most certainly, for any exuberant love of life. Rather did
he regard them as healthful exercise of the body and a charm against
that dreaded corpulency which, in the end, caused his downfall. Some
recreation from his work even the most strenuous artist must have; and
Mr. Brummell naturally sought his in that exalted sphere whose modish
elegance accorded best with his temperament, the sphere of le plus beau
monde. General Bucknall used to growl, from the window of the Guards'
Club, that such a fellow was only fit to associate with tailors. But
that was an old soldier's fallacy. The proper associates of an artist
are they who practise his own art rather than they who--however
honourably--do but cater for its practice. For the rest, I am sure that
Mr. Brummell was no lackey, as they have suggested. He wished merely to
be seen by those who were best qualified to appreciate the splendour of
his achievements. Shall not the painter show his work in galleries, the
poet flit down Paternoster Row? Of rank, for its own sake, Mr. Brummell
had no love. He patronised all his patrons. Even to the Regent his
attitude was always that of a master in an art to one who is sincerely
willing and anxious to learn from him.

Indeed, English society is always ruled by a dandy, and the more
absolutely ruled the greater that dandy be. For dandyism, the perfect
flower of outward elegance, is the ideal it is always striving to
realise in its own rather incoherent way. But there is no reason why
dandyism should be confused, as it has been by nearly all writers, with
mere social life. Its contact with social life is, indeed, but one of
the accidents of an art. Its influence, like the scent of a flower, is
diffused unconsciously. It has its own aims and laws, and knows none
other. And the only person who ever fully acknowledged this truth
in aesthetics is, of all persons most unlikely, the author of Sartor
Resartus. That any one who dressed so very badly as did Thomas Carlyle
should have tried to construct a philosophy of clothes has always seemed
to me one of the most pathetic things in literature. He in the Temple
of Vestments! Why sought he to intrude, another Clodius, upon those
mysteries and light his pipe from those ardent censers? What were his
hobnails that they should mar the pavement of that delicate Temple? Yet,
for that he betrayed one secret rightly heard there, will I pardon his
sacrilege. 'A dandy,' he cried through the mask of Teufelsdr