would be hard to say: a great-grandson of George the Second in the Highland garb of "Bonnie Prince Charlie," was perhaps as absurd an anachronism as a fat cockney alderman in the same fancy costume. Our friends the caricaturists were fully alive to these puerilities. An anonymous caricature of the day celebrates the ludicrous event in a satire entitled, Equipt for a Northern Visit, which represents the fat king and the fat alderman in kilts, the point of the pictorial epigram lying in the fact that the corpulent king recommends his corpulent subject to lay aside the costume as unbecoming to a man of his proportions. George has several pictorial satires on the same fertile theme; one of these, Bonnie Willie, depicts the huge man in Highland garb. A rare and most amusing caricature shows us the supposed unfortunate Results of this Northern Excursion. The fat king and his fat subject have caught the northern complaint vulgarly termed the "Scottish fiddle," and are vigorously going through the traditionary process of rubbing themselves against the post, blessing the while his grace the Duke of Argyle. An English acquaintance, not unnaturally afraid of infection, refuses the alderman's proffered hand.
A caricature of altogether another kind commemorates a raid made by the Bow Street officers on the numerous gaming establishments of 1822. It is called, Cribbage, Shuffling, Whist, and a Round Game, is divided into six compartments, and is most humorously and admirably treated. The principal performers are the knaves of cards. One of the compartments shows us the knaves on the treadmill, which is marked "Fortune's Wheel;" while in another a knave is undergoing the discipline of the "cat," and calling out at every stroke "E. O.! E. O.! E. O.!"[1]
Statue of AchillesSir Richard Westmacott's statue of Achilles was executed in 1822. The nude, undraped colossal figure, which was subscribed for by the ladies of England in honour of the Duke of Wellington and his soldiers, was the occasion of numerous contemporary satires—most of them (in those plain-spoken days) of the broadest possible
- ↑ "E. O." was another name for roulette, and forms the subject of one of Rowlandson's early and best caricatures.
