e will ever rear a daughter."

Polly, contemplating the possibility of Macheath's being hanged
exclaims--

"Now, I'm a wretch indeed. Methinks, I see him already in the cart,
sweeter and more lovely than the nosegay in his hand! I hear the
crowd extolling his resolution and intrepidity! What volleys of
sighs are sent down from the windows of Holborn, that so comely a
youth should be brought to disgrace. I see him at the tree! the
whole circle are in tears! even butchers weep! Jack Ketch himself
hesitates to perform his duty, and would be glad to lose his fee by
a reprieve. What then will become of Polly?"

To Macheath

Were you sentenced to transportation, sure, my dear, you could not
leave me behind you?

_Mac._ "Is there any power, any force, that could tear thee from me.
You might sooner tear a pension out of the hands of a courtier, a
fee from a lawyer, a pretty woman from a looking-glass, or any
woman from quadrille."[5]

Gay may have taken his idea of writing fables from Dryden whose
classical reading tempted him in two or three instances to indulge in
such fancies. They were clever and in childhood appeared humorous to us,
but we have long ceased to be amused by them, owing to their excessive
improbability. Such ingenuity seems misplaced, we see more absurdity
than talent in representing a sheep as talking to a wolf. To us fables
now present, not what is strange and difficult of comprehension, but
mentally fanciful folly. In some few instances in La Fontaine and Gay,
the wisdom of the lessons atones for the strangeness of their garb, and
the peculiarity of the dramatis personae may tend to rivet them in our
minds. There is something also fresh and pleasant in the scenes of
country life which they bring before us. But the taste for such conceits
is irrevocably gone, and every attempt to revive it, even when
recommended by such ingenuity and talent as that of Owen Meredith, only
tends to prove the fact more incontestably. In Russia, a younger nation
than ours, the fables of Kriloff had a considerable sale at the
beginning of this century, but they had a political meaning.

CHAPTER II.

Defoe--Irony--Ode to the Pillory--The "Comical Pilgrim"--The "Scandalous
Club"--Humorous Periodicals--Heraclitus Ridens--The London Spy--The
British Apollo.

Defoe was born in 1663, and was the son of a butcher in St. Giles'. He
first distin