For Centuries The Marks Of A Gentleman Had Been Bravery, Courtesy
And A Good Seat In The Saddle, And It
Was not to be supposed that a
sudden fashionable enthusiasm for literature could change all that.
Ascham had declared that
The Elizabethan young bloods thought it
shameful to be learned because the "Jentlemen of France" were not
so.[208] When with the general relaxation of high effort which appeared
in so many ways at the Court of James I., the mastery of Greek authors
was no longer an ideal of the courtier, the Jacobean gallant was hardly
more intellectual than the mediaeval page. Henry Peacham, in 1623,
described noblemen's flagging faith in a university education. They sent
their sons to Oxford or Cambridge at an early age, and if the striplings
did not immediately lay hold on philosophy, declared that they had no
aptitude for learning, and removed them to a dancing school. "These
young things," as he calls the Oxford students "of twelve, thirteene, or
foureteene, that have no more care than to expect the next Carrier, and
where to sup on Fridayes and Fasting nights" find "such a disproportion
betweene Aristotles Categories, and their childish capacities, that what
together with the sweetnesse of libertie, varietie of companie, and so
many kinds of recreation in towne and fields abroad," they give over any
attempt to understand "the crabbed grounds of Arts." Whereupon, the
parents, "if they perceive any wildnesse or unstayednesse in their
children, are presently in despaire, and out of all hope of them for
ever prooving Schollers, or fit for anything else; neither consider the
nature of youth, nor the effect of time, the Physitian of all. But to
mend the matter, send them either to the Court to serve as Pages, or
into France and Italy to see fashions, and mend their manners, where
they become ten times worse."[209]
The influence of France would not be towards books, certainly. Brave,
gallant, and magnificent were the Gallic gentlemen; but not learned.
Reading made them positively ill: "la tete leur tourne de lire," as
Breze confessed.[210] Scorning an indoor sedentary life, they left all
civil offices to the bourgeoisie, and devoted themselves exclusively to
war. As the Vicomte D'Avenel has crisply put it:
"It would have seemed as strange to see a person of high rank the
Treasurer of France, the Controller of Finance, or the Rector of a
University, as it would be to see him a cloth-merchant or maker of
crockery.... The poorest younger son of an ancient family, who would not
disdain to engage himself as a page to a nobleman, or as a common
soldier, would have thought himself debased by accepting the post of
secretary to an ambassador."[211]
Brute force was still considered the greatest power in the world, even
when Sully was Conseiller d'Etat, though divining spirits like Eustache
Deschamps had declared that the day would come when serving-men would
rule France by their wits, all because the noblesse would not learn
letters.[212] In vain the wise Bras-de-Fer warned his generation that
glory and strength of limb were of short duration, while knowledge was
the only immortal quality.[213] As long as parents saw that the honours
at Court went to handsome horsemen, they thought it mistaken policy to
waste money on book-learning for their sons.
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