Make gentlemen, and that your high degree Is much disparaged to be matched with me,-- Know this, my lord, nobility of blood Is but a glittering and fallacious good: The nobleman is he, whose noble mind Is filled with inborn worth, unborrowed from his kind. The King of Heaven was in a manger laid, And took his earth but from an humble maid: Then what can birth, or mortal men, bestow, Since floods no higher than their fountains flow? We, who for name and empty honour strive, Our true nobility from him derive. Your ancestors, who puff your mind with pride, And vast estates to mighty titles tied, Did not your honour, but their own, advance; For virtue comes not by inheritance. If you tralineate from your father's mind, What are you else but of a bastard-kind? Do, as your great progenitors have done, And by their virtues prove yourself their son. No father can infuse, or wit, or grace; A mother comes across, and mars the race. A grandsire or a grandame taints the blood; And seldom three descents continue good. Were virtue by descent, a noble name Could never villanize his father's fame; But, as the first, the last of all the line, Would, like the sun, even in descending shine. Take fire, and bear it to the darkest house, Betwixt king Arthur's court and Caucasus, If you depart, the flame shall still remain, And the bright blaze enlighten all the plain; Nor, till the fuel perish, can decay, By nature formed on things combustible to prey. Such is not man, who, mixing better seed With worse, begets a base degenerate breed. The bad corrupts the good, and leaves behind No trace of all the great begetter's mind. The father sinks within his son, we see, And often rises in the third degree; If better luck a better mother give, Chance gave us being, and by chance we live. Such as our atoms were, even such are we, } Or call it chance, or strong necessity: } Thus loaded with dead weight, the will is free. } And thus it needs must be; for seed conjoined Lets into nature's work the imperfect kind; But fire, the enlivener of the general frame, Is one, its operation still the same. Its principle is in itself: while ours Works, as confederates war, with mingled powers; Or man or woman, which soever fails; And, oft, the vigour of the worse prevails. Æther, with sulphur blended, alters hue, And casts a dusky gleam of Sodom blue. Thus, in a brute, their ancient honour ends, And the fair mermaid in a fish descends: The line is gone; no longer duke or earl; But, by himself degraded, turns a churl. Nobility of blood is but renown } Of thy great fathers by their virtue known, } And a long trail of light, to thee descending down. } If in thy smoke it ends, their glories shine; But infamy and villanage are thine. Then what I said before is plainly showed, That true nobility proceeds from God: