But Chatham and Rochester, although outward romance had departed, did not cease to be interested in naval and military affairs. Indeed, they have grown continually greater on them.
HOGARTH’S SATIRES
It was in 1756 that the plates of England and France were published by Hogarth. We were suffering then from one of those panic fears of invasion by the French to which this country has been periodically subject, and these efforts were consequently calculated to have a large sale. Hogarth, of course, after his arrest for sketching at Calais, was morbidly, vitriolically patriotic, and his work is earnest of his feelings. The English are seen drilling in the background of the first plate, while in front of the “Duke of Cumberland” inn a recruit is being measured, and smiles at the caricature of the King of France which a grenadier is painting on the wall. A long inscription proceeds from the mouth of His Most Christian Majesty, “You take a my fine ships, you be de Pirate, you be de Teef, me send you my grand Armies, and hang you all, Morbleu,” and he grasps a gibbet to emphasize the words. Meanwhile, a fifer plays “God Save the King”; a soldier in the group has placed his sword across a great cheese; and a sailor has guarded his tankard of beer with a pistol.
But see how different are things across the Channel. Outside the Sabot Royal a party of French grenadiers, lean and hungry-looking after their poor fare of soupe maigre, are watching one of their number cook the sprats he has spitted on his sword. A monk with a grin of satisfaction feels the edge of an axe which he has taken from a cart full of racks and other engines of torture destined towards the furnishing of a monastery at Blackfriars in London, of which a plan is seen lying upon this heap of ironmongery; and a file of soldiers may be seen in the distance, reluctantly embarking for England, and spurred forward by the point of the sergeant’s halberd. Garrick wrote the patriotic verses that went with this picture, and you may see from them how constantly Englishmen have thought the French to be a nation of lean and hungry starvelings. That is, of course, as absurd as the unfailing practice of French caricaturists to whom the typical Englishman is a creature who has red hair and protruding teeth, and says “Goddam”—
With lanthorn jaws and croaking gut,
See how the half-starv’d Frenchmen strut,
And call us English dogs;
But soon we’ll teach these bragging foes,
That beef and beer give heavier blows
Than soup and roasted frogs.
The priests, inflam’d with righteous hopes,
Prepare their axes, wheels, and ropes,
To bend the stiff-neck’d sinner:
But, should they sink in coming over,
Old Nick may fish ’twixt France and Dover,
And catch a glorious dinner.
THE INVASION OF ENGLAND: ENGLAND.
After Hogarth.
CHATHAM