Caricature and Other Comic Art

ive home of all th

ous throughout the classic world as Rosa Bonheur's "Horse Fair" is now in ours; they had Rosa Bonheurs of their own-famous women, a list of whose names Pliny gives; they had portrait-painters too good to be fashionable, and portrait-painters too fashionable to be good; they had artists who excelled in flesh, others great in form, others excellent in composition; they took plaster casts of dead faces; they had varnishers and picture-cleaners. Noted pictures were spoken of as having lost their charm through an unskillful cleaner. They had their "life sch

wned as the "Unswept Hall of Pergamus." And what a pleasing story is that of the contest between Zeuxis and his rival, Parrhasius! On the day of trial Zeuxis hung in the place of exhibition a painting of grapes, and Parrhasius a picture of a curtain. Some birds flew to the grapes of Zeuxis, and began to pick

er's Wooing of the

being accompanied by a Mercury ludicrously unlike the light and agile messenger of the gods. The story goes that the Princess Alcmena, though betrothed to a lover, vowed her hand to the man who should avenge her slaughtered brothers. Jupiter assumed the form and face of the lover, and, pretending to have avenged her brothers' death, gained admittance. Pliny describes a celebrated burle

, and which all Greece held in awe! Cr?sus propitiated this oracle by the gift of a solid golden lion as large as life, and the Phocians found in its coffers, and carried off, a sum equal to nearly eleven millions of dollars in gold. Such was the general belief in its divine inspiration! But in this picture we see the oracle, the god, and those who consult them, a

ims from them, but may sit and starve on Olympus without festivals, holidays, sacrifices, or any pomp or ceremonies whatever." The whole debate is in this manner, and is at the same time a burlesque of the political discussions at the Athenian mass-meetings. What can be more ludicrous than the story of Mercury visiting Athens

of the Oracle of

, standing opposite each other, and competing for the tragic throne by reciting verses in which the mannerism of each, as well as familiar passages of their plays, is broadly burlesqued. Nothing in literature can be found more ludicrous or less becoming, unless we look for it in Aristophanes himself. In his play of "The Clouds" occurs his caricature of Socrates, of infinite absurdity, but not ludicrous to us, because we read it as part of the story of a sublime and affecting martyrdom. It fills our minds with wonder to think that a people among whom a Socrates could have been formed could have borne to see him thus profaned. A rogue of a father, plagued by an extravagant son, repairs to the school of Socrates to learn the arts by which creditors are argued out of their just claims in courts of justice. Upon reaching the place, the door of the "Thinking Shop" opens, and behold! a caricature all ready for the artist's pencil. The pupils are discovered with their heads fixed to the f