text:  Are the _dramatis personae_ Sawney Jockey and the Goddess with Sawney's love the whole population of Scotland? Do the two lads and their sheep and Famine occupy the same sole cave which is all the houses in Scotland? Is it a comprehensive Allegory under the guise of a pastoral Idyl? A ground is laid; and it is easy to conceive that a Hogarth in verse with his stored eye and that hand mimic and creative which by some unmistaken touch of nature sets upon capricious extravagance the known seal of truth might have finished a picture which experience itself would have half-believed in spite of its conviction that never had there been such an hungered race