POPE. 395 



writing they endure not (unless haply imbued with for- 

 eign manners) to descend to those words of imaginary 

 servitude which the refinement (blandities) of ages hath 

 invented." * Yet their fondness of foreign fashions had 

 long been the butt of native satirists. Every one re- 

 members Portia's merry' picture of the English lord : 

 '• How oddly he is suited ! I think he bought his doub- 

 let in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in 

 Germany, and his behavior everywhere." But while 

 she lauo-hs at his bungling efforts to mai^e himself a cos- 

 mopolite in externals, she hints at the persistency of 

 his inward Anglicism : " He hath neither Latin, French, 

 nor Italian." In matters of taste the Anglo-Saxon mind 

 seems always to have felt a painful distrust of itself, 

 which it betrays either in an affectation of burly con- 

 tempt or in a pretence of admiration equally insincere. 

 The young lords who were to make the future court of 

 Charles II. no doubt found in Paris an elegance beside 

 which the homely bluntness of native manners seemed 

 rustic and underbred. They frequented a theatre where 

 propriety was absolute upon the stage, though license 

 had its full swing behind the scenes. They brought 

 home with them to England debauched morals and 

 that urbane discipline of manners which is so agree- 

 able a substitute for discipline of mind. The word 

 " genteel " came back with them, an outward symptom 

 of the inward change. In the last generation, the men 

 whose great aim was success in the Other World had 

 wrought a political revolution ; now, those whose ideal 

 was prosperity in This World were to have their turn 

 and to accomplish with their lighter weapons as great a 

 change. Before the end of the seventeenth century 

 John Bull was pretty well persuaded, in a bewildered 

 kind of way, that he had been vulgar, and especially 



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



