Hints on Good Manners

Summary

Headnote

Probably composed after 1727; posthumously published; copy text 1765a (see Textual Account).

This posthumously published fragment is placed in the present volume with two items on related topics (‘Hints towards an Essay on Conversation’; ‘On Good-Manners and Good-Breeding’). Swift's claim to have known the court under four monarchs implies a date after his return to Ireland in 1727, shortly after the accession of George II. Woolley suggests that the piece may have been intended as an Intelligencer. The fragment also prompts comparisons with the conversation of the Houyhnhnms. For its possible relation to ‘On Good- Manners and Good-Breeding’, see Headnote to that work. For its relation to Swift's wider thinking about courtesy and conversation, see Introduction.

HINTS ON GOOD MANNERS

Good manners is the art ofmaking every reasonable person in the company easy, and to be easy ourselves.

What passeth for good-manners in the world, generally produceth quite contrary effects.

Many persons of both sexes, whom I have known, and who passed for well-bred in their own and the world's opinion, are the most troublesome in company to others and themselves.

Nothing is so great an instance of ill-manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; if you flatter only one or two, you affront the rest.

Flattery is the worst, and falsest way of shewing our esteem.

Where company meets, I am confident the few reasonable persons are every minute tempted to curse the man or woman among them, who endeavours to be most distinguished for their good-manners.

A man of sense would rather fast till night, than dine at some tables, where the lady of the house is possessed with good-manners; uneasiness, pressing to eat, teazing with civility; less practised in England than here. Courts are the worst of all schools to teach good-manners.

A courtly bow, or gait, or dress, are no part of good-manners. And therefore every man of good understanding is capable of being well-bred upon any occasion.

To speak in such a manner as may possibly offend any reasonable person in company, is the highest instance of ill-manners.

Good-manners chiefly consist in action, not in words. Modesty and humility the chief ingredients.