[From This World to the Next by Henry Fielding]@TWC D-Link bookFrom This World to the Next CHAPTER XXV 2/2
As to myself, I was so fully persuaded of this truth, that I not only slighted and despised those who were ignorant of dancing, but I thought the highest character I could give any man was that he made a graceful bow: for want of which accomplishment I had a sovereign contempt for most persons of learning; nay, for some officers in the army, and a few even of the courtiers themselves. "Though so little of my youth had been thrown away in what they call literature that I could hardly write and read, yet I composed a treatise on education; the first rudiments of which, as I taught, were to instruct a child in the science of coming handsomely into a room.
In this I corrected many faults of my predecessors, particularly that of being too much in a hurry, and instituting a child in the sublimer parts of dancing before they are capable of making their honors. "But as I have not now the same high opinion of my profession which I had then, I shall not entertain you with a long history of a life which consisted of borees and coupees.
Let it suffice that I lived to a very old age and followed my business as long as I could crawl.
At length I revisited my old friend Minos, who treated me with very little respect and bade me dance back again to earth. "I did so, and was now once more born an Englishman, bred up to the church, and at length arrived to the station of a bishop. "Nothing was so remarkable in this character as my always voting-- [10].".
<<Back Index Next>> D-Link book Top TWC mobile books
|