XIX. A CHAPTER ON MANNERS.
Whatever the people of the Middle Ages may have been in morals, their manners are supposed to have been about as lacking in refinement as possible. As for nearly everything else, however, this impression is utterly false, and is due to the assumption that because we are better-mannered than the generations of a century or two ago, therefore we must be almost infinitely in advance, in the same respect, of the people of seven centuries ago. There are ups and downs in manners, however, as there are in education, and the beginnings of the formal setting forth of modern manners are, like everything else modern, to be found in the Thirteenth Century. About the year 1215 Thomasin Zerklaere wrote in German a rather lengthy treatise, Der Wälsche Gast, on manners. It contains most of the details of polite conduct that have been accepted in later times. Not long afterwards, John Garland, an Oxford man who had lived in France for many years, wrote a book on manners for English young men. He meant this to be a supplement to Dionysius Cato's treatise, written probably in the Fourth Century in Latin, which was concerned more with morals than manners and had been very popular during the Middle Ages. Garland's book was the first of a series of such treatises on manners which appeared in England at the close of the Middle Ages. Many of them have been recently republished, and are a revelation of the development of manners among our English forefathers. The book is usually alluded to in literature as Liber Faceti, or as Facet; the full title was, "The Book of the Polite Man, Teaching Manners for Men, Especially for Boys, as a Supplement to those which were Omitted by the Most Moral Cato." The "Romance of the Rose" has, of course, many references to manners which show us how courtesy was cultivated in France. In Italy, Dante's teacher, Bruneto Latini, published his "Tesoretto," which treats of manners, and which was soon followed by a number of similar treatises in [{453}] Italian. In a word, we must look to the Thirteenth Century for the origin, or at least the definite acceptance, of most of those conventions which make for kindly courtesy among men, and have made possible human society and friendly intercourse in our modern sense of those words.
We are prone to think that refinement in table manners is a matter of distinctly modern times. In "The Babees' Book," which is one of the oldest books of English manners, the date of which in its present form is about the middle of the Fourteenth Century, many of our rules of politeness at table are anticipated. This book is usually looked upon as a compilation from preceding times, and the original of it is supposed to be from the preceding century. A few quotations from it will show how closely it resembles our own instructions to children:
"Thou shalt not laugh nor speak nothing
While thy mouth be full of meat or drink;
Nor sup thou not with great sounding
Neither pottage nor other thing.
At meat cleanse not thy teeth, nor pick
With knife or straw or wand or stick.
While thou holdest meat in mouth, beware
To drink; that is an unhonest chare;
And also physic forbids it quite.
Also eschew, without strife.
To foul the board cloth with thy knife.
Nor blow not on thy drink or meat,
Neither for cold, neither for heat.
Nor bear with meat thy knife to mouth.
Whether thou be set by strong or couth.
Lean not on elbow at thy meat,
Neither for cold nor for heat.
Dip not thy thumb thy drink into;
Thou art uncourteous if thou it do.
In salt-cellar if thou put
Or fish or flesh that men see it,
That is a vice, as men me tells;
And great wonder it would be else."
The directions, "how to behave thyself in talking with any man," in one of these old books, are very minute and specific:—
"If a man demand a question of thee.
In thine answer making be not too hasty;
Weigh well his words, the case understand
Ere an answer to make thou take in hand;
Else may he judge in thee little wit,
To answer to a thing and not hear it.
Suffer his tale whole out to be told.
Then speak thou mayst, and not be controlled;
In audible voice thy words do thou utter,
Not high nor low, but using a measure.
Thy words see that thou pronounce plaine.
And that they spoken be not in vain;
In uttering whereon keep thou an order,
Thy matter thereby thou shalt much forder
Which order if thou do not observe.
From the purpose needs must thou swerve."