Paul, the superior father, rules the roast,
His god’s the glass, the blue-eyed nun his toast.
Thus priests consume what fearful fools bestow,
And saints’ donations make the bumpers flow.
The butler sleeps—the cellar door is free—
This is a modern cloister’s piety.
No. 214. Father Paul in his Cups.
From Collet to Sayer we rush into the heat—I may say into the bitterness—of politics, for James Sayer is known, with very trifling exceptions, as a political caricaturist. He was the son of a captain of a merchant ship at Great Yarmouth, but was himself put to the profession of an attorney. As, however, he was possessed of a moderate independence, and appears to have had no great taste for the law, he neglected his business, and, with considerable talent for satire and caricature, he threw himself into the political strife of the day. Sayer was a bad draughtsman, and his pictures are produced more by labour than by skill in drawing, but they possess a considerable amount of humour, and were sufficiently severe to obtain popularity at a time when this latter character excused worse drawing even than that of Sayer. He made the acquaintance and gained the favour of the younger William Pitt, when that statesman was aspiring to power, and he began his career as a caricaturist by attacking the Rockingham ministry in 1782—of course in the interest of Pitt. Sayer’s earliest productions which are now known, are a series of caricature portraits of the Rockingham administration, that appear to have been given to the public in instalments, at the several dates of April 6, May 14, June 17, and July 3, 1782, and bear the name of C. Bretherton as publisher. He published his first veritable caricature on the occasion of the ministerial changes which followed the death of lord Rockingham, when lord Shelburne was placed at the head of the cabinet, and Fox and Burke retired, while Pitt became chancellor of the exchequer. This caricature, which bears the title of “Paradise Lost,” and is, in fact, a parody upon Milton, represents the once happy pair, Fox and Burke, turned out of their paradise, the Treasury, the arch of the gate of which is ornamented with the heads of Shelburne, the prime minister, and Dunning and Barré, two of his staunch supporters, who were considered to be especially obnoxious to Fox and Burke. Between these three heads appear the faces of two mocking fiends, and groups of pistols, daggers, and swords. Beneath are inscribed the well-known lines of Milton—
To the eastern side