abitually in the best company, he knows perfectly
well when a coat is well cut, or a periwig well mounted.[241] As soon as
you enter the place where he is, he tells the next man to him who is
your tailor, and judges of you more from the choice of your
periwig-maker than of your friend. His business in this world is to be
well dressed; and the greatest circumstance that is to be recorded in
his annals is, that he wears twenty shirts a week. Thus, without ever
speaking reason among the men, or passion among the women, he is
everywhere well received; and without any one man's esteem, he has every
man's indulgence.

This order has produced great numbers of tolerable copiers in painting,
good rhymers in poetry, and harmless projectors in politics. You may see
them at first sight grow acquainted by sympathy, insomuch that one who
had not studied nature, and did not know the true cause of their sudden
familiarities, would think that they had some secret intimation of each
other, like the freemasons. The other day at Will's I heard Modely, and
a critic of the same order, show their equal talents with great delight.
The learned insipid was commending Racine's turns; the genteel insipid,
Devillier's curls.[242]

These creatures, when they are not forced into any particular
employment, for want of ideas in their own imaginations, are the
constant plague of all they meet with by inquiries for news and scandal,
which makes them the heroes of visiting-days, where they help the design
of the meeting, which is to pass away that odious thing called Time, in
discourses too trivial to raise any reflections which may put well-bred
persons to the trouble of thinking.

_From my own Apartment, May 1._

I was looking out of my parlour window this morning,[243] and receiving
the honours which Margery, the milkmaid to our lane, was doing me, by
dancing before my door with the plate of half her customers on her
head, when Mr. Clayton,[244] the author of "Arsinoe," made me a visit,
and desired me to insert the following advertisement in my ensuing
paper:

The Pastoral Masque composed by Mr. Clayton, author of "Arsinoe,"
will be performed on Wednesday the 3rd instant, in the great room
at York Buildings.[245] Tickets are to be had at White's
Chocolate-house, St. James's Coffee-house in St. James's Street,
and Young Man's Coffee-house.[246]

Note. The tickets delivered out for the 27th of April will be
ta