Beginning with the preacher, we notice that {89} his is the only figure practically unaltered and common to both engravings. By his “bull-roar” (vide the “scale of Vociferation” hanging on the wall to his left) he has apparently succeeded in cracking the sounding-board above his head. Notice his shaven crown, exposed by the fallen wig, which intimates that he is a Papist in disguise; and the harlequin jacket underneath his gown, which suggests that he is a religious merry-andrew. A point worth remarking is that the halo surrounds his wig, and not his head!
From his right hand (Plate I.) he suspends a puppet (caricatured from a picture of Raphael’s) supporting the sacred triangle, which, in attempting to personify the Trinity, was considered by some to be a profane materialisation of a mystical idea. This he has ingeniously turned into a gridiron or trivet of the Inquisition by the simple addition of three legs. In Plate II. this puppet has been removed and its place taken by a witch, riding on a broom-handle, who is suckling what appears to be a huge rat. Beyond the preacher’s hand we find a further addition in the shape of a cherub, hunting-cap on head, bearing in its mouth {90} a letter directed “To St. Moneytrap.” The sermon paper, too, has been turned about so as to bring the words “I speak as a fool” into greater prominence. In which connection it may be noticed that in “Enthusiasm Delineated” all the lettering would seem to be from the burin of Hogarth, whilst that in the “Medley” has been put in by a writing engraver, with considerable weakening of the general effect. Dangling from the preacher’s left hand is a devil with a gridiron (after Rubens), practically identical in both plates, though obviously re-engraved.
Further puppets hang ready for use on the panels of the pulpit. In Plate I. they are caricature representations, from pictures of the Old Masters, of Adam and Eve (suggested by Albert Dürer), of Peter with his Key, and Paul in a black periwig armed with two swords and elevated by high-heeled shoes (travestied from Rembrandt), and of Moses and Aaron. In Plate II. these scriptural puppets are exchanged for the superstitious images of Mrs. Veal’s ghost (see the writing on the book), who, according to Defoe, appeared the day after her death to Mrs. Bargrave {91} of Canterbury, September 8, 1705; of Julius Cæsar’s apparition, starting at its own appearance in the looking-glass; and of that of Sir George Villers (sic), not “Villiers” as Ireland has it, whose appearance to an officer at Windsor, charging him to warn his son, the Duke of Buckingham, of his approaching assassination, is recorded by Lord Clarendon and Lilly the astrologer.
In the foreground, on the right, we have in both plates a most remarkable mental thermometer, the bulb of which is inserted in a Methodist’s brain. In Plate I. the mercury stands at “low-spirits”; in Plate II. at “lukewarm.” In the first a dove surmounts the whole; in the second the Methodist’s brain rests upon “Wesley’s Sermons,” and “Glanvid” (an evident misprint for “Glanvil”) on “Witches.” The lettering, too, is altered, and, in place of the inscription in the top division, is a picture of the Cock Lane Ghost, of which Walpole wrote—“Elizabeth Canning and the Rabbit Women were modest impostors in comparison of this.” The whole is surmounted by a figure of the Tedworth drummer immortalised by Addison. {92}
In the adjoining pew a nobleman, as can be seen by the decoration half concealed by his coat, makes love to a girl, who discards a heavenly for a very earthly affection, point to which is given by the quotation from Whitfield’s hymn which can be read on the paper hanging over the adjacent clerk’s desk. The “mixed expression of religious hypocrisy and amorous desire” on the girl’s face is marvellously expressed. The other occupant of the pew is a repentant thief, as may be seen from the “T” branded on his cheek.
In the first account of the plate given in the Catalogue of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, the suggestion that the felon sniffs at a bottle of spirits held in the hands of the image is obviously incorrect. He is dropping his tears into the bottle. In Plate II. a less aristocratic and somewhat more decently behaved pair of lovers occupy the pew. The puppet held by the man is clearly a repetition of the Cock Lane Ghost, only bearing in its hand a lighted candle in place of a hammer. What the meaning of this is I fail to understand. Of the two other occupants of the pew one is weeping and the other asleep. {93} A winged devil whispers evil thoughts into the sleeper’s ear.
In both plates, on a bracket attached to the side of the pew and inscribed “The Poor’s Box,” rests a wire rat-trap in place of the proper receptacle.
Turning now to the clerk’s desk, which in Plate I. has the inscription “Cherubim and Seraph [ — ] do cry,” and in Plate II. “Continually do cry,” we find a hideous and brutal-looking clerk singing lustily from a book which he half supports in his claw-like fingers. Supporting him are two winged cherubs, the ridiculous nothingness of whose bodies (so envied by Thackeray in his days of pupilage) is accentuated by the significant addition of ducks’ feet. Their pitiful faces accord with the punning inscription on the edge of the desk. In Plate II. the ducks’ feet have been removed, but to make up for the loss we have the clerk himself, now a lean and hungry-looking individual, also decorated with a pair of wings.
Below the desk in Plate I. howls a dog, his collar engraved with Whitfield’s name, whilst, below the hassock on which he sits, a ragged {94} figure squats embracing an image. In Plate II. a book entitled Demonology, by K. James Ist., surmounted by a shoeblack’s basket in which Whitfield’s Journal is stuck, takes the place of the dog, whilst the boy of Bilston, vomiting forth nails, displaces the ragged figure. From the neck of the bottle in his hand a figure, similar to that held by the man in the pew, rises expelling the cork, which falls to the ground.
In the forefront of Plate I. lies the bloated figure of Mother Douglas, who, after a most licentious life, was said to have become a rigid devotee. Hogarth, who has portrayed her in other of his plates, here ridicules her conversion. A hand belonging to a figure outside the plate holds a bottle of salts to her nose. In Plate II. Mary Tofts, “ye Godliman woman,” takes her place. Her well-known imposture, which it would be out of place to particularise here, gave rise to a voluminous literature, and a sheaf of remarkable caricatures. In place of the salts a glass of cordial is applied as a restorative.