The Works of ... Joseph Addison, Collected by Mr. Tickell (1804) Book

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: whiskers. A lover running about the stage, with his head peeping out of a barrel, was thought a very good jest in King Charles the Second's time, and invented by one of the first wits of that age. But because ridicule is not so delicate as compassion, and because the objects that make us laugh, are infinitely more numerous than those that make us weep, there is a much greater latitude for comic" than tragic artifices, and by consequence a much greater indulgence to be allowed them. No. 45. SATURDAY, APRIL 21. Natio Comada est- J Here is nothing which I more desire than a safe and honourable peace, though at the same time I am very apprehensive of many ill consequences that may attend it. I do not mean in regard to our politics, but to our manners. What an inundation of ribands and brocades will break in upon us ! What peals of laughter and impertinence shall we be exposed to ! For the prevention of these great evils, I could heartily wish that there was an act of parliament for prohibiting the importation of French fopperies. The female inhabitants of our Island have already received very strong impressions from this ludicrous nation, though by the length of the war (as there is no evil which has not some good attending it) they are'pretty well worn out and forgotten. I remember the time when some of our well-bred country-women kept their Valet de Chambre, because for sooth, a man was much more handy about them than one of their own sex. I myself have seen one of these male Abigails tripping about the room with a Vol. I. I looking-glass in his hand, and combing his lady's hair a whole morning together. Whether or no there was any truth in the story of a lady's being got with child by one of these her handmaids, I cannot tell; but I think at present the whole race...Read More