The Rape of the Lock

This drawing appears to be an unrealised design for an illustration to Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock. While it does not seem to have been engraved, Hayman did execute an illustration for Pope's Dunciad, engraved by Charles Grignion in William Warburton's 1760 Collected Edition of Pope, vol. V. Here we see the pivotal moment of the story: Belinda comforted by her maid, while the Baron holds the lock of her hair he has cut aloft. Pope's mock-heroic narrative poem was hugely popular throughout the 18th Century, and its imagery would have been well-known.