Height: 268.000 mm (full page illustration)
Width: 210.000 mm
Height: 268.000 mm (full page illustration)
Width: 210.000 mm

PD 1868-7-11-11to13

Prints and Drawings

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London 1753

Illustrations to 'Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat' by Thomas Gray Johann Sebastian Muller (about 171

This double page spread comes from a publication comprising six poems by Thomas Gray (1716-71). Each is illustrated with engravings after designs by Richard Bentley (1708-82). An 'Explanation of the prints' by Horace Walpole follows. Gray was reluctant to be seen to be promoting his own work and this volume appeared only after a great deal of persuasion on the part of Walpole, a long-standing friend.

Robert Dodsley (1703-64) was the leading bookseller of the day and his shop in Pall Mall was a centre for the publication of poetry. He also co-published Johnson's Dictionary (1755), and the first translations of Voltaire and Rousseau; he ran four periodicals as well as partly owning others; his Oeconomy of Human Life, a collection of moral precepts, was the best-selling book of the eighteenth century.

Bentley's designs are delightfully inventive and perfectly embody the rococo taste for chinoiserie. On the left two cats fish from pagodas on either side of a large mouse trap. The moment before Selina meets her end is framed by a river god and Fate cutting the thread of life. Below mice rejoice. Above the poem two cat pall-bearers with black crepe ribbons round their hats frame the scene of Selina's last moments as she flounders in the fish bowl. At the end of the poem a tailpiece shows Charon rowing the cat across the Styx to where a slavering Cerberus awaits her.