Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, CompleteVarious
General
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete
Various
English wit and humor -- Periodicals
The sculptor, seated in his studio, throws loose the reins of his
imagination, and, conjuring up some perfect ideality, seeks to impress
the beautiful illusion on the rude and undigested mass before him. The
tailor spreads out, upon his ample board, the happy broadcloth; his eyes
scan the measured proportions of his client, and, with mystic power,
guides the obedient pipe-clay into the graceful diagram of a perfect
gentleman. The sculptor, with all the patient perseverance of genius,
conscious of the greatness of its object, chips, and chips, and chips,
from day to day; and as the stone quickens at each touch, he glows with
all the pride of the creative Prometheus, mingled with the gentler
ecstacies of paternal love. The tailor, with fresh-ground shears, and
perfect faith in the gentility and solvency of his client, snips, and
snips, and snips, until the superfine grows, with each abscission,
into the first style of elegance and fashion, and the excited schneider
feels himself every inch a king, his shop a heralds college, and
every brown paper pattern garnishing its walls, an escutcheon of
gentility.
But to dismount from our Pegasus, or, in other words, to cut the poetry,
and come to the practice of our subject, it is necessary that a perfect
gentleman should be cut up very high, or cut down very lowi.e., up to
the marquis or down to the jarvey. Any intermediate style is perfectly
inadmissible; for who above the grade of an attorney would wear a coat
with pockets inserted in the tails, like salt-boxes; or any but an
incipient Esculapius indulge in trousers that evinced a morbid ambition
to become knee-breeches, and were only restrained in their aspirations
by a pair of most strenuous straps. We will now proceed to details.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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