"There are laws [...] against such young gallants there have always been, and there still are! Yes, if there has been nothing that ought not to have been, old as I am, I'd have called him out to the barrier, the young dandy.
Leo Tolstoy. Anna Karenina (Translated by Constance Garnett)
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SUB. And
Beneath your threshold, bury me a load-stone
To draw in gallants that wear spurs: the rest,
They'll seem to follow.
Ben Jonson. The Alchemist (1610)
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Among these the ladies choose their gallants: but the vexation is, that they act with too much ease and security; for the husband is always so rapt in speculation, that the mistress and lover may proceed to the greatest familiarities before his face, if he be but provided with paper and implements, and without his flapper at his side.
Jonathan Swift. Gulliver's Travels Into Several Remote Regions of the World (1726)
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Love entanglement. (He shoulders the second watch gently.) Dash it all. It’s a way we gallants have in the navy. Uniform that does it.