Spenser's Irish loafer, in addition to the laziness characteristic of a loafer, may be regarded as representing a mingled feeling of distaste to brutalizing servile labor, and of aspiration for the freedom which other conditions promise. But not only he scorneth to work, "but thenceforth becometh either an horseboy or a stocah (attendant) to some kerne, (Irish footsoldier,) inuring himself to his weapon, and to the gentlemanly trade of stealing, - as they count it." In those contentious sword-andbuckler days, when roads were few and bad, and constables inadequate, an Irish horseboy had privileges and perquisites not enjoyed by his successors; and that foot-soldiers had attendants seems to imply a light, marauding life, where opportunities were good for dining without earning a dinner. You observe that this gentleman founds his vocation upon his blood; for it was only when he, by a fanciful amplification of finest filaments into tough cords, could bind himself to an old family, that he felt entitled to scorn work and betake him "to the gentlemanly trade of stealing." Nor should we be too hard upon this terraqueous buccaneer, this ancient Hibernian Bedouin, who imagined himself a gentleman. The civilized nineteenth century engenders imaginations not less bewrayed. Nor need we cross the Atlantic to find his present counterpart in higher strata of the social crust, - in individuals who, within the pale of the statute and without violent infraction of the usages of trade, do virtually steal, or suck and grind the poor, or blow attainting breath on female purity, or, under the ægis of legal forms, defraud justice of her dues; and who, nevertheless, are met in the circles of fashion, and pass there for gentlemen. Since Spenser's day, many forward and upward steps have been made; but still palpable in the social as in other provinces of life is the usurpation of form over substance, of appearance over reality, of sight over insight, of seem over be. In our endeavor to thrust aside some of the veils that obscure our subject, to cleanse it of the cheap varnish that defaces a solid, brilliant ground, let us go back for a few moments more to the learned, invaluable Richardson, who, with his searching exhaustive industry, under the head of gent and its derivatives, gives more than eighty citations out of English authors, from Robert of Glocester and Piers Plowman to Gray and Gibbon. Roger Ascham, a generation further from us than Spenser, noted for his acquirements, the valued tutor of Queen Elizabeth, says in his Schole Master, "Some in France, which will needs be jentlemen, whether men will or no, and have more jentleshippe in their hat than their head, be at deadlie feude with both learning and honestie." Haberdashery and patentleather, in and out of France, are formidable adjuncts to much of modern "jentleshippe;" and a fair relation of the part played by velvet and satin in the social history of Christendom were a sprightly satire. Clothes have ever striven to symbolize gentlemanhood; and how well they have succeeded and continue to succeed, we have a gross example in the triumphant hypocrisy of the costly, super-fashionable dressing of the managers and decoys of luxurious gambling-halls, and of the better class of pickpockets. The chief tailor of Antwerp, - a man zealous and accomplished in his craft, once said to me, complaining of a wealthy customer, - and he spoke with earnestness and sympathy, -" Mr. does not do himself justice; that last froc I made him is threadbare; and you know, sir, a gentleman is known by his clothes." A somewhat hyperprofessional magnification of tailorship. But the shrewd, lively man perhaps felt, that the "jentleshippe" of many of his well-born customers did not lie so subterrenely deep, but that it might be largely aided by the virtue there was in the laying on of his proficient hands; and in his pride of calling was ready to declare, with a wider application than Polonius, "The apparel oft proclaims the man." One more citation from Richardson, drawn out of still deeper recesses of the past, from the very well-head of English poetry, - a brief sentence, fraught with that homely wisdom which has so much helped to keep the name of Chaucer fresh for five centuries. It is from The Persone's (Parson's) Tale : "Also to have pride of gentrie is right gret folie; for ofttime the gentrie of the bodie benimeth (taketh away) the gentrie of the soule; and also we ben all of one fader and one moder." I am tempted to add other four lines of Chaucer, from The Clerke's Tale, not quoted by Richardson: "For God it wot, that children often ben |