1830.] C 317 ] 



A CHAPTER ON OLD COATS. 



I LOVE an old coat. By an old coat, I mean not one of last summer's 

 growth, on which the gloss yet lingers, shadowy, and intermittent, like 

 a'faint ray of sunlight on the counting-house desk of a clothier's ware- 

 house in Eastcheap, but a real unquestionable antique, which for some 

 five or six years has withstood the combined assaults of sun, dust, and 

 rain, has lost all pretensions to starch, unsocial formality, and gives the 

 shoulders assurance of ease, and the waist of a holiday. Such a coat is 

 my delight. It presents itself to my mind's eye, mixed up with a thou- 

 sand varying recollections, and not only shadows forth the figures, but 

 recals the very faces, even to the particular expression of eye, brow, or 

 lip, of friends over whom the waters of oblivion have long since rolled. 

 This, you will say, is strange. Granted ; but mark how I deduce my 

 analogy ! 



In that repository of wit, learning, and sarcasm, the " Tale of 

 a Tub," Swift pertinently remarks, that, in forming an estimate of an 

 individual's trade or profession, one should look to his dress. The man 

 himself is nothing ; his apparel is the distinguishing characteristic ; the 

 outward and visible sign of his inward and spiritual grace. What, 

 adds the satirist, is a lawyer, but a black wig and gown, hung up on 

 an animated peg, like a barber's caxon on a block ? What, a judge, but 

 an apt conjunction of scarlet and white ermine, thrown over a similar 

 peg, a little stoutsr, perhaps, and stuck upright on a Bench ? What, a 

 dandy, but a pair of tight persuasives to corns and gentility, exuberant 

 pantaloons, and unimpeachable coat and hat, trimly appended to a moving 

 stick, from a yard and a half to two yards high, grown in Bond Street, and 

 cut down in the fulness of time in the King's Bench ? What, a lord mayor, 

 but a gold chain stuck round the neck of a plump occupier of space ? 

 What, a physician, but a black gilt-headed cane, thrust, with profes- 

 sional gravity, under the snout of an embodied " Memento Mori ?" What, 

 an alderman, but a furred gown and white napkin stuck beneath the 



triple chin of a polypetalous personification of dyspepsia ? Caxon the 



barber held opinions similar to these. " Pray, Sir," said he to the 

 Antiquary, " do not venture near the sands to-night ; for when you are 

 dead and gone, there will only be three wigs left in the village."* 



If then we look to the dress of which the coat, of course, forms the chief 

 feature as the criterion of a man, it is logically manifest that the appear- 

 ance of certain coats will renew the recollection of certain individuals ; or 

 suppose we substitute the word " coat" for " man," and it will be equally 

 manifest that a certain coat is bonafide a certain man. Now, whenever I 

 see an old coat, brown, rusty, and long-waisted, with the dim metal but- 

 tons at the back, sewed on so far apart, that if a short-sighted man were to 

 stand upon the one, he could scarcely according to the ordinary laws 

 of probability see over to the other ; I imagine, on Swift's principle, 

 that I see my fat city friend, Tims, who died of a lord mayor's feast, ten 

 years since come Martinmas. In like manner, whenever I behold a 

 gaunt, attenuated blue surtout, so perfectly old-fashioned in shape, that 

 I should hardly be justified in making an affidavit before Sir Richard 

 Birnie, that, to the best of my belief, it was younger than the Temple of 

 the Sun, at Palmyra; I think that I behold mine ancient college- 



* Vide Sir W. Scott's novel of the Antiquary, Vol. I. 



