an old song, made by an aged old pate,
of an old worshipful gentleman who had a great estate,
that kept a brave old house at a bountiful rate,
and an old porter to relieve the poor at his gate.
with an old study ?lld full of learned old books,
with an old reverend chaplain, you might know him by his looks,
with an old buttery-hatch worn quite off the hooks,
and an old kit that maintained half-a-dozen old cooks.
like an old courtier, etc.--old song.
there is no species of humor in which the english more excel than that which sists in caricaturing and giving ludicrous appellations or niames. in this way they have whimsically designated, not merely individuals, but nations, and in their fondness for pushing a joke they have not spared even themselves.
one would think that in personifying itself a nation would be apt to picture something grand, heroid imposing; but it is characteristic of the peculiar humor of the english, and of their love for what is blunt, id familiar, that they have embodied their national oddities in the ?gure of a sturdy, corpulent old fellow with a three-ered hat, red waistcoat, leather breeches, and stout oaken cudgel. thus they have taken a singular delight in exhibiting their most private foibles in a laughable point of view, and have been so successful in their deliions that there is scarcely a being in actual existence more absolutely present to the publid than that etric personage, john bull.
perhaps the tinual plation of the character thus drawn of them has tributed to ?x it upoion, and thus to give reality to what at ?rst may have been painted in a great measure from the imagination. me to acquire peculiarities that are tinually ascribed to them. the on orders of english seem wonderfully captivated with the beau ideal which they have formed of john bull, and endeavor to act up to the broad caricature that is perpetually before their eyes.
unluckily, they sometimes make their boasted bullism an apology for their prejudice rossness; and this i have especially noticed among those truly homebred and genuine sons of the soil who have never migrated beyond the sound of bow bells. if one of these should be a little uncouth in speed apt to utter impertiruths, he fesses that he is a real john bull and always speaks his mind. if he now and then ?ies into an unreasonable burst of passion about tri?es, he observes that john bull is a choleric old blade, but then h
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