"
ROCHESTER.
Footnotes
{1} Tipperary.
{2} An obscene oath.
{3} See "Muses' Library," pp. 86, 87. London, 1738.
{4} Genteel with them seems to be synonymous with Gentile and
Gentoo; if so, the manner in which it has been applied for ages
ceases to surprise, for genteel is heathenish. Ideas of barbaric
pearl and gold, glittering armour, plumes, tortures, blood-
shedding, and lust, should always be connected with it. Wace, in
his grand Norman poem, calls the Baron genteel:-
"La furent li gentil Baron," etc.
And he certainly could not have applied the word better than to the
strong Norman thief, armed cap-a-pie, without one particle of truth
or generosity; for a person to be a pink of gentility, that is
heathenism, should have no such feelings; and, indeed, the admirers
of gentility seldom or never associate any such feelings with it.
It was from the Norman, the worst of all robbers and miscreants,
who built strong castles, garrisoned them with devils, and tore out
poor wretches' eyes, as the Saxon Chronicle says, that the English
got their detestable word genteel. What could ever have made the
English such admirers of gentility, it would be difficult to say;
for, during three hundred years, they suffered enough by it. Their
genteel Norman landlords were their scourgers, their torturers, the
plunderers of their homes, the dishonourers of their wives, and the
deflourers of their daughters.
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