The History of John Bull

The lawyers, as their last effort to put off the composition, sent Don Diego to John. Don Diego was a very worthy gentleman, a friend to John, his mother, and present wife, and,...

* Concerns of the party, and speeches for carrying on the war, etc. Sentiments of the Tories and House of Commons against continuing the war for setting King Charles upon the th...

MRS. BULL.--It is a most sad life we lead, my dear, to be so teazed, paying interest for old debts, and still contracting new ones. However, I don't blame you for vindicating yo...

* The history of the Partition Treaty; suspicions at that time that the French King intended to take the whole, and that he revealed the secret to the Court of Spain.

The attentive reader cannot have forgot that the story of Van Ptschirnsooker's powder was interrupted by a message from Frog. I have a natural compassion for curiosity, being mu...

JOHN BULL.--I am not much for that at present; we'll settle it between ourselves. Fair and square, Nic., keeps friends together. There have been laid out in this lawsuit, at one...

Jack was a professed enemy to implicit faith, and yet I dare say it was never more strongly exerted nor more basely abused than upon this occasion. He was now, with his old frie...

Where I think I left John Bull, sitting between Nic. Frog and Lewis Baboon, with his arms akimbo, in great concern to keep Lewis and Nic. asunder. As watchful as he was, Nic. fo...

John thought every minute a year till he got into Ecclesdown Castle; he repairs to the "Salutation" with a design to break the matter gently to his partners. Before he entered h...

I think it is but ingenuous to acquaint the reader that this chapter was not wrote by Sir Humphrey himself, but by another very able pen of the university of Grub Street.

* The Treaty of Utrecht: the difficulty to get them to meet. When met, the Dutch would not speak their sentiments, nor the French deliver in their proposals. The House of Austri...

Nic. Frog, who thought of nothing but carrying John to the market, and there disposing of him as his own proper goods, was mad to find that John thought himself now of age to lo...

Jack hitherto had passed in the world for a poor, simple, well-meaning, half-witted, crack-brained fellow. People were strangely surprised to find him in such a roguery--that he...

When John had got into his castle he seemed like Ulysses upon his plank after he had been well soused in salt water, who, as Homer says, was as glad as a judge going to sit down...

When Nic. could not dissuade John by argument, he tried to move his pity; he pretended to be sick and like to die; that he should leave his wife and children in a starving condi...

In the first place, Jack was a very young fellow, by much the youngest of the three brothers, and people, indeed, wondered how such a young upstart jackanapes should grow so per...

"It is evident that matrimony is founded upon an original contract, whereby the wife makes over the right she has by the law of Nature in favour of the husband, by which he acqu...

John Bull, otherwise a good-natured man, was very hard-hearted to his sister Peg, chiefly from an aversion he had conceived in his infancy. While he flourished, kept a warm hous...

It is an old observation that the quarrels of relations are harder to reconcile than any other; injuries from friends fret and gall more, and the memory of them is not so easily...

FRIEND JOHN,--What schellum is it that makes thee jealous of thy old friend Nicholas? Hast thou forgot how some years ago he took thee out of the sponging-house?** ['Tis true, m...

Well might the learned Daniel Burgess say, "That a lawsuit is a suit for life. He that sows his grain upon marble will have many a hungry belly before harvest." This John felt b...

John had a mother whom he loved and honoured extremely, a discreet, grave, sober, good-conditioned, cleanly old gentlewoman as ever lived. She was none of your cross-grained, te...

As John Bull and his wife were talking together they were surprised with a sudden knocking at the door. "Those wicked scriveners and lawyers, no doubt," quoth John; and so it wa...

John quickly got the better of his grief, and, seeing that neither his constitution nor the affairs of his family, could permit him to live in an unmarried state, he resolved to...

John had not run on a madding so long had it not been for an extravagant wife, whom Hocus perceiving John to be fond of, was resolved to win over to his side. It is a true sayin...

Nic. perceived now that his Cully had eloped, that John intended henceforth to deal without a broker; but he was resolved to leave no stone unturned to cover his bubble. Amongst...

John had a sister, a poor girl that had been starved at nurse. Anybody would have guessed Miss to have been bred up under the influence of a cruel stepdame, and John to be the f...

The arguments used by Hocus and the rest of the guardians had hitherto proved insufficient. John and his wife could not be persuaded to bear the expense of Esquire South's lawsu...

It is wisely observed by a great philosopher that habit is a second nature. This was verified in the case of John Bull, who, from an honest and plain tradesman, had got such a h...

DON DIEGO.--You have been endeavouring, for several years, to have justice done upon that rogue Jack, but, what through the remissness of constables, justices, and packed juries...

There is nothing so impossible in Nature but mountebanks will undertake; nothing so incredible but they will affirm: Mrs. Bull's condition was looked upon as desperate by all th...

All endeavours of accommodation between Lord Strutt and his drapers proved vain. Jealousies increased, and, indeed, it was rumoured abroad that Lord Strutt had bespoke his new l...

I need not tell you of the great quarrels that have happened in our neighbourhood since the death of the late Lord Strutt;* how the parson** and a cunning attorney got him to se...

Law is a bottomless pit; it is a cormorant, a harpy, that devours everything. John Bull was flattered by the lawyers that his suit would not last above a year or two at most; th...

For the better understanding the following history the reader ought to know that Bull, in the main, was an honest, plain-dealing fellow, choleric, bold, and of a very unconstant...

My Lord,--I suppose your lordship knows that the Bulls and the Frogs have served the Lord Strutts with all sorts of draperyware time out of mind. And whereas we are jealous, not...

It happened unfortunately for the peace of our neighbourhood that this young lord had an old cunning rogue, or, as the Scots call it, a false loon of a grandfather, that one mig...

The world is much indebted to the famous Sir Humphry Polesworth for his ingenious and impartial account of John Bull's lawsuit. Yet there is just cause of complaint against him,...

The doctrine of unlimited fidelity in wives was universally espoused by all husbands, who went about the country and made the wives sign papers signifying their utter detestatio...

When John first brought out the bills, the surprise of all the family was unexpressible at the prodigious dimensions of them; they would have measured with the best bale of clot...