Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER III THE ENGLAND OF PITT AND HER ILLUSTRATORS WHAT, we may ask at this point of our survey, was this England where Francesco Bartolozzi had come in 1764 to settle, and whose art we have just seen to modify and profoundly influence his own conception? If it was the epoch of Sir Joshua Reynolds, of Hoppner, Gainsborough, and George Romney in English portraiture, it was also the period of Gillray, Bunbury, and Thomas Rowlandson in English political caricature. George III. had but lately (in 1760) ascended the Jthrone, with the scarcely concealed intention of enforcing a stronger and more personal government. We are told that in his boyhood and youth the Princess of Wales, his mother, often exclaimed to him: "George, be King 1 --and that when the Peace of Paris was approved (1763) by the " King's Party" within the Commons, in the teeth of Pitt's denunciation, she was able to cry: "At last my son is King!" But, in spite of a House of Commons which had become subservient to Court influence, a new power was then making its appearance in English public life--the power of the Press. Dissatisfied with the conduct of the Government, and unable to find expression in a House of Commons where the majority were place-men, the masses were inclined to give vent to their feelings in riot and violence; but a yet more effective outlet for this deep-felt discontent was found when the journals of the period indulged in most bitter and personal attacks on the Ministry, with the King's favourite, Lord Bute, at its head. In No. 45 of the North 'Briton Wilkes had ventured to criticise and condemn the Speech from the Throne at the opening of the Session; and in 1764--the very year of Bartolozzi's arrival--had been compelled to fly to France, and been...