some singularities in her manners, requested the artist to
recriminate on her opponents, and paid him sixty guineas for his
production.

It is professedly intended to ridicule the reigning fashions of high
life, in the year 1742: to do this, the painter has brought into one
group, an old beau and an old lady of the Chesterfield school, a
fashionable young lady, a little black boy, and a full-dressed monkey.
The old lady, with a most affected air, poises, between her finger and
thumb, a small tea-cup, with the beauties of which she appears to be
highly enamoured.

The gentleman, gazing with vacant wonder at that and the companion
saucer which he holds in his hand, joins in admiration of its
astonishing beauties!

"Each varied colour of the brightest hue,
The green, the red, the yellow, and the blue,
In every part their dazzled eyes behold,
Here streak'd with silver--there enrich'd with gold."

This gentleman is said to be intended for Lord Portmore, in the habit he
first appeared at Court, on his return from France. The cane dangling
from his wrist, large muff, long queue, black stock, feathered chapeau,
and shoes, give him the air of

"An old and finish'd fop,
All cork at heel, and feather all at top."

The old lady's habit, formed of stiff brocade, gives her the appearance
of a squat pyramid, with a grotesque head at the top of it. The young
one is fondling a little black boy, who on his part is playing with a
petite pagoda. This miniature Othello has been said to be intended for
the late Ignatius Sancho, whose talents and virtues were an honour to
his colour. At the time the picture was painted, he would have been
rather older than the figure, but as he was then honoured by the
partiality and protection of a noble family, the painter might possibly
mean to delineate what his figure had been a few years before.

The little monkey, with a magnifying glass, bag-wig, solitaire, laced
hat, and ruffles, is eagerly inspecting a bill of fare, with the
following articles _pour diner_; cocks' combs, ducks' tongues, rabbits'
ears, fricasee of snails, _grande d'oeufs buerre_.

In the centre of the room is a capacious china jar; in one corner a
tremendous pyramid, composed of packs of cards, and on the floor close
to them, a bill, inscribed "Lady Basto, D^{r} to John Pip, for
cards,--L300."

The room is ornamented with several pictures; the principal represents
the Medicean Venus, on a pede