They stipulate for a writer's popularity before they will do
much more than take the position of umpires to record his failure or
success. Now the pig supplies the most popular of dishes, but it is not
accounted the most honoured of animals, unless it be by the cottager. Our
public might surely be led to try other, perhaps finer, meat. It has good
taste in song. It might be taught as justly, on the whole, and the sooner
when the cottager's view of the feast shall cease to be the humble one of
our literary critics, to extend this capacity for delicate choosing in
the direction of the matter arousing laughter.
Footnotes:
{1} A lecture delivered at the London Institution, February 1st, 1877.
{2} Realism in the writing is carried to such a pitch in THE OLD
BACHELOR, that husband and wife use imbecile connubial epithets to one
another.
{3} Tallemant des Reaux, in his rough portrait of the Duke, shows the
foundation of the character of Alceste.
{4} See Tom Jones, book viii. chapter I, for Fielding's opinion of our
Comedy.
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