TWO PAIR OF PORTRAITS. PRESENTED TO ALL THE UNBIASED ELECTORS OF GREAT BRITAIN. 1798. BY JAMES GILLRAY. [_Page 305._] [Illustration: LOYAL MEDAL. 1797. A parody of the patriotic medal struck in commemoration of the Reform meeting held at Greathead’s, Guy’s Cliff, Warwick.] The Tories exulted over the secession of “the party,” and numerous caricatures appeared, imputing all sorts of offences to the Whigs; and one version represented Fox as “Phaeton” involving the Whig Club in his destruction. We have noticed the candidature of Horne Tooke for Westminster; ever since his prominence upon the occasion of Wilkes’s return for Middlesex in 1768, the “Brentford Parson” had striven to obtain a seat in parliament. He was in 1798 one of the most conspicuous members of the reform associations. Few were his match in ready eloquence, his pen was ever active, and his writings to the purpose. At an earlier stage of his career, a pamphlet appeared, written, it was alleged, by his hand, contrasting the two Pitts with the two Foxes as a pair of portraits; the comparison being in favour of the former. Advantage was taken of this circumstance to bring into discredit the confederation of Horne Tooke (who held more democratic views) with Fox for the advancement of the reform cause. James Gillray designed for the _Anti-Jacobin Review_ his own satirical version of “Two Pair of Portraits, presented to all the unbiased Electors of Great Britain, by John Horne Tooke,” December 1, 1798. The eminent philologer is represented as a portrait-painter, seated before his easel, on which appear the two original likenesses of the Whig and Tory chiefs, Pitt resting on the pedestal of “Truth,” and Fox on that of “Deceit.” The presentment of Lord Holland with the plunder of “unaccounted millions” so frequently quoted, is placed beside the portrait of the patriotic Earl of Chatham, dowered with the “Rewards of a Grateful Nation.” Horne Tooke, who has in his pocket, “Sketches of Patriotic Views, a pension, a mouth-stopper, a place,” is presumed to be retouching his unflattering and sinister portrait of the Whig chief, while demanding of the electors of Great Britain, which two of them will you choose to hang in your Cabinets, the PITTS or the FOXES? “Where, on your conscience, should the other two be hanged?” Allusions to various periods of the limner’s life and principles appear round the studio--the windmill at Wimbledon (where Tooke resided), the parsonage at Brentford, the bust of Machiavel, the shadow or “silhouette” of the Abbé Siéyès; the picture of his old friend Wilkes, in his aldermanic gown as the prosperous and handsomely remunerated city chamberlain, _ci-devant_ Wilkes and Liberty; “The effect in this picture to be copied as exact as possible;” “A London Corresponding Society, _i.e._ a Sketch for an English Directory;” with a folio of “Studies from French masters, Robespierre, Tallien, Marat,” together with the prospectus for