The ideal of a gentleman, or, A mirror for gentlefolks : a portrayal in literature from the earliest times / by A. Smythe-Palmer.
- Abram Smythe Palmer
- Date:
- [1908]
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.
53/542 page 37
![The True Gentleman.—We will consider him in his Birth, Breeding and Behaviour, He is extracted from ancient and worshipfull parentage. When a Pepin is planted on a pepin-stock, the fruit growing thence is called a Renate, a most delicious apple, as both by Sire and Dam well descended. Thus his bloud must needs be well purified who is gentilely born on both sides. If his birth be not, at least his qualities are generous. What if he cannot with the Hevenninghams of Suffolk count five and twenty knights of his familie, or tell sixteen knights successively with the Tilneys of Norfolk, or with the Nauntons shew where their ancestors had seven hundred pound a year before or at the conquest; yet he hath endeavoured by his own deserts to ennoble himself. Thus valour makes him son to Caesar, Learning entitles him kinsman to Tully, and Piety reports him nephew to Constantine. It graceth a Gentleman of low descent and high desert, when he will own the meanness of his parentage. . . . At the University he is so studious as if he intended Learning for his profession. He knows well that cunning [knowledge] is no burthen to carry, as paying neither portage by Land, nor pondage by Sea. Yea though to have Land be a good First, yet to have Learning is the surest Second, which may stand to it when the other may chance to be taken away. . . . He is courteous and affable to his neighbours. As the sword of the best tempered metall is most flexible ; so the truly generous are most pliant and courteous in their behaviour to their inferiours. He delights to see himself and his servants well mounted : therefore he loveth good horsemanship. Let never any forein Rabshakeh send that brave to our Jerusalem, offering ‘ to lend her two thousand horses, if she be able for her part to set Riders upon them.’ We know how Darius got the Persian Empire from the rest of his fellow Peers, by the first neighing of his generous Steed. It were no harm if in some needlesse suits of intricate precedencie betwixt equall Gentle- men, the priority were adjudged to him who keeps a stable of most serviceable horses. 1652, T. Fuller, Holy and Profane State, pp, 138-40. In the age of chivalry a true gentleman was distinguished.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b29008529_0055.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
