Waylett's breeches,{2}
characters at the Haymarket Theatre, or a solution of Euclid by one of
Dr. Birkbeck's "operatives."
Allow me, then, who am not indeed "without vanity," once more to "stand
by your side," or rather for you, and to attempt, albeit I have not your
magic pencil, another taste of my quality, by dashing off _con amore_
the lions of the North.
2 There frequently occur circumstances in a younker's life
which lie never, in all his after career, forgets. I
remember a very worthy and a very handsome old gentlewoman,
the wife of an eminent physician, once being exceedingly
wroth, it was almost the only time I ever knew her seriously
angry, because a nephew of hers asserted all women were,
what in the vulgate is called "knock-knee'd," and almost
threatened to prove the contrary. Had she lived in our days,
the truth, almost on any evening on our stage, might be
ascertained, and I fear not at all to the satisfaction of
the defender of her sex's shape. Nature never intended women
to wear the breeches, and the invention of petticoats was
the triumph of art. Why will Eve's daughters publicly
convince us they are not from top to toe perfect?
~273~~As, however, some that attend my sitting are quite as difficult
to manage as the conspirators of Prospero's isle, it may be as well if,
like Ariel, I sing to them as I lay on the colours of identification.
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