'Plausible' — Swinfen Eady, 1902

Spy depicts Sir Arthur Swinfen Eady, Chancery judge, seated at the bench in full legal dress: black silk robe, white lawn bands, and the distinctive barrister's wig cropped close at the temples. The chromolithograph's caption, 'plausible', is a wry one-word verdict on a judge celebrated for persuasive, carefully hedged reasoning rather than thundering pronouncement. Eady leans slightly forward, pen in hand, one eye half-lidded behind a monocle — the image of cool, skeptical authority. Ward's caricature technique exaggerates the long jaw and heavy brow without ethnic distortion; this is straightforward professional satire aimed at temperament and reputation. The wooden bench, cropped low, grounds the figure in institutional power, reinforcing the joke that this eminently reasonable man makes plausibility itself a judicial instrument.