, though they treat of low life in all its branches. It is in
their _finery_ that the new under school are _most_ vulgar, and they may
be known by this at once; as what we called at Harrow 'a Sunday blood'
might be easily distinguished from a gentleman, although his clothes
might be better cut, and his boots the best blackened, of the
two;--probably because he made the one or cleaned the other with his own
hands.

"In the present case, I speak of writing, not of persons. Of the latter,
I know nothing; of the former, I judge as it is found. * * They may be
honourable and _gentlemanly_ men, for what I know, but the latter
quality is studiously excluded from their publications. They remind me
of Mr. Smith and the Miss Broughtons at the Hampstead Assembly, in
'Evelina.' In these things (in private life, at least) I pretend to some
small experience: because, in the course of my youth, I have seen a
little of all sorts of society, from the Christian prince and the
Mussulman sultan and pacha, and the higher ranks of their countries,
down to the London boxer, the '_flash and the swell_,' the Spanish
muleteer, the wandering Turkish dervise, the Scotch Highlander, and the
Albanian robber;--to say nothing of the curious varieties of Italian
social life. Far be it from me to presume that there are now, or can be,
such a thing as an _aristocracy_ of _poets_; but there _is_ a nobility
of thought and of style, open to all stations, and derived partly from
talent, and partly from education,--which is to be found in Shakspeare,
and Pope, and Burns, no less than in Dante and Alfieri, but which is
nowhere to be perceived in the mock birds and bards of Mr. Hunt's little
chorus. If I were asked to define what this gentlemanliness is, I should
say that it is only to be defined by _examples_--of those who have it,
and those who have it not. In _life_, I should say that most _military_
men have it, and few _naval_; that several men of rank have it, and few
lawyers; that it is more frequent among authors than divines (when they
are not pedants); that _fencing_-masters have more of it than
dancing-masters, and singers than players; and that (if it be not _an
Irishism_ to say so) it is far more generally diffused among women than
among men. In poetry, as well as writing in general, it will never
_make_ entirely a poet or a poem; but neither poet nor poem will ever be
good for any thing without it. It is the _salt_ of society, and the
seasoning of