The Tatler (Volume 2) - Pasta blanda

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: No. 5 I. [steele. From "Thursday, August 4, to Saturday, August 6, 1709. White s Chocolate-house, August 5. The History of Orlando the Fair.1 Chap. II. Fortune being now propitious to the gay Orlando, he dressed, he spoke, he moved, as a man might be supposed to do in a nation of pigmies, and had an equal value for our approbation or dislike. It is usual for those who profess a contempt of the world, to fly from it and live in obscurity; but Orlando, with a greater magnanimity, contemned it, and appeared in it to tell them so. If therefore his exalted mien met with an unwelcome reception, he was sure always to double the cause which gave the distaste. You see our beauties affect a negligence in the ornament of their hair, and adjusting their head-dresses, as conscious that they adorn whatever they wear. Orlando had not only this humour in common with other beauties, but also had a neglect whether things became him or not, in a world he contemned. For this reason, a noble particularity appeared in all his economy, furniture, and equipage. And to convince the present little race, how unequal all their measures were to an antediluvian, as he called himself, in respect of the insects which now appear for men, he sometimes rode in an open tumbril, ' of less size than ordinary, to show the largeness of his limbs, and thegrandeur, of his personage, to the greater advantage: at other seasons, all his appointments had a magnificence, as if it were formed by the genius of Trimalchio1 of old, which showed itself in doing ordinary things with an air of pomp and grandeur.2 Orlando therefore called for tea by beat of drum; his valet got ready to shave him by a trumpet " To horse "; and water was brought for his teeth when the sound was changed to " Boots and saddle." In all these ...