], mamma's darling; when she was with child of him she dreamt she was brought to bed of a pincushion. He was never suffered to look into a book for fear of making him round-shouldered, yet was an immense scholar for all that; his mamma's woman had taught him all Hoyle by heart, and he could calculate to a single tea-spoonful how much cream should be put into a codlin tart. He wears a piece of lace which seems purloined from a lady's tucker, and placed here, to shew that such beings as these can make no other use of ladies' favours than to expose them. Horace had certainly such a character in view by his

    dulcissime rerum

   —"sweetest of all things;" all essence and effeminacy;

   and that line of his—

    Quid Agis, dulcissime rerum?

   may be rendered, "What ails you, master Jacky?" As they have rivalled the ladies in the delicacy of their complexion, the ladies therefore have a right to make reprisals, and to take up that manliness which our sex seems to have cast off.

   Here is a Lady in her fashionable uniform. [

    Takes up the head.

   ] She looks as if marching at the head of a battalion, or else up before day to follow the hounds with spirit; while this lies in bed all the morning, with his hands wrapped up in chicken gloves, his complexion covered with milk of roses, essence of May-dew, and lily of the valley water. This does honour to creation; this

   disgraces it. And so far have these things femalized themselves, by effeminate affections, that, if a lady's cap was put on this head, Master Jacky might be taken for Miss Jenny [

    puts a lady's cap on the head of Master Jacky

   ]; therefore grammarians can neither rank them as

    masculine

   or

    feminine

 Prev. P 9/54 next