. His Forty Years of 'Spy' has nearly two hundred of these telling portraits that " without the same qualities as the caricature, are sometimes more
