The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope — Volume 1 by Unknown
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page 18 of 372 (04%)
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[13]
Meantime his generation was one of colossal exaggeration, both in talent and in idiocy, in virtue and in vice. Men sinned like giants and as giants atoned. Common sense, mediocrity--save upon the throne--were rare. Even the fools in their folly were great. The spectacle was recurrent of men who would smilingly stake a fortune as a wager, who could for hours drench their drink-sodden brains in wine, then rise like gods refreshed, and with an iron will throw off the stupor which bound them, to wield a flood of eloquence that swayed senates and ruled the fate of nations. Even the fops in their foppishness were of a magnitude in harmony with their period. They could promote dandyism to a fine art and win immortality by perfecting the role. Their affectation became an adjunct of their greatness, their eccentricity an assumption of supremacy; their very insolence was a right divine before which the common herd bowed with a limitless tolerance. In the world of London, as that celebrated gossip, Gronow, points out, from generation to generation, certain men of fashion have come to the fore amongst the less conspicuous mass of their fellows, and have been defined by the general term of "men about town." The earlier representatives of that race, the Macaronis of a former date, ere 1805 had been replaced by a clique of dandies whose pretensions to recognition were based on a less worthy footing. For while those previous votaries of fashion, although derided and caricatured according to the humour of their day, were, none the less, valuable patrons of art and literature, the exquisites of a later date could seldom lay claim to such distinction. To dine, to dress, to exhibit sufficient peculiarity in their habits and rudeness in their manners whereby to enhance that fictitious value in the eyes of those who did not dare to emulate such foibles, was the end and |
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