or Sir Fopling Flutter – “God Almighty’s Fool”

 Most modern wits such monstrous fools have shown,

They seem’d not of heaven’s making, but their own.

Those nauseous harlequins in farce may pass,

But there goes more to a substantial ass;

Something of man must be exposed to view,

That, gallants, they may more resemble you:

Sir Fopling is a fool so nicely writ,

The ladies would mistake him for a wit

And when he sings, talks loud, and cocks, would cry:

“I vow, methinks he’s pretty company”

So brisk, so gay, so travell’d, so refined,

As he took pains to graft upon his kind.

True fops help nature’s work, and go to school

To file and finish God Almighty’s fool.

from the Epilogue to The Man Of Mode by George Etherege (1676)

“Pwithee, when I am engaged upon my intwigues, bwayingly bewating a burmese genewal, par examplé, e’en the lewdest of them all, I would fain cawwy upon my person a big stick, adorn’d forsooth with wibbons upon’t, the which to wave most menacingly at the vile perpetwators. (A pox upon the vile debauchewers!) A faux joust upon the unjust foe! (Forgive me til’ I wipe the chortle from me lips!) Naturelementé it has not the slightest effect upon ’em and yet it maketh me, I own, t’ appear most fierce in Canbewwa…yet of a courteous-mannered qualité. Un noblé politesse. Ung Gena Saze Kwoy. Marry, it maketh one appear so much more…fashionably ineffectual.
“One ought not to offend the powerful, I trow.
To be fore’er obsequious is my vow.”