Her lightness gets her to swim at top of the table, where her wry little finger bewrays carving; her neighbours at the latter end know they are welcome, and for that purpose she quencheth her thirst. She travels to and among, and so becomes a woman of good entertainment, for all the folly in the country comes in clean linen to visit her; she breaks to them her grief in sugar cakes, and receives from their mouths in exchange many stories that conclude to no purpose. Her eldest son is like her howsoever, and that dispraiseth him best; her utmost drift is to turn him fool, which commonly she obtains at the years of discretion. She takes a journey sometimes to her niece's house, but never thinks beyond London. Her devotion is good clothes--they carry her to church, express their stuff and fashion, and are silent if she be more devout; she lifts up a certain number of eyes instead of prayers, and takes the sermon, and measures out a nap by it, just as long. She sends religion afore to sixty, where she never overtakes it, or drives it before her again. Her most necessary instruments are a waiting gentlewoman and a chambermaid; she wears her gentlewoman still, but most often leaves the other in her chamber window. She hath a little kennel in her lap, and she smells the sweeter for it. The utmost reach of her providence is the fatness of a capon, and her greatest envy is the next gentlewoman's better gown. Her most commendable skill is to make her husband's fustian bear her velvet. This she doth many times over, and then is delivered to old age and a chair, where everybody leaves her.
Is an essence needing a double definition, for he is not that he appears. Unto the eye he is pleasing, unto the ear he is harsh, but unto the understanding intricate and full of windings; he is theprima materia, and his intents give him form; he dyeth his means and his meaning into two colours; he baits craft with humility, and his countenance is the picture of the present disposition. He wins not by battery but undermining, and his rack is smoothing. He allures, is not allured by his affections, for they are the breakers of his observation. He knows passion only by sufferance, and resisteth by obeying. He makes his time an accountant to his memory, and of the humours of men weaves a net for occasion; the inquisitor must look through his judgment, for to the eye only he is not visible.
To all men's thinking, is a man, and to most men the finest; all things else are defined by the understanding, but this by the senses; but his surest mark is, that he is to be found only about princes. He smells, and putteth away much of his judgment about the situation of his clothes. He knows no man that is not generally known. His wit, like the marigold, openeth with the sun, and therefore he riseth not before ten of the clock. He puts more confidence in his words than meaning, and more in his pronunciation than his words. Occasion is his Cupid, and he hath but one receipt of making love. He follows nothing but inconstancy, admires nothing but beauty, honours nothing but fortune: Loves nothing. The sustenance of his discourse is news, and his censure, like a shot, depends upon the charging. He is not, if he be out of court, but fish-like breathes destruction if out of his element. Neither his motion or aspect are regular, but he moves by the upper spheres, and is the reflection of higher substances.
If you find him not here, you shall in Paul's, with a pick-tooth in his hat, cape-cloak, and a long stocking.
Is a young thing, whose father went to the devil; he is followed like a salt bitch, and limbed by him that gets up first; his disposition is cut, and knaves rend him like tenter-hooks; he is as blind as his mother, and swallows flatterers for friends. He is high in his own imagination, but that imagination is as a stone that is raised by violence, descends naturally. When he goes, he looks who looks; if he find not good store of vailers, he comes home stiff and sere, until he be new oiled and watered by his husbandmen. Wheresoever he eats he hath an officer to warn men not to talk out of his element, and his own is exceeding sensible, because it is sensual; but he cannot exchange a piece of reason, though he can a piece of gold. He is not plucked, for his feathers are his beauty, and more than his beauty, they are his discretion, his countenance, his all. He is now at an end, for he hath had the wolf of vainglory, which he fed until himself became the food.
Is the shadow of a fool. He is a good woodman, for he singleth out none but the wealthy. His carriage is ever of the colour of his patient; and for his sake he will halt or wear a wry neck. He dispraiseth nothing but poverty and small drink, and praiseth his Grace of making water. He selleth himself with reckoning his great friends, and teacheth the present how to win his praises by reciting the other gifts; he is ready for all employments, but especially before dinner, for his courage and his stomach go together. He will play any upon his countenance, and where he cannot be admitted for a counsellor he will serve as a fool. He frequents the Court of Wards and Ordinaries, and fits these guests ofTogae virileswith wives or worse. He entereth young men into aquaintance with debt-books. In a word, he is the impression of the last term, and will be so until the coming of a new term or termer.
Is aninsectumanimal, for he is the maggot of opinion; his behaviour is another thing from himself, and is glued and but set on. He entertains men with repetitions, and returns them their own words. He is ignorant of nothing, no not of those things where ignorance is the lesser shame. He gets the names of good wits, and utters them for his companions. He confesseth vices that he is guiltless of, if they be in fashion; and dares not salute a man in old clothes, or out of fashion. There is not a public assembly without him, and he will take any pains for an acquaintance there. In any show he will be one, though he be but a whiffler or a torch-bearer, and bears down strangers with the story of his actions. He handles nothing that is not rare, and defends his wardrobe, diet, and all customs, with intituling their beginnings from princes, great soldiers, and strange nations. He dare speak more than he understands, and adventures his words without the relief of any seconds. He relates battles and skirmishes as from an eyewitness, when his eyes thievishly beguiled a ballad of them. In a word, to make sure of admiration, he will not let himself understand himself, but hopes fame and opinion will be the readers of his riddles.
Is a noun adjective of the present tense. He hath no more of a conscience than fear, and his religion is not his but the prince's. He reverenceth a courtier's servant's servant; is first his own slave, and then whosesoever looketh big. When he gives he curseth, and when he sells he worships. He reads the statutes in his chamber, and wears the Bible in the streets; he never praiseth any, but before themselves or friends; and mislikes no great man's actions during his life. His New Year's gifts are ready at Allhallowmas, and the suit he meant to meditate before them. He pleaseth the children of great men, and promiseth to adopt them, and his courtesy extends itself even to the stable. He strains to talk wisely, and his modesty would serve a bride. He is gravity from the head to the foot, but not from the head to the heart. You may find what place he affecteth, for he creeps as near it as may be, and as passionately courts it; if at any time his hopes be affected, he swelleth with them, and they burst out too good for the vessel. In a word, he danceth to the tune of Fortune, and studies for nothing but to keep time.
Is a man blasted or planet-stricken, and is the dog that leads blind Cupid; when he is at the best his fashion exceeds the worth of his weight. He is never without verses and musk confects, and sighs to the hazard of his buttons. His eyes are all white, either to wear the livery of his mistress' complexion or to keep Cupid from hitting the black. He fights with passion, and loseth much of his blood by his weapon; dreams, thence his paleness. His arms are carelessly used, as if their best use was nothing but embracements. He is untrussed, unbuttoned, and ungartered, not out of carelessness, but care; his farthest end being but going to bed. Sometimes he wraps his petition in neatness, but he goeth not alone; for then he makes some other quality moralise his affection, and his trimness is the grace of that grace. Her favour lifts him up as the sun moisture; when she disfavours, unable to hold that happiness, it falls down in tears. His fingers are his orators, and he expresseth much of himself upon some instrument. He answers not, or not to the purpose, and no marvel, for he is not at home. He scotcheth time with dancing with his mistress, taking up of her glove, and wearing her feather; he is confined to her colour, and dares not pass out of the circuit of her memory. His imagination is a fool, and it goeth in a pied coat of red and white. Shortly, he is translated out of a man into folly; his imagination is the glass of lust, and himself the traitor to his own discretion.
Is a speaking fashion; he hath taken pains to be ridiculous, and hath seen more than he hath perceived. His attire speaks French or Italian, and his gait cries, Behold me. He censures all things by countenances and shrugs, and speaks his own language with shame and lisping; he will choke rather than confess beer good drink, and his pick-tooth is a main part of his behaviour. He chooseth rather to be counted a spy than not a politician, and maintains his reputation by naming great men familiarly. He chooseth rather to tell lies than not wonders, and talks with men singly; his discourse sounds big, but means nothing; and his boy is bound to admire him howsoever. He comes still from great personages, but goes with mean. He takes occasion to show jewels given him in regard of his virtue, that were bought in St. Martin's; and not long after having with a mountebank's method pronounced them worth thousands, impawneth them for a few shillings. Upon festival days he goes to court, and salutes without resaluting; at night in an ordinary he canvasseth the business in hand, and seems as conversant with all intents and plots as if he begot them. His extraordinary account of men is, first to tell them the ends of all matters of consequence, and then to borrow money of them; he offers courtesies to show them, rather than himself, humble. He disdains all things above his reach, and preferreth all countries before his own. He imputeth his want and poverty to the ignorance of the time, not his own unworthiness; and concludes his discourse with half a period, or a word, and leaves the rest to imagination. In a word, his religion is fashion, and both body and soul are governed by fame; he loves most voices above truth.
Is the truth of the true definition of man, that is, a reasonable creature. His disposition alters; he alters not. He hides himself with the attire of the vulgar; and in indifferent things is content to be governed by them. He looks according to nature; so goes his behaviour. His mind enjoys a continual smoothness; so cometh it that his consideration is always at home. He endures the faults of all men silently, except his friends, and to them he is the mirror of their actions; by this means, his peace cometh not from fortune, but himself. He is cunning in men, not to surprise, but keep his own, and beats off their ill-affected humours no otherwise than if they were flies. He chooseth not friends by the Subsidy-book, and is not luxurious after acquaintance. He maintains the strength of his body, not by delicates but temperance; and his mind, by giving it pre-eminence over his body. He understands things, not by their form, but qualities; and his comparisons intend not to excuse but to provoke him higher. He is not subject to casualties, for fortune hath nothing to do with the mind, except those drowned in the body; but he hath divided his soul from the case of his soul, whose weakness he assists no otherwise than commiseratively--not that it is his, but that it is. He is thus, and will be thus; and lives subject neither to time nor his frailties, the servant of virtue, and by virtue the friend of the highest.
Hath surveyed and fortified his disposition, and converts all occurrents into experience, between which experience and his reason there is marriage; the issue are his actions. He circuits his intents, and seeth the end before he shoot. Men are the instruments of his art, and there is no man without his use. Occasion incites him, none enticeth him; and he moves by affection, not for affection. He loves glory, scorns shame, and governeth and obeyeth with one countenance, for it comes from one consideration. He calls not the variety of the world chances, for his meditation hath travelled over them, and his eye, mounted upon his understanding, seeth them as things underneath. He covers not his body with delicacies, nor excuseth these delicacies by his body, but teacheth it, since it is not able to defend its own imbecility, to show or suffer. He licenseth not his weakness to wear fate, but knowing reason to be no idle gift of nature, he is the steersman of his own destiny. Truth is the goddess, and he takes pains to get her, not to look like her. He knows the condition of the world, that he must act one thing like another, and then another. To these he carries his desires, and not his desires him, and sticks not fast by the way (for that contentment is repentance), but knowing the circle of all courses, of all intents, of all things, to have but one centre or period, without all distraction, he hasteth thither and ends there, as his true and natural element. He doth not contemn Fortune, but not confess her. He is no gamester of the world (which only complain and praise her), but being only sensible of the honesty of actions, contemns a particular profit as the excrement of scum. Unto the society of men he is a sun, whose clearness directs their steps in a regular motion. When he is more particular, he is the wise man's friend, the example of the indifferent, the medicine of the vicious. Thus time goeth not from him, but with him; and he feels age more by the strength of his soul than the weakness of his body. Thus feels he no pain, but esteems all such things as friends that desire to file off his fetters, and help him out of prison.
Is a thing that hath been a man in his days. Old men are to be known blindfolded, for their talk is as terrible as their resemblance. They praise their own times as vehemently as if they would sell them. They become wrinkled with frowning and facing youth; they admire their old customs, even to the eating of red herring and going wetshod. They cast the thumb under the girdle, gravity; and because they can hardly smell at all their posies are under their girdles. They count it an ornament of speech to close the period with a cough; and it is venerable (they say) to spend time in wiping their drivelled beards. Their discourse is unanswerable, by reason of their obstinacy; their speech is much, though little to the purpose. Truths and lies pass with an unequal affirmation; for their memories several are won into one receptacle, and so they come out with one sense. They teach their servants their duties with as much scorn and tyranny as some people teach their dogs to fetch. Their envy is one of their diseases. They put off and on their clothes with that certainty, as if they knew their heads would not direct them, and therefore custom should. They take a pride in halting and going stiffly, and therefore their staves are carved and tipped; they trust their attire with much of their gravity; and they dare not go without a gown in summer. Their hats are brushed, to draw men's eyes off from their faces; but of all, their pomanders are worn to most purpose, for their putrified breath ought not to want either a smell to defend or a dog to excuse.
Is a thing, out of whose corruption the generation of a Justice of Peace is produced. He speaks statutes and husbandry well enough to make his neighbours think him a wise man; he is well skilled in arithmetic or rates, and hath eloquence enough to save twopence. His conversation amongst his tenants is desperate, but amongst his equals full of doubt. His travel is seldom farther than the next market town, and his inquisition is about the price of corn. When he travelleth he will go ten miles out of the way to a cousin's house of his to save charges; he rewards the servant by taking him by the hand when he departs. Nothing under a subpoena can draw him to London; and when he is there he sticks fast upon every object, casts his eyes away upon gazing, and becomes the prey of every cutpurse. When he comes home, those wonders serve him for his holiday talk. If he go to court it is in yellow stockings; and if it be in winter, in a slight taffety cloak, and pumps and pantofles. He is chained that woos the usher for his coming into the presence, where he becomes troublesome with the ill-managing of his rapier, and the wearing of his girdle of one fashion, and the hangers of another. By this time he hath learned to kiss his hand, and make a leg both together, and the names of lords and councillors. He hath thus much toward entertainment and courtesy, but of the last he makes more use, for, by the recital of my lord, he conjures his poor countrymen. But this is not his element; he must home again, being like a dor, that ends his flight in a dunghill.
Is the cinnamon tree, whose bark is more worth than his body. He hath read the book of good manners, and by this time each of his limbs may read it. He alloweth of no judge but the eye: painting, bolstering, and bombasting are his orators. By these also he proves his industry, for he hath purchased legs, hair, beauty, and straightness, more than nature left him. He unlocks maidenheads with his language, and speaks Euphues, not so gracefully as heartily. His discourse makes not his behaviour; but he buys it at court, as countrymen their clothes in Birchin Lane. He is somewhat like the salamander, and lives in the flame of love, which pains he expresseth comically. And nothing grieves him so much as the want of a poet to make an issue in his love. Yet he sighs sweetly and speaks lamentably, for his breath is perfumed and his words are wind. He is best in season at Christmas, for the boar's head and reveller come together. His hopes are laden in his quality; and, lest fiddlers should take him unprovided, he wears pumps in his pocket; and, lest he should take fiddlers unprovided, he whistles his own galliard. He is a calendar of ten years, and marriage rusts him. Afterwards he maintains himself an implement of household, by carving and ushering. For all this, he is judicial only in tailors and barbers; but his opinion is ever ready, and ever idle. If you will know more of his acts, the broker's shop is the witness of his valour, where lies wounded, dead rent, and out of fashion, many a spruce suit, overthrown by his fantasticness.
Is a creature born to the best advantage of things without him; that hath the start at the beginning, but loiters it away before the ending. He looks like his land, as heavily and dirtily, as stubbornly. He dares do anything but fight, and fears nothing but his father's life, and minority. The first thing he makes known is his estate, and the loadstone that draws him is the upper end of the table. He wooeth by a particular, and his strongest argument is all about the jointure. His observation is all about the fashion, and he commends partlets for a rare device. He speaks no language, but smells of dogs or hawks, and his ambition flies justice-height. He loves to be commended; and he will go into the kitchen but he'll have it. He loves glory, but is so lazy as he is content with flattery. He speaks most of the precedency of age, and protests fortune the greatest virtue. He summoneth the old servants, and tells what strange acts he will do when he reigns. He verily believes housekeepers the best commonwealths-men, and therefore studies baking, brewing, greasing, and such, as the limbs of goodness. He judgeth it no small sign of wisdom to talk much; his tongue therefore goes continually his errand, but never speeds. If his understanding were not honester than his will, no man should keep good conceit by him, for he thinks it no theft to sell all he can to opinion. His pedigree and his father's seal-ring are the stilts of his crazed disposition. He had rather keep company with the dregs of men than not to be the best man. His insinuation is the inviting of men to his house; and he thinks it a great modesty to comprehend his cheer under a piece of mutton and a rabbit. If he by this time be not known, he will go home again, for he can no more abide to have himself concealed than his land. Yet he is (as you see) good for nothing, except to make a stallion to maintain the race.
Is the oyster that the pearl is in, for a man may be picked out of him. He hath the abilities of the mind inpotentia, andactunothing but boldness. His clothes are in fashion before his body, and he accounts boldness the chiefest virtue. Above all men he loves an herald, and speaks pedigrees naturally. He accounts none well descended that call him not cousin, and prefers Owen Glendower before any of the Nine Worthies. The first note of his familiarity is the confession of his valour, and so he prevents quarrels. He voucheth Welsh a pure and unconquered language, and courts ladies with the story of their chronicle. To conclude, he is precious in his own conceit, and upon St. David's Day without comparison.
He treads in a rule, and one hand scans verses, and the other holds his sceptre. He dares not think a thought that the nominative case governs not the verb; and he never had meaning in his life, for he travelled only for words. His ambition is criticism, and his example Tully. He values phrases, and elects them by the sound, and the eight parts of speech are his servants. To be brief, he is a Heteroclite, for he wants the plural number, having only the single quality of words.
Is a creature, which, though he be not drunk, yet is not his own man. He tells without asking who owns him, by the superscription of his livery. His life is for ease and leisure, much about gentleman-like. His wealth enough to suffice nature, and sufficient to make him happy, if he were sure of it, for he hath little, and wants nothing; he values himself higher or lower as his master is. He hates or loves the men as his master doth the master. He is commonly proud of his master's horses or his Christmas; he sleeps when he is sleepy, is of his religion, only the clock of his stomach is set to go an hour after his. He seldom breaks his own clothes. He never drinks but double, for he must be pledged; nor commonly without some short sentence nothing to the purpose, and seldom abstains till he comes to a thirst. His discretion is to be careful for his master's credit, and his sufficiency to marshal dishes at a table, and to carve well; his neatness consists much in his hair and outward linen; his courting language, visible coarse jests; and against his matter fail, he is always ready furnished with a song. His inheritance is the chambermaid, but often purchaseth his master's daughter, by reason of opportunity, or for want of a better, he always cuckolds himself, and never marries but his own widow. His master being appeased, he becomes a retainer, and entails himself and his posterity upon his heir-males for ever.
Is the kernel of a sign; or the sign is the shell, and mine host is the snail. He consists of double beer and fellowship, and his vices are the bawds of his thirst. He entertains humbly, and gives his guests power, as well of himself as house. He answers all men's expectations to his power, save in the reckoning; and hath gotten the trick of greatness, to lay all mislikes upon his servants. His wife is the common seed of his dove-house; and to be a good guest is a warrant for her liberty. He traffics for guests by men-friends' friends' friends, and is sensible only of his purse. In a word, he is none of his own; for he neither eats, drinks, or thinks, but at other men's charges and appointments.
Is a thing that scrubbeth unreasonably his horse, reasonably himself. He consists of travellers, though he be none himself. His highest ambition is to be host, and the invention of his sign is his greatest wit, for the expressing whereof he sends away the painters for want of understanding. He hath certain charms for a horse mouth, that he should not eat his hay; and behind your back he will cozen your horse to his face. His curry-comb is one of his best parts, for he expresseth much by the jingling; and his mane-comb is a spinner's card turned out of service. He puffs and blows over your horse, to the hazard of a double jug, and leaves much of the dressing to the proverb ofmuli mutuo scabient, one horse rubs another. He comes to him that calls loudest, not first; he takes a broken head patiently, but the knave he feels it not; utmost honesty is good fellowship, and he speaks northern, what countryman soever. He hath a pension of ale from the next smith and saddler for intelligence; he loves to see you ride, and hold your stirrup in expectation.
He hath a soul drowned in a lump of flesh, or is a piece of earth that Prometheus put not half his proportion of fire into. A thing that hath neither edge of desire nor feeling of affection in it; the most dangerous creature for confirming an atheist, who would swear his soul were nothing but the bare temperature of his body. He sleeps as he goes, and his thoughts seldom reach an inch further than his eyes. The most part of the faculties of his soul lie fallow, or are like the restive jades that no spur can drive forward towards the pursuit of any worthy designs. One of the most unprofitable of God's creatures, being as he is a thing put clean beside the right use; made fit for the cart and the flail, and by mischance entangled amongst books and papers. A man cannot tell possibly what he is now good for, save to move up and down and fill room, or to serve asanimatum instrumentum, for others to work withal in base employments, or to be foil for better wits, or to serve (as they say monsters do) to set out the variety of nature, and ornament of the universe. He is mere nothing of himself, neither eats, nor drinks, nor goes, nor spits, but by imitation, for all which he hath set forms and fashions, which he never varies, but sticks to with the like plodding constancy that a mill-horse follows his trace. But the Muses and the Graces are his hard mistresses; though he daily invocate them, though he sacrifice hecatombs, they still look asquint. You shall note him (besides his dull eye, and lowering head, and a certain clammy benumbed pace) by a fair displayed beard, a night-cap, and a gown, whose very wrinkles proclaim him the true genius of familiarity. But of all others, his discourse and compositions best speak him, both of them are much of one stuff and fashion. He speaks just what his books or last company said unto him, without varying one whit, and very seldom understands himself. You may know by his discourse where he was last; for what he heard or read yesterday, he now dischargeth his memory or note-book of--not his understanding, for it never came there. What he hath he flings abroad at all adventures, without accommodating it to time, place, or persons, or occasions. He commonly loseth himself in his tale, and flutters up and down windless without recovery, and whatsoever next presents itself, his heavy conceit seizeth upon, and goeth along with, however heterogeneal to his matter in hand. His jests are either old fled proverbs, or lean-starved hackney apophthegms, or poor verbal quips, outworn by serving-men, tapsters, and milkmaids, even laid aside by balladers. He assents to all men that bring any shadow of reason, and you may make him when he speaks most dogmatically even with one breath, to aver poor contradictions. His compositions differ onlyterminorum positionefrom dreams; nothing but rude heaps of immaterial, incoherent, drossy, rubbishy stuff, promiscuously thrust up together; enough to infuse dulness and barrenness in conceit into him that is so prodigal of his ears as to give the hearing; enough to make a man's memory ache with suffering such dirty stuff cast into it. As unwelcome to any true conceit, as sluttish morsels or wallowish potions to a nice stomach, which whiles he empties himself, it sticks in his teeth, nor can he be delivered without sweat, and sighs, and hems, and coughs enough to shake his grandam's teeth out of her head. He spits, and scratches, and spawls, and turns like sick men from one elbow to another, and deserves as much pity during his torture as men in fits of tertian fevers, or self-lashing penitentiaries. In a word, rip him quite asunder, and examine every shred of him, you shall find of him to be just nothing but the subject of nothing; the object of contempt; yet such as he is you must take him, for there is no hope he should ever become better.
Is a man's best movable, a scion incorporate with the stock, bringing sweet fruit; one that to her husband is more than a friend, less than trouble; an equal with him in the yoke. Calamities and troubles she shares alike, nothing pleaseth her that doth not him. She is relative in all, and he without her but half himself. She is his absent hands, eyes, ears, and mouth; his present and absent all. She frames her nature unto his howsoever; the hyacinth follows not the sun more willingly. Stubbornness and obstinacy are herbs that grow not in her garden. She leaves tattling to the gossips of the town, and is more seen than heard. Her household is her charge; her care to that makes her seldom non-resident. Her pride is but to be cleanly, and her thrift not to be prodigal. By her discretion she hath children not wantons; a husband without her is a misery to man's apparel: none but she hath an aged husband, to whom she is both a staff and a chair. To conclude, she is both wise and religious, which makes her all this.
Is a strayer from the drove: one that Nature made a sociable, because she made him man, and a crazed disposition hath altered. Unpleasing to all, as all to him; straggling thoughts are his content, they make him dream waking, there's his pleasure. His imagination is never idle, it keeps his mind in a continual motion, as the poise the clock: he winds up his thoughts often, and as often unwinds them; Penelope's web thrives faster. He'll seldom be found without the shade of some grove, in whose bottom a river dwells. He carries a cloud in his face, never fair weather; his outside is framed to his inside, in that he keeps a decorum, both unseemly. Speak to him; he hears with his eyes, ears follow his mind, and that's not at leisure. He thinks business, but never does any; he is all contemplation, no action. He hews and fashions his thoughts, as if he meant them to some purpose, but they prove unprofitable, as a piece of wrought timber to no use. His spirits and the sun are enemies: the sun bright and warm, his humour black and cold; variety of foolish apparitions people his head, they suffer him not to breathe according to the necessities of nature, which makes him sup up a draught of as much air at once as would serve at thrice. He denies nature her due in sleep, and nothing pleaseth him long, but that which pleaseth his own fantasies; they are the consuming evils, and evil consumptions that consume him alive. Lastly, he is a man only in show; but comes short of the better part, a whole reasonable soul, which is man's chief pre-eminence and sole mark from creatures sensible.
Is a pitched piece of reason caulked and tackled, and only studied to dispute with tempests. He is part of his own provision, for he lives ever pickled. A fore-wind is the substance of his creed, and fresh water the burden of his prayers. He is naturally ambitious, for he is ever climbing; out of which as naturally he fears, for he is ever flying. Time and he are everywhere ever contending who shall arrive first; he is well-winded, for he tires the day, and outruns darkness. His life is like a hawk's, the best part mewed; and if he live till three coats, is a master. He sees God's wonders in the deep, but so as rather they appear his playfellows than stirrers of his zeal. Nothing but hunger and hard rocks can convert him, and then but his upper deck neither; for his hold neither fears nor hopes, his sleeps are but reprievals of his dangers, and when he wakes 'tis but next stage to dying. His wisdom is the coldest part about him, for it ever points to the north, and it lies lowest, which makes his valour every tide overflow it. In a storm it is disputable whether the noise be more his or the elements, and which will first leave scolding; on which side of the ship he may be saved best, whether his faith be starboard faith or larboard, or the helm at that time not all his hope of heaven. His keel is the emblem of his conscience, till it be split he never repents, then no farther than the land allows him, and his language is a new confusion, and all his thoughts new nations. His body and his ship are both one burden, nor is it known who stows most wine or rolls most; only the ship is guided, he has no stern. A barnacle and he are bred together, both of one nature, and it is feared one reason. Upon any but a wooden horse he cannot ride, and if the wind blow against him he dare not. He swerves up to his seat as to a sail-yard, and cannot sit unless he bear a flagstaff. If ever he be broken to the saddle, it is but a voyage still, for he mistakes the bridle for a bowline, and is ever turning his horse-tail. He can pray, but it is by rote, not faith, and when he would he dares not, for his brackish belief hath made that ominous. A rock or a quicksand plucks him before he be ripe, else he is gathered to his friends at Wapping.
Is the husbandman of valour; his sword is his plough, which honour andaqua vita, two fiery-metalled jades, are ever drawing. A younger brother best becomes arms, an elder the thanks for them. Every heat makes him a harvest, and discontents abroad are his sowers. He is actively his prince's, but passively his anger's servant. He is often a desirer of learning, which once arrived at, proves his strongest armour. He is a lover at all points, and a true defender of the faith of women. More wealth than makes him seem a handsome foe, lightly he covets not, less is below him. He never truly wants but in much having, for then his ease and lechery afflict him. The word peace, though in prayer, makes him start, and God he best considers by His power. Hunger and cold rank in the same file with him, and hold him to a man; his honour else, and the desire of doing things beyond him, would blow him greater than the sons of Anak. His religion is, commonly, as his cause is, doubtful, and that the best devotion keeps best quarter. He seldom sees grey hairs, some none at all, for where the sword fails, there the flesh gives fire. In charity he goes beyond the clergy, for he loves his greatest enemy best, much drinking. He seems a full student, for he is a great desirer of controversies; he argues sharply, and carries his conclusion in his scabbard. In the first refining of mankind this was the gold, his actions are his amel. His alloy (for else you cannot work him perfectly) continual duties, heavy and weary marches, lodgings as full of need as cold diseases. No time to argue, but to execute. Line him with these, and link him to his squadrons, and he appears a most rich chain for princes.
Is a creature made up of threads that were pared off from Adam, when he was rough cast; the end of his being differeth from that of others, and is not to serve God, but to cover sin. Other men's pride is the best patron, and their negligence a main passage to his profit. He is a thing of more than ordinary judgment: for by virtue of that he buyeth land, buildeth houses, and raiseth the set roof of his cross-legged fortune. His actions are strong encounters, and for their notoriousness always upon record. It is neither Amadis de Gaul, nor the Knight of the Sun, that is able to resist them. A ten-groat fee setteth them on foot, and a brace of officers bringeth them to execution. He handleth the Spanish pike to the hazard of many poor Egyptian vermin; and in show of his valour, scorneth a greater gauntlet than will cover the top of his middle finger. Of all weapons he most affecteth the long bill; and this he will manage to the great prejudice of a customer's estate. His spirit, notwithstanding, is not so much as to make you think him man; like a true mongrel, he neither bites nor barks but when your back is towards him. His heart is a lump of congealed snow: Prometheus was asleep while it was making. He differeth altogether from God; for with him the best pieces are still marked out for damnation, and, without hope of recovery, shall be cast down into hell. He is partly an alchemist; for he extracteth his own apparel out of other men's clothes; and when occasion serveth, making a broker's shop his alembic, can turn your silks into gold, and having furnished his necessities, after a month or two, if he be urged unto it, reduce them again to their proper subsistence. He is in part likewise an arithmetician, cunning enough for multiplication and addition, but cannot abide subtraction:summa totalisis the language of his Canaan, andusque ad ultimum quadrantemthe period of all his charity. For any skill in geometry I dare not commend him, for he could never yet find out the dimensions of his own conscience; notwithstanding he hath many bottoms, it seemeth this is always bottomless. And so with alibera nos a maloI leave you, promising to amend whatsoever is amiss at his next setting.
Is a diseased piece of apocalypse: bind him to the Bible, and he corrupts the whole text. 'Ignorance and fat feed are his founders; his nurses, railing, rabies, and round breeches. His life is but a borrowed blast of wind: for between two religions, as between two doors, he is ever whistling. Truly, whose child he is is yet unknown; for, willingly, his faith allows no father: only thus far his pedigree is found, Bragger and he flourished about a time first. His fiery zeal keeps him continually costive, which withers him into his own translation; and till he eat a schoolman he is hide-bound. He ever prays against non-residents, but is himself the greatest discontinuer, for he never keeps near his text. Anything that the law allows, but marriage and March beer, he murmurs at; what it disallows and holds dangerous, makes him a discipline. Where the gate stands open, he is ever seeking a stile; and where his learning ought to climb, he creeps through. Give him advice, you run into traditions; and urge a modest course, he cries out counsel. His greatest care is to contemn obedience; his last care to serve God handsomely and cleanly. He is now become so cross a kind of teaching, that should the Church enjoin clean shirts, he were lousy. More sense than single prayers is not his; nor more in those than still the same petitions: from which he either fears a learned faith, or doubts God understands not at first hearing. Show him a ring, he runs back like a bear; and hates square dealing as allied to caps. A pair of organs blow him out of the parish, and are the only glyster-pipes to cool him. Where the meat is best, there he confutes most, for his arguing is but the efficacy of his eating: good bits he holds breed good positions, and the Pope he best concludes against in plum-broth. He is often drunk, but not as we are, temporally; nor can his sleep then cure him, for the fumes of his ambition make his very soul reel, and that small beer that should allay him (silence) keeps him more surfeited, and makes his heat break out in private houses. Women and lawyers are his best disciples; the one, next fruit, longs for forbidden doctrine, the other to maintain forbidden titles, both which he sows amongst them. Honest he dare not be, for that loves order; yet, if he can be brought to ceremony and made but master of it, he is converted.
Is the best shadow to make a discreet one show the fairer. He is amateria primainformed by reports, actuated by statutes, and hath his motion by the favourable intelligence of the Court. His law is always furnished with a commission to arraign his conscience; but, upon judgment given, he usually sets it at large. He thinks no language worth knowing but his Barragouin: only for that point he hath been a long time at wars with Priscian for a northern province. He imagines that by sure excellency his profession only is learning, and that it is a profanation of the Temple to his Themis dedicated, if any of the liberal arts be there admitted to offer strange incense to her. For, indeed, he is all for money. Seven or eight years squires him out, some of his nation less standing; and ever since the night of his call, he forgot much what he was at dinner. The next morning his man (inactuorpotentia) enjoys his pickadels. His laundress is then shrewdly troubled in fitting him a ruff, his perpetual badge. His love-letters of the last year of his gentlemanship are stuffed with discontinuances, remitters, and uncore priests; but, now being enabled to speak in proper person, he talks of a French hood instead of a jointure, wags his law, and joins issue. Then he begins to stick his letters in his ground chamber-window, that so the superscription may make his squireship transparent. His heraldry gives him place before the minister, because the Law was before the Gospel. Next term he walks his hoopsleeve gown to the hall; there it proclaims him. He feeds fat in the reading, and till it chance to his turn, dislikes no house order so much as that the month is so contracted to a fortnight. Amongst his country neighbours he arrogates as much honour for being reader of an Inn of Chancery, as if it had been of his own house; for they, poor souls, take law and conscience, Court and Chancery, for all one. He learned to frame his case from putting riddles and imitating Merlin's prophecies, and to set all the Cross Row together by the ears; yet his whole law is not able to decide Lucan's one old controversy betwixt Tau and Sigma. He accounts no man of his cap and coat idle, but who trots not the circuit. He affects no life or quality for itself, but for gain; and that, at least, to the stating him in a Justice of Peace-ship, which is the first quickening soul superadded to the elementary and inanimate form of his new tide. His terms are his wife's vacations; yet she then may usurp divers Court-days, and has her returns inmensemfor writs of entry--often shorter. His vacations are her termers; but in assize time (the circuit being long) he may have a trial at home against him bynisi prius. No way to heaven, he thinks, so wise as through Westminster Hall; and his clerks commonly through it visit both heaven and hell. Yet then he oft forgets his journey's end, although he look on the Star-Chamber. Neither is he wholly destitute of the arts. Grammar he has enough to make termination of those words which his authority hath endenizoned rhetoric-some; but so little that it is thought a concealment. Logic, enough to wrangle. Arithmetic, enough for the ordinals of his year-books and number-rolls; but he goes not to multiplication, there is a statute against it. So much geometry, that he can advise in aperambulatione fadenda, or arationalibus divisis. In astronomy and astrology he is so far seen, that by the Dominical letter he knows the holy-days, and finds by calculation that Michaelmas term will be long and dirty. Marry, he knows so much in music that he affects only the most and cunningest discords; rarely a perfect concord, especially song, exceptin fine. His skill in perspective endeavours much to deceive the eye of the law, and gives many false colours. He is specially practised in necromancy (such a kind as is out of the Statute of Primo), by raising many dead questions. What sufficiency he hath in criticism, the foul copies of his special pleas will tell you. Many of the same coat, which are much to be honoured, partake of divers of his indifferent qualities; but so that discretion, virtue, and sometimes other good learning, concurring and distinguishing ornaments to them, make them as foils to set their work on.