SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY. XVIII. POLITE AND RUSTIC MANNERS. Urbem quam dicunt Romam, Melibae, putavi VIRGIL, Eclogues, i. 20, 21. THE first and most obvious reflections which arise in a man who changes the city for the country 2 are upon the different manners of the people whom he meets with in those two different scenes of life. By manners I do not mean morals, but behavior and good-breeding as they show themselves in the town and in the country. And here, in the first place, I must observe a very 1. The city, Melibœus, that men call Rome, I, silly, thought like my small town. 2. It must be remembered that when Addison wrote, the infrequent intercourse between city and country left every petty neighborhood to form its own manners and dress, almost its own language. "A journey any little distance from home was a serious undertaking, so serious, indeed, that it often meant the inditing of a last will and testament before it was undertaken. Bad as the roads were in the summer-time when clouds of dust blinded the traveller in every direction, infinitely worse were they, at such times as the waters were out or after a heavy fall of rain, when the chances were that wayfarers, after crawling along at a pace of two or three miles an hour in constant fear of sticking fast in a quagmire, had to brave the impetuous force of the current of some river that had overflowed its banks, the strong barely escaping with their lives, the weak often perishing in the stream."-SYDNEY, England and the English in the Eighteenth Century, ii. 5. great revolution that has happened in this article of good-breeding. Several obliging deferences, condescensions, and submissions, with many outward forms and ceremonies that accompany them, were first of all brought up among the politer part of mankind, who lived in courts and cities, and distinguished themselves from the rustic part of the species (who on all occasions acted bluntly and naturally) by such a mutual complaisance and intercourse of civilities. These forms of conversation by degrees multiplied and grew troublesome; the modish world found too great a constraint in them, and have therefore thrown most of them aside. Conversation, like the Romish religion, was so encumbered with show and ceremony, that it stood in need of a reformation to retrench its superfluities, and restore it to its natural good sense and beauty. At present therefore an unconstrained carriage, and a certain openness of behavior, are the height of good-breeding. The fashionable world is grown free and easy; our manners sit more loose upon us. Nothing is so modish as an agreeable negligence. In a word, good-breeding shows itself most, where to an ordinary eye it appears the least. If after this we look on the people of mode in the country we find in them the manners of the last age. They have no sooner fetched themselves up to the fashion of the polite world, but the town has dropped them, and are nearer to the first state of nature than to those refinements which formerly reigned in the court, and still prevail in the country. One may now know a man that never conversed in the world by his excess of good-breeding. A polite country squire shall make you as many bows in half an hour as would serve a courtier for a week. There is infi nitely more to do about place and precedency in a meeting of justices' wives than in an assembly of duchesses. This rural politeness is very troublesome to a man of my temper, who generally take the chair that is next me, and walk first or last, in the front or in the rear, as chance directs. I have known my friend Sir Roger's dinner almost cold before the company could adjust the ceremonial, and be prevailed upon to sit down; and have heartily pitied my old friend, when I have seen him forced to pick and cull his guests, as they sat at the several parts of his table, that he might drink their healths according to their respective ranks and qualities. Honest Will Wimble, who I should have thought had been altogether uninfected with ceremony, gives me abundance of trouble in this particular. Though he has been fishing all the morning, he will not help himself at dinner till I am served. When we are going out of the hall, he runs behind me; and last night, as we were walking in the fields, stopped short at a stile till I came up to it, and upon my making signs to him to get over, told me, with a serious smile, that sure I believed they had no manners in the country. There has happened another revolution in the point of good-breeding, which relates to the conversation among men of mode, and which I cannot but look upon as very extraordinary. It was certainly one of the first distinctions of a well-bred man, to express everything that had the most remote appearance of being obscene in modest terms and distant phrases; whilst the clown, who had no such delicacy of conception and expression, clothed his ideas in those plain, homely terms that are the most obvious and natural. This kind of good manners was perhaps carried to an excess, so as to make conversation too stiff, formal, and precise: for which reason (as hypocrisy in one age is generally succeeded by atheism in another) conversation is in a great measure relapsed into the first extreme; so that at present several of our men of the town, and particularly those who have been polished in France, make use of the most coarse uncivilized words in our language, and utter themselves often in such a manner as a clown would blush to hear. This infamous piece of good-breeding, which reigns among the coxcombs of the town, has not yet made its way into the country; and as it is impossible for such an irrational way of conversation to last long among a people that make any profession of religion, or show of modesty, if the country gentlemen get into it they will certainly be left in the lurch. Their good-breeding will come too late to them, and they will be thought a parcel of lewd clowns, while they fancy themselves talking together like men of wit and pleasure. As the two points of good-breeding which I have hitherto insisted upon regard behavior and conversation, there is a third, which turns upon dress. In this, too, the country are very much behind-hand. The rural beaus are not yet got out of the fashion that took place at the time of the Revolution, but ride about the country in red coats and laced1 hats, while the women in many parts are still trying to outvie one another in the height of their headdresses.2 1. That is, edged with gold lace. 2. About a month before Addison had written in The Specta the western But a friend of mine, who is now upon circuit, having promised to give me an account of the several modes and fashions that prevail in the different parts of the nation through which he passes, I shall defer the enlarging upon this last topic till I have received a letter from him, which I expect every post. XIX. THE COVERLEY POULTRY. Equidem credo, quia sit divinitus illis VIRGIL, Georgics, i. 451. My friend Sir Roger is very often merry with me upon my passing so much of my time among his poultry. He has caught me twice or thrice looking tor, No. 98: "There is not so variable a thing in nature as a lady's head-dress. Within my own memory I have known it rise and fall above thirty degrees. About thirty years ago it shot up to a very great height, insomuch that the female part of our species were much taller than the men. The women were of such an enormous stature that we appeared as grasshoppers before them. At present the whole sex is in a manner dwarfed and shrunk into a race of beauties that seems almost another species. I remember several ladies who were once very near seven foot high, that at present want some inches of five. One may observe that women in all ages have taken more pains than men to adorn the outside of their heads; and, indeed, I very much admire that those female architects who raise such wonderful structures out of ribbands, lace, and wire, have not been recorded for their respective inventions. It is certain there has been as many orders in these kinds of building as in those which have been made of marble; sometimes they rise in the shape of a pyramid, sometimes like a tower, and sometimes like a steeple." 1. I verily believe that their intelligence has something divine about it. |