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,
And yet she boldly boasts of pedigree;
Repines that foreigners are put upon her,
And talks of her antiquity and honour;
Her Sackvilles, Saviles, Capels, De la Meres,
Mohuns, and Montagues, Darcys, and Veres,
Not one have English names, yet all are English peers.
Your Hermans, Papillons, and Lavalliers
Pass now for true-born English knights and squires,
And make good senate members or Lord Mayors.
Wealth, howsoever got, in England makes
Lords of mechanics, gentlemen of rakes:
Antiquity and birth are needless here;
’Tis impudence and money makes a peer.
Innumerable City knights, we know,
From Bluecoat Hospital and Bridewell flow;
Draymen and porters fill the city Chair
And footboys magisterial purple wear.
Fate has but very small distinction set
Betwixt the counter and the coronet.
Tarpaulin lords, pages of high renown,
Rise up by poor men’s valour, not their own.
Great families of yesterday we show,
And lords whose parents were the Lord knows who.
PART II
The breed’s described: Now, Satire, if you can,
Their temper show, for manners make the man.
Fierce, as the Briton; as the Roman, brave;
And less inclined to conquer than to save;
Eager to fight, and lavish of their blood,
And equally of fear and forecast void.
The Pict has made ’em sour, the Dane morose;
False from the Scot, and from the Norman worse.
What honesty they have, the Saxons gave them,
And that, now they grow old, begins to leave them.
The climate makes them terrible and bold,
And English beef their courage does uphold;
No danger can their daring spirit pall,
Always provided that their belly’s full.
In close intrigues their faculty’s but weak,
For generally what e’er they know they speak,
And often their own counsels undermine
By their infirmity, and not design;
From whence the learned say it does proceed,
That English treasons never can succeed;
For they’re so open-hearted, you may know
Their own most secret thoughts, and others too.