Genre:

Poetry, Satire

Relevant illustrations:

wdct. [3]

Illustrators:

T Hood

Subjects:

Ornithology, Politics, Class, Botany, Piety

    The article is headed with an illustration captioned 'A Bill-Sticker' (72), which depicts a man impaled by a bird's long sharp beak. The vignette is followed by quotations putatively from 'Selby' ('At certain seasons he makes a prodigious clattering with his bill') and 'Bewick' ('The bill is rather long, flat, and tinged with green'). The illustration captioned 'Fancy Portrait—Sir Andrew with his Bill' (facing 72) depicts a man with a bill instead of a nose. The poem bemoans the possible consequences of Agnew's Sabbath Bill. According to Hood, Agnew would deny poor men, who had perhaps spent the week 'weaving artificial flowers', from seeing 'Nature's kinder bowers' on the sabbath, and 'Making the earth, the streams, the skies, the trees, / A Chapel of Ease' (73–74). Instead he would wall them in with 'hard Scotch granite'. There may be 'Sermons in stones', but Hood fears Agnew would 'have us work at them like paviours'. (74) The illustration captioned 'A Black Dose' (78) depicts a bottle of medicine with a face superimposed to suggest the black-clad figure of a puritanical clergyman.