Treatise On Good Manners And Good
Breeding

      – Jonathan Swift

Good manners is the art of making
those people easy with whom we converse.

Whoever makes the fewest persons
uneasy is the best bred in the company.

As the best law is founded upon
reason, so are the best manners. And as some lawyers have introduced
unreasonable things into common law, so likewise many teachers have introduced
absurd things into common good manners.

One principal point of this art is to
suit our behaviour to the three several degrees of men; our superiors, our
equals, and those below us.

For instance, to press either of the
two former to eat or drink is a breach of manners; but a farmer or a tradesman
must be thus treated, or else it will be difficult to persuade them that they
are welcome.

Pride, ill nature, and want of sense,
are the three great sources of ill manners: without some one of these defects,
no man will behave himself ill for want of experience; or of what, in the
language of fools, is called knowing the world.

I defy any one to assign an incident
wherein reason will not direct us what we are to say or do in company, if we
are not misled by pride or ill nature.

Therefore I insist that good sense is
the principal foundation of good manners; but because the former is a gift
which very few among mankind are possessed of, therefore all the civilized
nations of the world have agreed upon fixing some rules for common behaviour,
best suited to their general customs, or fancies, as a kind of artificial good
sense, to supply the defects of reason. Without which the gentlemanly part of
dunces would be perpetually at cuffs, as they seldom fail when they happen to
be drunk, or engaged in squabbles about women or play. And, God be thanked,
there hardly happens a duel in a year, which may not be imputed to one of those
three motives. Upon which account, I should be exceedingly sorry to find the
legislature make any new laws against the practice of duelling; because the
methods are easy and many for a wise man to avoid a quarrel with honour, or
engage in it with innocence. And I can discover no political evil in suffering
bullies, sharpers, and rakes, to rid the world of each other by a method of
their own; where the law hath not been able to find an expedient. As the common
forms of good manners were intended for regulating the conduct of those who
have weak understandings; so they have been corrupted by the persons for whose
use they were contrived. For these people have fallen into a needless and
endless way of multiplying ceremonies, which have been extremely troublesome to
those who practise them, and insupportable to everybody else: insomuch that
wise men are often more uneasy at the over civility of these refiners, than
they could possibly be in the conversations of peasants or mechanics.

The impertinencies of this ceremonial
behaviour are nowhere better seen than at those tables where ladies preside,
who value themselves upon account of their good breeding; where a man must
reckon upon passing an hour without doing any one thing he has a mind to;
unless he will be so hardy to break through all the settled decorum of the
family. She determines what he loves best, and how much he shall eat; and if
the master of the house happens to be of the same disposition, he proceeds in
the same tryrannical manner to prescribe in the drinking part: at the same
time, you are under the necessity of answering a thousand apologies for your
entertainment. And although a good deal of this humour is pretty well worn off
among many people of the best fashion, yet too much of it still remains,
especially in the country; where an honest gentleman assured me, that having
been kept four days, against his will, at a friend’s house, with all the
circumstances of hiding his boots, locking up the stable, and other
contrivances of the like nature, he could not remember, from the moment he came
into the house to the moment he left it, any one thing, wherein his inclination
was not directly contradicted; as if the whole family had entered into a
combination to torment him.

But, besides all this, it would be
endless to recount the many foolish and ridiculous accidents I have observed
among these unfortunate proselytes to ceremony. I have seen a duchess fairly
knocked down, by the precipitancy of an officious coxcomb running to save her
the trouble of opening a door. I remember, upon a birthday at court, a great
lady was utterly desperate by a dish of sauce let fall by a page directly upon
her head-dress and brocade, while she gave a sudden turn to her elbow upon some
point of ceremony with the person who sat next her. Monsieur Buys, the Dutch
envoy, whose politics and manners were much of a size, brought a son with him,
about thirteen years old, to a great table at court. The boy and his father,
whatever they put on their plates, they first offered round in order, to every
person in the company; so that we could not get a minute’s quiet during the
whole dinner. At last their two plates happened to encounter, and with so much
violence, that, being china, they broke in twenty pieces, and stained half the
company with wet sweetmeats and cream.

There is a pedantry in manners, as in
all arts and sciences; and sometimes in trades. Pedantry is properly the
overrating of any kind of knowledge we pretend to. And if that kind of
knowledge be a trifle in itself, the pedantry is the greater. For which reason
I look upon fiddlers, dancing-masters, heralds, masters of the ceremony,
&c. to be greater pedants than Lipsius, or the elder Scaliger. With these
kind of pedants, the court, while I knew it, was always plentifully

stocked; I mean from the gentleman
usher (at least) inclusive, downwards to the gentleman porter; who are,
generally speaking, the most insignificant race of people that this island can
afford, and with the smallest tincture of good manners, which is the only trade
they profess. For being wholly illiterate, and conversing chiefly with each
other, they reduce the whole system of breeding within the forms and circles of
their several offices: and as they are below the notice of ministers, they live
and die in court under all revolutions with great obsequiousness to those who
are in any degree of favour or credit, and with rudeness or insolence to
everybody else. Whence I have long concluded, that good manners are not a plant
of the court growth: for if they were, those people who have understandings
directly of a level for such acquirements, and who have served such long
apprenticeships to nothing else, would certainly have picked them up. For as to
the great officers, who attend the prince’s person or councils, or preside in
his family, they are a transient body, who have no better a title to good
manners than their neighbours, nor will probably have recourse to gentlemen
ushers for instruction. So that I know little to be learned at court upon this
head, except in the material circumstance of dress; wherein the authority of
the maids of honour must indeed be allowed to be almost equal to that of a
favourite actress.

I remember a passage my Lord
Bolingbroke told me; that going to receive Prince Eugene of Savoy at his
landing, in order to conduct him immediately to the Queen, the prince said, he
was much concerned that he could not see her Majesty that night; for Monsieur
Hoffman (who was then by) had assured his Highness that he could not be
admitted into her presence with a tied-up periwig; that his equipage was not
arrived; and that he had endeavoured in vain to borrow a long one among all his
valets and pages. My lord turned the matter into a jest, and brought the Prince
to her Majesty; for which he was highly censured by the whole tribe of
gentlemen ushers; among whom Monsieur Hoffman, an old dull resident of the
Emperor’s, had picked up this material point of ceremony; and which, I believe,
was the best lesson he had learned in five-and-twenty years’ residence.

I make a difference between good
manners and good breeding; although, in order to vary my expression, I am
sometimes forced to confound them. By the first, I only understand the art of
remembering and applying certain settled forms of general behaviour. But good
breeding is of a much larger extent; for besides an uncommon degree of
literature sufficient to qualify a gentleman for reading a play, or a political
pamphlet, it takes in a great compass of knowledge; no less than that of
dancing, fighting, gaming, making the circle of Italy, riding the great horse,
and speaking French; not to mention some other secondary, or subaltern
accomplishments, which are more easily acquired. So that the difference between
good breeding and good manners lies in this, that the former cannot be attained
to by the best understandings, without study and labour; whereas a tolerable
degree of reason will instruct us in every part of good manners, without other
assistance.

I can think of nothing more useful
upon this subject than to point out some particulars, wherein the very
essentials of good manners are concerned, the neglect or perverting of which
doth very much disturb the good commerce of the world, by introducing a traffic
of mutual uneasiness in most companies.

First, a necessary part of good
manners, is a punctual observance of time at our own dwellings, or those of
others, or at third places, whether upon matter of civility, business, or
diversion: which rule, though it be a plain dictate of common reason, yet the
greatest minister I ever knew was the greatest trespasser against it; by which
all his business doubled upon him, and placed him in a continual arrear. Upon
which I often used to rally him, as deficient in point of good manners. I have
known more than one ambassador, and secretary of state with a very moderate
portion of intellectuals, execute their offices with good success and applause,
by the mere force of exactness and regularity. If you duly observe time for the
service of another, it doubles the obligation; if upon your own account, it
would be manifest folly, as well as ingratitude, to neglect it. If both are
concerned, to make your equal or inferior attend on you, to his own
disadvantage, is pride and injustice.

Ignorance of forms cannot properly be
styled ill manners; because forms are subject to frequent changes, and
consequently, being not founded upon reason, are beneath a wise man’s regard.
Besides, they vary in every country; and after a short period of time, very frequently
in the same; so that a man who travels, must needs be at first a stranger to
them in every court through which he passes; and perhaps at his return, as much
a stranger in his own; and after all, they are easier to be remembered or
forgotten than faces or names.

Indeed, among the many impertinences
that superficial young men bring with them from abroad, this bigotry of forms
is one of the principal, and more prominent than the rest; who look upon them
not only as if they were matters capable of admitting of choice, but even as
points of importance; and are therefore zealous on all occasions to introduce
and propagate the new forms and fashions they have brought back with them; so
that, usually speaking, the worst bred person in the company is a young
traveller just returned from abroad.