In further corroboration of this argument--who ever saw the wedding of a tailor announced in the newspapers, or the birth of his eldest son?
When was a tailor known to give a dance, or to be himself a good dancer, or to perform exquisitely on the tight-rope, or to shine in any such light and airy pastimes? to sing, or play on the violin?
Do they much care for public rejoicings, lightings up, ringing of bells, firing of cannons, &c.?
Valiant I know they can be; but I appeal to those who were witnesses to the exploits of Eliot's famous troop, whether in their fiercest charges they betrayed anything of that thoughtless oblivion of death with which a Frenchman jigs into battle, or whether they did not show more of the melancholy valor of the Spaniard, upon whom they charged; that deliberate courage which contemplation and sedentary habits breathe?
Are they often great newsmongers?--I have known some few among them arrive at the dignity of speculative politicians; but that light and cheerful every-day interest in the affairs and goings-on of the world, which makes the barber[1] such delightful company, I think is rarely observable in them.
[Footnote 1: Having incidentally mentioned the barber in a comparison of professional temperaments, I hope no other trade will take offence, or look upon it as an incivility done to them if I say, that in courtesy, humanity, and all the conversational and social graces which "gladden life," I esteem no profession comparable to his. Indeed, so great is the goodwill which I bear to this useful and agreeable body of men, that, residing in one of the Inns of Court (where the best specimens of them are to be found, except perhaps at the universities), there are seven of them to whom I am personally known, and who never pass me without the compliment of the hat on either side. My truly polite and urbane friend Mr. A----m, of Flower-de-luce Court, in Fleet Street, will forgive my mention of him in particular. I can truly say that I never spent a quarter of an hour under his hands without deriving some profit from the agreeable discussions which are always going on there.]
This characteristic pensiveness in them being so notorious, I wonder none of those writers, who have expressly treated of melancholy, should have mentioned it. Burton, whose book is an excellent abstract of all the authors in that kind who preceded him, and who treats of every species of this malady, from the _hypochondriacal_ or _windy_ to the _heroical_ or _love-melancholy_, has strangely omitted it. Shakspeare himself has overlooked it. "I have neither the scholar's melancholy (saith Jaques), which is emulation; nor the courtier's, which is proud; nor the soldier's, which is politic; nor the lover's, which is all these:" and then, when you might expect him to have brought in, "nor the tailor's, which is," so and so, he comes to an end of his enumeration, and falls to a defining of his own melancholy.