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Deprivation of Taste is as great as that of Morals, and tho' the correcting the latter may seem a more laudable Design, and more consistent with public-Spirit; yet there is so strong a Connection between them, and the Morals of a Nation have so great Dependence on their Taste nad Writings, that the fixing the latter, seems the first and surest Method of establishing the former. (The Reformer, Issue 1, 1748)
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The Chief use of Learning...is to implant and elegant disposition into the mind and manners and root our of them everything sordid, base or illiberal...the polite arts are rather better calculated for this purpose than any others; and this for the very reason that some condemn them; because they apply to the passions...
For this mind when it is entertained with high fancies, elegant and polite sentiments, beautiful language, and harmonious sounds, is modelled insensible into a disposition to elegance and humanity. For it is the bias the mind takes that gives direction to our lives; and not any rules or maxims of morals or behaviour.
(Burke, 'The Character of a Fine Gentleman')
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With many of his contemporaries, he (Burke) employed 'chivalry' as a term of art signifying the complex European union of manners. It was not a defence of the past, but of his present, of a social order he perceived as being more progressive and enlightened perhaps than any in history. In the Reflections, he observed:
Nothing is more certain, than our manners, our civilization, and all the good things which are connnected wiht manners, and with civilization, have, in this European world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles: and were indeed the result of both combined: I mean the spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion.
In notes of the period, Burke wrote that revolutionary philosophy left 'no other principle of restraint but terror. No other incentive but personal interest.
(''Language Is the Eye of Society': Edmund Burke on the Origins of the Polite and the Civil, Seán Patrick Donlan )
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France has always more or less influenced manners in England; and when your fountain is choked up and polluted, the stream will not run long, or not run clear, with us, or perhaps with any nation. This gives all Europe, in my opinion, but too close and connected a concern in what is done in France. Excuse me, therefore, if I have dwelt too long on the atrocious spectacle of the 6th of October, 1789, or have given too much scope to the reflections which have arisen in my mind on occasion of the most important of all revolutions, which may be dated from that day, I mean a revolution in sentiments, manners, and moral opinions. (Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke)
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Manners are of more importance than laws. The law can touch us here and there, now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation like that of the air we breathe in. They give their whole form and colour to our lives. According to their quality they aid morals, they supply them, or they totally destroy them. (Letters on a Regicide Peace, Burke)
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It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in—glittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendor, and joy. Oh! what a Revolution! And what a heart must I have to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor, and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.
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There ought to be system of manners in every nation which a well-formed mind would be disposed to relish. To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely. (Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke)
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Ben Jonson,
TO THE
SPECIAL FOUNTAIN of MANNERS,
The Court.
THou art a Bountiful and Brave Spring, and waterest all the Noble Plants of this Island. In thee the whole Kingdom dresseth it self, and is ambitious to use thee as her Glass. Beware then thou render Mens Figures truly, and teach them no less to hate their Deformities, than to love their Forms: For, to Grace, there should come Reverence; and no Man can call that Lovely, which is not also Venerable. It is not Powd'ring, Perfuming, and every day smelling of the Taylor, that converteth to a Beautiful Object: but a Mind shining through any Sute, which needs no False Light, either of Riches or Honours, to help it. Such shalt thou find some here, even in the Reign of C Y N T H I A, (a C R I T E S and an A R E T E.) Now, under thy P H œ B U S, it will be thy Province to make more: Except thou desirest to have thy Source mix with the Spring of Self-love, and so wilt draw upon thee as welcom a Discovery of thy Days, as was then made of her Nights.
Thy Servant, but not Slave,
BEN. JOHNSON.
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Look how the father's FACE
Lives in his issue, even so the race
Of Shakspeare's MIND AND MANNERS brightly shines
In his well torned and true filed lines;
In each of which he seems to shake a lance,
As brandisht at the eyes of ignorance.
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TO THE READER.
This figure that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle SHAKSPEARE cut,
Wherein the graver had a strife
With nature, to out-do the life :
O could he but have drawn his wit
As well in BRASS, as he has hit
His FACE ; the print would then surpass
All that was ever writ in BRASS :
But since he cannot, reader, look
Not on his picture, but his book.
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"Thou art a Moniment, without a tombe". The monument motif alludes to Horace's ode beginning "exegi monumentum aere perennius" [I have finished a monument more lasting than bronze] (3,30.1), expressing the immortality of his own poetry. But readers then may have thought of another meaning of "Moniment".
"Monument" still retained its etymological sense of "portent", deriving from the Latin monere, to remind [especially of universal disorder] (OED). It was used almost synonymously with "monster"; Shakespeare offers a good example in The TAming of the Shrew (1593-94):
[Pet] Gentles, methinks you frown,
And wherefore gaze this goodly company,
As if they saw some wondrous monument,
Some comet or unusual prodigy? (3.2.93-96)
Petruchio, appearing in bizarre clothes on hs wedding day, thus brags to the attendants who stand astounded. The portentousness of the word is clear, for it is used with "some comet or unusual prodigy", while his servant Grumio was called a "monster in apparel" some 30 lines earlier.
Moreover, the "wondrous" that "modifies "monument" in line 95 here means "ominous". From this we can safely infer that "the wonder of our Stage" four lines above "Moniment" implies "portent" (OED) The few readers who perceived "the portent" behind "the wonder of our Stage", when they encountered "Moniment", a monster portentous of a sickness in nature or of a vicious age. Precisely the same thing can be said of Lope de Vega, who was called "el monstruo de naturaleza" by Cervantes. (p.63)
Ben Jonson and Cervantes, Tilting against Chivalric Romances
Yumiko Yamada
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Men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues
We write in water. (Shakespeare)
"It is from the asymmetrie of our Poetrie, want of decorum and proportion in our *Figures*, that the irregularity of our humours and affections many be shrewdly discern’d…"
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Folly, and brain-sick HUMOURS of the time,
Distemper'd passion, and audacious crime,
Thy pen so on the stage doth personate,
That ere men scarce begin to know, they hate
The vice presented, and there lessons learn,
Virtue, from vicious habits to discern.
Oft have I seen thee in a sprightly strain,
To lash a vice, and yet no one complain ;
Thou threw'st the ink of malice from thy pen,
Whose aim was EVIL MANNERS, not ill men.
(Hawkins, Jonsonus Virbius)
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Jonson, _Volpone_, dedication
(...)For, if Men will impartially, and not asquint, look toward the Offices and Function of a Poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the Impossibility of any Man's being the good Poet, without first being a good Man. He that is said to be able to inform young Men to all good Disciplines, inflame grown Men to all great Vertues, keep old Men in their best and supream State, or as they decline to Childhood, recover them to their first Strength; that comes forth the Interpreter and Arbiter of Nature, a Teacher of Things Divine no less than Humane, a MASTER in MANNERS; and can alone (or with a few) effect the Business of Mankind: This, I take him, is no Subject for Pride and Ignorance to exercise their failing Rhetorick upon. But it will here be hastily answer'd, That the Writers of these Days are other Things; that not only their MANNERS, but their NATURES are INVERTED, and nothing remaining with them of the Dignity of Poet, but the abused Name, which every Scribe usurps; that now, especially in Drammatick, or (as they term it) Stage-Poetry, nothing but Ribaldry, Prophanation, Blasphemy, all Licence of Offence to God and Man is practis'd. I dare not deny a great part of this, (and I am sorry I dare not) because in some Mens abortive Features (and would they had never boasted the Light) it is over-true: But that all are imbark'd in this bold Adventure for Hell, is a most uncharitable Thought, and, utter'd, a more malicious Slander.
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Jonson, _Discoveries_
De malign. studentium. - There be some men are born only to suck out the poison of books: Habent venenum pro victu; imô, pro deliciis. {66a} And such are they that only relish the obscene and foul things in poets, which makes the profession taxed. But by whom? Men that watch for it; and, had they not had this hint, are so unjust valuers of letters as they think no learning good but what brings in gain. It shows they themselves would never have been of the professions they are but for the profits and fees. But if another learning, well used, can instruct to good life, INFORM MANNERS, no less persuade and lead men than they threaten and compel, and have no reward, is it therefore the worst study? I could never think the study of wisdom confined only to the philosopher, or of piety to the divine, or of state to the politic; but that he which can feign a COMMONWEALTH (which is the poet) can govern it with counsels, strengthen it with laws, correct it with judgments, inform it with religion and morals, is all these. We do not require in him mere elocution, or an excellent faculty in verse, but the exact knowledge of all virtues and their contraries, with ability to render the one LOVED, the other HATED, by his proper embattling them. The philosophers did insolently, to challenge only to themselves that which the greatest generals and gravest counsellors never durst. For such had rather do than promise the best things.
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el monstruo de naturaleza
De Vere
For what more difficult, more noble, or more magnificent task has anyone ever undertaken than our author Castiglione, who has drawn for FIGURE and model of a courtier, a work to which nothing can be added, in which there is no redundant word, a PORTRAIT which we shall recognize as that of a highest and most perfect type of man. And so, although NATURE herself has made nothing perfect in every detail, yet THE MANNERS OF MEN exceed in dignity that with which NATURE has endowed them; and he who SURPASSES others has here SURPASSED himself and has even OUT-DONE nature, which by no one has ever been SURPASSED.
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Jonathan Gibson, _Sidney's Arcadias and Elizabethan Courtiership_,
Oxford University Press
"One aspect of the Alencon dispute that, rather surprisingly, has been neglected in discussions of Sidney is the relationship between his own work and the writings of his court rival Edward DeVere, seventeenth earl of Oxford. The _Arcadias_ can plausibly be read as using their opposition to a specifically 'Oxfordian' literary aesthetic to trigger a more general meditation on the problems of Elizabethan courtiership. As Steven W. May has shown, French-influenced 'new lyricism', closely associated with Oxford, was the dominant poetic form at the Elizabethan court at the time of the composition of the old _Arcadia_.
Early Elizabethan court poetry had been largely religious and didactic but during the 1570's Oxford pioneered a revival of courtly Petrarchan lyric in the tradition of Wyatt and Surrey. I have argued elsewhere that this was connected with Oxford's advocacy of the French match, forming a key element in what H.R. Woudhuysen has called the 'wholesale importation of FRENCH CULTURE AND MANNERS to England' which occurred in the wake of the marriage negotiations. The arrival of 'new lyricism' meant that the Petrarchan language of love became part of the lingua franca of English court life. The complicated overlap at the Elizabethan court between the language of early modern patronage negotiations and the language of Petrarchanism has been much discussed. The blurring of the two was greatly heightened - and arguably set in place, in its specifically Elizabethan manifestation - by Oxford's literary programme.
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The subject of manners is really a subdivision of the general subject
of esthetics. Judgments about manners are made by applying the
principles of esthetic excellence to the field of human relationships
and personal conduct. Good manners are modes of behavior that are
fitting and appropriate to a particular situation; bad manners are
modes of behavior that are out of place in the same situation. *The
evaluation of fitness within a specific context is clearly an esthetic
process*.
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Manners are a kind of language, a "language of the act," which often
conveys meanings more effectively than can words.
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The principal characteristics of aristocracy are handed down by
history after an aristocracy is destroyed, but the light and exquisite
touches of manners are effaced from men's memories almost immediately
after its fall. (Tocqueville)
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el monstruo de naturaleza
Speculum Tuscanismi (1580)
Since GALATEO came in, and Tuscanism gan usurp, (Galateo - Conduct manual)
Vanity above all: villainy next her, stateliness Empress
No man but minion, stout, lout, plain, swain, quoth a Lording:
No words but valorous, no works but womanish only.
For life Magnificoes, not a beck but glorious in show,
In deed most frivolous, not a look but Tuscanish always.
His cringing side neck, eyes glancing, fisnamy smirking,
With forefinger kiss, and brave embrace to the footward.
Large bellied Cod-pieced doublet, uncod-pieced half hose,
Straight to the dock like a shirt, and close to the britch like a diveling.
A little Apish flat couched fast to the pate like an oyster,
French camarick ruffs, deep with a whiteness starched to the purpose.
Every one A per se A, his terms and braveries in print,
Delicate in speech, quaint in array: conceited in all points,
In Courtly guiles a passing singular odd man,
For Gallants a brave Mirror, a Primrose of Honour,
A Diamond for nonce, a fellow peerless in England.
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Author: Davies, John, 1565?-1618.
Title: Humours heau'n on earth with the ciuile warres of death and fortune. As also the triumph of death: or, the picture of the plague, according to the life; as it was in anno Domini. 1603. By Iohn Dauies of Hereford.
76
Some followed her by acting all mens parts,
Stage she rais'd (in scorne) to fall:
And made them Mirrors, by their acting Arts,
Wherin men saw their faults, thogh ne'r so small:
Yet some she guerdond not, to their desarts;
But, othersome, were but ill-Action all:
Who while they acted ill, ill staid behinde,
(By custome of their maners) in their minde.
78
If maners make mens fortunes good, or bad,
According to those maners, bad, or good,
Then men, ill-manner'd, still are ill bestad;
Because, by Fortune, they are still withstood:
Ah, were it so, I muse how those men had
Among them some that swamme in Foizons flood;
*Whose maners were but apish at the best*;
But Fortune made their fortunes but a Iest.
79
There were knights-arrant, that in Fortunes spite,
(Because they could not king it as they would)
Did play the Kings, at least prowd kings in sight,
And oft were prowder then a Caesar should:
Yet Nature made them men by Fortunes might,
And Fortune made them Natures Zanees bold:
So those, in nature, Fortune flowted so,
That though she made them Kings, she kept them low.
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SONNET 111 - Shakespeare
O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means which public MANNERS breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand:
Pity me then and wish I were renew'd;
Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink
Potions of eisel 'gainst my strong infection
No bitterness that I will bitter think,
Nor double penance, to correct correction.
Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye
Even that your pity is enough to cure me.
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In Rank, Manners and Display: The Gentlemanly House, 1500-1750, Nicholas Cooper
Shaftesbury, pupil of Locke and philosopher of the Revolution of 1688, made express connections between patriotism, the aristocratic principle, reason, morality and aesthetics. Properly ordered, houses and their surroundings were models of a higher mind set, connecting appropriate architectural display to both morality and manners. Though worked out by Shaftesbury, such an equation of aesthetics, morals and politeness was of course long established. The language of earlier writers is loaded with terms of moral opprobrium. Evelyn had written that ‘it is from the asymmetrie of our buildings, want of decorum and proportion in our Houses, that the irregularity of our humours and affections may be shrewdly discern’d.'
