As for rich men, who not being of gentle birth, but growing to wealth by some means or other, imitate gentlemen in the education of their children, as if money made equality, and the purse were the ground of preferment, without any other consideration, who contemn the lower ranks from which they sprang, and cloister up their children as a support to their position, they are in the same case as regards freedom of choice, but far behind in true gentility. As they were of lower condition themselves, they might with more acceptance continue their children in the same kind of training which brought up the parents and made them so wealthy, and not try to push themselves into a rank too far beyond their humble origin. For of all the means to make a gentleman, money is the most vile. All other means have some sign of virtue, but this is too bad to mate either with high birth, or with great worth. For to become a gentleman is to bear the cognisance of virtue, to which honour is companion; the vilest devices are the readiest means to become most wealthy and ought not to look honour in the face. It may be pretended that intelligence and capacity have enabled them to make their way, but it is not denied that these qualities may be turned to the worst uses, may only once in a thousand times make a gentleman. It is not intelligence that deserves praise, but the matter to which it has been directed, and the manner in which it has been employed. When it is bestowed wisely on the good of the community, it deserveth all praise; if devoted wholly to filling a private purse, without regard to the means, so long as nothing evil is disclosed, then it deserveth no praise for the result, but rather suspicion as to the method of bringing it about. These people in their business will not scruple to bring poverty to thousands, and for giving a penny to one of these thousands they will be accounted charitable. They will give a scholar some pretty exhibition, in order to seem religious, and under a slender veil of counterfeit liberality will hide the spoil of ransacked poverty. And though they do not profess to be impoverishing people of set purpose, yet their kind of dealing doth pierce as it passeth.
But of these kind of folks I intend not to speak. My purpose is to employ my pains upon such as are gentlemen indeed. Yet it is worth that gives name and note to nobility; it is virtue that must endow it, or vice will undo it. As I wish well to this class, so I wish their education to be good, and if it were possible, even better than that of ordinary people. But that cannot be, for the common training, if it be well appointed, is the best and fittest for them, especially as they may have it in full, while those of meaner rank have to be content with it incomplete.
What makes a Gentleman.
Before I enter upon the training of gentlemen and show what is specially suitable for them, I will examine those points which are best got by good education, and being once got do adorn them most, which two considerations are not foreign to my purpose. I must first ask what it is to be a gentleman or a nobleman, and what qualities these terms assume to be present in the persons of those to whom they are applied, and afterwards, what are the causes and uses of gentility, and the reasons why it is so highly thought of.
But ere I begin to deal with any of these points, once for all I must recommend to those of gentle birth exercise of the body, and chiefly such kinds as besides benefiting their health shall best serve their calling and place in their country. Just as those qualities which I have set forth for the general training, being most easily compassed in their perfection by them, may very well beseem a gentlemanly mind, so may the physical exercises without exception be found useful, either to make a healthy body, seeing that our constitution is all the same, or to prepare them for such occupations as belong to their position. Is it not for a gentleman to follow the chase and to hunt? Doth their place reprove them if they have skill to dance? Is skill in sitting a horse no honour at home, no help abroad? Is the use of a weapon suitable to their calling any blemish to them? Indeed those great exercises are most proper to such persons and are not for those of meaner rank.
What is it then to be a nobleman or a gentleman? The people of this country are either gentlemen or of the commonalty. The latter is divided into those who are engaged in trade, and those who work with their hands. Their distinction is by wealth, for some of them, who have enough and more, are called rich men, some who have no more than enough, poor men, and some who have less than enough, beggars. There are also three ranks in gentility, the gentlemen, who are the cream of the common people, the noblemen, who are the flower of gentility, and the prince, who is the primate and pearl of nobility. Their difference is in authority, the prince having most, the nobleman coming next, and the gentlemen under both. To be virtuous or vicious, to be rich or poor, are no peculiar badge of either kind; a gentleman or a common man may alike be virtuous or vicious, rich or poor, with land or without it. But as the gentleman in any position must have the power of exercising his lawful authority there are some virtues that seem to belong to him specially, such as wisdom in policy, valour in execution, justice in forming decisions, modesty in demeanour. Whether gentility come by descent or desert makes no difference; he that giveth fame to his family first, or he that deserveth such honour, or he that adds to his heritage by noble means, is the man whom I mean. He that continueth what he received through descent from his ancestry, by desert in his own person, hath much to thank God for, and doth well deserve double honour among men, as bearing the true coat of arms of the best nobility, when desert for virtue is quartered with descent in blood, seeing that ancient lineage and inheritance of nobility are in such credit among us, and always have been. As gentility argueth a courteous, civil, well-disposed, sociable constitution of mind in a superior degree, so doth nobility imply all these and much more, in a higher rank with greater authority. And do not these distinctive qualities deserve help by good and virtuous education?
Learning useful to Noblemen.
Excellent wisdom, which is the means of advancing grave and politic counsellors, is but a single cause of preferment; likewise valour, which is the means of making a noble and gallant captain, is but a single cause of advancement; but where these two qualities, wisdom and courage, are combined in the same man, the merit is doubled. The means of preferment which depend upon learning are either martial, for war and defence in relation to foreign countries, or political, for peace and tranquillity at home. The warrior seems to depend most on his personal courage and experience, which without any learning or reading at all, have often brought forth excellent leaders, but with those helps in addition produce most rare and famous generals. Those who use the pen most in taking part in the direction of public government, or in filling the necessary offices in the administrative or judicial service of the State, for the common peace and quietness, without profession of further learning, though they have their chief instrument of credit from books, are not debtors to book-knowledge only, because industry, experience, and discretion have much to do with their success. It is those who depend wholly upon learning that I am most concerned with, when I ask how gentlemen should be trained to have them learned.
The highest position to which learned valour doth give advancement, is that of a wise counsellor, the fruit of whose learning is policy, not in the limited sense where it is opposed to straightforwardness, but in the philosophical sense, as meaning the general skill to judge things rightly, to see them in their due proportions, to adapt them to any given circumstances, with as little disturbance as possible to existing arrangements, whether it be in matters religious or secular, public or private, professional or industrial. Such a man is, in the sphere of religion, a divine who is able to judge soundly of the general principles and applications of divinity; in the sphere of government, a lawyer who makes the laws in the first instance, and knows best how to have them kept; in short he is the man, whether he be concerned with ecclesiastical or temporal affairs, and whatever his rank or his profession may be, who is most sound and able, and sufficient in all points. And though the specialist may know more than he in any particular matter which he has not leisure to get up thoroughly himself, yet he will be able to make such skilful and methodical enquiries of the special student that he will probe his knowledge to the bottom, and then handle the material he gains to better purpose than the other could with all his scholarship. Of all those that depend upon learning I hold this kind of man worthiest to be preferred, in divinity a chief among divines, though he do not preach, in law, the first of lawyers, though he do not plead, and similarly in all the other departments of public direction. But wherefore is all this? To show how necessary a thing it is to have young gentlemen well brought up. For if these causes do make the man of mean birth noble, what will they do in him whose honour is augmented with perpetual increase, if he add personal worth to his nobility in blood? Wherefore the necessity of the training being evidently so great, I will handle that as well as I can, by way of general precept, with reference to those whose wisdom is their weight, learning their line, justice their balance, honour their armour, and all the different virtues their greatest ornaments in the eyes of all men.