The pious, chaste, the kind, the witty,
Who can afford it, great and small,
Regard well-shapen fardingale?....
Who watch their conduct, mien, and guise,
To shape their weeds as fits their case,
And place their patches as they please.’[[535]]
1719.
We learn with grief that our pathetic censor of the fair sex lived on bad terms with his own wife, and was imprisoned both in Dalkeith and in Edinburgh for alleged miscarriages towards her. One of his most furious outpourings was against a minister who had baptised a child born to him during his Dalkeith imprisonment, the rite being performed without his order or sanction.
1720. Jan. 5.
‘All persons [in Edinburgh] desirous to learn the French tongue’ were apprised by an advertisement in the Edinburgh Courant, that ‘there is a Frenchman lately come to this city who will teach at a reasonable price.’ This would imply that there was no native French teacher in Edinburgh previously. In 1858, there were eleven, besides three belonging to our own country.