^hap. VII.] Potatoes. 15^ 



they claim as their counti-yman ; an honour, if it be 

 disputed, of which I will make any of them a voluntary 

 surrender of my share. Now, Sir, what can induce the 

 American to sit and hear with delight the dialogues of 

 Falstaflf ani P(jins, and Dame Quickly and D(j1I Tear- 

 sheet ? What can restrain them from pelting Parson 

 Hugh, Justice Shallovr, Bardf)lph, and the whole crew 

 off the stage ? What can make them endure a ghost 

 cap-d-pie, a prince, who, for justice sake, pursues his 

 uncle and his mother, and. who slabs an old gentleman 

 in sport, and cries out "dead fur a ducat! dead!" 

 "What can they find to " delight " them in punning 

 clo^vns, in ranting heroes, in sorcerers, ghosts, witches, 

 fairies, monsters, sooth-sayers, dreamers , in incidents 

 out of nature, in scenes most unnecessarily bloody. 

 How they must be delighted at the story of Lear put- 

 ting the question to his daughters of which loved kirn 

 most, and then dividing his kingdom among them, ac' 

 cording to their professions of love ; how delighted to 

 see the fantastical disguise of Edgar, the treading out 

 Gloucester's eyes, and the trick by which it is pre- 

 tended he Avas made to believe, that he had actually 

 fallen from the top of the cliff I How thev must be de- 

 lighted to see the stage filled with green toughs, like a 

 coppice, as in JMacbeth, or streaming like a slaugliter- 

 house, as in Titus Andronicus ! How the young girls in 

 America must be tickled witli delight at the dialogues 

 in Troilus and Cressida, and more especially at the 

 pretty observations of the Xurse, I think it is in Romeo 

 and J'dietl But, it is the same all through the v.ork. 

 I know of one other, and only one other, book, so obscene 

 as this ; and, if I were to judge from the high favour in 

 which these two books seem to stand, I should conclude, 

 that wild and improbable fiction, bad principles of mo- 

 rality and politicks, obscurity in meaning, bombastical 

 language, forced jokes, puns, and s'nut, were fitted to 

 the minds of the people. But I do not thus judge. It 

 hfasliion. These books are in fashion. Every one is 

 ashamed not to be in the fashion. It is the fashion to 

 extol potatoes, and to eat potatoes. Every one joins 

 in e.\tolling potatoes, and all the world like potatoes. 



