If the foregoing examples of the Patriotic Handbills of 1803 are not choice specimens of refined literature, they are at least fairly representative. I have omitted all the vilification of Napoleon, which permeates all the series in a greater or less degree, because I have already given it in another work. It was gravely stated that his great grandfather was the keeper of a wine-shop, who, being convicted of robbery and murder, was condemned to the galleys, where he died in 1724. His wife, Napoleon’s great grandmother, was said to have died in the House of Correction at Genoa. “His grandfather was a butcher of Ajaccio, and his grandmother daughter of a journeyman tanner at Bastia. His father was a low pettyfogging lawyer, who served and betrayed his country by turns, during the Civil Wars. After France conquered Corsica, he was a spy to the French Government, and his mother their trull.” General Marbœuf was said to have been Napoleon’s father. He was accused of seducing his sisters, and his brothers were supposed to be a very bad lot. He massacred the people at Alexandria and Jaffa, besides poisoning his own sick soldiers there. There was nothing bad enough for the _Corsican Ogre_; they even found that he was the real, original, and veritable Apocalyptic BEAST, whose number is 666. It is but fair to say that the majority of these accusations came originally from French sources, but they were eagerly adopted here; and, although they might be, and probably were, taken at their proper valuation by the educated classes, there is no doubt but the lower classes regarded him as a ruffianly murderer. “Boney will come to you,” was quite enough to quiet and overawe any refractory youngster, who, however, must have had some consolation, and satisfaction, in crunching, in sweetstuff, _Bonaparte’s Ribs_. It was all very well to sing— “Come, BONAPARTE, if you dare; John Bull invites you; bring your Host, Your slaves with Free men to compare; Your Frogs shall croak along the Coast. When slain, thou vilest of thy Tribe, Wrapped in a sack your Bones shall be, That the Elements may ne’er imbibe The venom of a Toad like thee”—