Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 6.djvu/256

230 heads, to dwell any longer on so nice a subject. But as to counts, marquisses, dukes, earls, and the like, I was not so scrupulous. And I confess, it was not without some pleasure, that I found myself able to trace the particular features, by which certain families are distinguished, up to their originals. I could plainly discover, whence one family derives a long chin; why a second, has abounded with knaves for two generations, and fools for two more; why a third, happened to be crack-brained, and a fourth to be sharpers; whence it came, what Polydore Virgil says of a certain great house, Nec vir fortis, nec fœmina casta; how cruelty, falshood, and cowardice grew to be characteristicks, by which certain families are distinguished, as much as by their coats of arms; who first brought the pox into a noble house, which has lineally descended in scrofulous tumours to their posterity. Neither could I wonder at all this, when I saw such an interruption of lineages, by pages, lackeys, valets, coachmen, gamesters, fiddlers, players, captains, and pick-pockets.

I was chiefly disgusted with modern history. For having strictly examined all the persons of greatest name in the courts of princes, for a hundred years past, I found how the world had been misled by prostitute writers, to ascribe the greatest exploits in war, to cowards; the wisest counsel, to fools; sincerity, to flatterers; Roman virtue, to betrayers of their country; piety, to atheists; chastity, to sodomites; truth, to informers: how many innocent and excellent persons had been condemned to death or banishment, by the practising of great ministers upon the corruption of judges, and the malice of factions;