print;
satirical print
- Museum number
- 1937,0719.11
- Title
- Object: Retort courteous.
- Description
-
Heading to printed verses (14 ll.). The scene is the pavement outside a handsome shop-window at the corner of 'Houndsditch: Samuel Fawcett's Blacking Warehouse Wholesale, Retail & for Exportation'; it is flanked by doors with elegant fan-lights. Within are bottles ranged on shelves. A portly shock-headed yokel, smartly dressed, stands chapeau-bras. Two fashionably dressed Londoners (r.) approach, one points derisively, the other looks superciliously through his glass. The verses (ll. 5-14):
'Though improved in his dress, his gait still the same,
Hodge was known as a bumpkin wherever he came,
Wits cannot resist, but their jokes will be cracking,
One observing his boots shin'd with Fawcett's jet Blacking,
Says, I'll quiz yonder clown - "In your dressing so neat,
"Your head, my good fellow, is eclips'd by your feet."
Hodge, rous'd by the sneer was quick in reply:
"What again, Measter Coxcomb? - you folk often try
"To make honesty blush, by hoisting Wit's banners,
"But my boots are more polish'd by far than your Manners."' 22 April 1807
Etching with letterpress text
- Production date
- 1807
- Dimensions
-
Height: 230 millimetres (plate)
-
Height: 272 millimetres (sheet)
-
Width: 175 millimetres (plate)
-
Width: 183 millimetres (sheet)
- $Inscriptions
-
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1937
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1937,0719.11
