Home > Authors Index > Browse all available works of John Earle > Text of Idle Gallant
An essay by John Earle |
||
An Idle Gallant |
||
|
________________________________________________
Title: An Idle Gallant Author: John Earle [More Titles by Earle] Is one that was born and shaped for his cloaths; and, if Adam had not fallen, had lived to no purpose. He gratulates therefore the first sin, and fig-leaves that were an occasion of [his] bravery. His first care is his dress, the next his body, and in the uniting of these two lies his soul and its faculties. He observes London trulier than the terms, and his business is the street, the stage, the court, and those places where a proper man is best shown. If he be qualified in gaming extraordinary, he is so much the more genteel and compleat, and he learns the best oaths for the purpose. These are a great part of his discourse, and he is as curious in their newness as the fashion. His other talk is ladies and such pretty things, or some jest at a play. His pick-tooth bears a great part in his discourse, so does his body, the upper parts whereof are as starched as his linnen, and perchance use the same laundress. He has learned to ruffle his face from his boot, and takes great delight in his walk to hear his spurs gingle. Though his life pass somewhat slidingly, yet he seems very careful of the time, for he is still drawing his watch out of his pocket, and spends part of his hours in numbering them. He is one never serious but with his taylor, when he is in conspiracy for the next device. He is furnished with his jests, as some wanderer with sermons, some three for all congregations, one especially against the scholar, a man to him much ridiculous, whom he knows by no other definition, but a silly fellow in black. He is a kind of walking mercer's shop, and shows you one stuff to-day and another to-morrow; an ornament to the room he comes in as the fair bed and hangings be; and it is meerly ratable accordingly, fifty or a hundred pounds as his suit is. His main ambition is to get a knight-hood, and then an old lady, which if he be happy in, he fills the stage and a coach so much longer: Otherwise, himself and his cloaths grow stale together, and he is buried commonly ere he dies in the gaol, or the country. [The end] GO TO TOP OF SCREEN |