But let me go on to your two next strange lines:--
'And bring with you a wig, that is modish and gay,
To dance with the girls that are makers of hay.'
The absurdity of making hay at Christmas, you yourself seem sensible of:
you say your sister will laugh; and so indeed she well may! The Latins
have an expression for a contemptuous sort of laughter, 'Naso contemnere
adunco'; that is, to laugh with a crooked nose. She may laugh at you in
the manner of the ancients if she thinks fit. But now I come to the most
extraordinary of all extraordinary propositions, which is, to take your
and your sister's advice in playing at loo. The presumption of the offer
raises my indignation beyond the bounds of prose; it inspires me at once
with verse and resentment. I take advice! and from whom? You shall hear.
First let me suppose, what may shortly be true,
The company set, and the word to be, Loo;
All smirking, and pleasant, and big with adventure,
And ogling the stake which is fix'd in the centre.
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