)
amusingly describes the administration of an oath to a witness in a
court of law:--

"Here, Simon, you shall (silence there!)
The truth and all the truth declare,
And nothing but the truth be willing
To speak, so help you G--d (a shilling)."[102]

The artist possibly had this quotation in his mind when he designed the
following:--The deponent is a country bumpkin, to whom an official
tenders the Testament, at the same time extending his disengaged palm.
"Pleas zur," says Hodge, "wot be I to zay?" (To him the officer), "Say,
This is the truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God one and
sixpence."

The open and notorious bribery, corruption, and intimidation which
prevailed in those days at parliamentary elections; Sir Robert Peel's
"New Police Act" (which was received with extraordinary suspicion and
dislike); the Reform Bill; the universal distress and consequent bread
riots of 1830-31, form the subjects of other pictorial satires by Robert
Seymour, which seem, however, to call for little notice.

The artist's talent and services were constantly in demand as a designer
on wood; but finding that the productions of his pencil suffered at the
hands of the wood-engravers to whom they were entrusted, and the very
inferior paper upon which the impressions were taken, he, in or about
the year 1827, began to learn the art of etching on copper. We believe
his earliest attempts in this direction will be found in a work now
exceedingly rare, bearing the title of "Assisting, Resisting, and
Desisting." A volume called "Vagaries, in Quest of the Wild and
Wonderful," which appeared in 1827, was embellished with six clever
plates after the manner of George Cruikshank, and ran through no less
than three editions.

The "Humorous Sketches," several times republished, perhaps the only
work by which Seymour is now known to the general public, appeared
between the years 1834 and 1836. They were first published at threepence
each by Richard Carlisle, of Fleet Street, who is said to have paid the
artist fifteen shillings for each drawing on the stone. Carlisle falling
into difficulties shortly before Seymour's death, sold the copyright and
lithographic stones to Henry Wallis, who in turn parted with the latter
to Mr. Tregear, of Cheapside, but retaining his property in the
copyright, transferred the drawings to steel, and published them in
1838, with letterpress by Alfred Crowquill. Mr. Henry G. Bohn issued an
editio