'To dispute the right of fashion to enlarge, to vary, or to change the ideas, both of man and woman kind, were a want of good breeding, of which the author of a periodical publication, who throws himself, as it were, from day to day on the protection of the polite world, cannot be supposed capable.
'I pay, therefore, little regard to the observations of some antiquated correspondents who pretend to set up what they call the invariable notions of things against the opinions and practice of people of condition.
'I am afraid that Edinburgh (talking like a man who has travelled) is but a sort of mimic metropolis, and cannot fairly pretend to the same license of making a fool of itself as London or Paris. The circle, therefore, taking them en gros, of our fashionable people here, have seldom ventured on the same beautiful irregularity in dress, in behaviour, or in manners that is frequently practised by the leaders of ton in the capital of France or England.
'With individuals the same rule of subordination is to be observed, which, however, persons of extraordinary parts, of genius above their condition, are sometimes apt to overlook. I perceive, in the pit of the play-house, some young men who have got fuddled on punch, as noisy and as witty as the gentlemen in the boxes who have been drinking Burgundy; and others, who have come sober from the counter or writing-desk, give almost as little attention to the play as men of 3,000 l. a year. My old school acquaintance, Jack Wou'd-be, t'other morning had a neckcloth as dirty as a lord's, and picked his teeth after dinner, for a quarter of an hour, by the assistance of the little mirror in the lid of his tooth-pick case. I take the first opportunity of giving him a friendly hint, that this practice is elegant only in a man who has made the tour of Europe.'
The 'Mirror.'—Vol. III. No. 32.
An Essay upon Figure-Makers.
'There is a species of animal, several of whom must have fallen under the notice of everybody present, which it is difficult to class either among the witty or the foolish, the clever or the dull, the wise or the mad, who, of all others, have the greatest propensity to figure-making. Nature seems to have made them up in haste, and to have put the different ingredients, above referred to, into their composition at random. Here there is never wanting a junta of them of both sexes, who are liked or hated, admired or despised, who make people laugh, or set them asleep, according to the fashion of the time or the humour of the audience, but who have always the satisfaction of talking themselves, or of being talked of by others. With us, indeed, a very moderate degree of genius is sufficient for this purpose; in small societies folks are set agape by small circumstances. I have known a lady here contrive to make a figure for half the winter on the strength of a plume of feathers, or the trimming of a petticoat; and a gentleman make shift to be thought a fine fellow, only by outdoing everybody else in the thickness of his queue, or the height of his foretop.'