22 



QUIZZING. 



In the present very refined state of society, many accomplishments are 

 Hedulously practised, about which our great-grandmammas — good souls ! 

 — never dreamt in their afternoon nap ; and which (could they but hear 

 of them) would, I verily believe, cause them to lift up their hands and 

 eyes in mute and marvellous astonishment. Among these novel acquire- 

 ments — these oflfspring of the nineteenth century — quizzing stands 

 paramount, a gem of the first water, a star of the first magnitude. It 

 is, indeed, as necessary to the exclusive as a moustache to a cavalry 

 officer, or a billet-doux to the belle of the boarding-school, and as such 

 must be considered "part and parcel" of the legitimate accomplish- 

 ments of one fitted to go forth into the paths of the beau-monde and 

 mingle with those illustrious individuals who shine, planet-like, in the 

 brilliant hemisphere of ton. To be incapable of quizzing — to be either 

 too diffident or obtuse, — too compassionate or abstracted to seize certain 

 points of the ridiculous in the mien, manner, garb, or garniture of your 

 friends or intimate, the modest stranger seen for the first time, or the 

 shrinking novice trembling under the agonies of a debut, argues a want 

 of spirit, tact, and discrimination sufficient to sink you into utter 

 insignificance, and consign you, for the term of your natural life, to the 

 supercilious pity of your associates as " a very well-meaning sort of 

 personage — somewhat maudlin, and indeed destitute of esprit.** To 

 avoid this disastrous conclusion, to escape the shrugs and sneers and 

 commiserating looks of your friends, it is necessary to cultivate the talent 

 of ridicule, in fact to become, by due training, a quizzer — a free, 

 genuine, downright quizzer — and that your studies may be, in some 

 measure, facilitated by the suggestions of experience, I venture to throw 

 together a few desultory hints, to which] you can, occasionally, refer for 

 assistance in your career. 



My brief reflections are principally intended for the benefit of country 

 gentlemen, and Tyros from Oxford, emulous of becoming skilful and 

 dexterous quizzers, but I must avow that I would fain comprehend 

 among my pupils, the young and beautiful of the fairer and better part 

 of creation, those bright and sylphid creatures who, catching the reflec- 

 tion of their loveliness in the mirror, turn, half -blushing, from the 

 bewitching vision, and feel, for the first time, the desire of conquest. 



It is true — too true, that I am a bachelor — and I confess, with a sigh, 

 an elderly one — but Time has not yet frozen my heart, although the 

 inexorable despot has, long since, forced upon me the assumption of 

 wig, spectacles, and gouty pantouffles. I can, still, gaze with emotion 

 upon a brilliant eye, lucid with tenderness, or gemmed with the pearls 

 of compassion ; still view with delight a cheek suflfused with a bright 

 damask blush, and welcome a lip vivid as the ruby, illumined with the 

 exquisite spells of a smile. 



" Who can curiously behold 

 The smoothness and the sheen of beauty's cheek, 

 Nor feel the heart can never grow all old." 



Childe Harold; Canto III. 



Since, then, I am neither so juvenile as to incur the risk of being set 

 down as a presumptuous greenhorn, nor so aged as to be Burked as a 



