century French romance of "Perceforest,"—"for manner and measure must be added to all your deeds if you would have great virtue." This may seem to be closely akin to Della Casa's statement that polished behaviour consists in adding a good grace to a good deed; but to the hero of "Perceforest," it would have argued lack of "measure," or discretion, for any man to adopt graces and refinements so essentially feminine and unmanly as the table manners of Chaucer's Prioress.

It was in the Renaissance, and in the courts and cities of Italy, that the larger virtues of measure and magnanimity and liberality were first felt to be inadequate, in men no less than in women and children, without the minor nuances of good manners. It was first felt there that in such matters as yawning or coughing in another's face, carelessness and greediness in eating, and other annoying traits, there could be only one standard for both sexes and for all ages. If the mediaeval ideal of "courtoisie" was based essentially on the relation of the sexes, without regard to individual instinct or social agreement in the wider sense, the "Galateo," in basing good manners on the desire to please others, wholly regardless of sex, represents a real advance, or at least a widening of social interest. On a basis of mediaeval manners, then, the Renaissance superimposed the classical ideal of "urbanitas" or "civilitas." In keeping with the spirit of his time, Della Casa rounded all this practice and precept into a code; and because to codify is to stereotype, he is in part responsible for the fact that the pattern he formulated has scarcely been altered from his day to ours.

There is one side of personal manners, however, in which there has been much change. When Bacon says that "cleanness of body was ever deemed to proceed from a due reverence to God," he can hardly be said to summarize theological opinion on the subject of cleanliness in the preceding fifteen hundred years. The rules of St. Benedict permit bathing only to invalids and the very old, except on rare occasions; although an eighteenth century French ecclesiastic insists that the church never objected to bathing, "provided one indulges in it because of necessity and not for the sake of pleasure." But our concern is only with secular society, and there we find that cleanliness was considered only in so far as it was a social necessity, if indeed then; as an individual necessity or habit it scarcely appears at all. Della Casa's standard of social manners applies here, too: cleanliness was dictated by the need of pleasing others, and not because of any inner demand of individual instinct. But even in this Italy was in advance of her neighbours, if personal cleanliness represents social advance. In France, odorous greatness was the rule, and contemporary chronicles record the filthy personal habits of Henry of Navarre, the great Condé, and Louis XIII. The "Loix de la Galanterie," nearly a century after the "Galateo," advises the gallant to wash his hands every day—and "his face almost as often." All this has changed. Personal cleanliness, because of its complete acceptance as an individual necessity, has virtually ceased to touch the problem of social manners at any point; and cultivated society simply acts from time to time by formulating new delicacies of neatness and cleanliness, makes them the habit of life, and, forgetting them completely, passes on to new trifles of perfection. Perhaps we can judge this modern change without too great an exaggeration of its importance, if we bear in mind the paradox of the modern wit, that "dirt is evil chiefly as evidence of sloth, but the fact remains that the classes that wash most are those that work least."

I have already pointed out that one of the limitations of that code of good breeding which we have inherited from the Renaissance and which it is almost the mission of modern life to destroy, is that it looks merely to the comfort of those around us at any accidental point of time or place, often if not always at the expense of other groups, other classes, and wider interests. Those who inveigh against democracy as destructive of the "finer graces" of life have hit upon what is, for good or evil, the very essence of its reformative programme. A modern idealist sums up this newer attitude when he says of the old code that it asks us "rather to let a million pine than hurt the feelings of a single man." But wholly apart from this, codes and rules have no more justification in the art of life than in the arts of poetry and painting. Each individual soul must express its past and its present, its inheritance and its aspiration, in its own way; and it is as futile and vulgar to apply "rules" in the estimate of a life as it is in the criticism of a poem or a picture. Children and novices and immature societies may obtain practical guidance from the empirical observations of those who have had experience, but in order to create a real life of their own, a real social atmosphere, they must reach the point where the very rules that nurtured them no longer apply. To disregard every rule of good breeding is the symbol of real attainment in the creative art of living.

But this is no place to wage a battle for old codes or new ones. The "Galateo" describes habits and impulses that for centuries have moved the souls of men, dictated their conduct, given them pleasure and pain, and that probably for centuries will continue to do so. Nothing that has so stirred men and women, however trifling it may seem, can fail to hold a little human interest for those who call themselves Humanists.

J. E. S.

New York, February, 1914.

Galateo of Maister John Della Casa, Archebishop of Benevento.

Or rather, A Treatise of the Manners and Behaviours, it behoveth a Man to use and eschewe, in his Familiar Conversation. A Worke very necessary & profitable for all Gentlemen, or Other.

First written in the Italian Tongue, and now done into English by Robert Peterson, of Lincolnes Inne Gentleman. Satis, si sapienter.

Imprinted at London for Raufe Newbery dwelling in Fleetestreate litle above the Conduit. An. Do. 1576.

THE DEDICATION

To the Right Honorable my singular good Lord, the Lord Robert Dudley, Earle of Leicester, Baron of Denbigh, Knight of the Honorable order of the Garter, Maister of the Queenes Majesties Horses, and one of her Highnesse privie Counsell: Robert Peterson wisheth perfect felicitie.

Lighting of late (Right Honorable) upon this treatise of courtesie, penned by an experienced Italian, & drawn for the profit therof, in to so many languages: I thought his lessons fit for our store, & sought to make him speake Englishe.

Wise was that Cato, that ended bothe his learning, and living day together. And truly, Courtesie and Courtiership, be like Hippocrates twinnes, that laughe together, and grow together: and are so one affected, that who so divorceth them, destroyeth them. But yet, seeing moe redie to condemne the least trip then commend the best meaning, and knowing that the Scarre