A BEAR-LEADER. HOGARTH, CHURCHHILL, AND WILKES.
This plate was issued at 1s. 6d., and seems to have gone through various alterations and additions from first to last. On the palette which first displayed the mystifying “line of beauty,” was substituted two designs of a figurative nature—the one having reference to Pitt, his resignation and annual pension, and his city supporters, represented by the emblematic civic guardians, Gog and Magog; the other a group further applying to the castigation of the designer’s foes. Hogarth is armed with a triple whip, with which he is lustily chastising a big dancing bear, Churchill, held bound and muzzled, as not only the artist but the ministry and the Scotch faction would have rejoiced to have effected; the Bruiser to the clerical ruffles and bands has incongruously added the modish laced hat of a man about town; the other end of the rope, by which Hogarth has secured the bear through the muzzle, is fastened round an ape, intended to personify Wilkes. This animal is wearing a wig exactly similar to that shown on Wilkes’s head in the too-famous etching; the North Briton is in his left hand; the spear, topped with the inevitable cap of liberty, is turned into a hobby-horse, to infer, according to Mr. F. G. Stephen’s account, “that Wilkes used Liberty to get his own ends, which not more than a child progresses on its ‘cock-horse’ did he really obtain.” The face of the fiddling personage, who is making the music for this pretty caper, is a featureless blank; he wears a ribbon of knighthood, and it is understood that Earl Temple is the person intended.
Other uncomplimentary allusions to Wilkes and his proceedings appear in the Public Advertiser, where is a woodcut of an execution, I.W., and M.P., with a “Toast”—“May loyalists walk easily in their Boots The notoriety of John Wilkes was much assisted by the ill-advised and clumsy conduct of the ministry, which elected to make a martyr of the man whose career proves him to have been but a sham patriot, and, who, if unnoticed, was totally without weight or consequence. On April 30, 1763, Wilkes found himself, in spite of the Habeas Corpus granted by the Common Pleas, conducted to the Tower on a warrant, signed by the Earls of Egremont and Halifax as Privy Councillors and Secretaries of State, authorizing the Constable of the Tower, the Right Hon. John Lord Berkeley of Stratton,— “to receive into your custody the body of John Wilkes, Esq., herewith sent you, for being the author and publisher of a most infamous and seditious libel, entitled the North Briton, No. XLV., tending to inflame the minds and alienate the affections of the people from His Majesty, and to excite them to traitorous insurrections against the Government.”
The small engraving which exhibits Wilkes in the Tower, forms one portion of a series, entitled “The Places” (being a sequel to “The Posts”), a political pasquinade, dedicated to Bamber Gasoign, Esq., a Trading Lord for the time being.
A SAFE PLACE. WILKES IN THE TOWER, 1763.
“Satire’s a harmless, quiet thing—
’Tis application makes the sting.”
No. 3 is styled a Safe Place; the title is “Moderation, Moderation, this was Wonderful Moderation, an old song.” The prisoner is simultaneously attacked by curs, and by one of the historical lions of the Tower, which cannot do much harm, being chained to the secure post Magna Charta. Wilkes is threatening his assailants with a whip; he has on a spear the cap of liberty—this emblem is inscribed “Habeas Corpus.” A yeoman of the guard is in charge of the hero of the XLV. North Briton.