Eye of Straw and toe of Cade, Tyler's bow, Kosciusko's blade, Russell's liver, tongue of cur, Norfolk's boldness, Fox's fur; Add thereto a tiger's cauldron, For the ingredients of our cauldron!
A CHARM FOR A DEMOCRACY, REVIEWED, ANALYSED, AND DESTROYED, JANUARY 1ST, 1799, TO THE CONFUSION OF ITS AFFILIATED FRIENDS.
One of Horne Tooke's colleagues is working the incantation from a breviary of his own, 'Lying, False Swearing, &c.,' and is flourishing a witch's besom, 'Thrice the Gallic wolves have bayed!' Another of the weird sisterhood is stirring the unholy mixture, crying: 'Thrice! and twice King's Heads have fallen!' Horne Tooke is attending to the fuel department; he is muttering: ''Tis time, 'tis time, 'tis time!' The witches' familiars are whirling above their heads, and in the midst of the flames from the cauldron, in the shape of wild cats, with wings; a flying monkey, with 'Voltaire' on his collar; a tiger with vulture wings, marked Robespierre; and Dr. Price's little dog, which is even more remarkable than the animal associated with the early magicians, are the ministering imps. The fiend, with his pitch-fork, and attended by dragons, serpents, Cerberus, and other terrific monsters of an imaginative construction, suggestive of Callot's grotesques, is directing as head cook the Democratic philter-workers to
Pour in streams of Regal Blood, Then the charm is firm and good.
The inflammable materials, which are piled up to make the pot boil, and fanned into flames by a diabolical news-boy, from the Courier, consist of such combustibles as O'Connor's Manifesto; Oakley's Pyrology; Belsham's History; Rights of Nature; Quigley's Dying Speech; Freud's Atheism; Whig Club; Universal Equality; Darwin's topsey-turvey Plants and Animals' Destruction; Sedition; French Freedom; Political Liberty; Duty of Insurrection; Equality; Fraud; Sophisms; Blasphemy; Heresy; Deism, together with such fiery sentiments as Kings can do no good; Joel Barlow; Resistance is Prudence; The Vipers of Monarchy and Aristocracy will soon be strangled by the infant Democracy; Kings are Servants, &c.; with the Analytical Review, a rival publication, thrown in as Fallen never to rise again.
The Duke of Bedford is at the head of the Opposition; the members seem to fare badly between the two extremes of Pittites and Radicals, the leader is demanding: 'Where are they! Gone. Pocketed the Church and Poorlands! The Tythes next!' The Duke of Norfolk is deploring the 'Fallen Sovereignty (of the People). Degraded Counsellor!' having been deprived of some of his offices as a punishment for the famous toast. Lord Derby is equally hopeless: 'Poor Joe is done. No Test, no Corporation Acts.' Fox, who had kept his word and absented himself from the debates, is reduced to a tattered state, and enquires: 'Where can I hide my secluded head?' Erskine, in legal trim, as 'Counsellor Ego,' is deploring: 'Ah, woe is me—poor I!' Tierney is regretting his past activity: 'Would I had never spoke of the licentiousness of the press!' Sir Francis Burdett, who had brought an investigation into the abuses practised on the unfortunates in the New State prison, before the House, a motion founded on his own observations, is enquiring: 'What can I report to my friends at the Bastille?' Thelwall, with his lectures under his arm, is 'Off to Monmouthshire;' and the followers of the dispirited 'party' are wandering blindly, lost in the 'Cave of Despair.'
Above the clouds is the King as Jupiter, with his supporters; light is being poured down in streams, upon the machinations of the disaffected patriots, from a symbolical source: Afflavit Deus et Dissipantur. 'Your Destruction cometh as a whirlwind!' 'Vengeance is ripe!' The monarch is strangling a brace of serpents, and asserting, 'Our enemies are confounded!' One minister is offering congratulations on a 'Great Victory!' while Pitt, behind the Crown, is insinuating an expeditious method of disposing of his adversaries: 'Suspend their bodies.' The Lord Chancellor, careful of the forms of law, is suggesting a more formal mode of procedure: 'Take them to the King's Bench and Coldbath Fields!'
February 10, 1799. An Artist Travelling in Wales. Rowlandson delin., Mercke sculp. Published by R. Ackermann, 101 Strand.—The caricaturist—in company with his friend, Henry Wigstead, himself a bit of an artist, further given to sportive flirtation with the Muses—visited North and South Wales in August 1797, for the purpose of carrying out a picturesque tour, to which the two travellers furnished the accompaniments of descriptive sketches and sketchy descriptions. The journey was undertaken solely as a pleasure trip, and not carried out with the intention of 'making a book.' It seems, however, that the interest which partial friends took in the notes of scenery, as found in Rowlandson's sketch-books, and in the minutes of travel, as jotted down in Wigstead's journal, finally prevailed over the travellers' reluctance to make much of a little; and accordingly, some two years later, the Remarks on a Tour to North and South Wales were submitted to the public, in the form of an octavo book, with some additional views by the hands of Pugh, Howitt, &c. (See 1800.)