When I Talk Of The French Nation, I Must Again Except A Great
Number Of Individuals, From The General Censure.
Though I have a
hearty contempt for the ignorance, folly, and presumption which
characterise the generality, I cannot but respect the talents of
many great men, who have eminently distinguished themselves in
every art and science:
These I shall always revere and esteem as
creatures of a superior species, produced, for the wise purposes
of providence, among the refuse of mankind. 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.
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