On Good-Manners and Good-Breeding

Summary

Headnote

Possibly composed 1714–27; posthumously published; copy text 1754a (see Textual Account).

This posthumously published piece is placed in the present volume with two other treatments of related topics (‘Hints towards an Essay on Conversation’ and ‘Hints on Good Manners’). Although the present essay is fuller and more polished than ‘Hints on Good Manners’ (apparently dating from 1727 or later), Davis drew attention to its emphasis on Swift's experiences at the court of Queen Anne, and concluded that ‘it is certainly not an elaboration of the Hints; it seems indeed to have been written first’, thus weighing against previous speculations of a possible relation to the Intelligencer. For its relation to Harrison's Tatler 20, see Headnote to that work. For its relation to Swift's wider thinking about courtesy and conversation, see Introduction above.

ON GOODMANNERS AND GOOD-BREEDING.

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 illmanners; 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 incident4 wherein reason will not direct us what we are to say or to do in company, if we are not misled by pride or ill-nature.