An engraved writing sheet illustrated with seven scenes from Gay’s Fables, each titled above and with rhyming couplet below. At head, and the largest scene, is ‘The Shepherd and the Philosopher’; six smaller scenes form the right and left borders below. A garlanded oval, designed to carry a hand-inserted date-line, is engraved at the foot above the imprint
Description:
Title engraved at top of plate, on either side of the image of "The shepherd and the philosopher.", Watermark: [...]anshaw., and Sheet annotated in ink with the name 'Thomas Harbidge' and the date 'Decr. 19. 1787' in the blank oval at foot. Written in manuscript in black ink at the center of the sheet are three passages, beginning with 'Education either makes or mars us, and governments as well as private families, are concerned in it’s [sic] consequences, abcde’, and concluding with 'Good books are a guide in youth, and an entertainment for age, they support us under solitude and keep us from being a burden to ourselves'.
Publisher:
Published by Robt. Sayer, map, chart & printseller, No. 53 Fleet Street
Illustration to a poetic version of Aesop’s fable of a man with an older and a younger wife; the younger plucked out all his grey hairs, and the older, the dark ones with the inevitable result
Alternative Title:
Aesop's fables. Selections. English, Man and his 2 wives, Man and his two wives, and Man & his two wives
Description:
Title engraved below image., Plate from: The Lady's curiosity: or, Weekly Apollo. London : Printed by C. Sympson, no. 17 (1752)., Imperfect; sheet trimmed within plate mark with loss of text above image. Missing text supplied from a more perfect impression., Fourteen lines of verse engraved beneath title: A man whose years were in decline, / Had got two wives. One was a fine / Young airy thing who sung & danc'd; / The other grave, in age advanc'd, ..., Two additional lines of verse at bottom, beneath the heading "Application": Thus he that does to woman trust / Is shure to come off with the worst., "Fab. XXXII."--Above image., and Laid down on blue paper.
Titles from text above each design., Six designs on one plate, each individually titled., Sheet trimmed within plate mark., and Not in the Catalogue of prints and drawings in the British Museum. Division I, political and personal satires.
Four watercolors depicting scenes from accounts published in periodicals of the early 1820s, including The Mirror of Literature, Amusement and Instruction (volume I, 1822-23), John Long's Voyages and Travels of an Indian Interpreter and Trader (1791). The Mirror (November 1822) and Knapp and Baldwin's Newgate Calendar (1824)., The first drawing, 'Sultan Mahamoud punishing a Ravisher', from Knapp and Baldwin's Newgate Calendar, 1824, shows the Sultan kneeling surrounded by four women and another man with a dagger in his handl, The second drawing 'Janvier About to Kill the Indian Who had Relieved His Hunger' illustrates the tale of Charles Janvier who with two other servants had been sent by their master, Mr. Fulton, to catch supplies of meat and fish. Saved from hunger by a passing native Canadian, Janvier kills and eats the stranger, a fate he later inflicts on one of his fellow servants, The third sketch, 'A Miser Distracted', is perhaps a depiction of Aesop's fable 'The Miser and his Gold', in which a miser concentrates all his wealth into one lump of gold which he buries before it is stolen from him. Here he is shown kneeling on the ground, arms extended in a gesture of surprise as a couple in the distance run towards a town in the distance, the man clasping a bag, and The fourth and final drawing shows a scene from 'Rescue of the Emperor Basilius Maredo', as he is snagged by a stag whilst hunting; he is saved by the sword of a servant who is subsequently sentenced to death for drawing his sword in the presence of the Emperor
Description:
In English., Title devised by cataloger, based on dealer's description., Artist is unidentified., Drawings on rectos of four leaves of wove paper which are sewn into a wrapper made from an18th-century sugar paper printed advertisement for William Henry Hall's New encylopaedia., and For further information, consult library staff.
