I
noticed, however, that no one pretended to clothe himself from
any particular suit, but took a sleeve from one, a cape from
another, a skirt from a third, thus decking himself out
piecemeal, while some of his original rags would peep out from
among his borrowed finery.
There was a portly, rosy, well-fed parson, whom I observed ogling
several mouldy polemical writers through an eyeglass. He soon
contrived to slip on the voluminous mantle of one of the old
fathers, and having purloined the gray beard of another,
endeavored to look exceedingly wise; but the smirking commonplace
of his countenance set at naught all the trappings of wisdom. One
sickly-looking gentleman was busied embroidering a very flimsy
garment with gold thread drawn out of several old court-dresses
of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Another had trimmed himself
magnificently from an illuminated manuscript, had stuck a nosegay
in his bosom, culled from "The Paradise of Dainty Devices," and
having put Sir Philip Sidney's hat on one side of his head,
strutted off with an exquisite air of vulgar elegance. A third,
who was but of puny dimensions, had bolstered himself out bravely
with the spoils from several obscure tracts of philosophy, so
that he had a very imposing front, but he was lamentably tattered
in rear, and I perceived that he had patched his small-clothes
with scraps of parchment from a Latin author.
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