Is an artificer or maker of love, a sworn servant to all ladies, like an
officer in a corporation. Though no one in particular will own any title
to him, yet he never fails upon all occasions to offer his services, and
they as seldom to turn it back again untouched. He commits nothing with
them but himself to their good graces; and they recommend him back again
to his own, where he finds so kind a reception that he wonders how he
does fail of it everywhere else. His passion is as easily set on fire as
a fart, and as soon out again. He is charged and primed with love-powder
like a gun, and the least sparkle of an eye gives fire to him and off he
goes, but seldom or never hits the mark. He has commonplaces, and
precedents of repartees, and letters for all occasions, and falls as
readily into his method of making love as a parson does into his form of
matrimony. He converses, as angels are said to do, by intuition, and
expresses himself by sighs most significantly. He follows his visits as
men do their business, and is very industrious in waiting on the ladies
where his affairs lie; among which those of greatest concernment are
questions and commands, purposes, and other such received forms of wit
and conversation, in which he is so deeply studied that in all questions
and doubts that arise he is appealed to, and very learnedly declares
which was the most true and primitive way of proceeding in the purest
times. For these virtues he never fails of his summons to all balls,
where he manages the country-dances with singular judgment, and is
frequently an assistant at _l'ombre_; and these are all the uses they
make of his parts, beside the sport they give themselves in laughing at
him, which he takes for singular favours and interprets to his own
advantage, though it never goes further; for, all his employments being
public, he is never admitted to any private services, and they despise
him as not woman's meat; for he applies to too many to be trusted by any
one, as bastards by having many fathers have none at all. He goes often
mounted in a coach as a convoy to guard the ladies, to take the dust in
Hyde Park, where by his prudent management of the glass windows he
secures them from beggars, and returns fraught with China-oranges and
ballads. Thus he is but a gentleman-usher-general, and his business is
to carry one lady's services to another, and bring back the other's
in exchange.