The living honour of his ancestors is long ago departed,
dead and gone, and his is but the ghost and shadow of it, that haunts
the house with horror and disquiet where once it lived. His nobility is
truly descended from the glory of his forefathers, and may be rightly
said to fall to him, for it will never rise again to the height it was
in them by his means, and he succeeds them as candles do the office of
the sun. The confidence of nobility has rendered him ignoble, as the
opinion of wealth makes some men poor, and as those that are born to
estates neglect industry and have no business but to spend, so he being
born to honour believes he is no further concerned than to consume and
waste it. He is but a copy, and so ill done that there is no line of the
original in him but the sin only. He is like a word that by ill-custom
and mistake has utterly lost the sense of that from which it was
derived, and now signifies quite contrary; for the glory of noble
ancestors will not permit the good or bad of their posterity to be
obscure. He values himself only upon his title, which being only verbal
gives him a wrong account of his natural capacity, for the same words
signify more or less, according as they are applied to things, as
ordinary and extraordinary do at court; and sometimes the greater sound
has the less sense, as in accounts, though four be more than three, yet
a third in proportion is more than a fourth.
A HUFFING COURTIER
Is a cipher, that has no value himself but from the place he stands in.
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