modern
is gathered at the waist; my grandmother appears as if she stood in a
large drum, whereas
the ladies now walk as if they were in a go-cart. For all this lady
was bred at
court, she became an excellent country-wife, she brought ten
children, and when I show you the library, you shall
see in her own hand (allowing for the difference of the language) the
best receipt now in England both for an hasty pudding
and a whitepot. "If you please
to fall back a little,
because it is necessary to look at the three
next pictures at one view; these are three sisters. She on the right
hand, who is so very beautiful, died a maid; the next to her, still
handsomer, had the same fate,
against her will; this homely thing in the middle had both
their portions added to her
own, and was stolen by a neighbouring gentleman, a man of stratagem
and resolution, for he poisoned three
mastiffs to come at
her, and knocked down two deer-stealers in carrying her off.
Misfortunes happen in all families. The theft of this romp and so
much money, was no great matter to our estate. But the next
heir that possessed it was this soft
gentleman, whom you see there. Observe the small buttons, the little
boots, the laces, the slashes about his clothes, and above all the
posture he is drawn in (which, to be sure, was his
own choosing); you see he sits with one hand on a desk writing, and
looking as
it were another way, like an easy writer, or a
sonneteer. He was one of those
that had too much wit to know how to live in the world; he was a man
of no justice, b
