We will now consider a curious broadside {230} published about the year 1688, the copperplate heading of which was destined to be seized upon and adapted to other purposes nearly twenty years later by the piratical publisher referred to in the last chapter. As will be seen from our reproduction, its letterpress is addressed, “Aan der Meester Tonge-Slyper” (“To the Master Tongue Grinder”). The engraver’s name does not appear, but the work is easily distinguished as that of Jean Bollard, by comparing it with other signed engravings of the same series of pictorial satires. Two men at a grindstone sharpen a tongue, Another tongue lies on the anvil. Two labourers empty a large hamper of tongues into a basket, which is steadied by a woman. Point is given to the picture by the gossiping groups seen through the door and window, and especially by the two Xantippes who, with arms akimbo, are slanging each other in good earnest. The doggerel letterpress refers to the birth of the Old Pretender, and the mendacious tongues of the conspirators are being delivered to the smith to be coerced into speaking the truth. {231} Here is a free translation of the passage, beginning “Heden zyn my over London”:— “To-day I received from London a cargo of those goods which you have to take in hand; I have some of the biggest size, _The Admiral of the First Flag_, which has been used so much and has become black from lying, and which, after all appearances, seems to have had his end bitten off; scrape thoroughly his thick skin or he will be up to anything; swearing oaths, breaking bonds, falsely protecting the Church is his daily work.” And so on, until it ends with the moral:— “Nothing more useful than whetting the tongue When its aim is to speak the truth. But when it is given to lying, It must be pierced, flayed, and scraped.” So much for the plate in its first state. In its second we find it published seventeen years later, and somewhat ingeniously adapted to the new exigencies. It now takes its place in the armoury of the anti-Jesuits, and is published without any acknowledgment in the pamphlet, entitled _Roma Pertubata Ofte’t Beroerde Romen, etc., etc._, referred to in the last chapter. This pamphlet, which is a very warren of palimpsest plates (it has at least four, and possibly there are others), may {232} be seen in the print-room of the British Museum. It may, too, as I have myself proved, be discovered at rare intervals in the shops of the old printsellers in Holland. Mine is in a parti-coloured paper wrapper, whether as issued or added later I cannot say. It consists of title-page, table of contents, and eleven full-page copperplate engravings of extraordinary interest. Curiously enough, the table of contents makes no reference to the eleventh and last. Our palimpsest is number 9.[44]