Now
as it is clearly demonstrable that a person may be perfectly
genteel according to some standard or other, and yet be no
gentleman, so it is demonstrable that a person may have no
pretensions to gentility, and yet be a gentleman. For example,
there is Lavengro! Would the admirers of the emperor, or the
admirers of those who admire the emperor, or the admirers of Mr.
Flamson, call him genteel? and gentility with them is everything!
Assuredly they would not; and assuredly they would consider him
respectively as a being to be shunned, despised, or hooted.
Genteel! Why at one time he is a hack author--writes reviewals for
eighteenpence a page--edits a Newgate chronicle. At another he
wanders the country with a face grimy from occasionally mending
kettles; and there is no evidence that his clothes are not seedy
and torn, and his shoes down at the heel; but by what process of
reasoning will they prove that he is no gentleman? Is he not
learned? Has he not generosity and courage? Whilst a hack author,
does he pawn the books entrusted to him to review? Does he break
his word to his publisher? Does he write begging letters? Does he
get clothes or lodgings without paying for them? Again, whilst a
wanderer, does he insult helpless women on the road with loose
proposals or ribald discourse? Does he take what is not his own
from the hedges? Does he play on the fiddle, or make faces in
public-houses, in order to obtain pence or beer? or does he call
for liquor, swallow it, and then say to a widowed landlady,
"Mistress, I have no brass?" In a word, what vice and crime does
he perpetrate--what low acts does he commit? Therefore, with his
endowments, who will venture to say that he is no gentleman?--
unless it be an admirer of Mr.
Pages:
512
513
514
515
516
517
518
519
520
521
522
523
524
525
526
527
528
529
530
531
532
533
534
535
536