TITLES. 63 



enough to know, that the true noble is the noble of 

 nature, and that the really great man is the man who 

 stands on his own legs, not on the crutches of his 

 forefathers : who relies on his own intellectual 

 and moral powers, without any wish to climb into 

 consequence over the tomb-stones of a venerable 

 ancestry. 



" Nam g-enus et proavos et quse non fecimus ipsi 

 Vis ea nostra voco." 



Let me not be misunderstood, as undervaluing 

 the advantages of a respectable family. What I 

 censure is the absurd pretensions of little m^n to 

 resolve themselves into great men b}^ a species of 

 genealogical alchymy. It is not a little amusing 

 to see the efforts of a novus homo, (as styled by the 

 old Romans) to attain the 'vantage ground of hon- 

 our, formerly occupied by the ancestors of these 

 pretenders — and the ridiculous counter exertions 

 of this factitious nobility in endeavoring to bar- 

 ricade the advances of their antagonists by a line 

 of genealogical trees. I accidentally lit on a rare 

 book in five octavos, in petto, styled Alden's 

 Epitaphs, he, where I found the lineal and col- 

 lateral consanguinities and affinities of some 

 families arranged with so much precision, and 

 their remote ramifications laid down with such 

 perspicuous delineations, thatl was almost tempt- 

 ed to believe that I had stumbled on the British 



