It Would Be Absurd To
Conclude That The Welch Or Highlanders Are A Gigantic People,
Because Those Mountains May Have Produced A Few Individuals Near
Seven Feet High.
It would be equally absurd to suppose the French
are a nation of philosophers, because France has given birth to a
Des Cartes, a Maupertuis, a Reaumur, and a Buffon.
I shall not even deny, that the French are by no means deficient
in natural capacity; but they are at the same time remarkable for
a natural levity, which hinders their youth from cultivating that
capacity. This is reinforced by the most preposterous education,
and the example of a giddy people, engaged in the most frivolous
pursuits. A Frenchman is by some Jesuit, or other monk, taught to
read his mother tongue, and to say his prayers in a language he
does not understand. He learns to dance and to fence, by the
masters of those noble sciences. He becomes a compleat
connoisseur in dressing hair, and in adorning his own person,
under the hands and instructions of his barber and valet de
chambre. If he learns to play upon the flute or the fiddle, he is
altogether irresistible. But he piques himself upon being
polished above the natives of any other country by his
conversation with the fair sex. In the course of this
communication, with which he is indulged from his tender years,
he learns like a parrot, by rote, the whole circle of French
compliments, which you know are a set of phrases ridiculous even
to a proverb; and these he throws out indiscriminately to all
women, without distinction in the exercise of that kind of
address, which is here distinguished by the name of gallantry: it
is no more than his making love to every woman who will give him
the hearing. It is an exercise, by the repetition of which he
becomes very pert, very familiar, and very impertinent. Modesty,
or diffidence, I have already said, is utterly unknown among
them, and therefore I wonder there should be a term to express
it in their language.
If I was obliged to define politeness, I should call it, the art
of making one's self agreeable. I think it an art that
necessarily implies a sense of decorum, and a delicacy of
sentiment. These are qualities, of which (as far as I have been
able to observe) a Frenchman has no idea; therefore he never can
be deemed polite, except by those persons among whom they are as
little understood. His first aim is to adorn his own person with
what he calls fine cloaths, that is the frippery of the fashion.
It is no wonder that the heart of a female, unimproved by reason,
and untinctured with natural good sense, should flutter at the
sight of such a gaudy thing, among the number of her admirers:
this impression is enforced by fustian compliments, which her own
vanity interprets in a literal sense, and still more confirmed by
the assiduous attention of the gallant, who, indeed, has nothing
else to mind. A Frenchman in consequence of his mingling with the
females from his infancy, not only becomes acquainted with all
their customs and humours; but grows wonderfully alert in
performing a thousand little offices, which are overlooked by
other men, whose time hath been spent in making more valuable
acquisitions. He enters, without ceremony, a lady's bed-chamber,
while she is in bed, reaches her whatever she wants, airs her
shift, and helps to put it on. He attends at her toilette,
regulates the distribution of her patches, and advises where to
lay on the paint. If he visits her when she is dressed, and
perceives the least impropriety in her coeffure, he insists upon
adjusting it with his own hands: if he sees a curl, or even a
single hair amiss, he produces his comb, his scissars, and
pomatum, and sets it to rights with the dexterity of a professed
friseur. He 'squires her to every place she visits, either on
business, or pleasure; and, by dedicating his whole time to her,
renders himself necessary to her occasions. This I take to be the
most agreeable side of his character: let us view him on the
quarter of impertinence. A Frenchman pries into all your secrets
with the most impudent and importunate curiosity, and then
discloses them without remorse. If you are indisposed, he
questions you about the symptoms of your disorder, with more
freedom than your physician would presume to use; very often in
the grossest terms. He then proposes his remedy (for they are all
quacks), he prepares it without your knowledge, and worries you
with solicitation to take it, without paying the least regard to
the opinion of those whom you have chosen to take care of your
health. Let you be ever so ill, or averse to company, he forces
himself at all times into your bed-chamber, and if it is
necessary to give him a peremptory refusal, he is affronted. I
have known one of those petit maitres insist upon paying regular
visits twice a day to a poor gentleman who was delirious; and he
conversed with him on different subjects, till he was in his
last agonies. This attendance is not the effect of attachment, or
regard, but of sheer vanity, that he may afterwards boast of his
charity and humane disposition: though, of all the people I have
ever known, I think the French are the least capable of feeling
for the distresses of their fellow creatures. Their hearts are
not susceptible of deep impressions; and, such is their levity,
that the imagination has not time to brood long over any
disagreeable idea, or sensation. As a Frenchman piques himself on
his gallantry, he no sooner makes a conquest of a female's heart,
than he exposes her character, for the gratification of his
vanity. Nay, if he should miscarry in his schemes, he will forge
letters and stories, to the ruin of the lady's reputation.
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