Such are the arguments he brought up against a charge of bad manners: singing, dancing, handy at a tea-table, wearing the best lace and linen and cutting a bold dash. The perfect gentleman indeed! The acme of culture! He, with all the others of his kidney, put in an appearance at Lyne’s coffee-house in academical undress somewhere about eleven o’clock--that is to say, immediately after a gentle dalliance with breakfast. Here he discussed the topics of the hour, heard the latest news, enjoyed the latest scandals, and then strolled in the Park or under Merton wall. Those who made no pretensions to “Smartness” were meanwhile dining in Hall--a thing far beneath the dignity of a Buck of the first head who ate in solitary dignity in his own chamber, his meal consisting, for example, of “boil’d chicken and pettitoes.” After resting awhile, he spent an hour or so in overcoming the difficulties of dressing. That satisfactorily concluded, it was his bounden duty to make an afternoon appearance at Lyne’s. About five o’clock he dropped in at Hamilton’s, where he “struts about the room for a while and drinks a dram of citron.” Thence he returned to college and adjourned to the chapel “to shew how genteely he dresses, and how well he can chaunt.” Having given conclusive demonstrations of these two accomplishments, he drank tea with some celebrated toast and attended her to Maudlin Grove or Paradise Garden and back again. Such a ridiculous idea as work never entered his head. Any time he might give to reading was employed in the study of novels and romances. As an example of his passion for cleanliness at all costs, Terrae Filius gave an account of an adventure of one of these gentry at Lyne’s coffee-house. “This afternoon, a noted Smart of Christ Church College, as he was writing a _billet-doux_ had the misfortune to blot one of his ruffles with a spot of ink, which put the gentleman in so great a disorder, that he threw the standish through the window, stamped about the room for half an hour together, and was often heard to say, I wonder that gentlemen cannot find some cleaner method of conveying their thoughts, and that he wished he might be blown up wherever he went, if he ever made use of that filthy liquor again, though the displeasure of the whole fair sex was the consequence. Let prigs and pedants, said he, keep all the nasty manufacture to themselves.”