ABSTRACT
The polite world were so engrossed by engagements, that lady Monteith found it impossible to form a party to her satisfaction. Exclusive of the pale votaries, who sacrifice peace, health, fortune, and honour at the shrine of Pharo, several were engaged to the Quizzes, and more to the Cabinet of Monkies, which was just opened. 305 The fair countess could scarcely get any body into her party but those who were left out of all others: and they who refused her secretly laughed at the rusticity of supposing / any body, who lived in the world, could defer till two o’clock the important business of fixing the evening occupation. She was forced to be contented with an antiquated belle of the last age, and a would-be fine lady of the present, to whom she was lucky enough to add a beau, sir Hargrave Nappy, a gentleman, who though known by every body to be incurably deaf, had long laboured under the tantalizing desire of wishing to be thought a connoisseur in music. With this design he constantly attended the opera, where his unvarying countenance and fixed posture procured him the appellation of the pillar of melody.
