"
It should not have been left to a later hand--it should surely have
been the privilege of Lamb's or Hazlitt's, and perhaps rather Hazlitt's
than even Lamb's--to unearth and to transcribe the quaint and spirited
description of Thames watermen "howling, hollowing, and calling for
passengers, as if all the hags in hell had been imprisoned, and begging
at the gate, fiends and furies that (God be thanked) could vex the soul
but not torment it, yet indeed their most power was over the body, for
here an audacious mouthing-randing-impudent-scullery-wastecoat-and-bodied
rascal would have hail'd a penny from us for his scullerships."
Could Rabelais himself have described them better, or with vigor of
humorous expression more heartily and enjoyably characteristic of his
own all but incomparable genius?
The good old times, as remote in Shakespeare's day as in our own, were
never more delightfully described than by Rowley in this noble and
simple phrase: "Then was England's whole year but a St. George's day."
Webster wished that what he wrote might be read by the light of
Shakespeare: an admirer of Rowley might hope and must wish that he
should be read by the light of Lamb.
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