2'12 
Literature 
and Art. 
463 
Among them are many of the profetibrs and other diliinguiihed members 
of the univeriity of Edinburgh. Thus one, copied in our cut No. 221, 
reprefents the eminent old geologiit, Dr. James Hutton, rather aftonifhed 
at the {hapes which his favourite rocks have fuddenly taken. The original 
print is dated in 1787, ten years before Dr. Hutton's death. The idea of 
giving faces to rocks was not new in the time of John Kay, and it has 
been frequently repeated. Some of thefe caricature portraits are clever 
and amufing, and they are at times very iatirical. Kay appears to have 
rarely ventured on caricature of any other defcription, but there is one 
rare plate by him, entitled " The Craft in Danger," which is Hated in a 
few words pencilled on the copy I have before me, to have been aimed 
at a cabal for propofing Dr. Barclay for a profeiibrfhip in the univerfity of 
Edinburgh. It difplays no great talent, and is, in fact, now not very 
intelligible. The figures introduced in it are evidently intended for 
rather caricatured portraits of members of the univerfity engaged in the 
cabal, and are in the {tyle of Kay's other portraits." 
" In the library of the British Museum there is a collection of john Kay's 
works bound in two volumes quarto, with a title and table of contents in manu- 
script, hut whether it is one of a few copies intended for publication, or whether 
it is merely the collection of some individual, I am not prepared to say. It contains 
343 plates, which are stated to be all Kay's works down to the year 1813, when 
this collection was made. " The Craft in Danger" is not among them. I have 
before me a smaller, but a very choice selection, of Kay's caricatures, the loan of 
which I owe to the kindness of Mr. john Camden Hotten, of Piccadilly. I am 
indebted to Mr. Hotten for many courtesies of this description, and especially for 
the use of a very valuable collection of caricatures of the latter part of the eighteenth 
century and earlier part of the present, mounted in four large folio volumes, which 
has been of much use to me. 
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