4. Keep your mind free from all violent affections at the hour of the toilet. A philosophical serenity is perfectly necessary to success. Helvetius says justly, that our errors arise from our passions.
5. Remember that none but those whose courage is unquestionable, can venture to be effeminate. It was only in the field that the Lacedemonians were accustomed to use perfumes and curl their hair.
6. Never let the finery of chains and rings seem your own choice; that which naturally belongs to women should appear only worn for their sake. We dignify foppery, when we invest it with a sentiment.
7. To win the affection of your mistress, appear negligent in your costume—to preserve it, assiduous: the first is a sign of the passion of love; the second, of its respect.
8. A man must be a profound calculator to be a consummate dresser. One must not dress the same, whether one goes to a minister or a mistress; an avaricious uncle, or an ostentatious cousin: there is no diplomacy more subtle than that of dress.
9. Is the great man whom you would conciliate a coxcomb?—go to him in a waistcoat like his own. “Imitation,” says the author of Lacon, “is the sincerest flattery.”
10. The handsome may be shewy in dress, the plain should study to be unexceptionable; just as in great men we look for something to admire—in ordinary men we ask for nothing to forgive.
11. There is a study of dress for the aged, as well as for the young. Inattention is no less indecorous in one than in the other; we may distinguish the taste appropriate to each, by the reflection that youth is made to be loved—age, to be respected.
12. A fool may dress gaudily, but a fool cannot dress well—for to dress well requires judgment; and Rochefaucault says with truth, “On est quelquefois un sot avec de l’esprit, mais on ne lest jamais avec du jugement.”
13. There may be more pathos in the fall of a collar, or the curl of a lock, than the shallow think for. Should we be so apt as we are now to compassionate the misfortunes, and to forgive the insincerity of Charles I., if his pictures had pourtrayed him in a bob wig and a pigtail? Vandyke was a greater sophist than Hume.