The accusing spirit which flew up to heavens chancery with the oath : blush'd as he gave it in, and the recording angel as he wrote it down dropt a tear on the word, and blotted it out for ever.
Caption title from Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy.
At lower right of caption title: Dedicated (without permission) to the Revd. Mr. Peters.
Formerly owned by Sir Robert Peel.
Print shows the Recording Angel with a long scroll, which rests on a small table supported on clouds. He is a sulky-faced naked child, with wide-spread wings and wearing a nightcap. A large tear falls from his right eye. The Accusing Spirit, a bald-headed, elderly man with wings and wearing a long robe, in profile to the right, holds up to the Angel a paper inscribed "He shall not dye by xxx". The winged heads of a man and woman, poised on the claws of birds of prey, rest on clouds in the upper left corner of the design; he regards her insinuatingly, she grins back. A cherub's winged head flies behind the Accusing Spirit
Peel, Robert, 1788-1850, former owner.