Complete. From the “Holy State.”
WE will consider him in his birth, breeding, and behavior. He is extracted from ancient and worshipful parentage. When a pippin is planted on a pippin stock, the fruit growing thence is called a renate, a most delicious apple, as both by sire and dame well descended. Thus his blood must needs be well purified who is gentilely born on both sides.
If his birth be not, at least his qualities are generous. What if he cannot with the Hevenninghams of Suffolk count five and twenty knights of his family, or tell sixteen knights successively with the Tilneys of Norfolk, or with the Nauntons show where their ancestors had seven hundred pounds a year before or at the Conquest; yet he hath endeavored, by his own deserts, to ennoble himself. Thus valor makes him son to Cæsar, learning entitles him kinsman to Tully, and piety reports him nephew to godly Constantine. It graceth a gentleman of low descent and high desert, when he will own the meanness of his parentage. How ridiculous it is when many men brag that their families are more ancient than the moon, which all know are later than the star which some seventy years since shined in Cassiopea. But if he be generously born, see how his parents breed him.
He is not in his youth possessed with the great hopes of his possession. No flatterer reads constantly in his ears a survey of the lands he is to inherit. This hath made many boys’ thoughts swell so great they could never be kept in compass afterwards. Only his parents acquaint him that he is the next undoubted heir to correction, if misbehaving himself; and he finds no more favor from his schoolmaster than his schoolmaster finds diligence in him, whose rod respects persons no more than bullets are partial in a battle.
At the university he is so studious as if he intended learning for his profession. He knows well that cunning is no burden to carry, as paying neither portage by land nor poundage by sea. Yea, though to have land be a good first, yet to have learning is the surest second, which may stand to it when the other may chance to be taken away.
At the inns of court he applies himself to learn the laws of the kingdom. Object not, “Why should a gentleman learn law, who, if he needeth it, may have it for his money, and if he hath never so much of his own, he must but give it away?” For what a shame is it for a man of quality to be ignorant of Solon in our Athens, of Lycurgus in our Sparta? Besides, law will help him to keep his own, and bestead his neighbors. Say not that there be enough which make this their set practice; for so there are also many masters of defense by their profession; and shall private men therefore learn no skill at their weapons?
As for the hospitality, the apparel, the traveling, the company, the recreations, the marriage of gentlemen, they are described in several chapters in the following book. A word or two of his behavior in the country:—
He is courteous and affable to his neighbors. As the sword of the best-tempered metal is most flexible, so the truly generous are most pliant and courteous in their behavior to their inferiors.
He delights to see himself and his servants well mounted; therefore he loveth good horsemanship. Let never any foreign Rabshakeh send that brave to our Jerusalem, offering to lend her two thousand horses, if she be able for her part to set riders upon them. We know how Darius got the Persian Empire from the rest of his fellow-peers by the first neighing of his generous steed. It were no harm if, in some needless suits of intricate precedency betwixt equal gentlemen, the priority were adjudged to him who keeps a stable of most serviceable horses.
He furnisheth and prepareth himself in peace against time of war, lest it be too late to learn when his skill is to be used. He approves himself courageous when brought to the trial, as well remembering the custom which is used at the creation of Knights of the Bath, wherein the king’s master cook cometh forth, and presenteth his great knife to the new-made Knights, admonishing them to be faithful and valiant, otherwise he threatens them that that very knife is prepared to cut off their spurs.
If the commission of the peace find him out, he faithfully discharges it. I say, find him out, for a public office is a guest which receives the best usage from them who never invited it. And though he declined the place, the country knew to prize his worth, who would be ignorant of his own. He compounds many petty differences betwixt his neighbors, which are easier ended in his own porch than in Westminster Hall; for many people think, if once they have fetched a warrant from a justice, they have given earnest to follow the suit, though otherwise the matter be so mean that the next night’s sleep would have bound both parties to the peace, and made them as good friends as ever before. Yet,
He connives not at the smothering of punishable faults. He hates that practice, as common as dangerous amongst country people, who, having received again the goods which were stolen from them, partly out of foolish pity, and partly out of covetousness to save charges in prosecuting the law, let the thief escape unpunished. Thus, whilst private losses are repaired, the wounds to the commonwealth (in the breach of the laws) are left uncured; and thus petty larceners are encouraged into felons, and afterwards are hanged for pounds, because never whipped for pence, who, if they had felt the cord, had never been brought to the halter.
If chosen a member of Parliament, he is willing to do his country a service. If he be no rhetorician to raise affections (yea, Mercury was a greater speaker than Jupiter himself), he counts it great wisdom to be the good manager of yea and nay. The slow pace of his judgment is recompensed by the swift following of his affections, when his judgment is once soundly informed. And here we leave him in consultation, wishing him, with the rest of his honorable society, all happy success.
