The people seem to have been constantly well off. A pig in almost every cottage sty; and that is the infallible mark of a happy people.Related post: The Swineherd.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Monday, December 15, 2025
The Mark of a Happy People
William Cobbett (1762-1835), Rural Rides, ed. George Woodcock (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985), p. 376 (Stroud, Gloucestershire, September 12, 1826):