and be praised for it, but rather of the Georgians, of whom a golden
lad, who happily lived long enough to do better, wrote thus of a lady
of his love:
And I shall find some girl, perhaps,
And a better one than you,
With eyes as wise, but kindlier,
And lips as soft, but true.
And I daresay she will do.
If that is not slouch-hat and brown boots, I don't know what to call
it. For that golden lad I think _The Shropshire Lad_ must answer, who
perhaps brought corduroys into the drawing-room. And if that is to be
the way of it, we should do well to go back to Lovelace or Waller, and
make believe with a difference. I shall find myself watching the sunny
side of Bond Street for a revival--because while one does not ask for
passion, or even object to the tart flavours of satiety, I feel that
there is a standard somewhere, and a line to be drawn. Taste draws it.
I trouble myself very little with the morals of the matter, yet must
think manners very nearly half of the conduct of life. And the manners
which are expressed in clothes are those which are instilled in art.
They are symptomatic alike and correlated. There is nothing surprising
about it, or even curious. It would be so, and it is so. If Milton
had not on a prim white collar and a doctor's gown I misread _Paradise
Lost_ and _Lycidas_ too.