she takes it into her bead to ape foreign fashions, like the vulgarest of the pretenders upon whom Thackeray loved to bring down his whip. In these fits, she resembles nothing so much as some purse-proud upstart's wife, blest with more wealth than brains, who thinks that she can take rank among Duchesses and Countesses by putting on her back the gaudiest refuse of a milliner's shop. Let us hope that these odd fits may soon become things of the past; and that the fair lady, whom each true knight is bound to champion against besetting clowns, may hold up before English scholars, preachers, and pressmen alike that brightest of all her jewels, simplicity.
Your termes, your coloures, and your figures,
Kepe hem in store, til so be ye endite
Hie stile, as whan that men to kinges write.
Speketh so plain at this time, I you pray,
That we may understonden what ye say.[1]
- ↑ Chaucer, the Clerkes Prologue.
