Caricature and Other Comic Art

inly laughed at one another just as we do, for precisely the same reasons, an

ompeii.[1] On the 23d of August, in the year 79, occurred the eruption of Vesuvius, which buried not Italian cities only, but Antiquity itself, and, by burying, preserved it for the instruction of after-times. In disinterred Pompeii, the Past stands revealed to us, and we remark with a kind of infantile surprise the great number of particulars in which the people of that day were even such as we are. There was found the familiar apothecary's shop, with a box of pills on the counter, and a roll of materia

ably a martinet centurion, odious to his company, for the name was found in various parts of the inclosure, usually accompanied by disparaging words. Many of the soldiers had simply chalked their own names; others had added the number of their cohort or legion, precisely as in the late war soldiers left

ture on a Wa

s. Nero condemned the pugnacious men of Pompeii to the terrible penalty of closing their amphitheatre for ten years. In the picture an armed man descends into the arena bearing the palm of victory, while on the other side a prisoner is dragged away bound. The inscription

h as in representations of Pigmies, for there was scarcely a house in Pompeii yet uncovered which did not exhibit some trace of the ancient belief in the existence of these little people. Homer, Aristotle, and Pliny all discourse of the Pigmies as actually existing, and the artists, availing themselves of this belief, which they shared, employed it in a hundred ways to caricature the doings of men of larger growth. Pliny describes them as inhabiting the salubrious mountainous regions of India, their stature about t

een Pigmies

he "Iliad," alludes to the wa

ement winters

rosts, or thick

s the Cranes

order through

s wounds and de

ar descends u

cene-from

ardless of the open-mouthed, bellowing hippopotamus behind him. In other pictures, however, the scaly monster, so far from playing this submissive part, is seen plunging in fierce pursuit of a Pigmy, who flies headlong before the foe. Frescoes, vases, mosaics, statuettes, paintings, and si

these Pigmy pictures were designed to amuse the children. No conjecture could be less erudite or more probable. We know, however, as a matter of record, that the walls of taverns and wine-shops were usually adorned with Pigmy pictures, such subjects being associated in every mind with pleasure and gayety. It is not dif

th Pigmy

of human beings. A very large number of specimens have been uncovered, some of them gorgeous with the hues given them by masters of coloring eighteen hundred years

per drivin

Antique

background and the greenish brown of the course. The colorists of Pompeii have obviously influenced the taste of Christendom. There are few houses of pretension decorated within the last quarter of a century, either in Europe or A

f ?neas

ave furnished us is a burlesque of a popular picture of ?neas escaping from Troy, carrying his father, Anchises, on his back, and leading by the hand his son, Ascanius, the old man carrying the casket of household gods. No sce

all that pruden

houlders with

ils; then on m

oad of my dea

better hand

qual paces t

and of one picture suggested by them two

of the Flig

iquity most frequently employed. It was also common with them to burlesque familiar paintings, as in the instance given. It is not unlikely that the cloyed and dainty taste of the Pompeian connoisseur perceived something ridiculous in the too-familiar exploit of Father ?neas as represented in serious art, just as we smile at the theatrical attitudes and costumes in the picture of "Washington crossin

Red J

esults. Forty years later, a peasant at work in a vineyard five miles from the same spot struck with his hoe something hard, which was too firmly fixed in the ground to be moved. It proved to be a small statue of metal, upright, and riveted to a stone pedestal, which was itself immovably fastened to some solid mass still deeper in the earth. Where the hoe had struck the statue the metal showed the tempting hue of gold, and the peasant, after carefully smoothing over the surface, hurried away with a fragment of it to a goldsmith, intending (so runs the local gos

s, Comic a

of culture: it does not exist in a dull or in an ignorant mind. And this curiosity, nourished and inflamed as it was by the brilliant and marvelous things brought to light in Pompeii and Herculaneum, has sought new gratification wherever a heap of ruins betrayed an ancient civilization. It looks now as if many of the old cities of the world are in layers or strata-a new London up

or masked for the

n the open air, compelled caricature, the basis of which is exaggeration. Actors, both comic and tragic, wore masks of very elaborate construction, made of resonant metal, and so shaped as to serve, in so

ance across spaces so extensive, he will readily understand the necessity of such masks as these. The art of acting could only have been developed in small theatres. In the open air or in the uncovered amphitheatre all m

ibition of rollicking freedom from restraints of law, usage, and gravitation, has amused mankind for unknown thousands of years; for it is merely what remains to us of the legendary Bacchus and his jovial crew. We observe, too, that the great comic books, such as "Gil Blas," "Don Quixote," "Pickwick," and others, are most effective when the hero is most like Bacchus, roaming over the earth with merry blades, delightfully free from the duties and conditions which make bondmen of us all. Mr. Dickens may never have thought of it-and he may-but there is much of the charm of

orace as statements of fact. During the heat of our antislavery contest, Dryden's translation of the passage in Juvenal which pictures the l

lave to death!

r innocent be

r, when man's l

ne'er too lo

t slave a man? t

ved the crime,

ereign power t

other reason

cter in Horace (Satire III., Book I.), where, wishing to give an example of impossible folly, he says, "If a man should crucify a slave for eating some of the fish which he had been ordered to take aw

ll her handmai

e will twenty

f, with breast a

nsiders every

ler from his

for the morta

urls they build

with a form

he seems; bu

dwindles to t

ort-waisted, su

rise on tipt

usband's whole

while she rece

ld," who has starved himself into a lethargy; his heir is scouring his coffers in triumph; but the doctor devises a mode of rousing his patient. He orders a table to be brought into the room, upon which he causes the hidden bags of money to be poured out, and several persons to draw near as if to count it. Opimius revives at this maddening spectacle, and the doctor urges him to strengthen himself by generous food, and

the manner in which slaves burlesqued their lords at this jocund time. He reports some of the remarks of his own slave, Davus, upon himself and his poetry. Davus, it is evident, had discovered the histrionic element in literature, and pressed it home upon his master. "You praise the simplicity of the ancient Romans; but if any god were to reduce you to their condition, you, the same man that wrote those fine things, would beg to be let off. At Rome you long for the country; and when you are in the country, you praise the distant city to the skies. When you are not invited out to supper, you extol your homely repast at home, and hug yourself that you are not obliged to drink with any body abroad. As if you ever went out upon compulsion! But let M?cenas

aricature of

had not been discovered. Most of the caricatures of passing events speedily perish in all countries, because the materials usually employed in them are p

all when uncovered was found scratched all over with rude caricature drawings in the style of the specimen given. This one immediately arrested attention, and the part of the wall on which it was dr

Christians. It is the only allusion to Christianity which has yet been found upon the walls of the Italian cities; but

this readiness should be the result of a calm judgment, and not be an exhibition of mere obstinacy, as with the Christians." The younger Pliny, too, in his character of magistrate, was extremely perplexed with this same obstinacy. He tells us that when people were brought before him charged with being Christians, he asked them the question, Are you a Christian? If they said they were, he repeated it twice, threatening them with punishment; and if they persisted, he ordered them to be punished. If they denied the charge, he put them to the proof by requiring them to repeat after him an invocation to the gods, and to offer wine and incense to the emperor's statue. Some of the accused, he says, reviled Ch

d into the country. Still, he thought it could be checked: nay, it had been checked; for the temples, which had been almost abandoned, were beginning to be frequented again, and there was also "a general demand for victims for sacrifice, which till lately had found few purchasers." The wise Trajan approved the course of his representative. He tells him, however, not to go out of his way to look for Christians; but if any were brought before him, why, of course he mu