ANTIQUE PRINT. The Comic History of Rome. (1850).

Set of 8 hand-coloured copper engravings, approx. 4 1/2″ x 6″, on sheets approx. 5 1/8″ x 8 1/4″ with engraved titles on margins. All but one in excellent condition with only lightly browned margins, a single case of light marginal soiling, and another with a couple of minor nicks. The damaged plate is stained on top margin, with minor bleeding into image. Leech was an eminent Victorian caricaturist and cartoonist, famous for his contributions to Punch, and his illustrations for Dickens’s “The Christmas Carol” and Surtees’s “Sporting Sketches”. In 1850 he unleashed his often Monty Pythonesque imagination on the history of Rome, and this set of eight includes: Romulus & Remus Discovered by a Gentle Shepherd; Tarquinus Superbus Makes Himself King; Marius Discovered in the Marshes at Minturna; Hannibal, whilst yet a child, swears eternal hatred to the Romans; Pyrrhus arrives in Italy with his Troupe; Flaminius restoring liberty to Greece; The gallant Curtius leaping into the gulf; Cicero denouncing Cataline. Contemporary 19th century details in some of the images suggest that Leech was poking fun at more than antique Romans. 0