But rustling in their silks and tissues.”
Of Speed’s fair descendant the poet sings:—
“The other Amazon, kind Heaven
Had arm’d with spirit, wit, and satire;
But Cobham had the polish given,
And tipp’d her arrows with good-nature.”
Being on the subject of dress, I may add, that Speed’s great-granddaughter was attired “in bonnet blue and capuchine;” and I may further and finally remark, that to have written history and divinity with a learned pen, and to have been remotely the cause of the authorship of Gray’s ‘Long Story,’ may fairly save Speed, and indeed the fellow-craftsmen who should hold him in honour, from such a nez-retroussé sort of sarcasm as “What could be expected from a tailor?”
Speed the tailor is remembered when Bishop Nicolson is forgotten. We will pass from him to consider a tailor’s son of another kidney,—garrulous, vain, rakish, clever, and ever-welcome Samuel Pepys.