A Lecture On Heads | Page 4

great many people about London affect to be thought knowing ones, they dress themselves in these fashions, as if it could add to the dignity of ahead, to shew they have taken their degrees from students in the stable, up to the masters of arts, upon a coach-box. [ Gives the two heads off, and takes the book-case.]
The phrase of wooden-heads is no longer paradoxical; some people set up wooden studies, cabinet-makers become book-makers, and a man may shew a parade of much reading, by only the assistance of a timber-merchant. A student in the temple may be furnished with a collection of law books cut from a whipping-post; physical dictionaries may be had in Jesuits' bark; a treatise upon duels in touchwood; the history of opposition in wormwood; Shakespeare's works in cedar, his commentators in rotten wood; the reviewers in birch, and the history of England in heart of oak.
Mankind now make use of substitutes in more things than book-making and militia-men: some husbands are apt to substitute inferior women to their own ladies, like the idiot, who exchanged a brilliant for a piece of broken looking-glass; of such husbands we can only say, they have {9}borrowed their education from these libraries, and have wooden, very wooden tastes indeed. [ Gives it off.]
Here's a head full charged for fun [takes the head], a comical half-foolish face, what a great many upon the stage can put on, and what a great many people, not upon the stage, can't put off. This man always laughed at what he said himself, and he imagined a man of wit must always be upon the broad grin; and whenever he was in company he was always teasing some one to be merry, saying, "Now you, muster what do you call 'im? do now say something to make us all laugh; come, do now be comical a little." But if there is no {10}other person will speak, he will threaten to "tell you a story to make you die with laughing," and he will assure you, "it is the most bestest and most comicallest story that ever you heard in all your born days;" and he always interlards his narration with "so as I was a saying, says I, and so as he was a saying, says he; so says he to me, and I to him, and he to me again;----did you ever hear any thing more comical in all your born days?" But after he has concluded his narration, not finding any person even to smile at what he said, struck with the disappointment, he puts on a sad face himself, and, looking round upon the company, he says, "It was a good story when I heard it too: why then so, and so, and so, that's all, that's all, gentlemen." [Puts on a foolish look, and gives the head off.]
{11}Here is Master Jacky [takes the head], mamma's darling; when she was with child of him she dreamt she was brought to bed of a pincushion. He was never suffered to look into a book for fear of making him round-shouldered, yet was an immense scholar for all that; his mamma's woman had taught him all Hoyle by heart, and he could calculate to a single tea-spoonful how much cream should be put into a codlin tart. He wears a piece of lace which seems purloined from a lady's tucker, and placed here, to shew that such beings as these can make no other use of ladies' favours than to expose them. Horace had certainly such a character in view by his dulcissime rerum--"sweetest of all things;" all essence and effeminacy; {12}and that line of his--Quid Agis, dulcissime rerum? may be rendered, "What ails you, master Jacky?" As they have rivalled the ladies in the delicacy of their complexion, the ladies therefore have a right to make reprisals, and to take up that manliness which our sex seems to have cast off.
Here is a Lady in her fashionable uniform. [Takes up the head.] She looks as if marching at the head of a battalion, or else up before day to follow the hounds with spirit; while this lies in bed all the morning, with his hands wrapped up in chicken gloves, his complexion covered with milk of roses, essence of May-dew, and lily of the valley water. This does honour to creation; this {13}disgraces it. And so far have these things femalized themselves, by effeminate affections, that, if a lady's cap was put on this head, Master Jacky might be taken for Miss Jenny [puts a lady's cap on the head of Master Jacky]; therefore grammarians can neither rank them as masculine or feminine, so set them down of the doubtful gender. [Puts off the heads.]
Among the multitude of odd characters with which