Which drew from a champion of Cambridge the reply:—
'The King to Oxford sent his troop of horse,
For Tories own no argument but force;
With equal care, to Cambridge books he sent,
For Whigs allow no force but argument.'
Though much later in date than the design just noticed, it may be as well to mention here another book-plate—also 'Allegoric'—which, was engraved by John Pine. This was executed by him from a drawing by Gravelot, for Dr. John Burton, about the year 1740. It shows us the interior of a library, presumably the doctor's, with a couple of cupids supporting a shield bearing the Burton arms. This design, which was subsequently appropriated by 'Wadham Wyndham, Esq.,' as his book-plate,[7] is a very 'slight' affair after the Cambridge plate; but Pine no doubt possessed a fitting sense of the difference to be observed in designing a book-plate for a mere Doctor of Divinity and in commemorating the gift of a royal donor.
After John Pine, the next designers of English book-plates in the Allegoric style are both famous men,—William Hogarth and George Vertue. We will speak of the works of the greater man first: they consist of two undoubted book-plates and of a few more possible ones, and were executed quite at the outset of Hogarth's career, say, about 1720. The first is described as done for the books of John Holland, herald painter. Minerva is seen seated among cupids, four in number, with her hand placed upon a shield bearing the family arms. The chief interest in Hogarth's other undoubted book-plate—that of George Lambart, the landscape painter, one of Hogarth's convivial crew—lies in the female figures, which sit right and left of the shield. It is figured over leaf, from the copy in Sir Wollaston Franks's collection, which is the only original example known to exist—other copies are from the plates in Ireland's work, and bear his initials. The collector is cautioned against certain plates signed 'W. H.,' which have been attributed to Hogarth, but are in reality the work of William Hibbart, a Bath engraver, working about the middle of the eighteenth century.
Turning now to the work of George Vertue in designing English Allegoric book-plates, we come to a very beautiful and very interesting example, which was probably engraved in, or very soon after, 1730—the book-plate of Henrietta, Countess of Oxford. I have already called attention to this engraving in speaking of old-time allusions to book-plates ([p. 14]), and do not here intend to do more than make passing reference to it, since I have spoken fully of it later on in what I have to say about 'ladies'' book-plates ([pp. 186-199]). It is only mentioned now in order to give a reference to it in its proper chronological position.
We have now to travel for some distance along the road of time before coming to another example of allegory on an English book-plate.
We find it, in 1740, on a plate which one J. Skinner engraved from a design by 'T. Ross.' This is really a very beautiful book-plate, as its reproduction ([p. 83]) shows. A shield—the shape and ornamentation of which is Chippendale—bearing the Wiltshire arms, is placed upon a platform and against a cippus, or small monumental column; Shakespeare stands on the right, and listens, with a pleased expression, to the music of a rustic piper, whose head appears at the back of the cippus, whilst, on the left, Pope weighs the eloquence of an orator, whose head and upraised hand also appear from behind the cippus. A medallion of Augustus is on a pedestal above. Lying on the platform are a globe and books and many emblems of the painter's and musician's arts, and amongst these sits Cupid thinking, perhaps, with which he will play next, and holding the end of a ribbon inscribed: 'John Wiltshire, Bath, 1740.' The design is certainly original, and makes us interested as to the identity of the owner.