The history of Henry Earl of Moreland / [Ed. by J.W].

  • Henry Brooke
Date:
[1813]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The history of Henry Earl of Moreland / [Ed. by J.W]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    494/504 page 474
    See page 150. Friend. Apropo’, to your turoiiig a Lord into a Gentleman; When your hero gave that just, though over haughty reproof, to the insolence and petulance of the gay stranger, had he not a clear con- ception of the character of your true Gentleman 1 Author. If he had not a positive, yet you see he had a negative apprehension of the matter. If he could not say what it was to be yet he could tell you what it was, not to be a Gentleman. And he clearly perceived that neither finery, grandeur of equipage, title, wealth, superior airs, affectation of generosity, neither a mischief- making temper, nor a taking delight in the broils, conflicts, passions, ^nd pains, of others, were any constituent qualities in this venerable character. Fr. I beseech you then, at this interval, to satisfy my impatience, and to make good your promise, that you would give me a detail of the qualities that entitle a man to this supreme of denominations. Aut. That perhaps may be done, with better effect to the under- standing as well as the heart, by instancing and exemplifying, rather than defining. It has already been intimated, that Hector was the finest Gentle- man of whom we read in history, and Don Quixote the finest Gentle- man we read of in romance; as was instanced from the tenor of their principles and actions. As Aristotle and the Critics derived their rules, for epic poetry and the sublime, from a poem w hich Homer had written long before the rules were formed, or laws established for the purpose: Thus, from the demeanour and innate principles of particular Gentlemen, art has borrowed and instituted the many modes of behaviour, which the world has adopted, under the title of good-manners. One quality of a Gentleman is that of charity to the poor; and this is delicately instanced in the account which Don Quixote gives, to his fast friend Sancho Pansa, of the valorous but yet more pious knight-errant Saint Martin. <* On a day, said the Don, Saint Martin met a poor man half naked, and taking his cloke from his shoulders, he divided and gave him the one half. Now, tell me at what time of the year this happened]— Was I a witness] quoth Sancho ; how the vengeance should I know in what year, or what time of the year, it happened]—Hadst thou, Sancho, rejoined the knight, any thing within thee of tiie sentiment of Saint Martin, tkou must assuredly have known that this happened in winter; for had it been summer, Saiut^Martin would have given the w hole cioke.
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