> the layers of irony implicit, including "you are not only a gentleman, but a scholar (even though you're wealthy enough to pay someone else to do it for you!)"

fwiw, I found another usage example that tends to support this idea:

JEREMY
Sir, I have the seeds of rhetoric and oratory in my head: I have been at Cambridge.
TATTLE
Ay; 'tis well enough for a servant to be bred at an university: but the education is a little too pedantic for a gentleman. I hope you are secret in your nature: private, close, ha?

William Congreve, Love for Love (1695)

http://www.classicreader.com/read.php/sid./bookid.1567/sec.68/


Gutenburg: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1244