By James Gillray.
A satire on the struggle between Pitt and Thurlow travestied as a scene from 'Paradise Lost'.
24 lines from Paradise lost at head of design and to the right of caption title, beginning "black it stood as night, Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as hell" and ending "Fast by hell-gate, and kept the fatal Key, "Ris'n, and with hideous outcry rushd between."
Print shows Pitt as Death, wearing the king's crown and wielding a long sceptre. Thurlow is Satan brandishing a cracked mace and oval shield decorated with the bag of the Great Seal and a tiny woolsack. The Queen, as Sin, naked, with snaky locks, and two writhing serpents for legs, interposes to protect Pitt. She is a hideous hag with pendent breasts; from her hair hangs a large key inscribed 'The Instrument of all our Woe'. Pitt wears a long ermine-trimmed cloak and his sceptre radiates darts of lightning. Behind him, and guarding the gate of Hell which is indicated by a stone arch, is Cerberus, with the profile heads of Dundas, Grenville, and Richmond, looking up at Thurlow; their body terminates in a large serpent with a barbed tail. Thurlow has wings, and is naked except for a quasi-Roman kilt. On the right are the flames of Hell in which demons are flying; smoke fills the background. At the foot of the design is etched: NB: The above performance containing Portraits of the Devil & his Relatives, drawn from the Life, is recommended to Messrs Boydell, Fuselli & the rest of the Proprietors of the Three Hundred & Sixty Five Editions of Milton now publishing, as necessary to be adopted, in their classick Embellishments.