Pamphlets and Parodies on Political SubjectsHone, William
General
Pamphlets and Parodies on Political Subjects
Hone, William
Political satire, English
I found not a sparkle of talent in any of Slop's lean 'leaders' to
re-pay me the trouble of wearisome reading. Under the 'stringent
necessity' of varying my original plan, yet loth to abandon it
altogether, I have parodied some of the features common to the
Slop-pail, and supplied the department I had allotted to an imitation of
his mindless verbiage with a sketch of his Life--filling the remainder
of the sheet in my own way. There are discrepancies inseparable from
this course, but I write to good-humoured readers, who have no objection
to see the mind as well as the person of a friend in undress, and who
take as little interest in the decision of the High Court of Criticism
on things of this sort, as they took in the decision of the 'Court of
Claims' concerning the 'imposing' ceremony of the coronation, and things
of that sort.,
The drawings are, as usual, by Mr. George Cruikshank, whose
able pencil has had greater scope here than in a pamphlet; that size
would have entirely excluded Dr. Southey's Vision, the
Jack-in-the-Green, and the masterly representation of the Bridge-street gang
destroying a Free Press, and suspending Liberty, while Slop is working
his Press to distort and torture Truth.
* The Marquess calls London, 'Lunnun.'
** A Marquess is styled 'a most puissant Prince!'
*** For this constipating phrase, see Slop Pail, July 26, 1821
{195}
[Illustration: 203]
THE LIFE OFbDOCTOR SLOP,
AND THE ORIGIN OF THE BRIDGE-STREET GANG.
The origin and the end of this man are alike uncertain. He was sent
to Oxford when young, as a student destined for holy orders, under the
patronage of the Bishop of Durham.
'Go thou and seek the house of prayer:
I to the woodlands bend my way,
And meet Religion there;
She needs not haunt the high-arch'd dome to pray,
Where storied windows dim the doubtful day;
With Liberty she loves to rove'----
These lines, in Mr. Southey's lyric poem, '_written on Sunday Morning_,' *
express the thoughts of Slop when a college youth.
* Southey's Minor Poems, vol. i. p. 1S7.
At {196}that time he had a sort of conscience; for, in consequence of
an honest course of reading, he refused to subscribe to the Thirty-nine
Articles. Thus disqualifying himself from being a candidate for the
'imposition of hands' by the Bishop, he for ever relinquished the
prospect of entrance into the church, and cultivated his mind by reading
Paine's _Rights of Man._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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