thing that was rightfully despised by your lusty Englishman, who held, with 'old Mr. Meynell,' that 'foreigners were fools.' No doubt John Bull was already notorious for his melancholy. He was a victim to the 'spleen' and given to committing suicide during his November fogs. Jaques had already learnt to suck melancholy out of a song as a weasel sucks eggs, and classified and compounded the various brands of melancholy. Great English poets had invoked 'divinest melancholy.' We had an 'anatomy' of melancholy; and one of the greatest writers of the time had combined melancholy with misanthropy and died 'like a poisoned rat in a hole.' Swift was melancholy in the true British fashion, but hardly sentimental. Probably enough our national character, or our fogs, predisposed us to a certain gloom, which might take the form of grim humour or tinge imaginative work with sadness. But, then, surely a Frenchman can be melancholy too, though he may wear his melancholy with a difference. A characteristic example often noticed is the simultaneous appearance of Candide and Rasselas, both of them powerful protests against optimism, but couched by the Frenchman in brilliant wit and by the Englishman
