��Anecdotes.
��answer to the arguments urged by Puritans, Quakers, &c. against showy decorations of the human figure, I once heard him exclaim, * Oh, let us not be found when our Master calls us, ripping the lace off our waistcoats, but the spirit of contention from our souls and tongues ! Let us all conform in outward customs, which are of no consequence, to the manners of those whom we live among, and despise such paltry distinctions *. Alas, Sir (continued he), a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat, will not find his way thither the sooner in a grey one.' On an occasion of less consequence, when he turned his back on Lord Bolingbroke in the rooms at Brighthelmstone, he made this excuse : * I am not obliged, Sir (said he to Mr. Thrale, who stood fretting), to find reasons for respecting the rank of him who will not condescend to declare it by his dress or some other visible mark : what are stars and other signs of superiority made for ? '
The next evening however he made us comical amends, by sitting by the same nobleman, and haranguing very loudly about the nature and use and abuse of divorces. Many people gathered round them to hear what was said, and when my husband called him away, and told him to whom he had been talking received an answer which I will not write down 2 .
rest of the world. ... A young fellow Bolingbroke. He had been divorced
is always forgiven, and often ap- from his wife, who thereupon married
plauded, when he carries a fashion Topham Beauclerk. Life, ii. 246. to an excess ; but never if he stops Johnson in a note on the last scene
short of it. The first is ascribed to in the third act of The Merry Wives
youth and fire ; but the latter is im- of Windsor says : ' There is no
puted to an affectation of singularity image which our author appears so
or superiority.' Chesterfield's Letters fond of as that of a cuckold's horns.
to his Son, iv. 23. Scarcely a light character is intro-
1 * He repeated his observation duced that does not endeavour to that the differences among Christians produce merriment by some allusion are really of no consequence.' Life, to horned husbands.'
iii. 1 88. Chesterfield wrote to his son on
2 Mrs. Piozzi has noted in the Feb. n, 1766: 'Lord , having margin : * He said, " Why, Sir, I parted with his wife, now keeps an- did not know the man. If he will other w e at a great expense. I put on no other mark of distinction fear he is totally undone.' Letters, let us make him wear his horns." ' iv. 238. ' Bolingbroke ' is the name Hayward's Piozzi, i. 293. He was suppressed. See Mahon's edition, the nephew of the famous Lord v. 472.
Though
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