The raree show a political contrast to the print of the Times by Wm. Hogarth. [graphic]

"Satire on the negotiations leading to the Peace of Paris in response to Hogarth's "The Times Part 1", but also with visual echoes of his much earlier print, "Southwark Fair". In the centre is a large theatrical booth advertising "The Full and Whole Play of Dido and Aeneas" with a show-cloth on which the lovers are depicted taking shelter in a cave; below is platform on which stand Bute and Princess Augusta accompanied by a zany, a drummer (Arthur Murphy) and a trumpeter (Tobias Smollett). Hogarth, portrayed as an ape, stands on a ladder painting a sign-board with a portrait of Pitt (echoing the sign painter in "Beer Street"); at the foot of the ladder another ape, representing the Duke of Bedford, ambassador to Paris, sits on a small table holding a sheet marked "Prelim Peace". Henry Fox looks out of a window at the top of the booth. On the left, Bute stands on stilts playing the bagpipes with a large bag of money hanging from his neck; he is supported by admiring Scotsmen and adored by a group of bishops. Behind him is an inn with the sign of the thistle advertising "Geud Scrubbing for Mon and Horse"; an ass peers throuh a window and an ass's skull hangs above. Beyond, Scotsmen rejoice as buildings burn, while three fireman sleep beside their engine; an owl representing the French ambassador, the Duke de Nivernois, flies overhead carrying on olive branch (in place of Hogarth's dove with the olive branch) . In the foreground a mastiff urinates on an impression of Hogarth's "The Times Part 1"; Charles Churchill gestures towards a bonfire on which is burning "The Wandsworth Epistle" and "The Briton" (Smollett's newspaper) while a sailor, watched by Britannia, brings a wheelbarrow laden with other journals (echoing the barrow containing "The North Briton" in Hogarth's print). Behind this group, William Beckford draws the attention of Pitt, Temple and Newcastle to the happy Scots; Cumberland, bald-headed, shakes his fist. The British lion grasps a dead French cock in his jaws and looks angrily at a Frenchman who hands coins to a Dutchman leaning on a bale marked "Neutrality" (a similar Dutchman in Hogarth's print sits on a bale smoking contentedly). Behind the lion, George Whitefield, arms outspread and a devil blowing with bellows into his ear, preaches from a three-legged stool to an old woman with a prayer-book and a man with the head of an ass. On the left, three further show-cloths hang on the wall of a house, referring to performances at "Punch Political Poppet Show with a Scotch Uproar": "Then", with the figure of Fame crowning a British commander; "Now", with a Scotsman at the prow of a boat foundering on the rocks of "New Lost Land"; "Alive from France & England" with a clown raising his fist and his foot at a Frenchman (echoing the sign, "Alive from America", in Hogarth's print); at the top of the house a Spaniard and a Frenchman, both grinning, look out of a window."--British Museum online catalogue