Begin therefore forthwith, dear Lady-readers, to knit genouillères for yourselves, and for those whom you love. You will like them better I know by their French name, though English comes best from English lips; but so you knit and wear them, call them what you will.
CHAPTER CLXXXIX.
THE DOCTOR'S OPINION OF LATE HOURS. DANCING. FANATICAL OBJECTION OF THE ALBIGENSES; INJURIOUS EFFECT OF THAT OPINION WHEN TRANSMITTED TO THE FRENCH PROTESTANTS. SIR JOHN DAVIES AND BURTON QUOTED TO SHOW THAT IT CAN BE NO DISPARAGEMENT TO SAY THAT ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE, WHEN ALL THE SKY'S A BALL-ROOM.
I could be pleased with any one
Who entertained my sight with such gay shows,
As men and women moving here and there,
That coursing one another in their steps
Have made their feet a tune.
DRYDEN.
The Doctor was no dancer. He had no inclination for this pastime even in what the song calls “our dancing days,” partly because his activity lay more in his head than in his heels, and partly perhaps from an apprehension of awkwardness, the consequence of his rustic breeding. In middle and later life he had strong professional objections, not to the act of dancing, but to the crowded and heated rooms wherein it was carried on, and to the late hours to which it was continued. In such rooms and at such assemblies, the Devil, as an old dramatist says, “takes delight to hang at a woman's girdle, like a rusty watch, that she cannot discern how the time passes.”1 Bishop Hall in our friend's opinion spake wisely when drawing an ideal picture of the Christian, he said of him, “in a due season he betakes himself to his rest. He presumes not to alter the ordinance of day and night; nor dares confound, where distinctions are made by his Maker.”
1 WEBSTER.
Concerning late hours indeed he was much of the same opinion as the man in the old play who thought that “if any thing was to be damned, it would be Twelve o'clock at night.”