Friday 23 April 2010

‘The Politician’ – William Hogarth

Politician

A politician sits and stares at his Gazette, a pursuit that takes up so much of his small brain capacity he fails to notice the candle is burning a hole in his hat brim.  The headline and story have far more importance than anything going on in the real world.  As the poem associated with it goes,

A politician should (as I have read)
Be furnish’d in the first place with a head…

(Just for the record, the picture is a 1775 engraving by a J.K Sherwin after a 1730s sketch by Hogarth.)

1 comment:

Unknown said...

can you please tell me which poem it is that's associated with this print. I am researching The Politician.
Mrs Browne