Edgar, in wandering about the country, for a safe disguise assumes the character of these Tom o’ Bedlams; he thus closes one of his distracted speeches—­“Poor Tom, Thy horn is dry!” On this Johnson is content to inform us, that “men that begged under pretence of lunacy used formerly to carry a horn and blow it through the streets.”  This is no explanation of Edgar’s allusion to the dryness of his horn.  Steevens adds a fanciful note, that Edgar alludes to a proverbial expression, Thy horn is dry, designed to express that a man had said all he could say; and, further, Steevens supposes that Edgar speaks these words aside; as if he had been quite weary of Tom o’ Bedlam’s part, and could not keep it up any longer.  The reasons of all this conjectural criticism are a curious illustration of perverse ingenuity.  Aubrey’s manuscript note has shown us that the Bedlam’s horn was also a drinking-horn, and Edgar closes his speech in the perfection of the assumed character, and not as one who had grown weary of it, by making the mendicant lunatic desirous of departing from a heath, to march, as he cries, “to wakes, and fairs, and market-towns—­Poor Tom! thy horn is dry!” as more likely places to solicit alms; and he is thinking of his drink-money, when he cries that “his horn is dry.”

An itinerant lunatic, chanting wild ditties, fancifully attired, gay with the simplicity of childhood, yet often moaning with the sorrows of a troubled man, a mixture of character at once grotesque and plaintive, became an interesting object to poetical minds.  It is probable that the character of Edgar, in the Lear of Shakspeare, first introduced the hazardous conception into the poetical world.  Poems composed in the character of a Tom o’ Bedlam appear to have formed a fashionable class of poetry among the wits; they seem to have held together their poetical contests, and some of these writers became celebrated for their successful efforts, for old Izaak Walton mentions a “Mr. William Basse, as one who has made the choice songs of ‘The Hunter in his career,’ and of ‘Tom o’ Bedlam,’ and many others of note.”  Bishop Percy, in his “Reliques of Ancient English Poetry,” has preserved six of what he calls “Mad Songs,” expressing his surprise that the English should have “more songs and ballads on the subject of madness than any of their neighbours,” for such are not found in the collection of songs of the French, Italian, &c., and nearly insinuates, for their cause, that we are perhaps more liable to the calamity of madness than other nations.  This superfluous criticism had been spared had that elegant collector been aware of the circumstance which had produced this class of poems, and recollected the more ancient original in the Edgar of Shakspeare.  Some of the “Mad Songs” which the bishop has preserved are of too modern a date to suit the title of his work; being written by Tom D’Urfey, for his comedies of Don Quixote.  I shall preserve one of more ancient date, fraught with all the wild spirit of this peculiar character.[180]