Poor Robin - Content

Content

"Poor Robin" established a tradition of parody, reporting the trivial and inconsequential juxtaposed with the serious, in parallel chronologies—set in rhymed couplets—of the "Loyal" and the "Fanatic", which began in 1663 and became Old Poor Robin with the 1777 issue. Poor Robin offered deadpan prognostications of the obvious, and substituted parodic saints' days under the "Fanatic" rubric. From the turn of the 18th century, the satire becomes blunted and wise homilies of prudence take their place. It observes the continued use of cucking stools in 1746.

Read more about this topic:  Poor Robin

Famous quotes containing the word content:

    You can hardly convince a man of an error in a life-time, but must content yourself with the reflection that the progress of science is slow. If he is not convinced, his grandchildren may be. The geologists tell us that it took one hundred years to prove that fossils are organic, and one hundred and fifty more to prove that they are not to be referred to the Noachian deluge.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Science asks no questions about the ontological pedigree or a priori character of a theory, but is content to judge it by its performance; and it is thus that a knowledge of nature, having all the certainty which the senses are competent to inspire, has been attained—a knowledge which maintains a strict neutrality toward all philosophical systems and concerns itself not with the genesis or a priori grounds of ideas.
    Chauncey Wright (1830–1875)

    No healthy man, in his secret heart, is content with his destiny. He is tortured by dreams and images as a child is tortured by the thought of a state of existence in which it would live in a candy store and have two stomachs.
    —H.L. (Henry Lewis)