That heterogeneous thing an Englishman; In eager rapes and furious lust begot, Betwixt a painted Briton and a Scot; Whose gendering offspring quickly learned to bow, And yoke their heifers to the Roman plough; From whence a mongrel half-bred race there came, With neither name nor nation, speech nor fame; In whose hot veins new mixtures quickly ran, Infused betwixt a Saxon and a Dane; While their rank daughters, to their parents just, Received all nations with promiscuous lust. This nauseous brood directly did contain The well-extracted brood of Englishmen. Which medley cantoned in a Heptarchy, A rhapsody of nations to supply, Among themselves maintained eternal wars, And still the ladies loved the conquerors. The Western Angles all the rest subdued, A bloody nation, barbarous and rude, Who by the tenure of the sword possessed One part of Britain, and subdued the rest. And as great things denominate the small, The conquering part gave title to the whole; The Scot, Pict, Briton, Roman, Dane, submit, And with the English-Saxon all unite; And these the mixtures have so close pursued, The very name and memory’s subdued. No Roman now, no Briton does remain; Wales strove to separate, but strove in vain; The silent nations undistinguished fall, And Englishman’s the common name of all. Fate jumbled them together, God knows how; What e’er they were, they’re true-born English now. The wonder which remains is at our pride, To value that which all men else deride. For Englishmen to boast of generation Cancels their knowledge and lampoons the nation. A true-born Englishman’s a contradiction, In speech an irony, in fact a fiction; A banter made to be a test to fools, Which those that use it justly ridicules; A metaphor invented to express A man akin to all the universe. For, as the Scots, as learned men have said, Throughout the world their wandering seed have spread; So open-handed England, ’tis believed, Has all the gleanings of the world received. Some think of England, ’twas our Saviour meant, The Gospel should to all the world be sent, Since, when the blessed sound did hither reach, They to all nations might be said to preach. ’Tis well that virtue gives nobility, How shall we else the want of birth and blood supply? Since scarce one family is left alive Which does not from some foreigner derive. Of sixty thousand English gentlemen, Whose name and arms in registers remain, We challenge all our heralds to declare Ten families which English-Saxons are. France justly owns the ancient noble line Of Bourbon, Montmorency, and Lorraine, The Germans too their House of Austria show And Holland their invincible Nassau, Lines which in heraldry were ancient grown Before the name of Englishman was known. Even Scotland, too, her elder glory shows, Her Gordons, Hamiltons, and her Monros, Douglas, Mackays, and Grahams, names well known Long before ancient England knew her own. But England, modern to the last degree Borrows or makes her own nobility,