Grocott & Ward, comps. Grocott’s Familiar Quotations, 6th ed. 189-?.
Dress
She bears a duke’s revenues on her back.
Shakespeare.—King Henry VI., Part II. Act I. Scene 3. (Queen Margaret to Suffolk.)
O, many
Have broke their backs with laying manors on them
For this great journey.
Shakespeare.—King Henry VIII., Act I. Scene 1. (Buckingham.)
To bear them
The back is sacrifice to the load.
Shakespeare.—King Henry VIII., Act I. Scene 2. (Katherine to Wolsey.)
No real happiness is found
In trailing purple o’er the ground.
Parnell.—Hymn to Contentment, Line 25.
Dress drains our cellar dry,
And keeps our larder lean; puts out our fires,
And introduces hunger, frost, and woe,
Where peace and hospitality might reign.
Cowper.—The Task, Book II. Line 614.
Here’s such a plague every morning, with buckling shoes, gartering, combing, and powdering.
Farquhar.—The Twin Rivals, Act I.
Exclude all silks, velvets, calicoes, and the whole lexicon of female fopperies.
Swift.—A Proposal in favour of Irish Manufactures.
I am convinced that if the virtuosi could once find out a world in the moon, with a passage to it, our women would wear nothing but what directly came from thence.
Swift.—Letter to the Archbishop of Dublin.
His dress was a volcano of silk with lava buttons.
Sidney Smith.—Wit and Wisdom. (Longman, Ed. III. Page 123.)
Ridiculous modes, invented by ignorance, and adopted by folly.
Smollett.—Humphrey Clinker. (Letter of Matthew Bramble to Dr. Lewis, October 8.)
Aping the foreigners in every dress.
Juvenal.—Sat. 3. (Dryden.)