The ideal of a gentleman, or, A mirror for gentlefolks : a portrayal in literature from the earliest times / by A. Smythe-Palmer.

  • Palmer, Abram Smythe.
Date:
[1908]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The ideal of a gentleman, or, A mirror for gentlefolks : a portrayal in literature from the earliest times / by A. Smythe-Palmer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Incidentally and by the way the reader will find matter of no little literary interest and quaint charm of expression, many of the passages selected being from rare or forgotten books of antiquity not easily come by. ‘ Lo, my childe, thes good fathers auncient Repide the feldis fresshe of fulsumnesse, The flowers feyre they gadderid up and hent, Of silverous langage the tresoure and richesse ; Who wolle hit have, my htle childe doutelesse Must of hem begge, ther is no more to say, For of oure toung they were bothe locke and key.’ ^ The unique portrait of that Ideal Gentleman, Sir Philip Sidney, which appropriately forms the frontispiece of the book, has been reproduced by permission of the Trustees of the British Museum from Early Engravers and Engraving in England (Messrs. Donald Macbeth & Co.). Its characteristi- cally modest and deprecatory motto, taken from Ovid, ‘ Vix ea nostra voco ’ [What others have done we can hardly claim as our own], will not be overlooked. A. SMYTHE PALMER. Hermon Hill, N.E. 1 Caxton, Book of Curtesye, 1477, st. 58.