The whole composition is more humorous than reverential, but it indicates the taste of the period, according to the last lines:—
'And thus we have carried the farce on: The taste of the times Will relish our rhymes, When the ridicule runs on a parson.'
November 1, 1784. New-Invented Elastic Breeches. Designed by Nixon. Etched by Rowlandson. Published by W. Humphrey.
November 8, 1784. [Money-Lenders.]—A young nobleman is receiving the visits of certain usurers. One Hebrew gentleman, the principal, or 'capitalist,' is dressed with a certain attention to the fashion of the day, which proves that he is by no means an insignificant member of the money-lending fraternity. A deed or bond, the security on which the young spendthrift is expecting an advance, is being duly examined by a more miserly-looking Shylock—'a little Jew-broker,' in fact. As to the borrower, it is clearly indicated that he is quite at his ease in the transaction; it seems evident that whatever money he may raise (regardless of the sacrifices to which he submits in obtaining it) will be quickly thrown to the winds, and 'the dose will have to be repeated as before' until his resources are exhausted.
MONEY-LENDERS.
September 25, 1784. Bookseller and Author.—A characteristic drawing, in Rowlandson's best recognised style, bearing the name of Henry Wigstead as inventor, published by J. R. Smith. The persons of the publisher and author present the marked and conventional extreme contrasts which the two spheres of life were supposed to suggest—the one gross and prosperous, the other meagre and miserable. The scene of the interview may be assumed to be the back-shop of the bookseller; it is fitted around with shelves lined with books. The trader is stout and solid; his spectacles are thrust up on his forehead, his pen is behind his ear, and his hands are held beneath his coat-tails, in a self-assertive attitude, implying well-to-do pomposity.
Wigstead, whose name is associated with authorship (although his professional position as a magistrate exempted him from the sufferings of a struggling literary hack), has painted the professional gentleman in no flattering colours; the man of letters is wretchedly lean in person, and abjectly subservient in manner to the trafficker who is buying his ideas; his hat is held respectfully under his arm, and his manuscript, which he is endeavouring to recommend to his patron, is in his hand. One of the bookseller's clients, a respectable Church dignitary, who is looking through the library, with great owl-like horn spectacles on his reverend nose, is present at the interview, and is regarding the poor literary hack with an air of inflated superiority.
1784. London, Made and Sold by Broderip and Wilkinson, 13 Haymarket.—A plate for a trade advertisement, introducing the figures Apollo, Daphne, &c., drawn and etched with considerable grace and spirit. Among Rowlandson's renderings of the works of other men we may mention a sketch after T. Mortimer, etched by T. R., 1784. This study portrays the back view of an Italian or Spanish peasant woman, playing the flute.