t note further "The Vexation of Little Boney"; and strike a
higher note in "The Handwriting upon the Wall," where, in the hour of
his triumph, Buonaparte, seated at table beside an enormously stout
Josephine, with gigantic and savage-looking Guards and very
_decolletees_ and ringleted maids-of-honour waiting in service on them,
sees with dilated eyes on the wall the warning of his doom.

=_By James Gillray_ ARMED HEROES (WILLIAM PITT AND BUONAPARTE)=

Of course the threatened invasion of England finds its echo in Gillray's
prints. "French Invasion, or Buonaparte Landing," "Armed Heroes" (of
which I give here a reproduction), and the "King of Brobindnag and
Gulliver" all belong to this theme of the nation's peril; as does that
interesting print, which I also reproduce, of "Britannia between
Death and the Doctor," where the sick lady is threatened on the one side
by Buonaparte as Death, the while Pitt, as chief physician, executes a
war dance at the expense of his professional rivals, planting his heel
very neatly in the mouth of the prostrate Charles James Fox. Napoleon's
European victories find comment in the "Surrender of Ulm," and in
another of my plates, "Tiddy Doll, the Great French Gingerbread Maker,
drawing out a New Batch of Kings," where Talleyrand seems, very
appropriately, to be the figure in the background kneading the dough
(note, too, the rubbish heap). But the worst danger was past already at
the time (as we know now) of that fine plate that commemorates the
"Death of Admiral Lord Nelson in the Moment of Victory," published by
Humphrey of St. James Street, on December 23, 1805.

Gillray, after trying various publishers--Kent, Brown, Holland of Oxford
Street, Fores of Piccadilly--seems to have settled down with Humphrey,
first in the Strand, then in Bond Street, and later St. James Street,
whose shop-windows became famed for his prints. Joseph Grego, a known
authority on our artist, relates that Fox and Burke once walked into
the shop together, alarming the worthy proprietress by this sudden
invasion of Gillray's favourite subjects. But Burke reassured her with a
smile: "Were I to prosecute you it would be the making of your fortune;
and that favour, excuse me, Mrs. Humphrey, you do not entirely merit at
my hands."

We may terminate our study or Gillray's Napoleonic caricatures very
appropriately with the "Spanish Bullfight," in which Buonaparte is
tossed by the Spanish bull (Peninsular War of 1808