d corruption.

To say the truth, the great neglect of education, in several noble
families, whose sons are suffered to pass the most improvable seasons of
their youth, in vice and idleness, have too much lessened their
reputation; but even this misfortune we owe, among all the rest, to that
Whiggish practice of reviling the Universities, under the pretence of
their instilling pedantry, narrow principles, and high-church doctrines.

I would not be thought to undervalue merit and virtue, wherever they are
to be found; but will allow them capable of the highest dignities in a
state, when they are in a very great degree of eminence. A pearl holds
its value though it be found in a dunghill; but however, that is not the
most probable place to search for it. Nay, I will go farther, and admit,
that a man of quality without merit, is just so much the worse for his
quality; which at once sets his vices in a more public view, and
reproaches him for them. But on the other side, I doubt, those who are
always undervaluing the advantages of birth, and celebrating personal
merit, have principally an eye to their own, which they are fully
satisfied with, and which nobody will dispute with them about; whereas
they cannot, without impudence and folly, pretend to be nobly born:
because this is a secret too easily discovered: for no men's parentage is
so nicely inquired into, as that of assuming upstarts; especially when
they affect to make it better than it is, as they often do, or behave
themselves with insolence.

But whatever may be the opinion of others upon this subject, whose
philosophical scorn for blood and families, reaches even to those that
are royal, or perhaps took its rise from a Whiggish contempt of the
latter; I am pleased to find two such instances of extraordinary merit,
as I have mentioned, joined with ancient and honourable birth, which
whether it be of real or imaginary value, hath been held in veneration by
all wise, polite states, both ancient and modern. And, as much a foppery,
as men pretend to think it, nothing is more observable in those who rise
to great place or wealth, from mean originals, than their mighty
solicitude to convince the world that they are not so low as is commonly
believed. They are glad to find it made out by some strained genealogy,
that they have some remote alliance with better families. Cromwell
himself was pleased with the impudence of a flatterer, who undertook to
prove him descended fr