"
S.W.S.
Mickleham, Nov. 14. 1849.
[We cannot insert the interesting Query which our correspondent
has forwarded on the subject of the disappearance of
Shakespeare's MSS. without referring to the ingenious suggestion
upon that subject so skilfully brought forward by the Rev.
Joseph Hunter in his _New Illustrations of the Life, Studies,
and Writings of Shakspeare_, vol. i. p. 105.:--"That the entire
disappearance of all manuscripts of Shakspeare, so entire that
no writing of his remains except his name, and only one letter
ever addressed to him, is in some way connected with the
religious turn which his posterity took, in whose eyes there
would be much to be lamented in what they must, I fear, have
considered a prostitution of the noble talents which had been
given him."]
* * * * *
FOOD OF THE PEOPLE.--BILLS OF FARE IN 1683--HUMBLE PIE.
The food of the people must always be regarded as an important element
in estimating the degree of civilization of a nation, and its position
in the social scale. Mr. Macaulay, in his masterly picture of the state
of England at the period of the accession of James II., has not failed
to notice this subject as illustrative of the condition of the working
classes of that day. He tells us that meat, viewed relatively with
wages, was "so dear that hundreds of thousands of families scarcely knew
the taste of it.
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