Short Shanks," and was published by King. Among
rarer and better ones may be named two very excellent specimens, without
date, published by Creed, of Chancery Lane, labelled respectively, _A
Musical Genius_ (a butcher boy playing on the Pandean pipes and
accompanying himself with marrow bone and cleaver), and _A Man of Taste
and Feeling_ (a tramp caught in a trap while helping himself in a
butler's pantry). Among the best of his coloured political caricatures,
we may mention, _Greece and her Rough Lovers_ (_i.e._ Russia and
Turkey), published by Maclean, in 1828. Lithography afforded greater
facilities of execution than the old process, and much of Seymour's work
in political as well as social satire was executed by himself on stone.

DEATH OF GEORGE IV.

The year 1830 brought the life and reign of George the Fourth to a
close. He had been breaking up for a long time past. The first entry of
any moment occurs in Mr. Greville's diary, of 25th August, 1828: "The
king has not been well; he goes fishing and dining at Virginia Water,
stays out late, and catches cold." A year later, the diarist relates
that the king had nearly lost his eyesight, and would be "couched" as
soon as his eyes were in a proper state for the operation. On the 7th of
December he attended a chapter of the Bath, "looked well," but was so
blind that "he could not see to read the list, and begged [Mr. Greville]
to read it for him." The Sangrado treatment was then in full force; and
we find that in January, 1830, the king, being very ill, "lost forty
ounces of blood." He grew at last so much worse that the preparations
for the festivities with which the royal birthday was to have been
celebrated were obliged to be postponed _sine die_. A victim to dropsy,
the operation of puncturing the legs was resorted to, with the result of
giving him temporary relief. The patient, however, became liable to
violent fits of coughing, in one of which he ruptured a blood vessel,
and expired early on the morning of Saturday the 26th of June, 1830.

A more contemptible, selfish, unfeeling being as a _man_ than this king
could scarcely have been found, "a mixture of narrow-mindedness,
selfishness, truckling, blustering, and duplicity, with no object but
self, his own ease, and the gratification of his own fancies and
prejudices."[97] "A more despicable scene," continues Mr. Greville,
"cannot be exhibited than that which the interior of our Court
presents--every base, l