Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/171

 10 s. x. AUG. 15, loos.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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not be entitled to the same nattering distinctions. This suggestion is then scorned as specious, and unworthy of refutation, as " a gentleman is a gentleman." It is to be feared that Boswell had the pride of the landed proprietor, yet perhaps admired with envy the money of the Thrale whom he regarded as an inferior. Boswell would certainly be surprised and shocked at the glorification of trade and commerce in our own day. Already in the days of * Bleak House ' Dickens had noted (end of chap, xxxv.) that titles were not customarily conferred "on men distinguished for peaceful services, however good or great ; unless occasionally, when they consisted of the accumulation of some very large amount of money."

The classical tongues, which Goethe hoped would ever remain the characteristic of the higher cultiva- tion, are getting out of fashion, and the combina- tion " a scholar and a gentleman " is not now often heard. But there are plenty of books which supply extracts of the wisdom of the world concerning right thinking and acting. None of these can com- pare in range and exhaustiveness with our author's admirable collection. He is a scholar of ample erudition, and his book was first thought of some twenty years ago. It began as an Anthology, and now it has, as he says, " turned into something like a cyclopaedia of Gentlehood." There are no fewer than 522 pages, which include a capital index ; and the fourteen chapters have such headings as 4 The Historical Idea of a Gentleman,' * The Herald's Gentleman,' 'Ancestry,' 'Wealth and Work,' ' Manners and Good Breeding,' ' The Poets' Gentle- man,' ' Gentlemen of other Nations,' and ' Ironical and Abusive Acceptation of " Gentleman." ' All the pages are close packed with passages of the most varied character, ranging, as the Foreword says, from an Egyptian moralist of B.C. 3300 to Mr. William Watson ; and the frontispiece is, most suitably, a unique portrait of that ideal gentleman, Sir Philip Sidney. We are pleased to see many of our favourite passages from Tennyson, Ruskin, Walter Scott, Newman, Wordsworth, and a host of other great men. An important and unusual addi- tion to a book of this sort is the collection of ex- cerpts from journalism The Spectator, Quarterly, Saturday Review, Times, Standard. &c. which would form an anthology of themselves, and often supply illuminating matter. The volume is, in fact, a symphony in which minds ancient and modern play with subtle modulations of phrase and key the themes of the whole. No one could read it straight off, but it supplies endless matter for reflection and edification. We owe to Dr. Symthe Palmer himself some original passages, and translations of classical authors. Exact references are almost always sup- plied, and pains are taken to indicate the context where passages as they stand are not clear.

Any additions or suggestions that we make are rather such as are dictated by our own fancy and reading than by a sense that anything of moment is wanting. Further references to Greek and Latin would have made the book too bulky for a single volume, but we note that good citizenship has recently, and wisely, been put forward as one of the essentials of perfect manhood, and thus there is a return to Aristotle's conception of the man who is rtXat'wc ffirovSalof. Without some self-imposed idea of useful industry the man of great wealth, who need network, becomes the dangerous and freakish millionaire. We find two quotations from Horace. Ruskin, in a passage from his diaries, only avail-

able, we think, since this book was written ('Works,' Library Edition, vol. xxxiii. p. xxiii), has: "Horace's definition of a gentleman: 'Est animus tibi : sunt mores et lingua, fidesque.' I've learned this to-day, quite one of the most exhaustive verses in the world."

The "Nil admirari" of Horace is, as our late Editor used to remark* one of the chief boasts of those gentlemen who move in the social world. This stoical demeanour has its obvious defects and virtues. The latter might have been exhibited in the prose of Marcus Aurelius or the melancholy wisdom of Amiel.

From our own columns (7 S. xii. 514) is gathered the story of an inebriated diner expelled from The Cock Tavern by a waiter, who on his return to the room " said with emphasis, ' He's a perfec' gentleman ' ; adding, after a pause, as if to explain how he arrived at so decided a conclusion ' he give me 'alf-a-crown.' " Many amusing manifestations of the same confidence by the lower orders are quoted. We remember a definition, supplied, we think, by Mr. G. R. Sims, that "a gentleman is a person who can be seen in a clean collar without remark." The merits of good dress and cleanliness are not omitted here, but there is nothing on the gentleman fop quite so pungent as Tennyson's satire on Lytton, not now printed in his works, but sent to Punch (28 February, 1846) by John Forster. One verse runs :

What profits now to understand The merits of a spotless shirt A dapper boot a little hand If half the little soul is dirt ?

We recall in this connexion the conflict between Cloten and Guiderius in 'Cymbeline' (IV. ii.). Cloten demands submission on the strength of his obvious rank and superior appearance : do. Thou villain base,

Knows't me not by my clothes ? Gui. No, nor thy tailor, rascal ;

Who is thy grandfather : he made those clothes,

Which, as it seems, make thee.

Dr. Smythe Palmer gives, as might be expected, many excellent passages concerning the Christian gentleman. Our own commonplace books remind us that without faith high ideals have been enunciated. From the sections entitled 'We Scholars ' and ' What is Noble ' in Nietzsche's ' Beyond Good and Evil ' it may be gathered that the 'idea of the Superman does not exclude enviable qualities.

The book is admirably printed, and we have not detected any misprints. The passage of Ruskin quoted on p. 296 appears in a shorter form, with somewhat different punctuation, on p. 355. But that does not matter. In the words of the Greek proverb we may say, Ate r\ rptf ra jcaAd. Such repeated attention is deserved by this collection of the world's best thoughts on the subject of the best men.

The National Review is as lively as usual in its remarks on current politics. Mr. H. W. Wilson has an 'Appreciation' of Lord Charles Beresford, and Mr. J. S. Arkwright, M.P., writes on 'The Parliamentary Breakdown,' remarking that the hopeless overloading of the Party programme is known to everybody. This is an accusation brought, we think, against most Governments by the Opposition. An "old-time admirer" has been discovered who talks of " the biggest muddle that