“The Bruiser, C. Churchill (once the Revd.!), in the character of a Russian Hercules, regaling himself after having kill’d the monster Caricatura that so sorely gall’d his virtuous friend, the Heaven-born WILKES. “‘But he had a Club this Dragon to drub, Or he had ne’er don’t I warrant ye.’” (_Dragon of Wantley._) [Illustration: A BEAR-LEADER. HOGARTH, CHURCHHILL, AND WILKES.] This plate was issued at 1_s._ _6d._, and seems to have gone through various alterations and additions from first to last. On the palette which first displayed the mystifying “line of beauty,” was substituted two designs of a figurative nature--the one having reference to Pitt, his resignation and annual pension, and his city supporters, represented by the emblematic civic guardians, Gog and Magog; the other a group further applying to the castigation of the designer’s foes. Hogarth is armed with a triple whip, with which he is lustily chastising a big dancing bear, Churchill, held bound and muzzled, as not only the artist but the ministry and the Scotch faction would have rejoiced to have effected; the Bruiser to the clerical ruffles and bands has incongruously added the modish laced hat of a man about town; the other end of the rope, by which Hogarth has secured the bear through the muzzle, is fastened round an ape, intended to personify Wilkes. This animal is wearing a wig exactly similar to that shown on Wilkes’s head in the too-famous etching; the _North Briton_ is in his left hand; the spear, topped with the inevitable cap of liberty, is turned into a hobby-horse, to infer, according to Mr. F. G. Stephen’s account, “that Wilkes used Liberty to get his own ends, which not more than a child progresses on its ‘cock-horse’ did he really obtain.” The face of the fiddling personage, who is making the music for this pretty caper, is a featureless blank; he wears a ribbon of knighthood, and it is understood that Earl Temple is the person intended. Other uncomplimentary allusions to Wilkes and his proceedings appear in the _Public Advertiser_, where is a woodcut of an execution, I.W., and M.P., with a “Toast”--“May loyalists walk easily in their Boots [a reference to Lord Bute], and malcontents die like Wilks in their shells.” The notoriety of John Wilkes was much assisted by the ill-advised and clumsy conduct of the ministry, which elected to make a martyr of the man whose career proves him to have been but a sham patriot, and, who, if unnoticed, was totally without weight or consequence. On April 30, 1763, Wilkes found himself, in spite of the Habeas Corpus granted by the Common Pleas, conducted to the Tower on a warrant, signed by the Earls of Egremont and Halifax as Privy Councillors and Secretaries of State, authorizing the Constable of the Tower, the Right Hon. John Lord Berkeley of Stratton,--