ESSAY XXV. On a Portrait of an English Lady, by Vandyke 280 ESSAY XXVI. On Novelty and Familiarity 294 ESSAY XXVII. On Old English Writers and Speakers 311 ESSAY XXVIII. Madame Pasta and Mademoiselle Mars 324 ESSAY XXIX. Sir Walter Scott, Racine, and Shakespear 336 ESSAY XXX. On Depth and Superficiality 346 ESSAY XXXI. On Respectable People 360 ESSAY XXXII. On Jealousy and Spleen of Party 365 THE PLAIN SPEAKER ESSAY I ON THE PROSE-STYLE OF POETS ‘Do you read or sing? If you sing, you sing very ill!’ I have but an indifferent opinion of the prose-style of poets: not that it is not sometimes good, nay, excellent; but it is never the better, and generally the worse from the habit of writing verse. Poets are winged animals, and can cleave the air, like birds, with ease to themselves and delight to the beholders; but like those ‘feathered, two-legged things,’ when they light upon the ground of prose and matter-of-fact, they seem not to have the same use of their feet.