friend in the drama. Our dear old Harrison Ainsworth wrote a novel about
him yesterday; to-day he figures in the pages of one of the most
attractive of Mr. Lewis Wingfield's attractive stories. He found his
way on to the stage under the care of Douglas Jerrold whose comedy of
manners was acted at the Haymarket in the midsummer of 1834. There is a
charm about these Beaux, these odd blossoms of last century
civilisation, the Brummells and the Nashes and the Fieldings, so "high
fantastical" in their bearing, such living examples of the eternal
verities contained in the clothes' philosophy of Herr Diogenes
Teufelsdröckh of Weissnichtwo. Their wigs were more important than their
wit; the pattern of their waistcoats more important than the composition
of their hearts; all morals, all philosophy are absorbed for them in the
engrossing question of the fit of their breeches. D'Artois is of their
kin, French d'Artois who helped to ruin the Old Order and failed to
re-create it as Charles the Tenth, d'Artois whom Mercier describes as
being poured into his faultlessly fitting breeches by the careful and
united efforts of no less than four valets de chambre. But the English
dandies were better than the Frenchman, for they did harm only to
themselves, while he helped to ruin his cause, his party, and his king.

As we turn the pages, we come to one name which immediately if
whimsically suggests poetry. The man was, like Touchstone's Audrey, not
poetical and yet a great poet has been pleased to address him, very much
as Pindar might have addressed the Ancestral Hero of some mighty tyrant.

Ah, George Bubb Dodington Lord Melcombe--no,
Yours was the wrong way!--always understand,
Supposing that permissibly you planned
How statesmanship--your trade--in outward show
Might figure as inspired by simple zeal