elucidate this
simple proposition. Prior likewise advises the husband to send his wife
abroad, and let her see the world as it really stands:--

"Powder, and pocket-glass, and beau."

Mr. Johnson was indeed unjustly supposed to be a lover of singularity.
Few people had a more settled reverence for the world than he, or was
less captivated by new modes of behaviour introduced, or innovations on
the long-received customs of common life. He hated the way of leaving a
company without taking notice to the lady of the house that he was going,
and did not much like any of the contrivances by which ease had lately
been introduced into society instead of ceremony, which had more of his
approbation. Cards, dress, and dancing, however, all found their
advocate in Dr. Johnson, who inculcated, upon principle, the cultivation
of those arts which many a moralist thinks himself bound to reject, and
many a Christian holds unfit to be practised. "No person," said he one
day, "goes under-dressed till he thinks himself of consequence enough to
forbear carrying the badge of his rank upon his back." And in answer to
the arguments urged by Puritans, Quakers, etc., against showy decorations
of the human figure, I once heard him exclaim, "Oh, let us not be found,
when our Master calls us, ripping the lace off our waistcoats, but the
spirit of contention from our souls and tongues! Let us all conform in
outward customs, which are of no consequence, to the manners of those
whom we live among, and despise such paltry distinctions. Alas, sir!"
continued he, "a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat, will not
find his way thither sooner in a grey one." On an occasion of less
consequence, when he turned his back on Lord Bolingbroke in the rooms at
Brighthelmstone, he made this excuse, "I am not obliged, sir," said he to
Mr. Thrale, who stood fretting, "to find reasons for respecting the rank
of him who will not condescend to declare it by his dress or some other
visible mark. What are stars and other signs of superiority made for?"

The next evening, however, he made us comical amends, by sitting by the
same nobleman, and haranguing very loudly about the nature and use and
abuse of divorces. Many people gathered round them to hear what was
said, and when my husband called him away, and told him to whom he had
been talking, received an answer which I will not write down.

Though no man, perhaps, made such rough replies as Dr. Jo