POPE. 343 



code of society is stronger with most persons than that of 

 Sinai, and many a man who would not scruple to thrust his 

 fingers in his neighbour s pocket would forego green peas 

 rather than use his knife as a shovel. The submission with 

 which the greater number surrender their natural likings 

 for the acquired taste of what for the moment is called the 

 World is a highly curious phenomenon, and, however 

 destructive of originality, is the main safeguard of society 

 and nurse of civility. Anyone who has witnessed the 

 torments of an honest citizen in a foreign gallery before 

 some hideous martyrdom which he feels it his duty to 

 admire, though it be hateful to him as nightmare, may well 

 doubt whether the gridiron of the saint were hotter than 

 that of the sinner. It is only a great mind or a strong 

 character that knows how to respect its own provincialism 

 and can dare to be in fashion with itself. The bewildered 

 clown with his &quot;Am I Giles? or am I not 1 &quot; was but a type 

 of the average man who finds himself uniformed, drilled, and 

 keeping step, whether he will or no, with the company into 

 which destiny or chance has drafted him, and which is 

 marching him inexorably away from everything that made 

 him comfortable. 



The insularity of England, while it fostered pride and 

 reserve, entailed also that sensitiveness to ridicule which 

 haunts pride like an evil genius. &quot;The English,&quot; says 

 Barclay, writing half a century before the Restoration, 

 &quot; have for the most part grave minds, and withdrawn, as 

 it were, into themselves for counsel \ they wonderfully 

 admire themselves and the manners, genius, and spirit 

 of their own nation. In salutation or in writing they 

 endure not (unless haply imbued with foreign manners) 

 to descend to those words of imaginary servitude which 

 the refinement (blandities) of ages hath invented.&quot;* Yet 

 their fondness of foreign fashions had long been the butt of 

 native satirists. Everyone remembers Portia s merry pic 

 ture of the English lord : &quot; How oddly he is suited ! I 

 think he bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in 

 * Bardaii Satyricon, p. 382. Barclay had lived in France. 



