to be read backwards like a Witch's Prayer

Tom Bobbin (pseud)

Human Passions Delineated... Designed in the Hogarthian Style, very useful for young practitioners in Drawing, Heywood, Manchester, 1773.

This larger and more ambitious image was included in a bound set of Bobbin's prints of grotesque faces. Although it makes an obscure point, it offers us a satirical image in the transition period between Hogarth and Gillray. The narrative structure of clues and motifs standing for aspects of the Total Message, is an original and fascinating one. The message is an inriguing one and the visual convention relates to the tradition of the Narrator telling stories while his audience looks at pictures. Here the audience dozes.

a. here's powder dust to blind a Piercing Eye
b. Here's corks to stop both Mouth and ears by the bye
c Here's Almond oil to grease a tardy Tongue
d This makes white black
e. This changes right to wrong
f. Here's Lethe's water, Patriot Thoughts to drown
g. Here's Britain's magna
h. Here's the rights o the Crown
i. Here's Polar Stars by which a Statesaman steers
k. And here's the Lares of our Mitred Peers
l. here's Wit
m. Here's Learning
n.Politics are here
o. Here's Titles
p. Pensions
q. Grants of thousands clear
r. Here's curious Salve, to Plaister britain's Wounds
s. The Present War
t. Last Peace, which all confounds
u. Here's Silken Pleasure
w. Wilkes' Cutting Road
x. Here's law
y. Here's Gospel
z. here's our Senate's God.
 

By Chris Mullen
Information supplied by: http://www.adh.brighton.ac.uk