CONTENTS.

ESSAY XVII. ON THE LOOK OF A GENTLEMAN

XVIII. ON READING OLD BOOKS

XIX. ON PERSONAL CHARACTER

PAGE

1

XXII. ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE: OR, ADVICE TC

116

130

141

161

176

XXV. ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS XXVI. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED XXVII. Mr FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS XXVIII. OF PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN XXIX. SHYNESS OF SCHOLARS XXX. ON OLD ENGLISH WRITERS AND SPEAKERS. 188

TABLE TALK.

ESSAY XVII.

On the Look of a Gentleman.

"The noblen-look? Yes, I know what you mean very well: that look which a noblemʼn should have, rather than what they have generally now. The Duke of Buckingham (Sheffield) was a genteel man, and had a great deal the look you speak of. Wycherley was a very genteel man, and had the nobleman-look as much as the Duke of Buckingham."-POPE.

"He instanced it too in Lord Peterborough, Lord Bolingbroke, Lord Hinchinbroke, the Duke of Bolton, and two or three more."-SPENCE's Anecdotes of Pope.

I HAVE chosen the above motto to a very delicate subject, which in prudence I might let alone. I, however, like the title; and will try, at least, to make a sketch of it.

What it is that constitutes the look of a gentleman is more easily felt than described. We all know it when we see it; but we do not know how to account for it, or to explain in what it consists. Causa latet, res ipsa notissima. Ease, grace, dignity, have been given as the exponents and expressive symbols of this look; but I would rather say, that an habitual self-possession determines the appearance of a gentleman. He should have the complete command not only over his countenance, but over his limbs and motions. In other words, he should discover in his air and manner a voluntary power over his whole body, which, with every inflexion of it, should be under the control of his will. It must be

Quere, Villiers, because in another place it is said, that "when the latter entered the presence-chamber, he attracted all eyes by the handsomeness of his person, and the gracefulness of his demeanor."

evident that he looks and does as he likes, without any restraint, confusion, or awkwardness. He is, in fact, master of his person, as the professor of an art or science is of a particular instrument; he directs it to what use he pleases and intends. Wherever this power and facility appear, we recognize the look and deportment of the gentleman, that is, of a person who by his habits and situation in life, and in his ordinary intercourse with society, has had little else to do than to study those movements, and that carriage of the body, which were accompanied with most sa sfaction to himself, and were calculated to excite the approbation of the beholder. Ease, it might be observed, is not enough; dignity is too much. There must be a certain retenu, a conscious decorum added to the first,-and a certain "familiarity of regard, quenching the austere countenance of control,” in the second, to answer to our conception of this character. Perhaps propriety is as near a word as any to denote the manners of the gentleman; elegance is necessary to the fine gentleman; dignity is proper to noblemen; and majesty to kings!

A

Wherever this constant and decent subjection of the body to the mind is visible in the customary actions of walking, sitting, riding, standing, speaking, &c., we draw the same conclusion as to the individual-whatever may be the impediments or unavoidable defects in the machine, of which he has the management. man may have a mean or disagreeable exterior, may halt in his gait, or have lost the use of half his limbs; and yet he may show this habitual attention to what is graceful and becoming in the use he makes of all the power he has left-in the “nice conduct” of the most unpromising and impracticable figure. A humpbacked or deformed man does not necessarily look like a clown or a mechanic; on the contrary, from his care in the adjustment of his appearance, and his desire to remedy his defects, he for the most part acquires something of the look of a gentleman. The comm.on nick-name of My Lord, applied to such persons, has allusion to this-to their circumspect deportment, and tacit re sistance to vulgar prejudice. Lord Ogleby, in the Clandestine Marriage, is as crazy a piece of elegance and refinement, even after he is “wound up for the day,” as can well be imagined; yet in the hands of a genuine actor, his tottering step, his twitches

of the gout, his unsuccessful attempts at youth and gaiety, take nothing from the nobleman. He has the idea! model in his mind, resents his deviations from it with proper horror, recovers himself from any ungraceful action as soon as possible: does all he can with his limited means, and fails in his just pretensions, not from inadvertence, but necessity. Sir Joseph Banks, who was almost bent double, retained to the last the look of a privy-counsellor. There was all the firmness and dignity that could be given by the sense of his own importance to so distorted and disabled a trunk. Sir Charles Bunbury, as he saunters down St. James's street, with a large slouched hat, a lack-lustre eye and aquiline nose, an old shabby drab-coloured coat, buttoned across his breast without a cape with old top-boots, and his hands in his waistcoat or breeches' pockets, as if he were strolling along his own gardenwalks, or over the turf at Newmarket, after having made his bets secure-presents nothing very dazzling, or graceful, or dignified to the imagination; though you can tell infallibly at the first glance, or even a bowshot off, that he is a gentleman of the first water (the same that sixty years ago married the beautiful Lady Sarah L-nn-x, with whom the king was in love). What is the - clue to this mystery? It is evident that his person costs him no more trouble than an old glove. His limbs are, from long practice, left to take care of themselves; they move of their own accord; he does not strut or stand on tip-toe to show

-"how tall

His person is above them all :"

but he seems to find his own level, and wherever he is, to slide into his place naturally; he is equally at home among lords or gamblers; nothing can discompose his fixed serenity of look and purpose; there is no mark of superciliousness about him, nor does it appear as if any thing could meet his eye to startle or throw him off his guard; he neither avoids nor courts notice; but the archaism of his dress may be understood to denote a lingering partiality for the costume of the last age, and something like a prescriptive contempt for the finery of this. The old one-eyed Duke of Queensberry is another example that I might quote. As he sat in his bow-window in Piccadilly, erect and emaciated, he