tameters; renown might await others only through boating or cricket;
with him the colour of his coat and the cut of his waistcoat were the
materials of fame. Fellows and provosts of Eton might seem to others the
"magnificoes" of mankind--the colossal figures which overtopped the age
by their elevation, or eclipsed it by their splendour--the "dii majorum
gentium," who sat on the pinnacle of the modern Olympus; but Brummell
saw nothing great but his tailor--nothing worthy of respect among the
human arts but the art of cutting out a coat--and nothing fit to ensure
human fame with posterity but the power to create and to bequeath a new
fashion.

But the name of dandy was of later date; the age had not attained
sufficient elegance for so polished a title; it was still buck or
macaroni; the latter having been the legacy of the semi-barbarian age
which preceded the eighteenth century. Brummell was called Buck Brummell
when an urchin at Eton--a preliminary evidence of the honours which
awaited him in a generation fitter to reward his skill and acknowledge
his superiority. Dandy was a thing yet to come, but which, in his
instance, was sure to come.

"The force of title could no further go--
The 'dandy was the heirloom of the beau.'"

Yet even in boyhood the sly and subtle style, the Brummellism of his
after years, began to exhibit itself. A party of the boys having
quarreled with the boatmen of the Thames, had fallen on one who had
rendered himself obnoxious, and were about to throw him into the river.
Brummell, who never took part in those affrays, but happened to pass by
at the time, said, "My good fellows, don't throw him into the river;
for, as the man is in a high state of perspiration, it amounts to a
certainty that he will catch cold." The boys burst into laughter, and
let their enemy run for his life.

At Eton, however, he was a general favourite for his pleasantry, the
gentleness of his manner, and the smartness of his repartee. He had
attained tolerable scholarship, was in the fifth form in 1793, the year
in which he left Eton, and wrote good Latin verses, an accomplishment
which he partially retained to his last days. From Eton he went to
Oriel, and there commenced that cutting system of which he so soon
became the acknowledged master. He cut an old Eton acquaintance simply
because he had entered at an inferior college, and discontinued visiting
another because he had invited him to meet two students of a