24 OCTOBER 1908, Page 18

BOOKS.

A MIRROR FOR GENTLEFOLKS.*

IF we were to find ourselves suddenly transported to another planet, and obliged to give an account of the nature of the world from which we had come, perhaps our greatest difficulty * The Ideal of a Gentleman ; or, A Mirror for Gentlofolks: a Portrayal in Literature from the Earliest Times. By A. Smythe Palmer, D.D. London I George Bontledge and Sons. [Ss.]

would be to describe precisely what we meant by the term "gentleman." The "Mirror for Gentlefolks" which Dr. Smythe Palmer has put together as the result, as he tells us, of the reading of some twenty years would hardly help us, for it contains such a multitude of opinions of so varied a nature that it leaves us, if anything, rather more puzzled than we were before. The mirror, in fact, is a composite one, in which, naturally enough, we can find only a blurred and confused reflection; yet it is well worth looking into, if only for the amusement which it provides. As the editor says, his anthology has become "something like a cyclopaedia of Gentlehood," ranging over "a field of flowers so wide and extensive that it includes at one extreme the Egyptian moralist, Ptah-hotep, B.C. 3300, and at the other Mr. William Watson." The book is divided into sections devoted to various aspects of the subject—such as "The Herald's Gentleman," "Wealth and Work," "Manners and Good Breeding," "The Poet's Gentleman"— and each receives abundant illustration In the extracts which Dr. Palmer has gathered together with so diligent a hand.

The arrangement of -the passages within these sections is in the main chronological, and the reader is thus enabled to trace the changes which in the course of centuries the conception of gentility has undergone. That changes have occurred, that there has, in fact, been something like an historical develop- ment in the opinions generally current upon what constitutes a gentleman, must be obvious to any one who examines Dr. Palmer's book. In spite of some exceptions, the move- ment has certainly been in the direction of an increasing catholicity ; outward, formal, and accidental qualities have come to be insisted upon less and less; emphasis has been laid more and more upon the underlying and essential spirit of the gentleman. No one to-day would venture to maintain

that the real test of a gentleman is his birth, but the opinion was common enough two or three hundred years ago. The true gentleman, says Fuller, "is extracted from ancient and worshipfull parentage"; and Defoe in his Compleat English Gentleman," published in 1729, declares that "our modern Acceptation of a Gentleman is this—A person born (for there lies the essence of Quality) of some known or Ancient Family;

whose Ancestors have at least for some time been rais'd above the class of Mechanicka—If we will examine," he shrewdly adds, "for how long it must be, that is a dangerous Inquiry, we dive too deep, and may indeed strike at the Root of both the Gentry and Nobility." But it is easy to observe, running parallel, so to speak, with this tendency to lay stress upon good birth as the essence of gentility, a very different view, which has found expression in our literature from the earliest times, and has eventually completely triumphed over the other. This is what may be called the ethical conception of the gentleman. "He is gentil," says Chaucer, "that doth gentil dedis ; Al were it that myne auncestres were rude, Yet may the hye God, and so hope I, Grante me grace to liven vertuously : Thanne am I gentil, when that I beginne To liven vertuously, and weyve sinne."

Similarly the Elizabethan poet Dekker in a beautiful passage says of our Lord—" the best of men that e'er wore earth about him "—that He was "A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit, The first true gentleman that ever breathed."

And in the following century we find Steele declaring that "to be a fine gentleman is to be generous and a brave man." The ethical conception had become firmly established by the nineteenth century, when the importance attributed to mere birth finally disappeared. Even the Prince Regent's immortal dictum on Sir Robert Peel—" He is no gentleman ; he divides his coat-tails when he sits down"—was in the last resort based upon ethical considerations. Peel's habit, to the Regent's eye, was evidence of a certain niggardly and self-conscious quality of mind which was incompatible with true gentility. Had the Regent lived a century earlier he would doubtless have added that nothing better could be expected from a man whose father had been in trade.

Modern opinion seems, indeed, in its reaction against the criterion of caste, to be sometimes in danger of falling into

the other extreme, and of se:turning that there is no dis- tinction whatever between what is gentlemanlike and what is

good. The first to give distinct expression to this exaggeration

of the old view of Chaucer and Dekker was Thackeray. "What is a gentleman ?" be asks, and replies to his question as follows :—" It is to be honest, to be gentle, to be generous, to be brave, to be wise ; and possessed of all these qualities to exercise them in the most graceful manner." Thackeray seems to be anxious to describe the perfect man, and then to apply to his description the designation of "gentleman." But is this method of definition a sound one ? No doubt the perfect man must be a gentleman ; but from that does it follow that every gentleman must be a perfect man P Clearly gentility and virtue do not signify the same thing, for if they did the words would be interchangeable, and when we described an acquaintance as a gentleman we should mean simply that he was a virtuous man; and this is not the case.

Is it possible to deny that a number of admirable persons exist who, in spite of all their good qualities, yet fail, for some reason or another, to be gentlemen P-

" All I can do," says Charles Lamb in one of his letters, "I cannot make P— look like a gentleman, yet he is portly, majestic gives no affront, and expects to receive none, is honourable, mannered, of good bearing, looks like a man who, accustomed to respect others, silently extorts respect from them, has it, as a sort of in course ; without claiming it finds it. What do I miss in him, then, of the essentials of gentlemanhood Ho is right sterling—but then, somehow, he always has that d—d large Goldsmiths' Hall mark staring upon him. Possibly he is too fat for a gentleman."

Who has not felt these difficulties of Lamb's, and in a similar uncertainty flown to some such fantastic conclusion?

But if we are forced to abandon the all-embracing and sentimental definition of the gentleman which was brought into fashion by Thackeray, it does not follow that we need return to the view which tended to regard the whole matter as fundamentally a question of heraldry. The simple

truth is that what Lamb calls "the essentials of gentleman- hood" reside indeed in a kind of morality; but it is only a very particular kind,—it is largely the morality of social intercourse. One may be a good man and lack this special moral sense. Its precise domain lies in that region of the soul where morals seem to melt into aesthetics; it is bounded on the one side by taste, and on the other by good feeling. It cannot exist without the instinct which determines imme- diately a whole universe of social relationships, and can habitually ilaike the exactly appropriate balance between humility and pride. Thus the most obvious of its outward characteristics is ease,—ease, which arises from a just respect - for one's companions mingled with a just respect for oneself.

"Gentleman gentleman," said a Maori chief to Bishop Selwyn, "never mind what be does, but piggy gentleman very particular." The sentiment is echoed in the observation of an old village woman, quoted from our own columns in Dr. Palmer's hook: " Ah my dear, true gentlefolks never suspect theirselves."