Against dandy footmen he is particularly severe. He hates idlers, pretenders, boasters, and punishes these fellows as best he may. Who does not recollect the famous picture ' What is Taxes, Thomas ? ' What is taxes indeed; well may that vast, over-fed, lounging flunky ask the question of his associate Thomas, and yet not well, for all that Thomas says in reply is, / don't know. " O beati plushicola," what a charming state of ignorance is yours! In the Sketch-Book many footmen make their appearance : one is a huge fat Hercules of a Portman square porter, who calmly surveys another poor fellow, a porter likewise, but out of livery, who comes staggering forward with a box that Hercules might lift with his little finger. Will Hercules do so ? not he. The giant can carry nothing heavier than a cocked-hat note on a silver tray, and his labours are to walk from his sentry-box to the door, and from the door back to his sentry-box, and to read the Sunday paper, and to poke the hall fire twice or thrice, and to make five meals a day. Such a fellow does Cruikshank hate and scorn worse even than a Frenchman.
The man's master, too, comes in for no small share of our artist's wrath. See, here is a company of them at church, who humbly designate themselves
"miserable sinners!"
Miserable sinners indeed! O what floods of turtle-soup; what
tons of turbot and lobster-sauce must have been sacrificed to
make those sinners properly miserable. My lady there, with
the ermine tippet and draggling feather, can we not see that she
lives in Portland place, and is the wife of an East India Director ? She has been to the
Opera over-night (indeed her husband,
