The Oratory
by George Bickham the Younger
1731
British Museum 1868,0808.3547
A view of John "Orator" Henley's Oratory in Clare Market. A monkey holds a rope which appears to be tied to Henley, who holds a bottle of medicine. A box of various pills and a paper titled "The Hyp Doctor" (the "Hypochondriac Doctor"), a pro-Walpole weekly Henley produced in opposition to The Craftsman, lie at his feet. The man in laurels in the procession below is identified as actor Colley Cibber. A butcher stands guard at the door, and on the far left a man defecates on Henley's publications.
Below the image:
An extempore Epigram made at ye Oratory.
O! Orator, with brazen face and lungs;
Whose jargon's form'd of ten unlearned Tongues;
Why Stand'st thou there a whole long hour haranguing,
When half the time fits better Men for hanging? Grub-Street journal May 18' (13.1731)
© The Trustees of the British Museum in the UK
This image is provided courtesy of the British Museum under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence. In certain other jurisdictions it is considered to be in the public domain.