he will admit that such was the case; he admits that it was
a love of principle, rather than an over-regard for gentility, which
prevented the hero from accepting, when on the brink of starvation, an
ungenteel though lucrative office, an office which, the writer begs leave
to observe, many a person with a great regard for gentility, and no
particular regard for principle, would in a similar strait have accepted;
for when did a mere love for gentility keep a person from being a dirty
scoundrel, when the alternatives apparently were "either to be a dirty
scoundrel or starve"? One thing, however, is certain, which is, that
Lavengro did not accept the office, which if a love for what is low had
been his ruling passion he certainly would have done; consequently, he
refuses to do one thing which no genteel person would willingly do, even
as he does many things which every genteel person would gladly do, for
example speaks Italian, rides on horseback, associates with a fashionable
young man, dines with a rich genius, et cetera. Yet--and it cannot be
minced--he and gentility with regard to many things are at strange
divergency; he shrinks from many things at which gentility placidly hums
a tune, or approvingly simpers, and does some things at which gentility
positively sinks. He will not run into debt for clothes or lodgings,
which he might do without any scandal to gentility; he will not receive
money from Francis Ardry, and go to Brighton with the sister of Annette
Le Noir, though there is nothing ungenteel in borrowing money from a
friend, even when you never intend to repay him, and something poignantly
genteel in going to a watering-place with a gay young Frenchwoman; but he
has no objection, after raising twenty pounds by the sale of that
extraordinary work "Joseph Sell," to set off into the country, mend
kettles under hedge-rows, and make pony and donkey shoes in a dingle.
Here, perhaps, some plain, well-meaning person will cry--and with much
apparent justice--how can the writer justify him in this act? What
motive, save a love for what is low, could induce him to do such things?
Would the writer have everybody who is in need of recreation go into the
country, mend kettles under hedges, and make pony shoes in dingles? To
such an observation the writer would answer, that Lavengro had an
excellent motive in doing what he did, but that the writer is not so
unreasonable as to wish everybody to do the same. It is not every