“A broadside satirising Robert Walpole with an etching in two parts. In the left-hand scene Frederick, Prince of Wales, stands with the Duke of Argyll and other gentlemen, pointing to the left where George II embraces Britannia. In the foreground, the grotesque figure of Walpole, wearing a coronet, kneels holding in five hands, bags of French and Spanish gold and another lettered, “I am Lord Corruption”. Behind him stands his daughter, Lady Mary, toying with a coronet. On the ground beside Walpole, the French cock perches on the back of the exhausted Imperial Eagle, but the British lion watching the conflict growls, “Now I’m rousing”. In the background, the white horse of Hanover kicks a man off a high rock; the man cries, “I’m lost”; a ship lies at anchor off Cartagena observed from another high rock to right by Admiral Vernon whose impetus towards the city is restrained by General Wentworth; below these two men sits Admiral Haddock chained to a rock (a reference to the limitation of his resources in dealing with the combined Spanish and French Mediterranean fleets). In the right-hand scene Walpole raises his hands in horror at the appearance in a cloud of smoke of the ghost of Eustace Budgell who holds out a paper described in the verses to left as a “black Account …Full twenty Winters of Misdeeds”; on the table at which Walpole is sitting is a large candlestick and letters addressed “A son Eminence” (Cardinal Fleury) and “à don [Sebastian] de la Quadra” and a book on “The Art of Bribery”. Budgell’s ghost raises his hand above his head to point at a scene of a beheading in the background above which flies Time while Justice sits on a column beside the scaffold and a crowd cheers below; over a doorway to right is a portrait of a Cardinal, presumably intended for Wolsey who is mentioned in the verses on the right. Engraved title and dedication to the Prince of Wales on a cloth above the scene supported by two putti; verses in two columns on either side condemning Walpole for his maladministration and celebrating the new prominence of the Prince of Wales and his followers; lines of music in two columns below the etching.”–British Museum online catalogue.
- Title: The ghost of Eustace Budgel Esqr. to the *man in blue [graphic] : most humbly inscrib’d to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales *see the Chinese Orphan, a tragedy for the reason of this term / designd by N.S. ; engrav’d by G.S.
- Publication: [London] : Printed for Eliza Haywood at Fame in the Piazza, Covent Garden, and sold by the printsellers and pamphlet shops of London and Westminster, according to act of Parliament, [1742]
Catalog Record
742.00.00.10++ Impression 2
Acquired January 2019
