[57] Civilization expands the range of modesty, and
renders it, at the same time, more changeable. The French seventeenth
century, and the English eighteenth, represent early stages of modern
European civilization, and they both devoted special attention to the
elaboration of the minute details of modesty. The frequenters of the Hotel
Rambouillet, the _precieuses_ satirized by Moliere, were not only engaged
in refining the language; they were refining feelings and ideas and
enlarging the boundaries of modesty.[58] In England such famous and
popular authors as Swift and Sterne bear witness to a new ardor of modesty
in the sudden reticences, the dashes, and the asterisks, which are found
throughout their works. The altogether new quality of literary prurience,
of which Sterne is still the classical example, could only have arisen on
the basis of the new modesty which was then overspreading society and
literature. Idle people, mostly, no doubt, the women in _salons_ and
drawing-rooms, people more familiar with books than with the realities of
life, now laid down the rules of modesty, and were ever enlarging it, ever
inventing new subtleties of gesture and speech, which it would be immodest
to neglect, and which are ever being rendered vulgar by use and ever
changing.
It was at this time, probably, that the custom of inventing an
arbitrary private vocabulary of words and phrases for the purpose
of disguising references to functions and parts of the body
regarded as immodest and indecent, first began to become common.
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