To designate more positively the object of his ridicule, and render this rude representative still more ludicrous, it is decorated with a band and a pair of ruffles; and with these characteristic ornaments, though it remains a good bear, it becomes a sort of overcharged portrait of the reverend satirist, and I really think resembles him.
Hogarth's favourite dog Trump, who had been his companion in the portrait from which this is altered, retains his original situation on the outside of the picture frame, but is now contemptuously treating and trampling upon the Epistle to his master. Near him lie two books, on one of which is written, "A New Way to Pay Old Debts, a comedy, by Massinger:" on the other, "A List of Subscribers to the North Briton." To intimate the poverty of those who wrote it, the pyramid is crowned by a begging-box; and beneath, as emblems of art, lie a pencil and palette.
In this state the print was published; but the gentleman whom it offended asserting that it proved the painter in his dotage, he refuted their calumny by the following spirited addition:—
In the form of a framed picture on the painter's palette, is placed a small drawing, which may serve as a sort of political postscript to his first plate of "The Times," or a kind of prelude to the second. It represents Mr. Pitt reclining in a similar position to that of Sir Isaac Newton in Westminster Abbey, and is probably meant as allusive to his having retired from public business, to enjoy the otium cum dignitate, a short time before. The background is composed of a pyramidical piece of marble, from the top of which is suspended a millstone, inscribed "£3000," in allusion to his saying that "Hanover was a millstone round the neck of England," and afterwards increasing the public burdens by accepting a pension of £3000 a year. It is suspended by a thread, and must, if it falls, dash him to pieces. This was Hogarth's idea of crushing popularity. To heighten the ridicule, though recumbent, he is firing a mortar at the symbol of peace, "a dove with an olive branch" perched on the standard of England; but his artillery is not powerful enough to reach the mark; the powder fails in its effect, the ball falls short of its object. In most of his measures Mr. Pitt was supported by the city of London, and to this our great metropolis Hogarth appears to allude, in making the two Guildhall giants, with each of them a pipe of tobacco in his mouth, supporters of the Monument. The tubes with Indian weed evidently hint at his great Creolian friend, Mr. Alderman Beckford. To denote that Mr. Pitt was the sovereign of their affections, and kept the master-key of their iron chests, one of these representatives of the city is giving him supreme rule, by placing upon his head "the likeness of a kingly crown." The other holds a shield, on which is emblazoned the arms of Austria, which the statesman indignantly spurns. At an opposite corner, the painter has exhibited himself, in the humble character of a showman, drilling Messrs. Churchill and Wilkes through the varying steps of a political minuet. The first he has represented under the type of a bear in a laced hat, and the last as a monkey astride upon a mop-stick, with the cap of liberty at the top of it. In his left hand he holds a check-string, which being fastened to his two pupils, answers the purpose of a bridle, and in his right brandishes a cat-o'-nine-tails. That the two quadrupeds may dance to some tune, a figure without features, intended as a second delineation of Earl Temple, is playing on the fiddle.[164]
Such is Hogarth's representation; and in the poem of Independence, which Churchill published in September 1764, he admirably parries the caricature by a most spirited description of himself. In this he has evidently taken Hogarth's print for his model. Having described a lean, long, lank, and bony figure, designed for a then unpopular nobleman, he thus proceeds:
"Such was the first. The second was a man
Whom Nature built on a quite different plan:
A bear, whom from the moment he was born,
His dam despis'd, and left unlick'd in scorn: