ABSTRACT

Few subjects are more nearly allied than vulgarity and affectation. It may be said of them truly that 'thin partitions do their bounds divide.' The author hardly knows which is to be regarded with most distaste, the vulgar aping the genteel, or the genteel constantly sneering at and endeavouring to distinguish themselves from the vulgar. The spirit of gentility is the mere essence of spleen and affectation; — of affected delight in its own would-be qualifications, and of ineffable disdain poured out upon the involuntary blunders or accidental disadvantages of those whom it chooses to treat as its inferiors. Simplicity is not vulgarity; but the looking to affectation of any sort for distinction is. With some speculators the modern philosophy has deadened and distorted all the natural affections: and before abstract ideas and the mischievous refinements of literature were introduced, nothing was to be met with in the primeval state of society but simplicity and pastoral innocence of manners.