We see a ghost: Hogarth's satire on Methodists and Connoisseurs

Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism ironically connects the satirical uses of thermometry with the strange contemporary views of mental barometry. We recognize most of the thermometer's different degrees of mood in the behavior and faces of the congregation. Thus, on the left, a woman has fallen to the ground, "all over convulsed"(21) and is giving birth to rabbits. In 1726 a certain Mary Toft had caused considerable uproar when she claimed she could actually give birth to rabbits. She had fooled several physicians and obstetricians and the outrage had prompted Hogarth to make an earlier print of the subject, Cunicularii; or, The Wise Men of Godliman in Consultation [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 5 OMITTED].(22) In this print the sexual connotations are unambiguous. The curtains of the four-poster bed on which Mary Toft lies resemble the female vulva. The title of the print, which is the Latin word for tunnelers, likewise plays on the pun of cuniculus (the Latin word for rabbit) and cunnus (the pudenda),(23) and an "Occult Philosopher" reaches under Mary Toft's dress, shouting: "It Pouts it swells, it spreads it comes."

Below Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism, there is a warning caption quoted from 1 John 4:1: "Believe not every Spirit; but try the Spirits whether they are of God: because many false Prophets are gone out into the World." As we have seen, the "false prophet" here is Whitefield; "Believe not every spirit," however, may well be a pun referring to the Methodist belief in ghosts. The lay preacher beneath the pulpit uses a little white figure holding a candle as a sexual stimulant as he slips it into the bodice of an enraptured girl. We find the same figure in the hands of several members of the congregation. These little figures represent the Cock Lane Ghost, which made headlines early in 1762.

The Cock Lane Ghost story was started by the Methodist Richard Parsons, who claimed to hear strange noises in his house at night, "like knuckles knocking against the wainscot," particularly in the bedchamber of his eleven-year-old daughter. The story was later proved to be a hoax.(24) In Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism, the register plates of the barometer have been replaced by a mock weather house in which the Cock Lane Ghost can be seen knocking a mallet against a wall with a bed and child on the other side. The barometer is accurate in forecasting ghost weather in 1762. The Cock Lane hoax sparked off a period of ghost story revival in which numerous older ghost stories were printed - and often satirized - in contemporary pamphlets and periodicals. One is the story of the Drummer of Tedworth, which is found in Joseph Glanvil's Saducismus Triumphatus (1681).(25)

In March 1662 John Mompesson of Tedworth, who held a legal post in the county of Wiltshire, heard the beat of a drum. He sent for the drummer, a certain William Drury, and asked him by what authority he drummed up and down the country. Drury produced a pass and warrant, both of which were counterfeit. The drum was confiscated and kept in Mompesson's house. From then on Mompesson was disturbed by "a very great knocking at his Doors, and the outsides of his House" and frequently by "a Thumping and Drumming." It usually came as the Mompessons "were going to sleep, whether early or late," and it also "came into the Room where the Drum lay." It beat out "Round-heads and Cuckolds, the Tat-too, and several other points of War, as well as any Drummer," and was occasionally "so boisterous and rude, that it hath been heard at a considerable distance in the Fields, and awakened the Neighbours in the Village." According to Glanvil, who examined the case, there was not the slightest doubt about the preternatural cause of the extraordinary events in Mompesson's house. To a friend, however, Drury confessed to having plagued the gentleman at Tedworth, adding that Mompesson "shall never be at quiet, till he hath made me satisfaction for taking away my Drum." This statement brought him to trial for witchcraft. He was condemned to transportation, but