ers became a trifle more refined, and
the customs described so faithfully by Fielding and Smollett belonged to
a lower social stratum. Yet we can fancy Walpole's occasional visit to
his constituents, and imagine him forced to preside at one of those
election feasts which still survive on Hogarth's canvas. Substitute him
for the luckless fine gentleman in a laced coat, who represents the
successful candidate in the first picture of the series. A drunken voter
is dropping lighted pipe ashes upon his wig; a hideous old hag is
picking his pockets; a boy is brewing oceans of punch in a mash-tub; a
man is blowing bagpipes in his ear; a fat parson close by is gorging the
remains of a haunch of venison; a butcher is pouring gin on his
neighbour's broken head; an alderman--a very mountain of roast beef--is
sinking back in a fit, whilst a barber is trying to bleed him; brickbats
are flying in at the windows; the room reeks with the stale smell of
heavy viands and the fresh vapours of punch and gin, whilst the very air
is laden with discordant howls and thick with oaths and ribald songs.
Only think of the smart young candidate's headache next morning in the
days when soda-water was not invented! And remember too that the
representatives were not entirely free from sympathy with the coarseness
of their constituents. Just at the period of Hogarth's painting,
Walpole, when speaking of the feeling excited by a Westminster election,
has occasion to use this pleasing 'new fashionable proverb'--'We spit in
his hat on Thursday, and wiped it off on Friday.' It owed its origin to
a feat performed by Lord Cobham at an assembly given at his own house.
For a bet of a guinea he came behind Lord Hervey, who was talking to
some ladies, and made use of his hat as a spittoon. The point of the
joke was that Lord Hervey--son of Pope's 'mere white curd of asses'
milk,' and related, as the scandal went, rather too closely to Horace
Walpole himself--was a person of effeminate appearance, and therefore
considered unlikely--wrongly, as it turned out--to resent the insult. We
may charitably hope that the assailants, who thus practically
exemplified the proper mode of treating milksops, were drunk. The
two-bottle men who lingered till our day were surviving relics of the
type which then gave the tone to society. Within a short period there
was a prime minister who always consoled himself under defeats and
celebrated triumphs with his bottle; a chancellor who