"A truly elegant taste is generally accompanied with excellency of heart"
About this Quote
Fielding is selling manners as morality, but with the sly confidence of someone who knows manners are also a kind of weapon. “A truly elegant taste” sounds like a harmless compliment to refinement, yet the hinge word is “generally”: he’s not claiming the rich are virtuous, only that real elegance tends to travel with “excellency of heart.” That qualifier matters. It lets him elevate an ideal without blindly endorsing the aristocratic reality around him.
In the 18th-century world Fielding helped define, “taste” wasn’t just about art or dinnerware; it was a social technology. Taste sorted people. It justified hierarchy. It turned private preference into public proof of worth. Fielding’s move is to moralize that system from the inside: if taste is going to be used as a badge of superiority, he insists it should at least be tethered to kindness, integrity, and fellow-feeling. The phrase “accompanied with” is doing quiet work too, suggesting a pairing rather than a causal chain. Good taste doesn’t automatically manufacture a good heart; it walks beside it when taste is “truly” elegant, not merely fashionable.
There’s also a novelist’s agenda here. Fielding wrote about hypocrisy and performance, about people who learn the gestures of virtue without the substance. This line draws a bright boundary between polish and pose. It flatters the reader into aspiring to “elegance,” then raises the price of admission: without moral excellence, your refinement is just decoration.
In the 18th-century world Fielding helped define, “taste” wasn’t just about art or dinnerware; it was a social technology. Taste sorted people. It justified hierarchy. It turned private preference into public proof of worth. Fielding’s move is to moralize that system from the inside: if taste is going to be used as a badge of superiority, he insists it should at least be tethered to kindness, integrity, and fellow-feeling. The phrase “accompanied with” is doing quiet work too, suggesting a pairing rather than a causal chain. Good taste doesn’t automatically manufacture a good heart; it walks beside it when taste is “truly” elegant, not merely fashionable.
There’s also a novelist’s agenda here. Fielding wrote about hypocrisy and performance, about people who learn the gestures of virtue without the substance. This line draws a bright boundary between polish and pose. It flatters the reader into aspiring to “elegance,” then raises the price of admission: without moral excellence, your refinement is just decoration.
Quote Details
| Topic | Kindness |
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