Genre:

Illustration, Drollery; Poetry, Drollery

Relevant illustrations:

wdct.

Subjects:

Pollution, Analytical Chemistry

    Describes the evils of 'King Smoke', including his veiling of sunlight and overlaying the 'toilet' of 'many a maiden'. Notes that although 'The chemist applied all his learning [...] their fuel men kept half-burning / Whence still the dark fumes arose'. The illustration shows a black figure who wears a smoking chimney pot for a hat and who smokes a pipe fuelled by a coal gas stove.