Harrison’s Tatler no. 20

Summary

Headnote

Published 1711; copy text 1735 (see Textual Account).

For Swift's involvement in Harrison's continuation of the Tatler, seeHeadnote to Harrison's Tatler no. 5. Bickerstaff's difficulty in getting away from his hosts recalls the Conclusion of the Tale, whose supposed author recalls experiences of ‘Visiting, where the Ceremony of taking Leave, has employ’d more Time than the whole Conversation before’. The advocacy of mutual comfort over ceremony is close to the views that Swift would express in ‘On Good-Manners and Good-Breeding’ and ‘Hints on Good Manners’; and the experience of oppressive hospitality thatBickerstaff here reports will be recalled in the complaint of the ‘honest gentleman’ who laments ‘having been kept four days, against his will, at a friend's house’.

THE TATLER. NUMBER X X .

—— Ingenuas didicisse fideliter Artes

EmollitMores. —— Ovid.

From Saturd. Mar. 3, to Tuesd. Mar. 6, 1710.

From my own Apartment in Channel-Row, March 5.

Those inferior Duties of Life which the French call les petites Morales, or the smaller Morals, are with us distinguished by the Name of Good Manners, or Breeding. This I look upon, in the general Notion of it, to be a Sort of artificial good Sense, adapted to the meanest Capacities; and introduced to make Mankind easy in their Commerce with each other. Low and little Understandings, without some Rules of this Kind, would be perpetually wandering into a Thousand Indecencies and Irregularities in Behaviour; and in their ordinary Conversation fall into the same boisterous Familiarities that one observes amongst them, when a Debauch has quite taken away the Use of their Reason. In other Instances, it is odd to consider, that for want of common Discretion, the very End of Good Breeding is wholly perverted; and Civility, intended to make us easy, is employed in laying Chains and Fetters upon us, in debarring us of our Wishes, and in crossing our most reasonable Desires and Inclinations. This Abuse reigns chiefly in the Country, as I found to my Vexation, when I was last there, in a Visit I made to a Neighbour about two Miles from my Cousin. As soon as I entered the Parlour, they put me into the great Chair that stood close by a huge Fire, and kept me there by Force, untill I was almost stifled.