Plate 16. Death and the Portrait.
Nature and Truth are not at strife,
Death draws his pictures after life.
A gouty and decrepit corpulent sitter is propped up by cushions and pillows in an arm-chair placed on a raised stage in a painter's studio. From the canvas it appears that the original of this last act of vanity is a judge. The sitter has evidently reached a state of dotage, and the artist has left his slumbering subject to enjoy a more congenial occupation; he is showing a blushing young damsel, who has accompanied the gout-ridden old judge, certain designs, groups of cupids, and the young couple have seemingly established a very agreeable understanding. Death has fantastically perched himself in the artist's seat, and having assumed his brush and palette, is putting the finishing touches both to portrait and sitter.
The painter brings the promis'd aid,
And views the change that has been made.
He sees the picture's altered state,
And owns the master-hand of Fate.
'But, why,' he cries, 'should artists grieve
When models die,—if pictures live?'
Plate 17. The Genealogist.
On that illumin'd roll of fame
Death waits to write your lordship's name.
In the escutcheon-panelled ancestral hall of the peer, surrounded by the evidences of antiquity and wealthy ease, the sepulchral visitor, unbidden, lays down his hourglass, and is shown displaying to the affrighted gaze of a fashionably apparelled old couple, the family genealogical table which he has taken the liberty of unrolling for an unexpected addition he is about to make.
On that illumined roll of fame
Death waits to write your lordship's name.
Whether from Priam you descend,
Or your dad cried—Old chairs to mend,
When you are summon'd to your end,
You will not shun the fatal blow;
And sure you're old enough to know,
That though each varying pedigree
Begins with Time, it ends with me!
Plate 18. The Catchpole.
The catchpole need not fear a jail,
The undertaker is his bail.