| Citation |
BG.736.006
4-11 Oct 1736:11,12,21,22 (874)
"[From a late magazine] All the world cried, there goes a
gentleman: -- And, when you have said gentleman, you have
said every thing.
The author of my motto, pronounc'd it, in a sense,
different from that useful one, I propose to consider it in.
For the sake of some thousand pretty gentlemen about town,
whose eyes are too full of themselves, to discover the force
of this saying, I will lend 'em the light of a Peruvian
manuscript.
A descendant of one of the great men of the happy island
of Solomon becoming a gentleman, to so improv'd a degree, as
to despise the good qualities which had originally ennobled
his family, thought of nothing, but how to support and
distinguish his dignity, by the pride of an arrogant mind,
and a disposition abandon'd to pleasure."
[Moralistic story. A strip of overgrown marsh between the
gentleman's property and the sea protected animals the
gentleman hunted. He decided to obtain the property, but it
belonged to a mechanick basket maker who refused to sell.
Complaints to the King made the King relegate both to a
barbarous island. P.1, col. 2, 3d para from bott.:]
The place, in which they were landed, was a marsh, under
cover of whose flags, the gentleman was in hopes to conceal
himself, and give the slip, to a companion whom he thought
it a disgrace, to be found with [the basketmaker]. But, the
lights, in the galley, having given an alarm to the savages,
a considerable body of them came down; and discover'd, in
the morning, the two strangers.
Setting up a dismal yell, they surrounded them; and
advancing, seem'd determin'd to dispatch them with their
clubs. Here the gentleman began to discover, that the
superiority of his blood was imaginary: For, between a
consciousness of shame and cold, under the nakedness he had
never been us'd to; ---a fear of the event, from the
fierceness of the savages approach;---and the want of an
idea, whereby to soften their asperity, he fell behind the
poor sharer of his calamity; and, with an unmanly
sneakingness of mien, gave up the post of honour; and made a
leader of the very man whom he thought it a disgrace, to
consider as a companion.
The basket maker, on the contrary, to whom poverty had
made nakedness habitual, --- to whom, a life of pain,
represented death, as not dreadful; and, whose remembrance
of his skill, of which these savages were ignorant,. . . [5
lines][P.2,col.1, para.2:]
It was not long, before he [the gentleman] had wreath'd a
pretty coronet; and rising, with respect, and fearlessness,
approach'd the chief, and placed it, gently on his head;
whose figure, under this new ornament, so charm'd his
followers, that they threw down all their clubs, and form'd
a dance of welcome and congradulation, round the author of
so priz'd a favour; each shewing an impatience to be made as
fine as his captain: . . .
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