We were pronounced a "capital hand." Oh the conceits which
we varied upon _red_ in all its prismatic differences! from the trite
and obvious flower of Cytherea to the flaming costume of the lady that
has her sitting upon "many waters." Then there was the collateral topic
of ankles. What an occasion to a truly chaste writer, like ourself, of
touching that nice brink, and yet never tumbling over it, of a seemingly
ever approximating something "not quite proper," while, like a skilful
posture-maker, balancing betwixt decorums and their opposites, he keeps
the line, from which a hair's-breadth deviation is destruction; hovering
in the confines of light and darkness, or where "both seem either"; a
hazy uncertain delicacy; Autolycus-like in the play, still putting off
his expectant auditory with "Whoop, do me no harm, good man!" But, above
all, that conceit arrided us most at that time, and still tickles our
midriff to remember, where, allusively to the flight of Astrae--_ultima
Coelestum terras reliquit_--we pronounced--in reference to the stockings
still--that _Modesty taking her final leave of Mortals, her last blush
was visible in her ascent to the Heavens by the tract of the glowing
instep._ This might be called the crowning conceit; and was esteemed
tolerable writing in those days.
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