There is nothing upon earth that is of so much utility to men in general
as fine clothes. A splendid equipage, a magnificent house, may draw the
gaze of idle passers, and excite an occasional inquiry. But who, that
has entered taverns and coffeehouses, has not perceived that the ratio
of civility and attention from the waiter is regulated by the dress of
his various customers? Any stranger, elegantly and fashionably attired,
will find little difficulty in obtaining deference, politeness, and even
credit, in every shop he enters; whereas the stranger, in more homely,
or less modish garb, is really nobody. In truth, the gentleman is
distinguished in the crowd only by the cut of his trousers, and he
carries his patent of nobility in his coat-lap. And to whom does he owe
this index of his identity, but to his despised and much calumniated
tailor?
There is not a metamorphosis in all the pages of Ovid so wonderful as
that which the great magician of the shears and thimble is capable of
effecting. If there be the most unpleasant disproportions in the turn of
your limbs--any awkwardness or deformity in your figure, the enchantment
of this mighty wizard instantly communicates symmetry and elegance.
The incongruous and unseemly furrows of your shape become smooth and
harmonized; and the total want of all shape is immediately supplied
by the beautiful undulations of the coat, and the graceful fall of
the pantaloons. And all this is by the potency of your tailor. His
necromantic skill, unlike that of too many practisers of supernatural
arts, is exercised only for the benefit of the world: and whilst Circe
transformed the companions of Ulysses into brute beasts, the benevolent
enchanter of our day transforms brute beasts into handsome and
attractive men. Nay, had Olympus been furnished with a tailor, Brotheus
would have had no necessity to burn himself to death for the purpose
of escaping ridicule from the gods on account of his deformity.
But he who is most indebted to this manufacturer of elegant forms, is
the lover; and the base ingratitude of this sort of person is dreadfully
enormous. After he has riveted the gaze of his mistress upon his
charming figure, drawn forth sighs of admiration for his remarkable
elegance, excited the most tender perturbations by the grace of his
movements, and finally acquired a complete surrender of her heart
by the striking interest of his attitude when kneeling at her feet,
he ignorantly and presumptuously ascribes this to his own intrinsic
qualities, without ever remembering that the abilities of his tailor are
the sole source of all his success. The very being, who has endowed such
a man with all his attractions, rests contented with the payment of his
bills, (if he be fortunate enough to obtain that;) whilst the other, by
the power of fascinations so procured, obtains a lovely wife and twenty
thousand pounds. _Sic vos non vobis_, &c.
Such is the skill of that wonderful being, the tailor, that his
transformations are not more extraordinary than sudden. The time which
is occupied in thus new-moulding the human frame is really trivial
compared with the stupendous change which is literally wrought. It is
true, the soul may remain the same, but a new body is actually given to
it by the interposition of vestiary talent: and this is what we have
always believed to be the genuine meaning of the metempsychosis of
Pythagoras.
It is not, therefore, without the most cogent reasons that we assert our
opinion, that the distich of Pope, "Worth makes the man," or the title
appended by Colley Cibber to one of his dramas, "Love makes the man,"
ought henceforth to yield, in point of truth, to the irrefragable
principle which we here solemnly advance, "that it is the tailor makes
the man."--_Blackwood's Magazine_.
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