In various talk the cheerful hours they passed,
Of who was bit, or who capotted last.—Pope.
When one party has won all the tricks of cards at picquet, he is said to have capotted his antagonist.—Johnson.
Dryden's Æn. vi. 720:
While thus in talk the flying hours they pass.
[420] Japan screens, as appears from the Spectator, were then the rage, and in the Woman of Taste, 1733, we have the couplet,
Ne'er chuse a screen, and never touch a fan,
Till it has sailed from India or Japan.
[421] The snuff-box of the beau, and the fan of the woman of fashion, are frequent subjects of ridicule in the Spectator. The fan was employed to execute so many little coquettish manœuvres, that Addison ironically proposed that ladies should be drilled in the use of it, as soldiers were trained to the exercise of arms.
[422] The fifth Pastoral of A. Philips:
The sun now mounted to the noon of day
Began to shoot direct his burning ray.
[423] From Congreve.—Warton.