Good-Breeding.

1. Complaisance renders a superior amiable, an equal agreeable, and an inferior acceptable. It smoothes distinction, sweetens conversation, and makes every one in the company pleased with himself. It produces good nature and mutual benevolence, encourages the timorous, soothes the turbulent; humanizes the fierce, and distinguishes a society of civilized persons from a confusion of savages. In a word, complaisance is a virtue that blends all orders of men together in a friendly intercourse of words and actions, and is suited to that equality in human nature which every one ought to consider, so far as is consistent with the order and economy of the world.

2. If we could look into the secret anguish and affliction of every man's heart, we should often find, that more of it arises from little imaginary distresses, such as checks, frowns, contradictions, expressions of contempt, and (what Shakspeare reckons among other evils under the sun)

"—The poor man's contumely, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes,"

than from the more real pains and calamities of life. The only method to remove these imaginary distresses as much as possible out of human life, would be the universal practice of such an ingenious complaisance as I have been here describing, which, as it is a virtue, may be defined to be a "constant endeavour to please those whom we converse with, so far as we may do it innocently."

3. Good-breeding necessarily implies civility; but civility does not reciprocally imply good-breeding. The former has its intrinsic weight and value, which the latter always adorns, and often doubles by its workmanship.

To sacrifice one's own self-love to other people's, is a short, but, I believe, a true definition of civility: to do it with ease, propriety and grace, is good-breeding. The one is the result of good-nature; the other of good-sense, joined to experience, observation and attention.

4. A ploughman will be civil, if he is good-natured, but cannot be well bred. A courtier will be well bred though perhaps without good-nature, if he has but good sense. Flattery is the disgrace of good-breeding, as brutality often is of truth and sincerity. Good-breeding is the middle point between those two odious extremes.

Ceremony is the superstition of good-breeding, as well as of religion: but yet, being an out-work to both, should not be absolutely demolished. It is always, to a certain degree, to be complied with, though despised by those who think, because admired and respected by those who do not.

5. The most perfect degree of good-breeding, as I have already hinted, is only to be acquired by great knowledge of the world, and keeping the best company. It is not the object of mere speculation, and cannot be exactly defined, as it consists in a fitness, a propriety of words, actions, and even looks, adapted to the infinite variety and combinations of persons, places, and things. It is a mode, not a substance; for what is good-breeding at St. James's, would pass for foppery or banter in a remote village; and the homespun civility of that village would be considered as brutality at court.

6. A cloistered pedant may form true notions of civility; but if amidst the cobwebs of his cell he pretends to spin a speculative system of good-breeding, he will not be less absurd than his predecessor, who judiciously undertook to instruct Hannibal, in the art of war. The most ridiculous and most aukward of men are, therefore, the speculatively well bred monks of all religions and all professions.

7. Good-breeding, like charity, not only covers a multitude of faults, but, to a certain degree, supplies the want of some virtues. In the common intercourse of life, it nets good-nature, and often does what good-nature will not always do; it keeps both wits and fools within those bounds of decency, which the former are too apt to transgress, and which the latter never know. Courts are unquestionably the seats of good-breeding and must necessarily be so; otherwise they would be the seats of violence and desolation. There all the passions are in their highest state of fermentation.

8. All pursue what but few can obtain, and many seek what but one can enjoy. Good-breeding alone restrains their excesses. There, if enemies did not embrace they would stab. There, smiles are often put on to conceal tears. There, mutual services are professed, while mutual injuries are intended; and there, the guile of the serpent stimulates the gentleness of the dove: all this, it is true, at the expense of sincerity; but upon the whole, to the advantage of social intercourse in general.

9. I would not be misapprehended, and supposed to recommend good-breeding, thus prophaned and prostituted to the purposes of guilt and perfidy; but I think I may justly infer from it, to what a degree the accomplishment of good-breeding must adorn and enforce virtue and truth, when it can thus soften the outrages and deformity of vice and falsehood. I am sorry to be obliged to confess, that my native country is not perhaps the seat of the most perfect good-breeding, though I really believe, that it yields to none in hearty and sincere civility, as far as civility is (and to a certain degree it is) an inferior moral duty of doing as one would be done by.

10. If France exceeds us in that particular, the incomparable author of L'Esprit des Loix accounts for it very impartially, and I believe very truly. "If my countrymen," says he, "are the best bred people in the world, it is only because they are the vainest." It is certain that their good-breeding and attention, by flattering the vanity and self-love of others, repay their own with interest. It is a general commerce, usefully carried on by a barter of attentions, and often without one grain of solid merit, by way of medium, to make up the balance.

11. It were to be wished that good-breeding were in general thought a more essential part in the education of our youth, especially of distinction, than at present it seems to be. It might even be substituted in the room of some academical studies, that take up a great deal of time to very little purpose; or, at least, it might usefully share some of those many hours, that are so frequently employed upon a coach-box, or in stables. Surely those, who by their rank and fortune are called to adorn courts, ought at least not to disgrace, them by their manners.

12. But I observe with concern, that it is the fashion for our youth of both sexes to brand good-breeding with the name of ceremony and formality. As such they ridicule and explode it, and adopt in its stead, an offensive carelessness and inattention, to the diminution, I will venture to say, even of their own pleasures, if they know what true pleasures are. Love and friendship necessarily produce, and justly authorize familiarity; but then good-breeding must mark out its bounds, and say, thus far shalt thou go, and no farther; for I have known many a passion and many a friendship, degraded, weakened, and at last (if I may use the expression) wholly flattened away, by an unguarded and illiberal familiarity.

13. Nor is good-breeding less the ornament and cement of common social life: it connects, it endears, and at the same time that it indulges the just liberty, restrains that indecent licentiousness of conversation, which alienates and provokes. Great talents make a man famous, great merit makes him respected, and great learning makes him esteemed; but good breeding alone can make him beloved.

14. I recommend it in a more particular manner to my countrywomen, as the greatest ornament to such of them as have beauty, and the safest refuge for those who have not. It facilitates the victories, decorates the triumphs, and secures the conquests of beauty; or in some degree atones for the want of it. It almost deifies a fine woman, and procures respect at least to those who have not charms enough to be admired. Upon the whole, though good-breeding cannot, strictly speaking, be called a virtue, yet it is productive of so many good effects, that, in my opinion, it may be justly reckoned more than a mere accomplishment.

WORLD, No. 143.