Engraving (coloured impression). An untidy shock-headed footman stands letting a tureen slide onto the table so that its contents pour out; in his left hand is a dish containing a leg of mutton, held so that joint and gravy fall onto the floor. He stands between a hideous old woman at the head of the table (right) and a comely young one on her right. A fat maidservant follows the footman, holding a dish. Behind the man hangs an elaborately framed bust portrait of a grim-looking man wearing an early eighteenth-century wig. A cockatoo screams from a cage (left). A dog sits behind the old woman’s chair, a cat puts its fore-paws on the table to lap up the split soup. Below the title: 'Take off your largest dishes, and set them on with one hand, to shew the ladies your vigour and strength of your back, but always do it between two ladies, that if the dish happens to slip, the soup or sauce may fall on their cloaths, and do not daub the floor, by this practice, two of our brethren, my worthy friends, got considerable fortune… When you carry a dish of meat, dip your fingers into the sauce, or lick it with your tongue, to try whether it be good, and fit for your masters table'. [Two quotations from Swift’s Directions to Servants.] Grego, 'Rowlandson', ii. 82. Partial description from the Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires Vol. VIII. 10918.