| Citation |
NHG-P.766.001
3 Jan 1766:11,12,13 (483)
From a late London paper, On Christmas and a New-Year. . .
At this season of the year it has always been customary for
the lower part of the world to express their gratitude to
their benefactors; while some of a more elevated genius
among them cloath their thoughts in a kind of holiday dress,
and once in the year rise into poets. Thus the bellman bids
good night to all his masters and mistresses in couplets;
the news-carrier hawks his own verses; and the very
lamp-lighter addresses his worthy customers in rhyme. As a
servant to the public, I should be wanting in the due
respect to my readers, if I also did not take this earliest
opportunity of paying them the compilments of the season,
and (in the phrase of their barbers, taylors, shoemakers,
and other tradesmen) wish them a merry Christmas and a happy
New Year.
. . . [51 lines, 30 lines]
The Christmas box was formerly the bounty of well-disposed
people, who were willing to contribute something towards
rewarding the industrious, and supplying them with
necessaries. But the gift is now almost demanded as a
right; and our journeymen, apprentices, &c. are grown so
polite, that instead of reserving their Christmas Box for
it's original use, their ready cash serves them only for
present pocket-money; and instead of visiting their friends
and relations, they commence the fine gentlemen of the week.
The sixpenny hop is crouded with ladies and gentlemen from
the kitchen; the Syrens of Catherine-street charm many an
holiday gallant into their snares; and the play-houses are
filled with beaux, wits and critics from Cheapside and
White-Chapel.
. . . [34 lines, 15 more lines about how Christmas is
celebrated]
As to persons of fashion, this annual carnival is worse to
them than Lent, or the empty town in the middle of summer.
The boisterous merriment, and aukward affectation of
politeness among the vulgar, interrupts the course of their
refined pleasures, and drives them out of town for the
holidays. The few who remain are very much at a loss how to
dispose of their time; for the theatres at this season are
opened only for the reception of school-boys and
apprentices, and there is no public place where a person of
fashion can appear, without being surrounded with the dirty
inhabitants of St. Gles's, and the brutes from the Wapping
side of Westminster.
. . . [7 more lines]
|