| Citation |
BEP(F.737.031
17 Oct 1737:11,12 (114)
A Continuation of the Persian Letter.
I went yesterday with one of my acquaintance to see a friend
of his, who has a house about twenty miles from London. He
had formerly been a citizen and tradesman, but growing rich
on a sudden by some lucky hit in the more profitable trade
of stock-jobbing, he as suddenly set up for a judge in
architecture, painting, and all the arts which men of
quality wou'd be thought to understand, and built his house
as a specimen of his learning. . . [3d para.] . . . I was
entertain'd all the evening with a conversation between the
gentleman of the house and another man, ( who they told me,
was an architect) so stuffed with hard words and terms of
art, that I cou'd not understand one part in five of it.
They talk'd much of certain men call'd virtuosi, whom by the
near relation their [ ]itle bore to virtue, I took at first
to be a sect of rigid Mo[ahomet]ists: But, upon enquiry, I
discover'd that they were a company of fidlers, eunuchs,
painters, builders, gardeners, and above all, gentlemen that
had travell'd into Italy, who immediately came home perfect
virtuosi, tho' they went out the [du]llest fellows in the
world. This order of men, which is pretty numerous, (as I
could recollect from the discourse of these two adepts)
assume a sort of legislative authority over the bo[ok] of
their countrymen: They bid one man pull down his house, and
build another which he can neither pay for, nor inhabit;
they take a dislike to the furniture of a second, and
command him to change it for a different one more expensive
and less commodious; they order a third to go and languish
at an opera, when he had rather be hallowing in a
beargarden: it is even fear'd they will take upon them to
decide what sort of woman every man shall be in love with,
and prescribe a particular colour of eyes and hair for the
only object of universal incli[na]tion. . .
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