Noble savage
The idealized picture of "Nature's Gentleman" was an aspect of eighteenth-century sentimentalism, along with other stock figures such as, the Virtuous Milkmaid, the Servant-More-Clever-than-the-Master (such as Sancho Panza and Figaro, among countless others), and the general theme of virtue in the lowly born. Nature's Gentleman, whether European-born or exotic, takes his place among these tropes, along with the Wise Egyptian, Persian, and Chinaman. He had always existed, from the time of the epic of Gilgamesh, where he appears as Enkiddu, the wild-but-good man who lives with animals; and the untutored-but-noble medieval knight, Parsifal. Even the Biblical David the shepherd boy, falls into this category. Indeed, that virtue and lowly birth can coexist is a time-honored tenet of Abrahamic religion, most conspicuously so in the case of the Founder of the Christian religion. Likewise, the idea that withdrawal from society—and specifically from cities—is associated with virtue, is originally a religious one.