That excellent person Mr. Boyle had formed a different opinion. To be the son of a Peer whose prosperity had found many admirers, but few parallels, and not to be his eldest son, was a happiness that he used to “mention with great expressions of gratitude; his birth, he said, so suiting his inclinations and designs, that, had he been permitted an election, his choice would scarce have altered God's assignment. For as on the one side, a lower birth would have too much exposed him to the inconveniences of a mean descent, which are too notorious to need specifying; so on the other side, to a person whose humour indisposes him to the distracting hurry of the world, the being born heir to a great family is but a glittering kind of slavery, whilst obliging him to a public entangled course of life, to support the credit of his family, and tying him from satisfying his dearest inclinations, it often forces him to build the advantages of his house upon the ruins of his own contentment.”
“A man of mean extraction,” he continues, “is seldom admitted to the privacy and secrets of great ones promiscuously, and scarce dares pretend to it, for fear of being censured saucy, or an intruder. And titular greatness is ever an impediment to the knowledge of many retired truths, that cannot be attained without familiarity with meaner persons, and such other condescensions, as fond opinion, in great men, disapproves and makes disgraceful.” “But he himself,” Mr. Boyle said, “was born in a condition that neither was high enough to prove a temptation to laziness, nor low enough to discourage him from aspiring.” And certainly to a person that affected so much an universal knowledge, and arbitrary vicissitudes of quiet and employments, it could not be unwelcome to be of a quality, that was a handsome stirrup to preferment, without an obligation to court it, and which might at once both protect his higher pretensions from the guilt of ambition, and secure his retiredness from contempt.
There would be more and higher advantages in high birth than Mr. Boyle apprehended, if the Dean of Chalon, Pierre de St. Julien, were right when he maintained contre l'opinion des Philosophes, et l'ordinaire des Predicamants,—que la vraye Noblesse a sa source du sang, et est substancielle.
Ces mots Gentilhomme de sang, et d'armes, de race genereuse, de bonne part, &c., says the well-born Dean, who in his title pages let us know that he was de la maison de Balleurré,—sont termes non de qualité, ny d'habitude; ains importants substance de vray, comme il est bien dit,
veniunt cum sanguine mores;
et aillieurs,
Qui viret in foliis venit à radicibus humor;
Sic patrum in natos abeunt cum semine mores.
Et comme le sang est le vehicule, et porteur des esprits de vie, esquels est enclose la substance de l'ame; aussi est il le comme chariot, qui porte et soustient celle substance qui decoule des peres, et des ayeulx, par long ordre de generation, et provient aux enfants, qui, nez de bonne et gentille semence, sont (conformement à l'opinion du divin Philosophe Platon) rendu tels que leurs progeniteurs, par la vertu des esprits enclos en la semence.—Tellement qu'on ne peut nyer, que comme d'une bonne Ayre sortent de bons oyseaux, d'un bon Haras de bons chevaux, &c., aussi il importe beaucoup aux hommes d'estre nez de bons et valeureux parents; voire tant, que les mal nez, ennemys de ceste bien naissance, ne sont suffisants pour en juger.
Sir Robert Cotton once met with a man driving the plough, who was a true and undoubted Plantagenet. “That worthy Doctor,” (Dr. Hervey) says that worthy Fuller (dignissimus of being so styled himself,) “hath made many converts in physic to his seeming paradox, maintaining the circulation of blood running round about the body of man. Nor is it less true that gentle blood fetcheth a circuit in the body of a nation, running from Yeomanry, through Gentry to Nobility, and so retrograde, returning through Gentry to Yeomanry again.”
“Plust à Dieu,” said Maistre François Rabelais, of facetious memory, “qu'un chacun saust aussi certainement—(as Gargantua that is,) sa genealogie, depuis l'Arche de Noé, jusqu'à cet âge! Je pense que plusieurs sont aujourd'hui Empereurs, Roys, Ducs, Princes et Papes en la terre, lesquels sont descendus de quelques Porteurs de rogatons et de constrets. Comme au rebours plusieurs sont gueux de l'hostiere, souffreteux et miserables, lesquels sont descendus de sang et ligne de grands Roys et Empereurs; attends l'admirable transport des Regnes et Empires,