tiny pictures of that tiny time
Aim little at the lofty and sublime.

Yet cognoscenti still esteem it an error in the accomplished Shakespeare
that he introduced a game of billiards into his portrayal of Queen
Cleopatra's court; and the impropriety had been equal had I linked the
extreme of any passion with an age and circle wherein abandonment to
the emotions was adjudged bucolic, nay, Madam, the Eumenides were very
terrifying at Delphi, no doubt, but deck them with paint, patch, and
panniers, send them howling among the _beau monde_ on the Pantiles, and
they are only figures of fun; nor may, in reason, the high woes of a second
Lear, or of a new Prometheus, be adequately lighted by the flambeaux of
Louis Quinze.

Conceive, then, the overture begun, and fear not, if the action of the play
demand a lion, but that he shall be a beast of Peter Quince's picking. The
ladies shall not be frighted, for our chief comedians will enact modish
people of a time when gallantry prevailed.

Now the essence of gallantry, I take it, was to accept the pleasures of
life leisurely and its inconveniences with a shrug. As requisites, a
gallant person will, of course, be "amorous, but not too constant, have
a pleasant voice, and possess a talent for love-letters." He will always
bear in mind that in love-affairs success is less the Ultima Thule of
desire than its _coup de grace_, and he will be careful never to admit the
fact, especially to himself. He will value ceremony, but rather for its
comeliness than for its utility, as one esteeming the lily, say, to be a
more applaudable bulb than the onion. He will prink; and he will be at his
best after sunset. He will dare to acknowledge the shapeliness of a thief's