Aan der Meester Tonge-Slyper. As adapted by the Anti-Jesuits

We will now consider a curious broadside {230} published about the year 1688, the copperplate heading of which was destined to be seized upon and adapted to other purposes nearly twenty years later by the piratical publisher referred to in the last chapter.

As will be seen from our re­pro­duc­tion, its letterpress is addressed, “Aan der Meester Tonge-Slyper” (“To the Master Tongue Grinder”). The engraver’s name does not appear, but the work is easily dis­tin­guished as that of Jean Bollard, by comparing it with other signed engravings of the same series of pictorial satires.

Two men at a grindstone sharpen a tongue, Another tongue lies on the anvil. Two labourers empty a large hamper of tongues into a basket, which is steadied by a woman. Point is given to the picture by the gossiping groups seen through the door and window, and especially by the two Xantippes who, with arms akimbo, are slanging each other in good earnest.

The doggerel letterpress refers to the birth of the Old Pretender, and the mendacious tongues of the conspirators are being delivered to the smith to be coerced into speaking the truth. {231}

Here is a free translation of the passage, beginning “Heden zyn my over London”:—

“To-day I received from London a cargo of those goods which you have to take in hand; I have some of the biggest size, The Admiral of the First Flag, which has been used so much and has become black from lying, and which, after all appearances, seems to have had his end bitten off; scrape thoroughly his thick skin or he will be up to anything; swearing oaths, breaking bonds, falsely protecting the Church is his daily work.”

And so on, until it ends with the moral:—

“Nothing more useful than whetting the tongue When its aim is to speak the truth. But when it is given to lying, It must be pierced, flayed, and scraped.”