Explore "The True-Born Englishman" by Daniel Defoe on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Then let us boast of ancestors no more, / Or deeds of heroes done in days of yore, / In latent records of the ages past, / Behind the rear of time, in long oblivion plac'd; / For if our virtues must in lines descend, / The merit with the families would end, / And intermixtures would most fatal grow; / For vice would be hereditary too; / The tainted blood would of necessity, / Involuntary wickedness convey.
Vice, like ill-nature, for an age or two, / May seem a generation to pursue; / But virtue seldom does regard the breed, / Fools do the wise, and wise men fools succeed.