The fairest gave the fruit to me.’
The love of raillery has recorded that on this being communicated by Ramsay to his friend Eustace Budgell, the following comment was soon after received from the English wit:
‘As Juno fair, as Venus kind,
She may have been who gave the fruit;
But had she had Minerva’s mind,
She’d ne’er have given ’t to such a brute.’
[168] An old gentleman told our informant that he never saw so beautiful a figure in his life as Lady Eglintoune at a Hunters’ Ball in Holyrood House, dancing a minuet in a large hoop, and a suit of black velvet, trimmed with gold.
[169] Snuff-taking was prevalent among young women in our grandmothers’ time. Their flirts used to present them with pretty snuff-boxes. In one of the monthly numbers of the Scots Magazine for the year 1745 there is a satirical poem by a swain upon the practice of snuff-taking; to which a lady replies next month, defending the fashion as elegant and of some account in coquetry. Almost all the old ladies who survived the commencement of this century took snuff. Some kept it in pouches, and abandoned, for its sake, the wearing of white ruffles and handkerchiefs.
[170] A gown then required ten yards of stuff.
[171] This verse appears in a manuscript subsequent to 1760. The name, however, is Sleigh, not Lee. Mrs Mally Sleigh was married in 1725 to the Lord Lyon Brodie of Brodie. Allan Ramsay celebrates her.