l velvet coats and satin
small-clothes from Mr. Filby's, which are more famous than the finest
garments ever worn by prince or peer. Who does not remember that
bloom-colored coat which the ablest painters have studiously
immortalized, made by John Filby, at the Harrow, in Water Lane (best
advertised of tailors!), and that charming blue velvet suit, which Mr.
Filby was never paid for? Surely a poet so splendid was fit for the
career of fashion! No, Oliver Goldsmith's velvet and lace were the
expression of a deep and painful sense of personal unfitness. They were
the fine frame which is intended to pass off an awkward and imperfect
picture. There was a quieter dignity in Johnson's threadbare sleeves.
Johnson, the most influential though not the most elegant intellect of
his time, is grander in his neglect of fashion than Goldsmith in his
ruinous subservience. And if it were permitted to me to speak of two or
three great geniuses who adorn the age in which we ourselves are living,
I might add that they seem to follow the example of the author of
"Rasselas" rather than that of Mr. Filby's illustrious customer. They
remind me of a good old squire who, from a fine sentiment of duty,
permitted the village artist to do his worst upon him, and incurred
thereby this withering observation from his metropolitan tailor: "You
are _covered_, sir, but you are _not_ dressed!"

LETTER IV.

TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO LIVED MUCH IN FASHIONABLE SOCIETY.

Test of professions--Mobility of fashionable taste--Practical service
of an external deference to culture--Incompatibility between
fashionable and intellectual lives--What each has to offer.

Your polite, almost diplomatic answer to my letter about fashionable
society may be not unfairly concentrated into some such paragraph as the
following:--

"What grounds have I for concluding that the professed tastes and
opinions of Society are in any degree insincere? May not society be
quite sincere in the preferences which it professes, and are not the
preferences themselves almost always creditable to the good taste and
really advanced culture of the Society which I suspect of a certain
degree of affectation?"

This is the sense of your letter, and in reply to it I give you a simple
but sure test. Is the professed opinion carried out in practice, when
there are fair opportunities for practice?

Let us go so far as to examine a particular instance. Your friends
profess to appreciate