Page:Essays - Abraham Cowley (1886).djvu/124

 thousand, he stretched out his arms and stood on tiptoes, that he might appear the taller, and cried out in a very loud voice, "I rejoice, I rejoice!', We wondered, I remember, what new great fortune had befallen his eminence. "Xerxes," says he, "is all mine own. He who took away the sight of the sea with the canvas veils of so many ships" and then he goes on so, as I know not what to make of the rest, whether it be the fault of the edition, or the orator's own burly way of nonsense.

This is the character that Seneca gives of this hyperbolical fop, whom we stand amazed at, and yet there are very few men who are not, in some things, and to some degree, grandios. Is anything more common than to see our ladies of quality wear such high shoes as they cannot walk in without one to lead them? and a gown as long again as their body, so that they cannot stir to the next room without a page or two to hold it up? I may safely say that all the ostentation of our grandees is just like a train, of no use in the world, but horribly cumbersome and incommodious. What is