Where I can coil them in their wonted fashion.”
To conclude: the poets have been quite as guilty of petty larceny as ever was poor tailor. Pope stole from Pascal, and Addison from Pope; and Churchill’s line in his Rosciad, to the effect that
“Common sense stood trembling at the door,”
is a plagiarism from George Alexander Stevens’s ‘Distress upon Distress; or Tragedy in True Taste.’ This is more of “cabbage,” and less of coincidence, than the line in one of the ‘Roxburgh Ballads’ anent tailors, wherein we find an allusion in the phrase “turn up my ten toes,” which is, as nearly as possible, a translation of part of the ladies’ threat in the ‘Lysistra’ of Aristophanes. Altogether a volume might be filled with examples to prove that poetry and tailoring have one spirit in common.
But it is time to turn from poetry to prose, and come more nearly to our subject “touching tailors.” We will take individually those whose great deeds have shed glory on the craft. First on the roll of fame is noble Hawkwood.
SIR JOHN HAWKWOOD, THE HEROIC TAILOR.
“The dew of grace bless our new knight today.”
Beaumont and Fletcher: Knight of Malta.
On the 10th day of August, 1668, Mr. Samuel Pepys passed a portion of his morning at Goring House, the mansion of Lord Arlington, a nobleman who conversed with him amicably, and introduced him to other lords, with whom the gallant secretary prattled after his fashion, to say nothing of the flattery and compliments paid him by Lord Orrery. In the afternoon we find him at Cooper’s, the miniature painter’s, who was painting the portrait of that excellent lady Mrs. Pepys. The portrait was excellent in every way, save that it was not like Mr. Pepys’s wife, and that she wore a blue garment, which he could not bear. However, the courteous husband paid £38. 3s. 4d. for the picture, crystal, and case, that he might, as he prudently says, be out of the painter’s debt; and thereupon he adds:—“Home to supper, and my wife to read a ridiculous book I bought today of the History of the Taylors’ Company.”