| Citation |
GSSC.783.016
20 Nov 1783:22 (2177)
The English Catechism.
Necessary for all families.
Q. What is fashion?
A. An agreeable tyrant.
Q. What is progress?
A. It begins with the vain, is improved by the silly, and
stops with the wise.
Q. What does it regulate?
A. The dresses of the ladies, the philosophical, religious,
and political tenets of the men; the hours of meals, and the
value of toys; it determines which is the best stage dancer,
the best physician, the best milliner, the most heavenly
opera, the soundest lawyer, and the finest women of
pleasure?
Q. What is the present taste?
A. It consists in preferring French kickshaws to English
beef and pudding; dying away at an Italian opera, or having
the capacity sufficiently exalted to catch in a short time
the favorite airs of Artaxerxes, or the Maid of the Mill.
. . . [18 lines]
Q. What privileges doth custom allow?
A. Many, --to fine women the privilege of talking nonsense;
to favorite actors the privileges of behaving indecently to
the public; and to stale maids the privilege of uttering
nothing but scandal.
. . . [17 lines]
Q. What are the chief curiosities in England?
A. A modest woman of quality, a primitive Bishop, a real
maid of five and twenty, an exciseman with a conscience, a
n-n of common sense, a woman who has continued three months
a widow, a theatrical hero of modesty and oeconomy, an
attorney without a cloven foot, and a man of parts, wit, and
learning, with 100 L. a year.
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