Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 386, December, 1847

Оглавление

Various. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 386, December, 1847

EMERSON

HOW I CAME TO BE A SLOVEN

AN UNPUBLISHED FRENCH NOVEL

THE WIDOW OF GLENCOE

THE PYRENEES

JUDAISM IN THE LEGISLATURE

PÃANS OF THE ATHENIAN NAVY. – NO. I

OUR CURRENCY, OUR TRADE, AND OUR TARIFF

Отрывок из книги

A pretty question this, my dear Eusebius, – and that the question comes from you, who at no time of your life were a "Beau Nash," is rather extraordinary. It is after the fashion of most of your movements, however, and so far should not be thought extraordinary in you. For as you do not walk in the track that other men's shoes have made, nor dress your thoughts in other men's draperies; but both walk and think as few other men do, I ought not to wonder that you turn suddenly round upon me, eye me from head to foot, and ask me this curious question, How I came to be a sloven. Now, I can easily imagine your own slovenly attitude and attire when you wrote me this precious letter, and how fantastically conceited you fancied yourself standing before me, ωστε Ζωγραφης – like a painter, as says Hecuba, when she bad her rags and misery be looked at, – and thought to put me out of countenance with your own perfections. Perfections, indeed! Why, your whole wardrobe would not be worth exporting in charity to the land of Ne'erdo-weels – and I doubt not that the loss of a single suit, bad as it may be, would leave you in some small respects as bare as when you came into the world. You have been reading, you tell me, the "Ãsthetics of Dress," as you term them, those very amusing papers in Maga – from which you mean to cull materials for the history of the art, and to write a treatise on "The Philosophy of Tailors," wherein you intend to set forth upon what principles of the "Fitness of things" it is that nine tailors make a man. It is a whimsical notion of yours that the game of nine-pins was set up in honour of these nine worthies – "Knights of the thimble" – signifying how weakly they stand upon their pins, and how they go by the board at the very breath of a ball. You affect to think that the Templars were but the imitators of a more honourable cross-legged company – and that their antiquity is shown prior to the invention of Heraldry, for that the very term, the coat of arms, must have come from them. You say they can show parchments with the oldest companies and families, and cut to shivereens the longest pedigrees, and yet never go beyond their own measure.

What would a parliament be without them? They not only make their man, but seat him. Indeed, man is no man, till he is made one by these Novemviri, and hath been invested by them, as of old, with the toga virilis; and now-a-days (we vulgarise every thing even in the nomenclature) the first advance to manhood is to be "breeched: " – that first step when, with the dignity of newly assumed and duly authorised manhood, the dressed youth puts his best foot foremost, on the first step of the ladder of life, and is not ashamed, while ascending, to turn his back, and show what stuff he is made of.

.....

You should, however, remember to whom that advice was given, – to the courtier Laertes, that "man about town" in Denmark.

Your quotation will not, be assured, fit me, and, I suspect, not yourself either, with a new suit. We must play our parts, and dress accordingly. For, as the old courtier adds —

.....