=Motto.= "The city they call Rome, I had been foolish enough, Melibæus,
to suppose like this town of ours."--Virgil, _Eclogues_, i. 20.
=140=: 11. =The fashionable world is grown free and easy.= This
tendency in manners began to be more marked after the Restoration,
1660. Some reaction toward a more formal and elaborate courtesy in
the world of fashion could be seen about the middle of the eighteenth
century, under the influence of such men as Lord Chesterfield.
For some account of manners in the Queen Anne time, see Ashton, _Social
Life in the Reign of Queen Anne_, Chaps. vii, viii; Trail's _Social
England_, Chaps. xvi, xvii. For telling contemporary satire, see
Swift's _Polite Conversation_.
=143=: 2. =Red coats and laced hats= were fashionable twenty years
before Addison was writing. In 1711 the coat was likely to be of some
more quiet color, though in great variety of shades. At just this time
the skirts were "wired" to make them stand out--as may be seen by a
reference in _Spectator_, No. 145. The laced hat had been replaced by a
low-crowned, black felt hat, with very wide brim, which was looped up
or "cocked." For the variety of shapes into which the dandy would cock
his hat, and other information on the hat, see _Spectator_, No. 319.
=143=: 4. =The height of their head-dresses.= The head-dress
had evidently been much lowered within a few years. Addison, in
_Spectator_, No. 98, declares that "within my own memory I have known
it rise and fall about thirty degrees." In the latter half of the
century, about 1775, it again attained proportions even more startling
than in Addison's day.