NATIONAL RHYMES OF THE NURSERY

[Illustration: INTRODUCTION]

It is a good many years since Peacock, in one of those curiously
ill-tempered and not particularly happy attacks on the Lake poets, with
which he chose to diversify his earlier novels, conceived, as an
ornament of "Mainchance Villa," a grand allegorical picture, depicting
the most famous characters of English Nursery Tales, Rhymes,
&c.--Margery Daw, Jack and Jill, the other Jack who built the House, the
chief figures of "that sublime strain of immortal genius" called
_D...