| Citation |
CC-H.767.005
2 Feb 1767:11,12,13,21 (110)
CONSTITUTIONAL AND POLITICAL ENGLISH CATECHISM. Necessary
for all families. From a late English paper. . . [89 lines
of questions and answers]
Q. What does it regulate? A. The dress of the ladies, the
philosophical and political tenets of the men, the hours of
meals, and the value of days, it determines which is the
best [ ] dancer, the best physician, [ ], the most
eloquent divine, the most heavenly opera, the soundest
lawyer, and the finest woman of pleasure; and moreover it
regulates and fixes the state of the town.
Q. What is the present state? A. It consists in
preferring French kickshaws to English beef and pudding;
dying away at an Italian opera, or having a capacity
sufficiently enlarged and exalted to catch in a short time
the favourite airs of Artaxerxes or the Maid of the mill. .
. [49 more lines]
Q. What is the business or duty of an officer? A. In time
of peace to saunter from tavern to tavern, and from coffee-
house to coffee house; from court to the play and from play
to the court; from the gaming table to the bagnio, from the
bagnio to Vaux-Hall to Ranelagh, and from that to Hyde-Park.
All these duties to be performed in a red coat, with a
shoulder knot and a cockade. . . [31 more lines]
Q. What are the chief curiosities in England? A. It is a
land fertile in wonders; the following, as they are most
rare, are reckoned the most curious. A modest woman of
quality, a primitive bishop, a real maid of five and thirty,
an exciseman with a conscience, an author with a second suit
of cloaths, a n---n of common sense, a woman who has
continued three months a widow, a theatrical hero of modesty
and oeconomy, an attorney without a cloven foot, and a man
of parts, wit and learning with a thousand a year. . . [21
more lines]
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