With some Remarks on the Power or Influence of HIGH BLOOD.
I. He would do great service to the nobility, who could separate their
vanity from their quality; for it is almost as difficult to find this
dignity free from that vice, as it is to find silver in the mines
without a mixture of earth. Splendour of ancestry is a fire, which
produces much smoke in descendants. There is nothing of which people
should be less vain than their high origin, and there is nothing of
which they are more so. The best pens in all ages, both sacred and
profane, have laboured to persuade, that there is no pride worse
founded than that which is built upon high birth. The world perseveres
in its error, and there is no flattery better received, than that
which compliments a man on the grandeur of his race; nor is there any
adulation more hacknied and transcendent; to be convinced of which, you
need only read epistles dedicatory to books. Flattery in them, commonly
guides the pen, and you will hardly find one, which omits to lay great
stress on the nobleness and antiquity of the family of the person to
whom he consigns the protection of his book; and they do this, because
it is pretty well known, there is scarce any man so candid or modest,
as not to be pleased with this eulogium.
II. From hence spring those wild and extravagant genealogies,
fabricated by some flatterers, in order to compliment, and by that
means, cultivate the favour and protection of great and powerful
people. Basil the first, emperor of the East, was a man of obscure
birth. The patriarch Phocio, finding himself out of his good graces,
endeavoured to regain his favour, by forming a genealogical chain,
which made him descended from Tiridates king of Armenia, who reigned
in that country eight centuries anterior to Basil. The descent which
Abraham Bzovius gives to pope Sylvester the second, which began in
Timenus king of Argos, who flourished more than a thousand years before
Christ, in all likelihood was not fabricated by Bzovius, but was
probably found among some papers written in the life-time of that pope,
by some person who composed the thing to flatter him. Roderig Flaharti
wrote, a little while since, the history of some transactions relating
to Ireland, in which he assigns two thousand seven hundred years of
antiquity to the kings of England in their possession of the throne.
III. If you ascend two generations anterior to Rodulfus count of
Augsburg, there is no family of more doubtful origin than that of
the house of Austria. Upon coming to the grandfather of Rodulfus,
historians find themselves surrounded with such thick darkness, that
they don’t know which way to turn themselves; nor is it a point beyond
contest, who the grandfather of Rodulfus was. Notwithstanding this,
there have not been wanting Spanish historians, who, by running up the
line of their ancestors, have, without touching or tripping, traced
them to the destruction of Troy. Penafiel de Contreras, an author
of Grenada, went further than this; for, as Mothe le Vayer informs
us, he fabricated a genealogical chain of one hundred and eighteen
successions, and made Philip the third descend in a right line from
Adam; and because the duke of Lerma, Philip’s favourite at that time,
should not be under less obligations to his pen, he formed another of a
hundred and twenty-one from Adam to the duke, entwining the sovereign
and favourite with two kings of Troy and with Æneas, by means of
their two sons Iulus and Asaracus, from one of which he made the king
descend, and from the other the duke.
IV. There have not been wanting in other nations those who have
flattered their princes to the same excess. John Messanius derived the
succession of the kings of Sweden, without the least interruption, from
the primitive father of mankind; and William Slater did the same thing,
in compliment to James the first of England.
V. Truly one would be apt to think, that such fulsome incense must
stink in the nose of the idol to which it is offered; for Vespasian
despised some flatterers, who derived him from the stock of Hercules;
and Cardinal Mazarin treated with great scorn, one who traced his
origin to Titus Geganius Macerinus, and Proculus Geganius Macerinus,
ancient consuls of Rome. Thus those lose the fruits of their adulation,
who pour it forth without bounds.
VI. But to return to our subject: I repeat, that there is no
pre-eminence people have less reason to boast of, than that of
nobility; every other is personal, and proper to a man’s self; this is
derived, and may be deemed the reflection of a borrowed light. Nobility
is a mere extrinsic denomination, and if you would make it an intrinsic
one, it must be done by rational means. The virtue of our forefathers
was their own, not ours; and Ovid, in the following compendious
sentence, expressed all that is capable of being said on the subject:
_Nam genus, & proavos, & quæ non fecimus ipsi,_
_Vix ea nostra voco._
VII. It is true, that in a certain manner the excellencies of our
progenitors illustrate us, but they illustrate us as the sun does the
moon, by exposing our spots and blemishes if we degenerate from them.
I have seen, in some coats of arms, stars quartered, which seems as
if he who acquired this blazon gained it by his merit; because, after
the manner of a star, he shone by his own light. It is probable,
that in many of his successors they should take away the stars, and
substitute moons in their places, to denote that they only shine like
this luminary by virtue of a borrowed light. The following eulogium,
which Velleius Paterculus bestowed on Cicero, always appeared to me
extremely elegant and magnificent: _Per hæc tempora Marcus Cicero,
qui omnia incrementa sua sibi debuit, vir novitatis nobilissimæ, &c._
Cicero owed all his fortune to himself, because although he sprung from
an obscure family, he without any other support but that of his own
merit ascended to the first honours of Rome. I would much rather this
should be said of me, than that I was descended in a right line from
Augustus Cæsar.