We will add an amusing description of a petit maitre of the time of Elizabeth , the models of our old dramatists being only nominally natives of a foreign country.

“I wonder where that neat spruce slave becomes;
I think he was some barber’s son, by the mass,
‘Tis such a picked fellow, not a hair
About his whole bulk, but it stands in print;
Each pin hath his due place, not any point
But hath his perfect tie, fashion and grace.
A thing whose soul is specially employ’d
In knowing where best gloves, best stockings, waistcoats
Curiously wrought, are sold; sacks milliners’ shops
For all new types and fashions, and can tell ye
What new devices, of all sorts, there are:
And there is not, in the whole Rialto,
But one new fashion’d waistcoat, or one night-cap,
One pair of gloves, pretty or well-perfum’d,
And from a pair of gloves, of half-a-crown
To twenty crowns, will to a very scute
Smell out the price; and for these womanly parts
He is esteem’d a witty gentleman.”

Quoted from: Henry Southern: The Retrospective Review. Vol. V. London: 1822.