Note 409 — Chapter XXIV · SWORD-PLAY AND OTHER SPORTS. GARDEN, ETC.

'Woodcock. And pray, what are your Town Diversions? To hear a parcel of Italian Eunuchs, like so many Cats, squawll out somewhat you don't understand. The Song of my Lady's Birthday, by an honest Farmer, and a Merry Jig by a Country Wench that has Humour in her Buttocks, is worth Forty on't; Your Plays, your Park, and all your Town Diversions together, don't afford half so substantial a Joy as going home thoroughly wet and dirty after a fatiguing Fox Chace, and Shifting one's self by a good Fire. Neither are we Country Gentlemen such Ninnies as you make us; we have good Estates, therefore want not the Knavery and Cunning of the Town; but we are Loyal Subjects, true Friends, and never scruple to take our Bottle, because we are guilty of nothing which we are afraid of discovering in our Cups.'[409] A very pretty quarrel as it stood, and one on which, as Sir Roger remarked, 'much might be said on both sides,' for Addison[410] rather grumbles at the old-fashioned courtesy of the well-bred squire as opposed to the greater ease of manners then in vogue: '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 reign'd 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 infinitely more to do about Place and Precedency in a meeting of Justices Wives, than in an Assembly of Dutchesses.'