Can someone help me unpack this part of Sting's Englishman in New York?
If "Manners maketh man" as someone said
Then he's the hero of the day
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
I'm talking specifically about the first two lines. I am unsure about whether saying the quote makes someone a hero or the meaning of the quote itself.
I tried to deconstruct the sentence but I'm stumped.
So I tried to remove a part:
The version If "Manners maketh man", then he's the hero of the day works in itself, would make it clear that he and someone must be different people. The meaning would be that if the quote is correct, then an unspecified "he" is a hero.
Another way to deconstuct the sentence would be If someone said x, then he's the hero of the day. But I think grammatically this is not what the lyrics say because the sentence seems to be structured so that the content of the quote makes the hero, not the fact that is was uttered.
Could someone help me understand this part of the song? Is Sting taking some grammatical liberties to fit the constraint of the melody? What is he trying to say?
Addendum: For context, the quote above is the third verse, which comes right after the chorus, so I believe the verse stands pretty much by itself. But if we wanted to use the Chorus as a reference, it uses first person perspective, so I don't see any reference to who he could be.
Here is the chorus:
I'm an alien, I'm a legal alien
I'm an Englishman in New York
I'm an alien, I'm a legal alien
I'm an Englishman in New York
The first two verses use the same perspective.