John Bull by Washington Irving — Read

An old song, made by an aged old pate, / Of an old worshipful gentleman who had a great estate, / That kept a brave old house at a bountiful rate, / And an old porter to relieve the poor at his gate. / With an old study fill'd full of learned old books, / With an old reverend chaplain, you might know him by his looks, / With an old buttery-hatch worn quite off the hooks, / And an old kitchen that maintained half-a-dozen old cooks. / Like an old courtier, etc. / Old Song

There is no species of humor in which the English more excel than that which consists in caricaturing and giving ludicrous appellations or nicknames. In this way they have whimsically designated, not merely individuals, but nations, and in their fondness for pushing a joke they have not spared even themselves. One would think that in personifying itself a nation would be apt to picture something grand, heroic, and imposing; but it is characteristic of the peculiar humor of the English, and of their love for what is blunt, comic, and familiar, that they have embodied their national oddities in the figure of a sturdy, corpulent old fellow with a three-cornered hat, red waistcoat, leather breeches, and stout oaken cudgel. Thus they have taken a singular delight in exhibiting their most private foibles in a laughable point of view, and have been so successful in their delineations that there is scarcely a being in actual existence more absolutely present to the public mind than that eccentric personage, John Bull.