So much for the plate in its first state. In its second we find it published seventeen years later, and somewhat ingeniously adapted to the new exigencies. It now takes its place in the armoury of the anti-Jesuits, and is published without any acknowledgment in the pamphlet, entitled Roma Pertubata Ofte’t Beroerde Romen, etc., etc., referred to in the last chapter. This pamphlet, which is a very warren of palimpsest plates (it has at least four, and possibly there are others), may {232} be seen in the print-room of the British Museum. It may, too, as I have myself proved, be discovered at rare intervals in the shops of the old printsellers in Holland. Mine is in a parti-coloured paper wrapper, whether as issued or added later I cannot say. It consists of title-page, table of contents, and eleven full-page copperplate engravings of ex­traor­di­nary interest. Curiously enough, the table of contents makes no reference to the eleventh and last. Our palimpsest is number 9.[44]

[44] Grateful acknowledgments are here due to the splendid Catalogue of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, 5 vols., which should be in the library of every collector of satirical prints.

In its new surroundings it has (vide re­pro­duc­tion) been divorced from its letterpress, and been cut away at the bottom. A descriptive panel has been engraved over the doorway, and other lettering added here and there. The pub­li­ca­tion line, “tot Tongeren by J: la Langue,” apparently a bogus one, playing on the words of the original, “à Langres chez Tongelel,” now appears within the border of the design.

The tongue which lies on the anvil is now pierced by the seven heraldic arrows of the Dutch Provinces, and words are engraved below to the {233} effect that “There is no worse evil than that a Pope’s tongue dares slander the State,” and on the base of the anvil, “He has given way to slander. You must forge him before you grind him.”

Below the quarrelling women are the words: “These maids are quarrelling for de Kok,” referring to scandals which were afloat concerning the morality of the Pope’s vicar-general, and a Latin chronograph appears at the feet of the chief smith.

The inscription over the door gives directions to “The Romish Dutch Grinder of Tongues,” and, amongst other things, says of the tongue on the anvil, “That is de Kok’s tongue, wounded by seven arrows, because he has slandered the State by his speech,” which statement hardly tallies with the inscription on the anvil, unless the vicar-general may be regarded as the very mouthpiece of the Pope.

This is no place, as I have said, to enlarge upon the Jansenist propagandum, but it will well repay the enthusiastic historian to follow out the above allusions to their original source.

So much for our adapted broadside.

The Stature of a Great Man, or the English Colossus