"[130]
Love was hardly distinguished from mere animal desire. The poets wrote
of it coldly and conventionally, as of a thing which existed only in
name. The lover could only beg his mistress "to ease his pain." But the
conventionality which extended through all thoughts and expressions
relating to the higher emotions of the human soul, had no effect in
diminishing the coarseness of thought and conversation. Men were
conventional as regards the nobler sentiments of life, but they were
not conventional in the spirit which excludes from conversation and
literature the gross and the immoral. Chesterfield wrote to his son of
honor, justice, and so forth, as qualities of which he should know the
names, but of no consequence compared to "manners, good-breeding, and
the graces." If a man blushed, it was not at his own indecency, nor at
his own vice, but at the supposition that he could be so weak as to be
influenced by sentiments of delicacy. Coarseness is, of course, quite
separate from immorality, although the two are usually found together.
In the earlier part of the eighteenth century there was a marked
distinction between them. Swift's Stella, a woman of refinement, was
highly indignant at remarks being made before her of a licentious
character, but she herself used expressions of the grossest description
without a thought of impropriety.
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