CHAPTER X.

LATER PURITAN CARICATURE.

What a change came over the spirit of English art and literature at the Restoration in 1660! Forty years before, when James I. was king, who loathed a Puritan, there was occasionally published a print in which Puritans were treated in the manner of Hudibras. There was one of 1612 in which a crown was half covered by a broad-brimmed hat, with verses reflecting upon "the aspiring, factious Puritan," who presumed to "overlooke his king." There was one in 1636, in the reign of Charles I., aimed at "two infamous upstart prophets," weavers, then in Newgate for heresy, which contains a description of a Puritan at church, which is entirely in the spirit of Hudibras:

"His seat in the church is where he may be most seene. In the time of the Sermon he drawes out his tables to take the Notes, but still noting who observes him to take them. At every place of Scripture cited he turnes over the leaves of his Booke, more pleased with the motion of the leaves than the matter of the Text; For he folds downe the leaves though he finds not the place. Hee lifts up the whites of his eyes towards Heaven when hee meditates on the sordid pleasures of the earth; his body being in God's Church, when his mind is in the divel's Chappell."

Again, in 1647, two years before the execution of Charles, an extensive and elaborate sheet appeared, in which the ignorant preachers of the day were held up to opprobrium. Each of these "erronious, hereticall, and Mechannick spirits" was exhibited practicing his trade, and a multitude of verses below described the heresies which such teachers promulgated.

"Oxford and Cambridge make poore Preachers; Each shop affordeth better Teachers: Oh blessed Reformation!"

Among the "mechannick spirits" presented in this sheet we remark "Barbone, the Lether-seller," who figures in many later prints as "Barebones." There are also "Bulcher, a Chicken man;" "Henshaw, a Confectioner, alias an Infectioner;" "Duper, a Cowkeeper;" "Lamb, a Sope-boyler," and a dozen more.

Such pictures, however, were few and far between during the twenty years of Puritan ascendency. But when the rule of the Sound-head was at an end, and Rattle-head had once more the dispensing of preferment in Church and State, the press teemed with broadsheets reviling the Puritan heroes. The gorgeous funeral of the Protector--his body borne in state on a velvet bed, clad in royal robes, to Westminster Abbey, where a magnificent tomb rose over his remains--was still fresh in the recollection of the people of London when they saw the same body torn from its resting-place, and hung on Tyburn Hill from nine in the morning until six in the evening, and then cast into a deep pit. Thousands who saw his royal funeral looked upon his body swinging from the gallows. The caricatures vividly mark the change. Cromwell now appears only as tyrant, antichrist, hypocrite, monster. Charles I. is the holy martyr. His son's flight in disguise, the hiding in the oak-tree, and other circumstances of his escape are no longer ignominious or laughable, but graceful and glorious.

A cherished fiction appears frequently in the caricatures that no man came to a good end who had had any hand in the king's execution, not even the executioner nor the humblest of his assistants. On one sheet we read of a certain drum-maker, named Tench, who "provided roapes, pullies, and hookes (in case the king resisted) to compel and force him down to the block." "This roague is also haunted with a Devill, and consumes away." There was the confession, too, of the hangman, who, being about to depart this life, declared that he had solemnly vowed not to perform his office upon the king, but had nevertheless dealt the fatal blow, trembling from head to foot. Thirty pounds had been his reward, which was paid him in half-crown pieces within an hour after the execution--the dearest money, as he told his wife, that he had ever received, for it would cost him his life, "which propheticall words were soon made manifest, for it appeared that, ever since, he had been in a most sad condition, and lay raging and swearing, and still pointing at one thing or another which he conceived to appear visible before him."

Richard Cromwell was let off as easily by the caricaturist as he was by the king. He is depicted as "the meek knight," the mild incapable, hardly worth a parting kick. In one very good picture he is a cooper hammering away with a mallet at a cask, from which a number of owls escape, most of which, as they take their flight, cry out, "_King!_" Richard protests that he knows nothing of this trade of cooper, for the more he hammers, the more the barrel breaks up. Elizabeth, the wife of the Protector, figured in a ludicrous manner upon the cover of a cookery-book published in the reign of Charles II., the preface of which contained anecdotes of the kitchen over which she had presided.

Among other indications of change in the public feeling, we notice a few pictures conceived in the pure spirit of gayety, designed to afford pleasure to every one, and pain to no one. Two of these are given here--Shrove-tide and Lent tilting at one another--which were thought amazingly ingenious and comic two hundred years ago. They are quite in the taste of the period that produced them. Shrove-tide, in the calendar of Rome, is the Tuesday before Lent, a day on which many people gave themselves up to revelry and feasting, in anticipation of the forty days' fast. Shrove-tide accordingly is mounted on a fat ox, and his sword is sheathed in a pig and piece of meat, with capons and bottles of wine about his body. His flag, as we learn from the explanatory verses, is "a cooke's foule apron fix'd to a broome," and his helmet "a brasse pot." Lent, on the contrary, flings to the breeze a fishing-net, carries an angling-rod for a weapon, and wears upon his head "a boyling kettle." Thus accoutred, these mortal foes approach one another, and Lent lifts up his voice and proclaims his intention:

"I now am come to mundifie and cleare The base abuses of this last past yeare: Thou puff-paunch'd monster (Shrovetyde), thou art he That were ordain'd the latter end to be Of forty-five weekes' gluttony, now past, Which I in seaven weekes come to cleanse at last: Your feasting I will turn to fasting dyet; Your cookes shall have some leasure to be quiet; Your masques, pomps, playes, and all your vaine expence, I'll change to sorrow, and to penitence."

Shrove-tide replies valiantly to these brave words:

"What art thou, thou leane-jawde anottamie, All spirit (for I no flesh upon thee spie); Thou bragging peece of ayre and smoke, that prat'st, And all good-fellowship and friendship hat'st; You'le turn our feasts to fasts! when, can you tell? Against your spight, we are provided well. Thou sayst thou'lt ease the cookes!-the cookes could wish Thee boyl'd or broyl'd with all thy frothy fish; For one fish-dinner takes more paines and cost Than three of flesh, bak'd, roast, or boyl'd, almost."

This we are compelled to regard as about the best fun our ancestors of 1660 were capable of achieving with pencil and pen. Nor can we claim much for their pictures which aim to satirize the vices.

The joy of the English people at the restoration of the monarchy, which seemed at first to be as universal as it was enthusiastic, was of short duration. The Stuarts were the Bourbons of England, incapable of being taught by adversity. Within two years Charles II. alarmed Protestant England by marrying a Portuguese princess. The great plague of 1665, that destroyed in London alone sixty-eight thousand persons, was followed in the very next year by the great fire of London, which consumed thirteen thousand two hundred houses. At a moment when the public mind was reduced to the most abject credulity by such events as these, the scoundrel Titus Oates appeared, declaring that the dread calamities which had afflicted England, and others then imminent, were only parts of an awful _Popish Plot_, which aimed at the destruction of the king and the restoration of the Catholic religion. A short time after, 1678, Sir Edmundsbury Godfrey, the magistrate before whom Titus Oates made his deposition, was found dead in a field near London, the victim probably of some fanatic assassin of the Catholic party. The kingdom was thrown into an ecstasy of terror, from which, as before observed, it has not to this day wholly recovered. Terror may lurk in the blood of a race ages after the removal of its cause, as we find our sensitive horses shying from low-lying objects at the road-side, though a thousand generations may have peacefully labored and died since their ancestors crouched from the spring of a veritable wild beast. The broadsheets of that year, 1678, and of the troublous years following, even until William of Orange was seated on the throne of England, in 1690, have, we may almost say, but one topic--the Popish Plot. The spirit of that period lives in those sheets.

It had been a custom in England to celebrate the 17th of November, the day, as one sheet has it, on which the unfortunate Queen Mary died, and "that Glorious Sun, Queen Elizabeth, of happy memory, arose in the English horizon, and thereby dispelled those thick fogs and mists of Romish blindness, and restored to these kingdoms their just Rights both as men and Christians." The next recurrence of this anniversary after the murder of Godfrey was seized by the Protestants of London to arrange a procession which was itself a striking caricature. A pictorial representation of the procession is manifestly impossible here, but we can copy the list of objects as given on a broadsheet issued a few days after the event. This device of a procession, borrowed from Catholic times, was continually employed to promulgate and emphasize Protestant ideas down to a recent period, and has been used for political objects in our own day. How changed the thoughts of men since Albert Dürer witnessed the grand and gay procession at Antwerp, in honor of the Virgin's Assumption, one hundred and fifty-nine years before! The 17th of November, 1679, was ushered in, at three o'clock in the morning, by a burst of bell-ringing all over London. The broadsheet thus quaintly describes the procession:

"About Five o'clock in the Evening, all things being in readiness, the Solemn Procession began, in the following Order: I. Marched six Whiflers to clear the way, in Pioneers Caps and Red Waistcoats (and carrying torches). II. A Bellman Ringing, who, with a Loud and Dolesom Voice cried all the way, _Remember Justice Godfrey_. III. A Dead Body representing Sir Edmundbury Godfrey, in the Habit he usually wore, the Cravat wherewith he was murdered about his Neck, with spots of Blood on his Wrists, Shirt, and white Gloves that were on his hands, his Face pale and wan, riding on a White Horse, and one of his Murderers behind him to keep him from falling, representing the manner how he was carried from Somerset House to Primrose Hill. IV. A Priest in a Surplice, with a Cope Embroidered with Dead mens Bones, Skeletons, Skuls, &c., giving pardons very freely to those who would murder Protestants, and proclaiming it Meritorious. V. A Priest alone, in Black, with a large Silver Cross. VI. Four Carmelite Friers in White and Black Habits. VII. Four Grey Friars in their proper Habits. VIII. Six Jesuits with Bloody Daggers. IX. A Consort of Wind-musick, call'd the Waits. X. Four Popish Bishops in Purple and Lawn Sleeves, with Golden Crosses on their Breasts. XI. Four other Popish Bishops in their Pontificalibus, with Surplices, Rich Embroydered Copes, and Golden Miters on their Heads. XII. Six Cardinals in Scarlet Robes and Red Caps. XIII. The Popes Chief Physitian with Jesuites Powder in one hand, and a ---- in the other. XIV. Two Priests in Surplices, with two Golden Crosses. Lastly, the Pope in a Lofty Glorious Pageant, representing a Chair of State, covered with Scarlet, the Chair richly embroydered, fringed, and bedeckt with Golden Balls and Crosses; at his feet a Cushion of State, two Boys in Surplices, with white Silk Banners and Red Crosses, and Bloody Daggers for Murdering Heritical Kings and Princes, painted on them, with an Incense-pot before them, sate on each side censing his Holiness, who was arrayed in a rich Scarlet Gown, Lined through with Ermin, and adorned with Gold and Silver Lace, on his Head a Triple Crown of Gold, and a Glorious Collar of Gold and precious stones, St. Peters Keys, a number of Beads, Agnus Dei's and other Catholick Trumpery; at his Back stood his Holiness's Privy Councellor, the Devil, frequently caressing, hugging, and whispering, and oft-times instructing him aloud, to destroy His Majesty, to forge a Protestant Plot, and to fire the City again; to which purpose he held an Infernal Torch in his hand. The whole Procession was attended with 150 Flambeaus and Torches by order; but so many more came in Voluntiers as made up some thousands. Never were the Balconies, Windows and Houses more numerously filled, nor the Streets closer throng'd with multitudes of People, all expressing their abhorrence of Popery with continual Shouts and Acclamations."

With slow and solemn step the procession marched to Temple Bar, then just rebuilt, and there it halted, while a dialogue in verse was sung in parts by "one who represented the English Cardinal Howard, and one the people of England." We can imagine the manner in which the crowd would come thundering in with

"Now God preserve Great Charles our King, And eke all honest men; And Traytors all to justice bring, Amen! Amen! Amen!"

Fire-works succeeded the song, after which "his Holiness was decently tumbled from all his grandeur into the impartial flames," while the people gave so prodigious a shout that it was heard "far beyond Somerset House." For many years a similar pageant was given in London on the same day.

As an additional illustration of the feeling which then prevailed in Puritan circles, I will copy the rude and doleful rhymes which accompany a popular print of 1680, called "The Dreadful Apparition; or, the Pope haunted with Ghosts." Coleman, Whitebread, and Harcourt, who figure among the ghosts, had been recently executed as "popish plotters." The picture shows the Pope in bed, to whom the devil conducts Coleman, and an angel leads the spirit of Sir Edmundsbury Godfrey. Whitebread and Harcourt are in shrouds. A bishop, a cardinal, and other figures are seen. A label issuing from the mouth of each of the persons represented contains the rhymes which follow:

THE POPE IN BED.

"_Away! Away! am not I Pope of Rome, torment me not before my time is Come._"

THE DEVIL, IN THE FORM OF A DRAGON.

"_Your Sevt S{r}! Ned Coleman doth appeare he'll tell you all, therefore I brought him here._"

COLEMAN'S GHOST.

"_S{r} you are Cause of my Continuall paine, My Soul is Lost, for your Ambitious gaine._"

GODFREY'S GHOST, INTRODUCED BY ----.

"_Repent great S{r} and be for ever blest, in Heaven with me that happy place of rest._"

ANGEL, IN A "ROMAN SHAPE."

"_O Chariety! who mercy craves for those: With Bluddy hands that ware his Cruell foes._"

WHITEBREAD'S GHOST, WITH A SWORD THROUGH THE BODY.

"_I am perplexed with perpetuall fright; but who is this apeares this dreadful night._"

HARCOURT'S GHOST, WITH A SWORD THROUGH THE BODY.

"_'Tis Godfrey's Ghost I wish all things be well that we may have our Pope of Rome in hell._"

A BISHOP.

"_Let us depart and Shun their cruell fate, and all repent before it is to late._"

CARDINAL.

"_Come let us flie with all the Speed we may, Ye Devil els will take us all away._"

Below the picture are the verses subjoined:

NUNCIO.

"Horrors and Death! what _dismal Sights_ Invade His Nightly Slumbers, who in _Blood_ does Trade. The Ghostly Apparitions of the Dead; The _Bless'd_ by Angels; _Damn'd_ by _Demons Lead_; 'Tis sure, _Romes_ Conclave _must_ Amazed stand, When _Souls_ Complaining, thus against _them_ band; Who _All_ but _One_ to please Ambitious ROME, Have Gain'd _Damnation_ for Their Final DOOM. Hear how _They Curse Him_ all, but _He_ who fell. Great _Brittains Sacrifice_ by Imps of Hell; Who shew'd _Their Bloody Vengeance_ in the _Strife_, To Murther _Him_, who Business had for _Life_."

POPE.

"_How do_ my Eye-Balls _Roul_, and Blood _run back_, _What Tortures at this sight my Conscience Rack_; _Oh!_ Mountains _now fall on me, some Deep Cave_ Pitty me once, _and prove my speedy Grave_. _Involv'd_ in Darkness, _from the Seated_ Light, _Let Me abscond_ in _Everlasting Night_. Torment _me not_; _you Shades, before my time_, _I do confess_, your Downfalls _was_ my Crime; To _Satiate my_ Ambition _and_ Revenge, _I push'd you on to this Immortal Change_. _But Ah! fresh Horrors, Ah! my Power's grown weak_, What art thou Fiend? _from whence? or where? O Speak_; _That in this Frightful Form, a_ Dragon's _hew Presents_ One _Sainted, to_ my _Trembling View?"_

FIEND.

"By Hells Grim KING'S Command, on _whom_ I wait, I've brought your Saint his Story to relate; Who from the black _Tartarian_-Fire below, So long beg'd Absence as to let you know His Torments, and the Horrid Cheat condole, You fix'd on him to Rob him of his Soul."

POPE.

"_O! spare my Ears, I'll no such Horrors hear;_"

COLEMAN.

"You must, and know your _own_ Damnation's near: You must ere long be _Plung'd_ in Grizly Flame, Which I shall laugh to see, tho, rack'd with pain Thou _Grand Deceiver_ of the _Nations_ All, Contriver of my _Wretched Fate_ and _Fall_: Thou who didst push me on to Murther _Kings_ Persuading me for it on _Angels Wings_ I should _Transcend_ the Clouds, be _ever Blest_, ) And be of _Al_ that Heav'n cou'd yield, _possest_, ) But these I mist, got _Torment_ without _Rest_: ) For whilst on _Earth_ I stand, a _Hell_ within Distracts my Conscience, pale with horrid Sin: Instead of _Mortals_ Pardon, _One_ on High, I must your Everlasting Martyr Fry; Whilst Name of _Saint_ I bear on Earth, _below_ It _stirs_ the _flames_, and much Augments _my Woe_."

POPE.

"_Horrors! 'tis Dismal, I can hear no more, O! Hell and Furies, how I have lost my Pow'r._"

SIR E. GODFREY.

"See Sir this Crimson Stain, this baleful Wound See Murther'd me, with _Joys Eternal_ Crown'd; Though by the _Darkest Deed_ of Night I fell, Which _shook Three Kingdoms_, and _Astonish'd Hell_: Yet rap'd _above_ the Skyes to Mansion bright, There to Converse with Everlasting Light; Thence got I leave to View thy _Wretched Face_, And find my Death thy Hell-born PLOTS did race, And next to the _Almighty Arm_ did _Save_ Great _Albion's_ Glory from its yawning Grave; From _Sacred Bliss_ my Swift-_Wing'd Soul_ did glide, Conducted _Hither_ by my _Angel-Guide_, To let thee know thy Sands were almost run, And that thy Thread of _Life_ is well-nigh Spun; _Repent_ you then, Wash off the _Bloody Stain_, Or _You'll_ be Doom'd to _Everlasting Pain_."

ANGEL.

"Come Worthy _of Seraphick Joys Above_, Worthy _Our_ Converse, and _Our Sacred_ Love; Who hast Implor'd the Great _Jehove_ for One ) Who _Shed_ thy Blood, to _Snatch_ thy Princes _Throne_ ) In this thy _Saviour's_ Great Examples shown: ) Come let _Vs_ hence, and leave _Him_ to his Fate, When _Divine Vengeance_ shall the Business State."

POPE.

"_Chill Horror seizes me, I cannot flye; Oh Ghastly! yet more Apparitions nigh?_"

WHITEBREAD.

"Thus wandering through the _Gloomy Shades_, at last I've found _Thee_, Traytor, that _my Joys_ did Blast, Whose _Dam'd Injunctions_, _Dire Damnation_ Seal'd, And _Torments_ that were never yet Reveal'd: Mirrihords of _Plagues_, _Chains_, _Racks_, Tempestuous _Fire_, Sulpherian _Lakes_ that Burn and ner Expire, Deformed _Demons_, Uglier far than Hell, The Half what _We Endure_, no Tongue can _Tell_; This for a _Bishoprick_ I Undergo, But _Now_ would give Earth's _Empire_ wer't _not so_."

POPE.

"_Retire, Good Ghosts, or I shall Dye with Fear._"

HARCOURT.

"Nay stay Sir, first You must _my Story_ Hear: How could you thus _Delude_ your _Bosome-Friend_? Your _Foes_ to _Heaven_, and _Vs_ to _Hell_ thus send; _Damnation_ seize You for't; ere long You'll be Plung'd _Headlong_ into vast _Eternity_; _There_ for to Howl, whilst _We_ some _Comfort_ gain, ) To see You welter in an endless Pain, ) And without _Pitty_, justly there Complain." )

POPE.

"_Ho!_ Cardinals and Bishops, _haste with speed_, Bell, Book, _and_ Candle _fetch_, _let me be free'd_: _Ah! 'tis too late_, by Fear Intranc'd _I lye_."

BISHOP.

"Heard you that Groan? with speed _from hence_ let's flye."

CARDINAL.

"The _Fiend_ has got _Him_, doubtless, lets away, And in _this_ Ghastly place no longer stay."

BISHOP.

"Dread Horrors seize me, _Fly_, for _Mercy_ call, Least _Divine Vengeance_ over-whelm _Vs all_."

It was in this crude and lucid way that the forerunners of Gillray, Nast, Tenniel, and Leech satirized the murderous follies of their age. A volume larger than this would not contain the verse and prose that covered the broadsheets in the same style which appeared in London during the reign of Charles II. This specimen, however, suffices for any reader who is not making a special study of the period. To students and historians the collection of these prints in the British Museum is beyond price; for they show "the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure." Perhaps no other single source of information respecting that period is more valuable.

From the accession of William and Mary we notice a change in the subjects treated by caricaturists. If religion continued for a time to be the principal theme, there was more variety in its treatment. Sects became more distinct; the Quakers arose; the divergence between the doctrines of Luther and Calvin was more marked, and gave rise to much discussion; High Church and Low Church renewed their endless contest; the Baptists became an important denomination; deism began to be the whispered, and became soon the vaunted faith of men of the world; even the voice of the Jew was occasionally heard, timidly asking for a small share of his natural rights. It is interesting to note in the popular broadsheets and satirical pictures how quickly the human mind began to exert its powers when an overshadowing and immediate fear of pope and king in league against liberty had been removed by the flight of James II. and the happy accession of William III.

Political caricature rapidly assumed prominence, though, as long as Louis XIV. remained on the throne of France, the chief aim of politics was to create safeguards against the possible return of the Catholic Stuarts. The accession of Queen Anne, the career of Bolingbroke and Harley, the splendid exploits of Marlborough, the early conflicts of Whig and Tory, the attempts of the Pretenders, the peaceful accession of George I.--all these are exhibited in broadsheets and satirical prints still preserved in more than one collection. Louis XIV., his pomps and his vanities, his misfortunes and his mistresses, furnished subjects for hundreds of caricatures both in England and Holland. It was on a Dutch caricature of 1695 that the famous retort occurs of the Duc de Luxembourg to an exclamation of the Prince of Orange. The prince impatiently said, after a defeat, "Shall I, then, never be able to beat that hunchback?" Luxembourg replied to the person reporting this, "How does he know that my back is hunched? He has never seen it." Interspersed with political satires, we observe an increasing number upon social and literary subjects. The transactions of learned societies were now important enough to be caricatured, and the public was entertained with burlesque discourses, illustrated, upon "The Invention of Samplers," "The Migration of Cuckoos," "The Eunuch's Child," "A New Method of teaching Learned Men how to write Unintelligibly." There was an essay, also, "proving by arguments philosophical that Millers, though falsely so reputed, yet in reality are not thieves, with an intervening argument that Taylors likewise are not so."

A strange episode in the conflict between Whig and Tory was the career of Sacheverell, a clergyman who preached such extreme doctrines concerning royal and ecclesiastical prerogative that he was formally censured by a Whig Parliament, and thus lifted into a preposterous importance. During his triumphal tour, which Dr. Johnson remembered as one of the events of his earliest childhood, he was escorted by voluntary guards that numbered from one thousand to four thousand mounted men, wearing the Tory badges of white knots edged with gold, and in their hats three leaves of gilt laurel. The picture of the Quaker meeting reflects upon the alliance alleged to have existed between the high Tories and the Quakers, both having an interest in the removal of disabilities, and hence making common cause. A curious relic of this brief delirium is a paragraph in the _Grub Street Journal_ of 1736, which records the death of Dame Box, a woman so zealous for the Church that when Sacheverell was relieved of censure she clothed herself in white, kept the clothes all her life, and was buried in them. As long as Dr. Sacheverell lived she went to London once a year, and carried a present of a dozen larks to that "high-flying priest."

The flight of the Huguenots from France, in 1685 and 1686, enriched Holland, England, and the American colonies with the _élite_ of the French people. Holland being nearest to France, and honored above all lands for nearly a century as the refuge of people persecuted for opinions' sake, received at first the greatest number, especially of the class who could live by intellectual pursuits. The rarest of all rarities in the way of caricature, "the diamond of the pictorial library," is a series of burlesque portraits, produced in Holland in 1686, of the twenty-four persons most guilty of procuring the revocation of the wise edict of Henry IV., which secured to French Protestants the right to practice their religion. The work was entitled "La Procession Monacale conduite par Louis XIV. pour la Conversion des Protestans de son Royaume." The king, accordingly, leads the way, his face a sun in a monk's cowl, in allusion to his adoption of the sun as a device. Madame De Maintenon, his married mistress, hideously caricatured, follows. Père la Chaise, and all the ecclesiastics near the court who were reputed to have urged on the ignorant old king to this superlative folly, had their place in the procession. Several of the faces are executed with a freedom and power not common in any age, but at that period only possible to a French hand. Two specimens are given on the following page.

Louis XIV., as the caricature collections alone would suffice to show, was the conspicuous man of that painful period. The caricaturists avenged human nature. No man of the time called forth so many efforts of the satiric pencil, nor was there ever a person better adapted to the satirist's purpose, for he furnished precisely those contrasts which satire can exhibit most effectively. He stood five feet four in his stockings, but his shoe-maker put four inches of leather under his heels, and his wig-maker six inches of other people's hair upon his head, which gave him an imposing altitude. The beginning of his reign was prosperous enough to give some slight excuse for the most richly developed arrogance seen in the world since Xerxes lashed the Hellespont, but the last third of his reign was a collapse that could easily be made to seem ludicrous. There were very obvious contrasts in those years between the splendors of his barbaric court and the disgraceful defeats of his armies, between the opinion he cherished of himself and the contempt in which he was held abroad, between the adulations of his courtiers and the execrations of France, between the mass-attending and the morals of the court.

The caricaturists made the most of these points. Every town that he lost, every victory that Marlborough won, gave them an opportunity which they improved. We have him as a huge yellow sun, each ray of which bears an inscription referring to some defeat, folly, or shame. We have him as a jay, covered with stolen plumage, which his enemies are plucking from him, each feather inscribed with the name of a _lost_ city or fortress. We have him as the Crier of Versailles, crying the ships lost in the battle of La Hogue, and offering rewards for their recovery. He figures as the Gallic cock flying before that wise victorious fox of England, William III., and as a pompous drummer leading his army, and attended by his ladies and courtiers. He is an old French Apollo driving the sun, in wig and spectacles. He is a tiger on trial before the other beasts for his cruel depredations. He is shorn and fooled by Maintenon; he is bridled by Queen Anne. He is shown drinking a goblet of human blood. We see him in the stocks with his confederate, the Pope, and the devil standing behind, knocking their heads together. He is a sick man vomiting up towns. He is a sawyer, who, with the help of the King of Spain, saws the globe in two, Maintenon sitting aloft assisting the severance. As long as he lived the caricaturists continued to assail him; and when he died, in 1715, he left behind him a France so demoralized and impoverished that he still kept the satirists busy.

Even in our own time Louis XIV. has suggested one of the best caricatures ever drawn, and it is accompanied by an explanatory essay almost unique among prose satires for bitter wit and blasting truth. The same hand wielded both the pen and the pencil, and it was the wonderful hand of Thackeray. "You see at once," he says, in explanation of the picture, "that majesty is made out of the wig, the high-heeled shoes, and cloak, all _fleurs-de-lis_ bespangled.... Thus do barbers and cobblers make the gods that we worship."