In the opposite corner of the print, surrounded by his miserable and famished subjects, sits the heroic Frederick of Prussia. Regardless of their distress, and unmoved by their cries, tears, and execrations—like Nero, who fiddled while Rome burnt—he is lost to every feeling, except those which arise from the fine tones of his Cremona. The effects resulting from his insatiable thirst of glory are not confined to his own subjects. Fired by vaulting ambition, he scatters destruction through surrounding states; depopulates provinces, and lays waste kingdoms, to prove himself—a philosopher.
How far the rest of the figures in this group may refer to particular persons or nations, I cannot determine. The female, with clasped hands and eyes raised to heaven, has been supposed to be intended for the Empress Queen; a venerable matron, stealing away with a trunk under her arm, for the late Empress of Russia, Frederick's most inveterate enemy, who ended her earthly reign on the 2d of January 1762. They may be so intended, though I must acknowledge I do not discover anything which will wholly establish the supposition, but am more inclined to consider them as merely exemplifying the horrors of war.
The fleur-de-lis hung from one of the houses in flames, and the black eagle from the other, sufficiently indicate the powers intended to be pointed out. The sign of the Salutation alludes to the treaty between France and Spain, for the dexter figure is Louis Baboon; and the sinister, Lord Strut.
The flames rage with so much violence as to prevent the fluttering dove from alighting on any of the buildings; notwithstanding which, this bird of peace, with an olive branch, hovers over them in the midst of ascending smoke.
The exact point of time is determined by the waggon, inscribed "Hermione," in the background.[143]
Such is my general idea of the preceding plate;[144] there may be those who will discover many things which I do not see, and which possibly never entered into the contemplation of the artist. As the whole alludes to the politics of his own day, all the characters introduced were his contemporaries, and several of them had been his intimate friends, he might intentionally leave some parts obscure;[145] or conceiving his meaning sufficiently obvious to those who lived at the time, forget that it would become impervious to posterity.
I have before observed that in allegory he was not happy; and the dissimilar combinations here brought together are a proof of the assertion. Soldiers and sailors, whose business it is to increase the flames of war, carrying water to extinguish them, is not quite consonant to our general ideas of their dispositions. Highlanders, being universally considered as the soldiers of Europe, make but an awkward appearance in the character of peacemakers.
A sign of the globe on fire, flames bursting out of the Globe Tavern and three other buildings, with each an alehouse sign, to explain what nations are meant, borders upon the bathos. Another nation personified by the sovereign fiddling to his expiring subjects, is not a bad thought, but here it is incongruous. It has not that general unison with the other parts of the picture which either writing or painting demands. Separated from the accompaniments, this group might have made a good print; with the Globe Tavern, the Temple Coffeehouse, the garretteers, and the aldermen, it does not assimilate.
My last remark I shall take the liberty of borrowing from Mr. Wilkes, for in this one point I have the honour of agreeing with him: "The print is too much crowded with figures."