1800. _Matrimonial Comforts._ No. 7, _Washing Day_. Woodward del. Etched by Rowlandson. Published by R. Ackermann, 101 Strand.--A stout and comfortable-looking gentleman, whose features wear a very sulky and discontented expression, is giving one hand to a cheerful old 'chum' from the country, and pointing with the disengaged hand to two stout wenches deep in the washing-tubs: 'Ah! my old friend,' cries the host to the traveller, 'I wish you had called at some more convenient time, but this is washing day--I have nothing to give you but cold fish, cold tripe, and cold potatoes, you may smell soapsuds a mile! Ah Jack! Jack! you don't know these Comforts! You are a bachelor!'
1800. _Matrimonial Comforts._ No. 8, _A Curtain Lecture_. Woodward del. Etched by Rowlandson. Published by R. Ackermann, 101 Strand.--The bedchamber of a couple who seem to disagree. The clock points to 'five o'clock in the morning,' and the husband, night-cap on head, and his face bearing an expression of injured martyrdom, has clasped his hands in despair of obtaining rest from the energetic denunciations of his wife, who, leaning over him in a commanding attitude, is pouring forth her 'Caudle-like' remonstrances over the prostrate sufferer: 'Yes, you base man, you; don't you eat, drink, and sleep comfortably at home? and still you must be jaunting abroad every night. I'll find out all your intrigues, you may depend on it.'
1800 (?). _Preparation for the Academy, Old Joseph Nollekens and his Venus._--John Thomas Smith, many years Keeper of the prints and drawings in the British Museum, and better known by his works on metropolitan antiquities, to which he furnished etchings, as well as archæological researches, has left us one of the chattiest and most eccentric biographies to be found in the annals of literature--the _Life of the Sculptor Nollekens_, whose pupil he was. Much as we are indebted to 'Antiquity Smith' for the whimsical anecdotes he has imported into his unequivocally entertaining pair of volumes, which touch freely upon contemporary men and things under their most familiar and every-day aspect, we cannot fail to feel a passing regret that the versatile keeper has forgotten to make any anecdotal mention of his friend Rowlandson, with whom he was on terms of cordiality. The caricaturist had presented, at times, some of his most interesting drawings to 'his old friend John Thomas Smith,' as he has taken care to inscribe on the margins, with his autograph; the best of these is possibly, _Drawing from the Life-School at the Royal Academy_--a subject upon which both the humourists were well informed, since they had worked there as students, and were more or less acquainted with all the artists of the day, and, moreover, it being impossible to overlook such points, with their keen sense of the eccentric; they had noted--the one with his pencil, and the other with his pen--all the striking peculiarities, personal or professional, of their numerous associates. The latest portrait the present writer has seen of our artist is one drawn with a pen in outline and tinted with Indian ink by the worthy keeper, one day when the caricaturist was visiting the Print Room of the British Museum, Rowlandson being, at that time, well advanced in years. The sketch is that of a large and decisive-looking elderly gentleman, with a bald head, firmly-cut features, and wearing big old-fashioned spectacles; this portrait was taken while the subject was stooping to examine a drawing. Beneath it John Thomas Smith has inscribed the particulars under which he came to draw the portrait of 'his old friend.'