A Book of Drawings (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from A Book of DrawingsIt is well that a draughtsman with the wild exactitude of Mr. Bateman should enjoy one riot of ridiculing modern society , before modern society becomes too ridiculous to be ridiculed. For that is the chief danger at present to this branch of art. It is sometimes said that we have no satirists as great as Rabelais or Swift, but satire of that strength depends on a sanity and even sobriety in real things. The imaginative effect of Rabelais owes much to the old medieval and monastic setting at which he mocked, and Swift's wildest fancies can be seen more clearly against the background of clipped hedges and trim gardens in which Queen Anne took her tea. What could Rabelais have said, if he had stopped for wine and refreshment at a real abbey, and found that it deserved rather to be called Nightmare Abbey than the Abbey of Theleme? Suppose Swift, on walking stiffly up to Queen Anne's tea-party, had found it was the Mad Tea Party. Suppose that Anne, like Alice, was already dining with the March Hare, the Mad Hatter and the Dormouse? That is the disconcerting situation in which a satirist finds himself now-a-days. And so there is a tendency, in which the talent of Mr. Bateman is at once original and typical, for English pictorial satire to grow more and more fantastic. Otherwise, it might be outstripped by the facts. There was a Victorian epoch when the caricaturists were supposed to caricature the politicians. Now the politicians are caricaturing their own caricatures. Hence it will probably be found that all our ablest artists, in this manner, will grow more and more frantic and farcical, more and more incredible and crazy. They are trying to keep pace with our statesmen and social philosophers.For instance, there is a delightful design in this book representing the secret and hideous crime of the gentleman who filled a fountain-pen with the ink in the hotel. It is exceedingly funny. But it is not so funny as it would be if a man in a hotel were allowed to fill forty fountain-pens and ten large bottles with ink, but were strictly forbidden ever to dip his pen in the ink, taking only what he needed at the moment for addressing an envelope or signing a cheque. It would be funnier still if the law which allowed him to take a bottleful, but forbade him to take a pen-full, were called a law for the saving of ink.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.