'Tis Fate commands, and I with pride,
Embrace Miss Mustard as my bride.
A well-appointed hearse-and-four,
Attends her pleasure at the door.
The marriage ceremonies wait
Her presence at the churchyard gate:
My lantern shines with nuptial light;
The bells in muffled peal invite;
And she shall be—A bride to-night.
Plate 11. The Quack Doctor.
I have a secret art to cure
Each malady which men endure.
Apothecaries' Hall, it might reasonably be hinted by the satirists, was a likely spot for Death's visitations. In Rowlandson's print we find the grim foe in the full exercise of his privileges, pounding away with fatal energy. An apothecary is dispensing various noxious drugs to a considerable crowd of patients, who are disfigured by various sufferings. They will not be kept waiting long apparently, for behind a curtain, Death, grinning at himself with a satisfied air in a mirror, and surrounded by the seeds of mortality, is grinding slow poisons with a will; the motive power of the situation; as an able assistant to the quacks, whose master he knows himself to be.
Plate 12. The Sot.
Drunk and alive, the man was thine,
But dead and drunk, why—he is mine.
Veteran topers are soaking at the sign of The Goat on the village green; they are bloated and gouty, but convivial and careless. The landlord is looking somewhat horrified to find one of his best and most unwieldy customers carried off by his enraged and scolding wife, for whose assistance Death has himself brought a wheelbarrow in which to cart away her incapable spouse, and in reply to the railings of the vixen the grim death's-head is comically wagging his nether jaw, and logically stating his just claim to this burden of well-saturated clay.
Plate 13. The Honeymoon.
When the old fool has drunk his wine
And gone to rest,—I will be thine.
A wealthy old dotard, already half in the grave, has committed the last supreme folly of decrepitude, and married a young, beautiful, and blooming maid, whose troth and affections are plighted in advance to a more suitable but less prosperous suitor. The artist has drawn the enjoyments of the honeymoon; the imbecile and antiquated 'happy man,' nightcap on head, is plunged in an invalid chair; a well-stuffed cushion gives ease to his gouty extremities; a table at his side is spread with a costly dessert service. The palsied hands of the venerable idiot are vainly striving to steady a goblet for a bumper; the eager toper does not distinguish the hand which is filling his last glass. The grim skeleton, Death, stooping over a screen, is supplying the final dose from his own fatal decanter. The blushing fair, who has been trying to soothe the gouty torments of her superannuated spouse with music and poetry, is awakened to the sound of a window opening at her back, her name is pronounced; 'tis the gallant and dashing young officer, the man of her choice. Nothing abashed, and without disturbing her attitude beside the invalid, or turning her head, her rounded arm and taper hand are leant over the casement by way of encouragement to her lover, who is availing himself of the opportunity and is embracing her fingers.