“I have been wishing,” cried he, “to address you this half hour, but as you were engaged with Mr Meadows, I did not dare advance.”
“O, I see your malice!” cried Cecilia; “you were determined to add weight to the value of your company, by making me fully sensible where the balance would preponderate.”
“Nay, if you do not admire Mr Meadows,” cried he, “you must not even whisper it to the winds.”
“Is he, then, so very admirable?”
“O, he is now in the very height of fashionable favour: his dress is a model, his manners are imitated, his attention is courted, and his notice is envied.”
“Are you not laughing?”
“No, indeed; his privileges are much more extensive than I have mentioned: his decision fixes the exact limits between what is vulgar and what is elegant, his praise gives reputation, and a word from him in public confers fashion!”
“And by what wonderful powers has he acquired such influence?”
“By nothing but a happy art in catching the reigning foibles of the times, and carrying them to an extreme yet more absurd than any one had done before him. Ceremony, he found, was already exploded for ease, he, therefore, exploded ease for indolence; devotion to the fair sex, had given way to a more equal and rational intercourse, which, to push still farther, he presently exchanged for rudeness; joviality, too, was already banished for philosophical indifference, and that, therefore, he discarded, for weariness and disgust.”
“And is it possible that qualities such as these should recommend him to favour and admiration?”