Another admirable version, the felicity of which has been much appreciated, is entitled “The Handwriting on the Wall” (May 26, 1831). The King, taking his constitutional stroll in the Park, has come upon the inscription, in huge white letters, painted on the wall, “Reform Bill!” William IV., shading his eyes with his hand, is peering at this legend,[69] exclaiming “‘Reform Bill!’ Can that mean me?”
The tendencies of the time were considered fraught with danger; the measures of reform about to be experimentally tested would, it was hinted, produce a political revolution—if not a total subversion of everything; Lord Grey, the Mephistopheles of the situation, as viewed through Doyle’s “Conservative Magnifiers,” occupied an unenviable prominence, and might expect a day of terrible retribution. “Brissot’s Ghost” (May 30, 1831) is the only hint which could be offered to the innovating statesman. The ghastly figure of Brissot, with his decapitated head under his arm, is disclosed to the premier as a startling vision, with a significant warning, drawn from his fatal revolutionary experience:—
“To lead the mob, ‘mid faction’s storm
I rode my hobby-horse—Reform,
And had it all my own way.
Till other levellers ruled the mob,
And then I lost my seat and nob,
Take warning, my Lord Grey.”
“Macbeth,” with the famous incantation scene, is impressed into the service of parody to sum up the anticipated state of affairs before the meeting of the House; “The Tricolored Witches” (June 6, 1831):—
“Black spirits and white,
Yellow spirits and Grey,
Mingle, mingle, mingle,
You that mingle may.”
There are five witches, wearing Republican red caps, and armed with besoms of destructiveness, assembled round the cauldron.
The three chief witches are Lords Grey, Durham (“Yellow Lambton”), and Brougham. As the ingredients are cast into the blaze, fed by Durham coal, Grey is singing the charm:—
“Forty years of toil and trouble
Like a hell-broth now shall bubble.
When the pot begins to boil,
Sons and daughters seize the spoil.
Double, double, toil and trouble,
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.”
Lord Brougham takes up the invocation:—
“Freeman’s votes, and Grants by Charter.
First-born rights in ev’ry quarter,
Law and Justice, Church and King,
These the glorious spoils I bring.”