cannot comprehend them. Thou art a low creature,
of the Andrews breed, a reptile of a lower order,
a weed that grows in the common garden of the creation.”—“I
assure your ladyship,” says Slipslop, whose passions
were almost of as high an order as her lady’s,
“I have no more to do with Common Garden than
other folks. Really, your ladyship talks of servants
as if they were not born of the Christian specious.
Servants have flesh and blood as well as quality;
and Mr Andrews himself is a proof that they have as
good, if not better. And for my own part, I can’t
perceive my dears[A] are coarser than other people’s;
and I am sure, if Mr Andrews was a dear of mine, I
should not be ashamed of him in company with gentlemen;
for whoever hath seen him in his new clothes must
confess he looks as much like a gentleman as anybody.
Coarse, quotha! I can’t bear to hear the
poor young fellow run down neither; for I will say
this, I never heard him say an ill word of anybody
in his life. I am sure his coarseness doth not
lie in his heart, for he is the best-natured man in
the world; and as for his skin, it is no coarser than
other people’s, I am sure. His bosom, when
a boy, was as white as driven snow; and, where it
is not covered with hairs, is so still. Ifakins!
if I was Mrs Andrews, with a hundred a year, I should
not envy the best she who wears a head. A woman
that could not be happy with such a man ought never
to be so; for if he can’t make a woman happy,
I never yet beheld the man who could. I say again,
I wish I was a great lady for his sake. I believe,
when I had made a gentleman of him, he’d behave
so that nobody should deprecate what I had done; and
I fancy few would venture to tell him he was no gentleman
to his face, nor to mine neither.” At which
words, taking up the candles, she asked her mistress,
who had been some time in her bed, if she had any farther
commands? who mildly answered, she had none; and,
telling her she was a comical creature, bid her good-night.
[A] Meaning perhaps ideas.
Philosophical reflections, the like not to be found
in any light French romance. Mr Booby’s
grave advice to Joseph, and Fanny’s encounter
with a beau.
Habit, my good reader, hath so vast a prevalence over
the human mind, that there is scarce anything too
strange or too strong to be asserted of it. The
story of the miser, who, from long accustoming to cheat
others, came at last to cheat himself, and with great
delight and triumph picked his own pocket of a guinea
to convey to his hoard, is not impossible or improbable.
In like manner it fares with the practisers of deceit,
who, from having long deceived their acquaintance,
gain at last a power of deceiving themselves, and
acquire that very opinion (however false) of their
own abilities, excellencies, and virtues, into which
they have for years perhaps endeavoured to betray their
neighbours. Now, reader, to apply this observation
