n a wooden bowle,
But his sweet self is served in si'ver plate.
His hungry sire will scrape you twenty legges
For one good Christmas meal on new year's day,
But his mawe must be capon cramm'd each day."

_Act III. Scene 2._

This does not look as if in those days "it snowed of meat and drink," as a
matter of course throughout the year!--The distinctions of dress, the
badges of different professions, the very signs of the shops, which we
have set aside for written inscriptions over the doors, were, as Mr. Lamb
observes, a sort of visible language to the imagination, and hints for
thought. Like the costume of different foreign nations, they had an
immediate striking and picturesque effect, giving scope to the fancy. The
surface of society was embossed with hieroglyphics, and poetry existed "in
art and compliment extern." The poetry of former times might be directly
taken from real life, as our poetry is taken from the poetry of former
times. Finally, the face of nature, which was the same glorious object
then that it is now, was open to them; and coming first, they gathered her
fairest flowers to live for ever in their verse:--the movements of the
human heart were not hid from them, for they had the same passions as we,
only less disguised, and less subject to control. Deckar has given an
admirable description of a mad-house in one of his plays. But it might be
perhaps objected, that it was only a literal account taken from Bedlam at
that time; and it might be answered, that the old poets took the same
method of describing the passions and fancies of men whom they met at
large, which forms the point of communion between us: for the title of the
old play, "A Mad World, my Masters," is hardly yet obsolete; and we are
pretty much the same Bedlam still, perhaps a little better managed, like
the real one, and with more care and humanity shewn to the patients!

Lastly, to conclude this account; what gave a unity and common direction
to all these causes, was the natural genius of the country, which was
strong in these writers in proportion to their strength. We are a nation
of islanders, and we cannot help it; nor mend ourselves if we would. We
are something in ourselves, nothing when we try to ape others. Music and
painting are not our _forte_: for what we have done in that way has been
little, and that borrowed from others with great difficulty. But we may
boast of our poets and philosophers. That's something. We