BOOKS
temporarily so until he acquires the skills, not the style, of the
master. For learning the arts of civilization does not consist in
copying patterns but in mastering a language of one sort or
another, and knowing a language does not dictate what
should be said.
627
Passages of this kind-lucid, elegant, balanced, concise–
abound in this book and lift it well beyond the apparent limits of
its subject.
It
becomes clear that the phenomenon being de–
scribed, though harder and harder to find in society and fiction,
has had powerful and widespread influence on American and
British values. Of the four cardinal virtues attributed by Ms. Let–
win
to
the gentleman, two-courage and honesty-are predic–
table. But even in discussing these, the author brings a refreshing
and wise judgment to bear. A gentleman's courage consists in
"hearing objections that may prove him wrong," enduring crit–
icism " once he has taken his decision," while avoiding the arro–
gance or obstinacy of assuming absolute authority. Honesty is
not sincerity or authenticity, but a " clarity about what he does
and does not know and about what kind of knowledge is appro–
priate to answering the questions in hand. "
The two gentlemanly virtues that will seem less obvious to
American readers are discrimination and diffidence. For "dis–
crimination" one might well supply words like judgment or
perspicacity, for this virtue, as Ms. Letwin defines it, is a moral
sensitivity to context, to the rich and often complicated interre–
latedness of things which makes behaving according to a simple
code impossible for a rational being. She does not mean moral
relativity, but rather an ability to apply general principles to
particular cases with charity and intelligence. This notion of
morality, she argues, is one of the reasons that the English genius
has found the novel a particularly congenial vehicle. The novel
of manners, for the English, is not mere entertainment. At its
best, it strikes at the core of a conception of moral conduct that
requires a fine alertness to tone, gesture, moment, in short, to the
human situation in its ever-changing shapes and shades.
The gentleman is diffident, not as is usually supposed,
simply out of unwillingness to give offense, and certainly not
because he thinks he is inferior, but because he has "a pervasive
awareness of the limitations of all human reason." He is philo-
