158 Potatoes. [Part IL 



thing more than ridicule and contempt, Mr. Ireland, 

 whose writings had been taken for Shakespear's, was, 

 when he made the discovery, treated as an impostor and 

 a cheat, and hunted down with as much rancour as if 

 he had wTitten against the buying and selling of seats 

 in Parliament. The learned men; the sage critics; 

 the Shahespear'mad folks ; were all so ashamed, that 

 they endeavoured to draw the public attention from 

 themselves to the 3'oung man. It was oi'his impositions 

 that they now talked, and not of their omn folhj. When 

 the witty clown, mentioned in Don Quixote, put the 

 nuncio's audience to shame by pulling the real pig out 

 from under his cloak, we do not find that that audience 

 were, like our learned men, so unjust as to pursue him 

 with reproaches and with every act that a vindictive 

 mind can suggest. They perceived how foolish they 

 had been, they hung down their heads in silence, and, 

 I dare say, would not easily be led to admire the 

 mountebank again. 



271. It h fashion. Sir, to Avhich in these most striking 

 instances, sense and reason have yielded ; and it is to 

 fashion that the potatoe owes its general cultivation and 

 use. If you ask me whether fashion can possibly make 

 a nation prefer one sort of diet to another, I ask you 

 what is it that can make a nation admire Shakespear ? 

 What is it that can make them call him a " Divine 

 Bard," nine-tenths of whose works are made up of 

 such trash as no decent man, now-a-days, would not be 

 ashamed, and even afraid, to put his name to ? What 

 can make an audience in London sit and hear, and even 

 applaud, under the name of Shakespear, what they 

 woidd hoot off the stage in a moment, if it came forth 

 imder any other name ? When folly has once given the 

 fashion she is a ver^' persevering dame. An American 

 writer, whose name is George Dorsey, I believe, and 

 who has recently published a pamphlet, called, " The 

 United States axf* E.vglaxd, Sec." being a reply to 

 an attack on the morals and government and learning 

 of the Americans, in the " Quarterly Review," states, 

 as matter of justification, that the People of America 

 sigh ivith delight to see the plays of Shapespear, whom 



