gentleman and a scholar, a

Well behaved and well educated. This term dates from the days when only well-born boys and men (or those who entered a religious order) received any education at all. Its earliest appear- ance in print was in George Peele’s Merrie Conceited Jests of 1607 (“He goes directly to the Mayor, tels him he was a Scholler and a Gentleman”). It probably was close to being a cliché by the time Robert Burns used it jok- ingly in his The Twa Dogs (1786): “His locked, letter’d braw brass collar shew’d him the gentleman an’ scholar.”