Ah! but
some sticker-up for gentility will exclaim, "The hero did not
refuse this office from an insurmountable dislike to its
ungentility, but merely from a feeling of principle." Well! the
writer is not fond of argument, and he will admit that such was the
case; he admits that it was a love of principle, rather than an
over-regard for gentility, which prevented the hero from accepting,
when on the brink of starvation, an ungenteel though lucrative
office, an office which, the writer begs leave to observe, many a
person with a great regard for gentility, and no particular regard
for principle, would in a similar strait have accepted; for when
did a mere love for gentility keep a person from being a dirty
scoundrel, when the alternatives were "either be a dirty scoundrel
or starve?" One thing, however, is certain, which is, that
Lavengro did not accept the office, which if a love for what is low
had been his ruling passion he certainly would have done;
consequently, he refuses to do one thing which no genteel person
would willingly do, even as he does many things which every genteel
person would gladly do, for example, speaks Italian, rides on
horseback, associates with a fashionable young man, dines with a
rich genius, et cetera. Yet--and it cannot be minced--he and
gentility with regard to many things are at strange divergency; he
shrinks from many things at which gentility placidly hums a tune,
or approvingly simpers, and does some things at which gentility
positively shrinks.
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