Template:POTD/2019-05-15
The King of Brobdingnag and Gulliver is a satirical print produced in 1803 by British caricaturist and printmaker James Gillray, executed in etching and aquatint. It is based on the fictional land of Brobdingnag from Jonathan Swift's 1726 novel Gulliver's Travels, which is inhabited by giants. The print shows a profile of George III of the United Kingdom, representing the Brobdingnagian king, holding a miniature Napoleon, representing Gulliver, while observing him through a spyglass. It was published on 26 June, five weeks after the breakdown of the Treaty of Amiens, which precipitated the Napoleonic Wars. The king's speech balloon in the top half of the print reads "My little friend Grildrig, you have made a most admirable panegyric upon Yourself and Country, but from what I can gather from your own relation & the answers I have with much pains wringed & extorted from you, I cannot but conclude you to be one of the most pernicious, little-odious-reptiles, that nature ever suffer'd to crawl upon the surface of the Earth". This copy of the print is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.Print credit: James Gillray; restored by Chris Woodrich