POTATOES 



rancour as if he had written against the buying and selling of seats 

 in Parliament. The learned men ; the sage critics : the Shake- 

 spear-mad folks : were all so ashamed, that they endeavoured to 

 draw the public attention from themselves to the young man. 

 It was of his impositions that they now talked, and not of their 

 own folly. 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 mounte 

 bank again. 



h$ 271. It is fashion, Sir, to which in these most striking instances, 

 sense and reason have yielded ; and it is to fashion that the potatoe 

 owes its general cultivation and use. Ir you &quot;ask me whether 

 fashion can possibly make a nation prefer one sort of diet to 

 another, I ask you what it is that can make a nation admire 

 Shakespear ? What is it that can make them call him a &quot; Divine 

 Bard,&quot; 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 hla name 10&quot;? What can make an audience in 

 London sit and hear, and even applaud, under the name of 

 Shakespear, what they would hoot off the stage in a moment, 

 if it came forth under any other name ? When folly has once 

 given the fashion she is a very persevering dame. An American 

 writer, whose name is GEORGE DORSEY, I believe, and who has 

 recently published a pamphlet, called, &quot; The UNITED STATES AND 

 &quot; ENGLAND, &c.&quot; being a reply to an attack on the morals and 

 government and learning of the Americans, in the &quot; Quarterly 

 Review,&quot; states, as matter of justification, that the People of 

 America sigh with delight to see the plays of Shakespear, whom 

 they claim as their countryman : 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 Falstaff and Poins, and Dame Quickely 

 and Doll Tearsheet ? What can restrain them from pelting 

 Parson Hugh, Justice Shallow, Bardolph, and the whole crew off 

 the stage ? What can make them endure a ghost cap^pie, a 

 prince-; who, for justice sake, pursues his uncle and his mother, 

 and who stabs an oIcTgentleman in sport, and cries out &quot; dead for 

 a ducat ! dead ! &quot; What can they find to &quot; delight &quot; them in 

 punning clowns, in ranting heroes, in sorcerers, ghosts, witches, 

 fairies, monsters, sooth-say ers, dreamers ; in incidents out of 

 nature, in scenes most unnecessarily bloody. How they must be 

 delighted at the story of Lear putting the question to his daughters 

 of which loved him most, and then dividing his kingdom among 

 them, according to their professions of love : how delighted to see 

 the fantastical disguise of Edgar, the treading out Gloucester s 

 K 125 



