Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

This is the friend of Rome

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Isaac Cruikshank
1756?-1811?

This is the friend of Rome

Published

London : Pub. June 21, 1790, by W.S.[sic] Fores, N. 3 Piccadilly, [21 June 1790]

etching, hand-colored
image: 319 x mm; plate mark: 353 x 249 mm; sheet: 327 x 252 mm (trimmed)
Peel 1687
Notes
Printmaker from George.
Library's copy cropped at head of sheet, with loss of imprint.
Provenance

Formerly owned by Sir Robert Peel.

Summary

Print shows Horne Tooke (left) pulling on a rope attached to a chain which links the necks of Hood and Fox, whom he is about to haul up to a gibbet. Hood and Fox stand bound together (right), a chain round their bodies and round a leg of each. Tooke is helped by two men partly visible on the extreme left; he says: "We hope all uninfluenced and Independent Electors will assist our Endeavours to Crush this truly Infamous Coalition to Deprive the Electors of Westminster of their franchises & make it like a Corrupt & Rotten Borough". Hood says, "Ah! this comes of my Getting into bad Company - Evil Communications Corrupt good manners." Fox says, "O my Dear Lord I Thought to have sold this City next Election for 100,000, or if I had been nickd in the Intrim, to have left it in my will to Major Hanger or H[ervey] Aston". An elector, whose profile appears on the lower right. margin of the design, says, "Charly looks D------d Gllum - he is Gallows Poor Else I should have nail'd Five Quid for em". The gibbet is inscribed: 'The End of all unnattural & unjust Coalitions'. Above it is a scroll inscribed: 'Caesar has Friends & Pompey has Friends but Rome has no Friends'. A cherub flying in the air points at Tooke; he holds an open book inscribed: 'Junius Discovered by P. Thicknesse'. (This tract (1789) identified Junius as Horne Tooke, cf. BMSat 7588). Cf. George.

Associated names
Fores, S. W., publisher.
Peel, Robert, 1788-1850, former owner.
Classification
Department