Footnotes

{1} Tipperary.

{2} An obscene oath.

{3} See “Muses’ Library,” pp. 86, 87.  London, 1738.

{4} Genteel with them seems to be synonymous with Gentile and Gentoo; if so, the manner in which it has been applied for ages ceases to surprise, for genteel is heathenish.  Ideas of barbaric pearl and gold, glittering armour, plumes, tortures, blood-shedding, and lust, should always be connected with it.  Wace, in his grand Norman poem, calls the Baron genteel:-

“La furent li gentil Baron,” etc.

And he certainly could not have applied the word better than to the strong Norman thief, armed cap-a-pie, without one particle of truth or generosity; for a person to be a pink of gentility, that is heathenism, should have no such feelings; and, indeed, the admirers of gentility seldom or never associate any such feelings with it.  It was from the Norman, the worst of all robbers and miscreants, who built strong castles, garrisoned them with devils, and tore out poor wretches’ eyes, as the Saxon Chronicle says, that the English got their detestable word genteel.  What could ever have made the English such admirers of gentility, it would be difficult to say; for, during three hundred years, they suffered enough by it.  Their genteel Norman landlords were their scourgers, their torturers, the plunderers of their homes, the dishonourers of their wives, and the deflourers of their daughters.  Perhaps, after all, fear is at the root of the English veneration for gentility.

{5} Gentle and gentlemanly may be derived from the same root as genteel; but nothing can be more distinct from the mere genteel, than the ideas which enlightened minds associate with these words.  Gentle and gentlemanly mean something kind and genial; genteel, that which is glittering or gaudy.  A person can be a gentleman in rags, but nobody can be genteel.

{6} The writer has been checked in print by the Scotch with being a Norfolk man.  Surely, surely, these latter times have not been exactly the ones in which it was expedient for Scotchmen to check the children of any county in England with the place of their birth, more especially those who have had the honour of being born in Norfolk—­times in which British fleets, commanded by Scotchmen, have returned laden with anything but laurels from foreign shores.  It would have been well for Britain had she had the old Norfolk man to dispatch to the Baltic or the Black sea, lately, instead of Scotch admirals.

{7} As the present work will come out in the midst of a vehement political contest, people may be led to suppose that the above was written expressly for the time.  The writer therefore begs to state that it was written in the year 1854.  He cannot help adding that he is neither Whig, Tory, nor Radical, and cares not a straw what party governs England, provided it is governed well.  But he has no