| Citation |
SCG-C.766.011
14-21 Jul 1766:12, 13, 14 (32/1615)
A CONSTITUTIONAL AND POLITICAL ENGLISH CATECHISM. Necessary
for all families.
. . . [Numerous lines of questions and answers]
Q. What does it regulate?
A. The dress of the ladies, the philosophical 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 eloquent divine, the
most heavenly opera, the soundest lawyer, and the finest
woman of pleasure; and moreover it regulates and fixes the
state of the town.
Q. What is the present state?
A. It consists in preferring French kickshaws to English
beef and pudding; dying away at an Italian opera, or having
a capacity sufficiently enlarged and exalted to catch in a
short time the favourite airs of Artaxerxes or the Maid of
the mill. [More lines]
Q. What is the business or duty of an officer?
A. In time of peace to saunter from tavern to tavern, and
from coffee-house to coffee house; from court to the play
and from play to the court; from the gaming table to the
bagnio, from the bagnio to Vaux-hall, thence to Ranelagh,
and from that to Hyde-Park. All these duties to be
performed in a red coat, with a shoulder knot and a cockade.
. . . [More lines]
Q. What are the chief curiosities in England?
A. It is a land fertile in wonders; the following, as they
are most rare, are reckoned the most curious. A modest
woman of quality, a primitive bishop, a real maid of five
and thirty, an exciseman with a conscience, an author with a
second suit of cloaths, 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 a thousand a year.
. . . [More lines]
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