| Citation |
NYGWPB.766.090
4 Dec 1766:112 (1248)
A Constitutional and Political English Catechism. Necessary
for all Families. From a late English Paper. . . [2 columns
of questions with answers]
Q. Who are the fools?
A. All those who let love of pleasure, ease, fame,
literature, on any consideration, interfere with this grand
pursuit; namely, players, ladies of easy virtue, thoughtless
rural squires, prime-ministers, virtuosi, school-masters,
and projectors.---All these are fools.
. . . [also includes, after answering "what is fashion?":]
Q. What does it regulate?
A. The dress of the ladies,---the philosophical, religious,
and political tenets of the men,---the hours of meals, and
the value of toys,---it determines which is the best stage-
dancer, the best physician, the best milliner, 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. . . [Next column includes:] Q. What privileges
doth custom allow?
A. To fine women, the privilege of talking nonsense; to
favourite actors the privilege of behaving insolently to the
public; and to stale maids the privilege of uttering nothing
but scandal. . .
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 Vauxhall, thence 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. . .
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. . .
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