| Citation |
NP.783.005
6 Nov 1783:41 (10/470)
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 physian [?], the best milliner, the most heavenly
opera, the soundest lawyer, and the finest woman of
pleasure;
Q. What is the present taste?
A. It consists in preserving French kickshaws to English
beef and pudding; dying away at an Italian opera, or having
a capacity sufficiently exalted to catch in a short time the
favourite airs of Artaxerxes, or the Maid of the Mill.
. . .[11 Questions and answers, ending with]
Q. What are the chief curiosities in England?
A. . . . a theatrical hero of modesty and economy . . .
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