OF THE TRULY NOBLE.

He stands not upon what he borrowed of his ancestors, but thinks he must work out his own honour:  and if he cannot reach the virtue of them that gave him outward glory by inheritance, he is more abashed of his impotency than transported with a great name.  Greatness doth not make him scornful and imperious, but rather like the fixed stars; the higher he is, the less he desires to seem.  Neither cares he so much for pomp and frothy ostentation as for the solid truth of nobleness.  Courtesy and sweet affability can be no more severed from him than life from his soul; not out of a base and servile popularity, and desire of ambitious insinuation, but of a native gentleness of disposition, and true value of himself.  His hand is open and bounteous, yet not so as that he should rather respect his glory than his estate; wherein his wisdom can distinguish betwixt parasites and friends, betwixt changing of favours and expending them.  He scorneth to make his height a privilege of looseness, but accounts his titles vain if he be inferior to others in goodness:  and thinks he should be more strict the more eminent he is, because he is more observed, and now his offences are become more exemplar.  There is no virtue that he holds unfit for ornament, for use; nor any vice which he condemns not as sordid, and a fit companion of baseness; and whereof he doth not more hate the blemish, than affect the pleasure.  He so studies as one that knows ignorance can neither purchase honour nor wield it; and that knowledge must both guide and grace, him.  His exercises are from his childhood ingenious, manly, decent, and such as tend still to wit, valour, activity:  and if (as seldom) he descend to disports of chance, his games shall never make him either pale with fear or hot with desire of gain.  He doth not so use his followers, as if he thought they were made for nothing but his servitude, whose felicity were only to be commanded and please:  wearing them to the back, and then either finding or framing excuses to discard them empty; but upon all opportunities lets them feel the sweetness of their own serviceableness and his bounty.  Silence in officious service is the best oratory to plead for his respect:  all diligence is but lent to him, none lost.  His wealth stands in receiving, his honour in giving.  He cares not either how many hold of his goodness, or to how few he is beholden:  and if he have cast away favours, he hates either to upbraid them to his enemy, or to challenge restitution.  None can be more pitiful to the distressed, or more prone to succour; and then most where is least means to solicit, least possibility of requital.  He is equally addressed to war and peace; and knows not more how to command others, than how to be his country’s servant in both.  He is more careful to give true honour to his Maker than to receive civil honour from men.  He knows that this service is free and noble, and ever loaded with sincere glory; and how vain it is to hunt after applause from the world till he be sure of Him that mouldeth all hearts, and poureth contempt on princes; and shortly, so demeans himself as one that accounts the body of nobility to consist in blood, the soul in the eminence of virtue.