IN WHICH THE FOURTH OF THE QUESTIONS PROPOSED IN CHAPTER II. P. I. IS
BEGUN TO BE ANSWERED; SOME OBSERVATIONS UPON ANCESTRY ARE INTRODUCED,
AND THE READER IS INFORMED WHY THE AUTHOR DOES NOT WEAR A CAP AND
BELLS.
Boast not the titles of your ancestors,
Brave youths! they're their possessions, none of yours.
When your own virtues equall'd have their names,
'Twill be but fair to lean upon their fames,
For they are strong supporters; but till then
The greatest are but growing gentlemen.
BEN JONSON.
Who was Mrs. Dove?
A woman of the oldest family in this or any other kingdom, for she was
beyond all doubt a legitimate descendant of Adam. Her husband perhaps
might have rather said that she was a daughter of Eve. But he would
have said it with a smile of playfulness, not of scorn.
To trace her descent somewhat lower, and bring it nearer to the stock
of the Courtenays, the Howards, the Manriques, the Bourbons and
Thundertentronks, she was a descendant of Noah, and of his eldest son
Japhet. She was allied to Ham however in another way, besides this
remote niece-ship.
As how I pray you, Sir?
Her maiden name was Bacon.
Grave Sir, be not disconcerted. I hope you have no antipathy to such
things: or at least that they do not act upon you, as the notes of a
bagpipe are said to act upon certain persons whose unfortunate
idiosyncrasy exposes them to very unpleasant effects from the sound.
Mr. Critickin,—for as there is a diminutive for cat, so should there
be for critic,—I defy you! Before I can be afraid of your claws, you
must leave off biting your nails.
I have something better to say to the Reader, who follows wherever I
lead up and down, high and low, to the hill and to the valley,
contented with his guide, and enjoying the prospect which I shew him
in all its parts, in the detail and in the whole, in the foreground
and home scene, as well as in the Pisgah view. I will tell him before
the chapter is finished, why I do not wear a cap and bells.
To you my Lady, who may imagine that Miss Bacon was not of a good
family, (Lord Verulam's line, as you very properly remark, being
extinct,) I beg leave to observe that she was certainly a cousin of
your own; somewhere within the tenth and twentieth degrees, if not
nearer. And this I proceed to prove.
Every person has two immediate parents, four ancestors in the second
degree, eight in the third, and so the pedigree ascends, doubling at
every step, till in the twentieth generation, he has no fewer than one
million, thirty thousand, eight hundred and ninety-six
Great, great, great,
great, great, great,
great, great, great,
great, great, great,
great, great, great,
great, great, great,
grandfathers and grandmothers. Therefore my Lady, I conceive it to be
absolutely certain, that under the Plantagenets, if not in the time of
the Tudors, some of your ancestors must have been equally ancestors of
Miss Deborah Bacon.
“At the conquest,” says Sir Richard Phillips, “the ancestry of every
one of the English people was the whole population of England; while
on the other hand, every one having children at that time, was the
direct progenitor of the whole of the living race.”
The reflecting reader sees at once that it must be so. _Plato ait,
Neminem regem non ex servis esse oriendum, neminem non servum ex
regibus. Omnia ista longa varietas miscuit, et sursum deorsum fortuna
versavit. Quis ergo generosus? ad virtutem bene à natura compositus.
Hoc unum est intuendum: alioqui, si ad vetera revocas, nemo non inde
est, ante quod nihil_[1] _est._ And the erudite Ihre in the _Proemium_
to his invaluable Glossary, says, _ut aliquoto cognationis gradu, sed
per monumentorum defectum hodie inexplicabile, omnes homines inter se
connexi sunt._
[Footnote 1: SENECA.]
Now then to the gentle reader. The reason why I do not wear a cap and
bells is this.
There are male caps of five kinds which are worn at present in this
kingdom; to wit, the military cap, the collegiate cap, the jockey cap,
the travelling cap, and the night cap. Observe reader, I said _kinds_,
that is to say in scientific language _genera_,—for the _species_ and
varieties are numerous, especially in the former _genus_.
I am not a soldier; and having long been weaned from Alma Mater, of
course have left off my college cap. The gentlemen of the ——— hunt
would object to my going out with the bells on, it would be likely to
frighten their horses; and were I to attempt it, it might involve me
in unpleasant disputes, which might possibly lead to more unpleasant
consequences. To my travelling cap the bells would be an inconvenient
appendage; nor would they be a whit more comfortable upon my
night-cap. Besides, my wife might object to them.
It follows that if I would wear a cap and bells, I must have a cap
made on purpose. But this would be rendering myself singular; and of
all things a wise man will most avoid any ostentatious appearance of
singularity.
Now I am certainly not singular in playing the fool without one.
And indeed if I possessed such a cap, it would not be proper to wear
it in this part of my history.