… behaviour expected of the traditional, patrician gentleman was not very different from the stylish oratory and elegant self-presentation set out in Baldessare Castiglione’s influential Il Cortigiano as long ago as 1528 (translated into … such vehicles . The young Dudley Ryder (1691-1756), a Hackney draper’s son, read these periodicals inter alia to fit himself for advancement through polite conversation. He rose to become a Member of Parliament and Chief Justice, for which … of gentlemanliness there was evidence of the new middling-sort gentleman’s need for more specific guides to gentlemanly self-presentation, necessary to avoid the risk of challenge to his self-made status. In these guides we see a shift …