Is a creature made, as it were, in wax. When Nature first framed him, she took a secret complacence in her work. He is even her masterpiece in irrational things, borrowing somewhat of all things to set him forth. For example, his slick bay coat he took from the chestnut; his neck from the rainbow, which perhaps make him rain so well. His mane belike he took from Pegasus, making him a hobby to make this a complete jennet, which mane he wears so curled, much after the women's fashions now-a-days;--this I am sure of, howsoever, it becomes them, [and] it sets forth our jennet well. His legs he borrowed of the hart, with his swiftness, which makes him a true courser indeed. The stars in his forehead he fetched from heaven, which will not be much missed, there being so many. The little head he hath, broad breast, fat buttock, and thick tail are properly his own, for he knew not where to get him better. If you tell him of the horns he wants to make him most complete, he scorns the motion, and sets them at his heel. He is well shod, especially in the upper leather, for as for his soles, they are much at reparation, and often fain to be removed. Nature seems to have spent an apprenticeship of years to make you such a one, for it is full seven years ere he comes to this perfection, and be fit for the saddle: for then (as we), it seems to come to the years of discretion, when he will show a kind of rational judgment with him, and if you set an expert rider on his back, you shall see how sensible they will talk together, as master and scholar. When he shall be no sooner mounted and planted in the seat, with the reins in one hand, a switch in the other, and speaking with his spurs in the horse's flanks, a language he well understands, but he shall prance, curvet, and dance the canaries half an hour together in compass of a bushel, and yet still, as he thinks, get some ground, shaking the goodly plume on his head with a comely pride. This will our Bucephalus do in the lists: but when he comes abroad into the fields, he will play the country gentleman as truly, as before the knight in tournament. If the game be up once, and the hounds in chase, you shall see how he will prick up his ears straight, and tickle at the sport as much as his rider shall, and laugh so loud, that if there be many of them, they will even drown the rural harmony of the dogs. When he travels, of all inns he loves best the sign of the silver bell, because likely there he fares best, especially if he come the first and get the prize. He carries his ears upright, nor seldom ever lets them fall till they be cropped off, and after that, as in despite, will never wear them more. His tail is so essential to him, that if he lose it once he is no longer a horse, but ever styled a curtali. To conclude, he is a blade of Vulcan's forging, made for Mars of the best metal, and the post of Fame to carry her tidings through the world, who, if he knew his own strength, would shrewdly put for the monarchy of our wilderness.
Then there-were separate Characters, as "of a Projector" (1642); "of an Oxford Incendiary" (1645); and in 1664, "A New Anatomic, or Character of a Christian or Roundhead, expressing his Description, Excellenrie, Happiness, and Innocencie. Wherein may appear how far this blind World is mistaken in their unjust Censures of him." Several Characters were included in Lord North's "Forest of Varieties" published in 1645. Fourteen Characters, some of individual persons, were in the "Characters and Elegies, by Sir Francis Wortley, Knight and Baronet" published in 1646. The author was son of Sir Richard Wortley of Wortley in Yorkshire. He was a good royalist, was taken prisoner in the civil wars, and wrote his Characters in the Tower. They were these:--The Character of his Roy all Majestie; the Character of the Queene's Majestie; the Hopeful Prince; a true Character of the illustrious James, Duke of York; the Character of a Noble General; a true English Protestant; an Antinomian, or Anabaptistical Independent; a Jesuit; the true Character of a Northern Lady, as she is Wife, Mother, and Sister; the Politique Neuter; the Citie Paragon; a Sharking Committee-man; Britannicus his Pedigree --afatall Prediction of his end; and last, the Phoenix of the Court.In 1646, T. F., who is named by interlineation on his title-page among the King's Pamphlets, T. Ford, servant to Mr. Sam. Man, produced the "Times Anatomized, in several Characters." These were: A Good King, Rebellion, an Honest Subject, an Hypocritical Convert of the Times, a Soldier of Fortune, a Discontented Person, an Ambitious Man, the Vulgar, Error, Truth, a Self-seeker, Pamphlets, an Envious Man, True Valour, Time, a Neuter, a Turn-Coat, a Moderate Man, a Corrupt Committee-man, a Sectary, War, Peace, a Drunkard, a Novice, Preacher, a Scandalous Preacher, a Grave Divine, a Self-Conceited Man, Religion, Death. This is T. Ford's Character of Pamphlets--
Are the weekly almanacs, showing what weather is in the state, which, like the doves of Aleppo, carry news to every part of the kingdom. They are the silent traitors that affront majesty, and abuse all authority, under the colour of an imprimatur. Ubiquitary flies that have of late so blistered the ears of all men, that they cannot endure the solid truth. The echoes, whereby what is done in part of the kingdom, is heard all over. They are like the mushrooms, sprung up in a night, and dead in a day; and such is the greediness of men's natures (in these Athenian days) of new, that they will rather feign than want it.
So the tide ran on. In1647there was "The Character of an Agitator," and also John Cleveland's Character of a London Diurnal.
The Cavalier poet, born at Loitghborough in Leicestershire in1613,son of an usher in a free school there, was sent to Milton's College, Christ's, at Cambridge in1627,when he was fifteen years old. Milton had gone to Christ's two years before, but at the age of seventeen. Cleveland left Christ's College in1631,when he took his B.A. degree, and went to St. John's, of which he was elected a Fellow in March1634.He proceeded M.A. in1634,and studied afterwards both law and physics, living for nine years at Cambridge. John Cleveland was ejected from his position as Fellow and Tutor by the Parliamentary visitors in February1645(new style), and was sent to Newark as judge advocate under Sir Richard Willis, the Governor. After the surrender at Newark, Cleveland depended upon friendship of cavaliers who gave him hospitality for his witty companionship, and the good scholarship that made him valuable as a tutor to their sons, Cleveland, who lives among our poets, wrote in the first days of his trouble these three prose Characters:--
A committee-man by his name should be one that is possessed, there is number enough in it to make an epithet for legion. He ispersona in concreto(to borrow the solecism of a modern statesman). You may translate it by the Red Bull phrase, and speak as properly, Enter seven devilssolus. It is a well-trussed title that contains both the number and the beast; for a committee-man is a noun of multitude, he must be spelled with figures, like Antichrist wrapped in a pair-royal of sixes. Thus the name is as monstrous as the man, a complex notion of the same lineage with accumulative treason. For his office it is the Heptarchy, or England's fritters; it is the broken meat of a crumbling prince, only the royalty is greater; for it is here, as in the miracle of loaves, the voider exceeds the bill of fare. The Pope and he ring the changes; here is the plurality of crowns to one head, join them together and there is a harmony in discord. The triple-headed turnkey of heaven with the triple-headed porter of hell. A committee-man is the relics of regal government, but, like holy relics, he outbulks the substance whereof he is a remnant. There is a score of kings in a committee, as in the relics of the cross there is the number of twenty. This is the giant with the hundred hands that wields the sceptre; the tyrannical bead-roll by which the kingdom prays backward, and at every curse drops a committee-man. Let Charles be waived whose condescending clemency aggravates the defection, and make Nero the question, better a Nero than a committee. There is less execution by a single bullet than by case-shot.
Now a committee-man is a parti-coloured officer. He must be drawn like Janus with cross and pile in his countenance, as he relates to the soldiers or faces about to his fleecing the country. Look upon him martially, and he is a justice of war, one that hath bound his Dalton up in buff, and will needs be of the Quorum to the best commanders. He is one of Mars his lay-elders; he shares in the government, though a Nonconformist to his bleeding rubric. He is the like sectary in arms, as the Platonic is in love, keeps a fluttering in discourse, but proves a haggard in the action. He is not of the soldiers and yet of his flock. It is an emblem of the golden age (and such indeed he makes it to him) when so tame a pigeon may converse with vultures. Methinks a committee hanging about a governor, and bandileers dangling about a furred alderman, have an anagram resemblance. There is no syntax between a cap of maintenance and a helmet. Who ever knew an enemy routed by a grand jury and aBilla vera?It is a left-handed garrison where their authority perches; but the more preposterous the more in fashion, the right hand fights while the left rules the reins. The truth is, the soldier and the gentleman are like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, one fights at all adventures to purchase the other the government of the island. A committee-man properly should be the governor's mattress to fit his truckle, and to new string him with sinews of war; for his chief use is to raise assessments in the neighbouring wapentake.
The country people being like an Irish cow that will not give down her milk unless she see her calf before her, hence it is he is the garrison's dry nurse; he chews their contribution before he feeds them, so the poor soldiers live like Trochilus by picking the teeth of this sacred crocodile.
So much for his warlike or ammunition face, which is so preter-natural that it is rather a vizard than a face; Mars in him hath but a blinking aspect, his face of arms is like his coat,partie per pale, soldier and gentleman much of a scantling.
Now enter his taxing and deglubing face, a squeezing look like that of Vespasianus, as if he were bleeding over a close stool.
Take him thus and he is in the inquisition of the purse an authentic gypsy, that nips your bong with a canting ordinance; not a murdered fortune in all the country but bleeds at the touch of this malefactor. He is the spleen of the body politic that swells itself to the consumption of the whole. At first, indeed, he ferreted for the parliament, but since he hath got off his cope he set up for himself. He lives upon the sins of the people, and that is a good standing dish too. He verifies the axiom,lisdem nutritur ex quibus componitur; his diet is suitable to his constitution. I have wondered often why the plundered countrymen should repair to him for succour, certainly it is under the same notion, as one whose pockets are picked goes to Moll Cutpurse, as the predominant in that faculty.
He outdives a Dutchman, gets a noble of him that was never worth sixpence; for the poorest do not escape, but Dutch-like he will be draining even in the driest ground. He aliens a delinquent's estate with as little remorse as his other holiness gives away an heretic's kingdom, and for the truth of the delinquency, both chapmen have as little share of infallibility. Lye is the grand salad of arbitrary government, executor to the star-chamber and the high commission; for those courts are not extinct, they survive in him like dollars changed into single money. To speak the truth, he is the universal tribunal; for since these times all causes fall to his cognisance, as in a great infection all diseases turn oft to the plague. It concerns our masters the parliament to look about them; if he proceedeth at this rate the jack may come to swallow the pike, as the interest often eats out the principal. As his commands are great, so he looks for a reverence accordingly. He is punctual in exacting your hat, and to say right his due, but by the same title as the upper garment is the vails of the executioner. There was a time when such cattle would hardly have been taken upon suspicion for men in office, unless the old proverb were renewed, that the beggars make a free company, and those their wardens. You may see what it is to hang together. Look upon them severally, and you cannot but fumble for some threads of charity. But oh, they are termagants in conjunction! like fiddlers who are rogues when they go single, and joined in consort, gentlemen musicianers. I care not much if I untwist my committee-man, and so give him the receipt of this grand Catholicon.
Take a state martyr, one that for his good behaviour hath paid the excise of his ears, so suffered captivity by the land-piracy of ship-money; next a primitive freeholder, one that hates the king because he is a gentleman transgressing the Magna Charta of delving Adam. Add to these a mortified bankrupt that helps out his false weights with some scruples of conscience, and with his peremptory scales can doom his prince with amene tekel. These with a new blue-stockinged justice, lately made of a good basket-hilted yeoman, with a short-handed clerk tacked to the rear of him to carry the knapsack of his understanding, together with two or three equivocal sirs whose religion, like their gentility, is the extract of their acres; being therefore spiritual because they are earthly; not forgetting the man of the law, whose corruption gives the Hogan to the sincere Juncto. These are the simples of this precious compound; a kind of Dutch hotch-potch, the Hogan Mogan committee-man.
The Committee-man hath a sideman, or rather a setter, hight a Sequestrator, of whom you may say, as of the great Sultan's horse, where he treads the grass grows no more. He is the State's cormorant, one that fishes for the public but feeds himself; the misery is he fishes without the cormorant's property, a rope to strengthen the gullet and to make him disgorge. A sequestrator! He is the devil's nut-hook, the sign with him is always in the clutches. There are more monsters retain to him than to all the limbs in anatomy. It is strange physicians do not apply him to the soles of the feet in a desperate fever, he draws far beyond pigeons. I hope some mountebank will slice him and make the experiment. He is a tooth-drawer once removed; here is the difference, one applauds the grinder the other the grist. Never till now could I verify the poet's description, that the ravenous harpy had a human visage. Death himself cannot quit scores with him; like the demoniac in the gospel, he lives among tombs, nor is all the holy water shed by widows and orphans a sufficient exorcism to dispossess him. Thus the cat sucks your breath and the fiend your blood; nor can the brotherhood of witchfinders, so sagely instituted with all their terror, wean the familiars.
But once more to single out my embossed committee-man; his fate (for I know you would fain see an end of him) is either a whipping audit, when he is wrung in the withers by a committee of examinations, and so the sponge weeps out the moisture which he had soaked before; or else he meets his passing peal in the clamorous mutiny of a gut-foundered garrison, for the hedge-sparrow will be feeding the cuckoo till he mistake his commons and bites off her head. Whatever it is, it is within his desert, for what is observed of some creatures that at the same time they trade in productions three stories high, suckling the first, big with the second, and clicketing for the third: a committee-man is the counterpoint, his mischief is superfoetation, a certain scale of destruction, for he ruins the father, beggars the son, and strangles the hope of all posterity.
A diurnal-maker is the sub-almoner of history, Queen Mab's register, one whom, by the same figure that a north country pedlar is a merchantman, you may style an author. It is like overreach of language, when every thin tinder-cloaked quack must be called a doctor; when a clumsy cobbler usurps the attribute of our English peers, and is vamped a translator. List him a writer and you smother Geoffrey in swabber-slops; the very name of dabbler oversets him; he is swallowed up in the phrase, like Sir S.L. [Samuel Luke] in a great saddle, nothing to be seen but the giddy feather in his crown. They call him a Mercury, but he becomes the epithet like the little negro mounted upon an elephant, just such another blot rampant. He has not stuffings sufficient for the reproach of a scribbler, but it hangs about him like an old wife's skin when the flesh hath forsaken her, lank and loose. He defames a good title as well as most of our modern noblemen; those wens of greatness, the body politic's most peccant humours blistered into lords. He hath so raw-boned a being that however you render him he rubs it out and makes rags of the expression. The silly countryman who, seeing an ape in a scarlet coat, blessed his young worship, and gave his landlord joy of the hopes of his house, did not slander his complement with worse application than he that names this shred an historian. To call him an historian is to knight a mandrake; 'tis to view him through a perspective, and by that gross hyperbole to give the reputation of an engineer to a maker of mousetraps. Such an historian would hardly pass muster with a Scotch stationer in a sieveful of ballads and godly books. He would not serve for the breast-plate of a begging Grecian. The most cramped compendium that the age hath seen since all learning hath been almost torn into ends, outstrips him by the head. I have heard of puppets that could prattle in a play, but never saw of their writings before. There goes a report of the Holland women that together with their children they are delivered of a Sooterkin, not unlike to a rat, which some imagine to be the offspring of the stoves. I know not whatIgnis fatuusadulterates the press, but it seems much after that fashion, else how could this vermin think to be a twin to a legitimate writer; when those weekly fragments shall pass for history, let the poor man's box be entitled the exchequer, and the alms-basket a magazine. Not a worm that gnaws on the dull scalp of voluminous Holinshed, but at every meal devoured more chronicle than his tribe amounts to. A marginal note of W. P. would serve for a winding-sheet for that man's works, like thick-skinned fruits are all rind, fit for nothing but the author's fate, to be pared in a pillory.
The cook who served up the dwarf in a pie (to continue the frolic) might have lapped up such an historian as this in the bill of fare. He is the first tincture and rudiment of a writer, dipped as yet in the preparative blue, like an almanac well-willer. He is the cadet of a pamphleteer, the pedee of a romancer; he is the embryo of a history slinked before maturity. How should he record the issues of time who is himself an abortive? I will not say but that he may pass for an historian in Garbier's academy; he is much of the size of those knotgrass professors. What a pitiful seminary was there projected; yet suitable enough to the present universities, those dry nurses which the providence of the age has so fully reformed that they are turned reformadoes. But that's no matter, the meaner the better. It is a maxim observable in these days, that the only way to win the game is to play petty Johns. Of this number is the esquire of the quill, for he hath the grudging of history and some yawnings accordingly. Writing is a disease in him and holds like a quotidian, so 'tis his infirmity that makes him an author, as Mahomet was beholding to the falling sickness to vouch him a prophet. That nice artificer who filed a chain so thin and light that a flea could trail it (as if he had worked shorthand, and taught his tools to cypher), did but contrive an emblem for this skipjack and his slight productions.
Methinks the Turk should licence diurnals because he prohibits learning and books. A library of diurnals is a wardrobe of frippery; 'tis a just idea of a Limbo of the infants. I saw one once that could write with his toes, by the same token I could have wished he had worn his copies for socks; 'tis he without doubt from whom the diurnals derive their pedigree, and they have a birthright accordingly, being shuffled out at the bed's feet of history. To what infinite numbers an historian would multiply should he crumble into elves of this profession? To supply this smallness they are fain to join forces, so they are not singly but as the custom is in a croaking committee. They tug at the pen like slaves at the oar, a whole bank together; they write in the posture that the Swedes gave fire in, over one another's heads. It is said there is more of them go to a suit of clothes than to aBritannicus;in this polygamy the clothes breed and cannot determine whose issue is lawfully begotten.
And here I think it were not amiss to take a particular how he is accoutred, and so do by him as he in his Siquis for the wall-eyed mare, or the crop flea-bitten, give you the marks of the beast. I begin with his head, which is ever in clouts, as if the nightcap should make affidavit that the brain was pregnant. To what purpose doth thePia Materlie in so dully in her white formalities; sure she hath had hard labour, for the brows have squeezed for it, as you may perceive by his buttered bon-grace that film of a demicastor; 'tis so thin and unctuous that the sunbeams mistake it for a vapour, and are like to cap him; so it is right heliotrope, it creaks in the shine and flaps in the shade; whatever it be I wish it were able to call in his ears. There's no proportion between that head and appurtenances; those of all lungs are no more fit for that small noddle of the circumcision than brass bosses for a Geneva Bible. In what a puzzling neutrality is the poor soul that moves betwixt two such ponderous biases? His collar is edged with a piece of peeping linen, by which he means a band; 'tis the forlorn of his shirt crawling out of his neck; indeed it were time that his shirt were jogging, for it has served an apprenticeship, and (as apprentices use) it hath learned its trade too, to which effect 'tis marching to the papermill, and the next week sets up for itself in the shape of a pamphlet. His gloves are the shavings of his hands, for he casts his skin like a cancelled parchment. The itch represents the broken seals. His boots are the legacies of two black jacks, and till he pawned the silver that the jacks were tipped with it was a pretty mode of boot-hose-tops. For the rest of his habit he is a perfect seaman, a kind of tarpaulin, he being hanged about with his coarse composition, those pole-davie papers.
But I must draw to an end, for every character is an anatomy lecture, and it fares with me in this of the diurnal-maker, as with him that reads on a begged malefactor, my subject smells before I have gone through with him; for a parting blow then. The word historian imports a sage and solemn author, one that curls his brow with a sullen gravity, like a bull-necked Presbyter since the army hath got him off his jurisdiction, who, Presbyter like, sweeps his breast with a reverend beard, full of native moss-troopers; not such a squirting scribe as this that's troubled with the rickets, and makes pennyworths of history. The college-treasury that never had in bank above a Harry-groat, shut up there in a melancholy solitude, like one that is kept to keep possession, had as good evidence to show for his title as he for an historian; so, if he will needs be an historian, he is not cited in the sterling acceptation, but after the rate of bluecaps' reckoning, an historian Scot. Now a Scotchman's tongue runs high fullams. There is a cheat in his idiom, for the sense ebbs from the bold expression, like the citizen's gallon, which the drawer interprets but half a pint. In sum, a diurnal-maker is the anti-mark of an historian, he differs from him as a drill from a man, or (if you had rather have it in the saints' gibberish) as a hinter doth from a holder-forth.
A diurnal is a puny chronicle, scarce pin-feathered with the wings of time. It is a history in sippets: the English Iliads in a nutshell: the apocryphal Parliament's book of Maccabees in single sheets. It would tire a Welshman to reckon up how many aps 'tis removed from an annal; for it is of that extract, only of the younger house, like a shrimp to a lobster. The original sinner in this kind was Dutch, Gallo-Belgicus the protoplast, and the modern Mercuries but Hans-en-kelders. The Countess of Zealand was brought to bed of an almanac, as many children as days in the year. It may be the legislative lady is of that lineage, so she spawns the diurnals, and they at Westminster take them in adoption by the names ofScoticus,Civicus,Britannicus. In the frontispiece of the old Beldam diurnal, like the contents of the chapter, sitteth the House of Commons judging the twelve tribes of Israel. You may call them the kingdom's anatomy before the weekly calendar; for such is a diurnal, the day of the month with what weather in the commonwealth. It is taken for the pulse of the body politic, and the empiric divines of the assembly, those spiritual dragooners, thumb it accordingly. Indeed it is a pretty synopsis, and those grave rabbis (though in the point of Divinity) trade in no larger authors. The country-carrier, when he buys it for the vicar, miscalls it the urinal; yet properly enough, for it casts the water of the state ever since it staled blood. It differs from an Aulicus, as the devil and his exorcist, or as a black witch doth from a white one, whose office is to unravel her enchantments.
It begins usually with an Ordinance, which is a law still born, dropped before quickened by the royal assent. 'Tis one of the parliament's bye-blows, acts only being legitimate, and hath no more sire than a Spanish jennet that is begotten by the wind.
Thus their militia, like its patron Mars, is the issue only of the mother, without the concourse of royal Jupiter: yet law it is, if they vote it, in defiance to their fundamentals; like the old sexton, who swore his clock went true, whatever the sun said to the contrary.
The next ingredient of a diurnal is plots, horrible plots, which with wonderful sagacity it hunts dry-Coot, while they are yet in their causes, beforemateria primacan put on her smock. How many such fits of the mother have troubled the kingdom; and for all Sir W.E. [William Earle] looks like a man-midwife, not yet delivered of so much as a cushion? But actors must have properties; and since the stages were voted down the only playhouse is at Westminster.
Suitable to their plots are their informers, skippers, and tailors, spaniels both for the land and water. Good conscionable intelligence! For however Pym's bill may inflame the reckoning, the honest vermin have not so much for lying as the public faith.
Thus a zealous botcher in Moorfields, while he was contriving some quirpocut of Church-Government, by the help of his outlying ears and the Otacousticon of the spirit, discovered such a plot, that Selden intends to combat antiquity, and maintain it was a tailor's goose that preserved the capital.
I wonder my Lord of Canterbury is not once more all to be traitored, for dealing with the lions to settle the Commission of Array in the Tower. It would do well to cramp the articles dormant, besides the opportunity of reforming these beasts of the prerogative, and changing their profaner names of Harry and Charles into Nehemiah and Eleazar.
Suppose a corn-cutter being to give little Isaac a cast of his office should fall to paring his brows (mistaking the one end for the other, because he branches at both), this would be a plot, and the next diurnal would furnish you with this scale of votes:--
Resolvedupon the question, That this act of the corn-cutter was an absolute invasion of the city's charter in the representative forehead of Isaac.
Resolved, That the evil counsellors about the corn-cutter are popishly affected and enemies to the State.
Resolved, That there be a public thanksgiving for the great deliverance of Isaac's brow-antlers; and a solemn covenant drawn up to defy the corn-cutter and all his works.
Thus the Quixotes of this age fight with the windmills of their own heads, quell monsters of their own creation, make plots, and then discover them; as who fitter to unkennel the fox than the terrier that is part of him?
In the third place march their adventures; the Roundheads' legends, the rebels' romance; stories of a larger size than the ears of their sect, able to strangle the belief of a Solifidian.
I'll present them in their order. And first as a whiffler before the show enter Stamford, one that trod the stage with the first, traversed the ground, made a leg and exit. The country people took him for one that by order of the Houses was to dance a morrice through the west of England. Well, he's a nimble gentleman; set him upon Banks his horse in a saddle rampant, and it is a great question which part of the Centaur shows better tricks.
There was a vote passing to translate him with all his equipage into monumental gingerbread; but it was crossed by the female committee alleging that the valour of his image would bite their children by the tongues.
This cubit and half of commander, by the help of a diurnal, routed his enemies fifty miles off. It's strange you'll say, and yet 'tis generally believed he would as soon do it at that distance as nearer hand. Sure it was his sword for which the weapon-salve was invented; that so wounding and healing (like loving correlates) might both work at the same removes. But the squib is run to the end of the rope: room for the prodigy of valour. Madam Atropos in breeches, Waller's knight-errantry; and because every mountebank must have his zany, throw him in Hazelrig to set off his story. These two, like Bel and the Dragon, are always worshipped in the same chapter; they hunt in couples, what one doth at the head, the other scores up at the heels.
Thus they kill a man over and over, as Hopkins and Sternhold murder the psalms with another of the same; one chimes all in, and then the other strikes up as the saints-bell.
I wonder for how many lives my Lord Hopton took the lease of his body.
First Stamford slew him, then Waller outkilled that half a bar; and yet it is thought the sullen corpse would scarce bleed were both these manslayers never so near it.
The same goes of a Dutch headsman, that he would do his office with so much ease and dexterity, that the head after execution should stand upon the shoulders. Pray God Sir William be not probationer for the place; for as if he had the like knack too, most of those whom the diurnal hath slain for him, to us poor mortals seem untouched.
Thus these artificers of death can kill the man without wounding the body, like lightning, that melts the sword and never singes the scabbard.
This is the William whose lady is the conqueror; this is the city's champion and the diurnal's delight; he that cuckolds the general in his commission; for he stalks with Essex, and shoots under his belly, because his Excellency himself is not charged there: yet in all this triumph there is a whip and bell; translate but the scene to Roundway Down, there Hazelrig's lobsters turned crabs and crawled backwards, there poor Sir William ran to his lady for an use of consolation.
But the diurnal is weary of the arm of flesh, and now begins an hosanna to Cromwell; one that hath beat up his drums clean through the Old Testament; you may learn the genealogy of our Saviour by the names in his regiment; the muster-master uses no other list but the first chapter of Matthew.
With what face can they object to the king the bringing in of foreigners, when themselves entertain such an army of Hebrews? This Cromwell is never so valorous as when he is making speeches for the association, which nevertheless he doth somewhat ominously with his neck awry, holding up his ear as if he expected Mahomet's pigeon to come and prompt him. He should be a bird of prey too by his bloody beak; his nose is able to try a young eagle, whether she be lawfully begotten. But all is not gold that glitters. What we wonder at in the rest of them is natural to him to kill without bloodshed, for the most of his trophies are in a church window, when a looking-glass would show him more superstition. He is so perfect a hater of images that he hath defaced God's in his own countenance. If he deals with men, 'tis when he takes them napping in an old monument; then down goes dust and ashes, and the stoutest cavalier is no better. O brave Oliver! Time's voider, subsizer to the worms, in whom death, who formerly devoured our ancestors, now chews the cud. He said grace once as if he would have fallen aboard with the Marquis of Newcastle; nay, and the diurnal gave you his bill of fare; but it proved a running banquet, as appears by the story. Believe him as he whistles to his Cambridge team of committee-men, and he doth wonders. But holy men, like the holy language, must be read backwards. They rifle colleges to promote learning, and pull down churches for edification. But sacrilege is entailed upon him. There must be a Cromwell for cathedrals as well as abbeys; a secure sin, whose offence carries its pardon in its mouth; for how shall he be hanged for church-robbery, that gives himself the benefit of the clergy?
But for all Cromwell's nose wears the dominical letter, compared to Manchester he is but like the vigils to an holy-day. This, this is the man of God, so sanctified a thunderbolt, that Burroughs (in a proportionable blasphemy to his Lord of Hosts) would style him the archangel giving battle to the devil.
Indeed, as the angels each of them makes a several species, so every one of his soldiers makes a distinct church. Had these beasts been to enter into the ark it would have puzzled Noah to have sorted them into pairs. If ever there were a rope of sand it was so many sects twisted into an association.
They agree in nothing but that they are all Adamites in understanding. It is a sign of a coward to wink and fight, yet all their valour proceeds from their ignorance.
But I wonder whence their general's purity proceeds; it is not by traduction; if he was begotten a saint it was by equivocal generation, for the devil in the father is turned monk in the son, so his godliness is of the same parentage with good laws, both extracted out of bad manners, and would he alter the Scripture as he hath attempted the creed, he might vary the text and say to corruption, Thou art my Father.
This is he that put out one of the kingdom's eyes by clouding our mother university; and (if this Scotch mist farther prevail) he will extinguish the other. He hath the like quarrel to both, because both are strung with the same optic nerve, knowing loyalty.
Barbarous rebel! who will be revenged upon all learning, because his treason is beyond the mercy of the book.
The diurnal as yet hath not talked much of his victories, but there is the more behind, for the knight must always beat the giant, that's resolved.
If anything fall out amiss which cannot be smothered, the diurnal hath a help at maw. It is but putting to sea and taking a Danish fleet, or brewing it with some success out of Ireland, and then it goes down merrily.
There are more puppets that move by the wire of a diurnal, as Brereton and Cell, two of Mars his petty-toes, such snivelling cowards that it is a favour to call them so. Was Brereton to fight with his teeth (as in all other things he resembles the beast) he would have odds of any man at the weapon. Oh, he's a terrible slaughterman at a Thanksgiving dinner. Had he been cannibal to have eaten those that he vanquished, his gut would have made him valiant.
The greatest wonder is at Fairfax, how he comes to be a babe of grace, certainly it is not in his personal, but (as the State-sophies distinguish) in his politic capacity; degenerateab extraby the zeal of the house he sat in, as chickens are hatched at Grand Cairo by the adoption of an oven.
There is the woodmonger too, a feeble crutch to a declining cause, a new branch of the old oak of reformation.
And now I speak of reformation,vous avez, Fox the tinker, the liveliest emblem of it that may be; for what did this parliament ever go about to reform, but, tinkerwise, in mending one hole they made three?
But I have not ink enough to cure all the tetters and ring-worms of the State.
I will close up all thus. The victories of the rebels are like the magical combat of Apuleius, who thinking he had slain three of his enemies, found them at last but a triumvirate of bladders. Such, and so empty are the triumphs of a diurnal, but so many impostumated fancies, so many bladders of their own blowing.
The "Surfeit to A.B.C." in 1656, was a look of Characters. "Naps upon Parnassus'" in 1658 contained Characters of a Temporizer and an Antiquary. In the same year appeared "Satyrical Characters and Handsome Descriptions, in Letters." In 1659 there was a third edition of a satire on the English, published as "A Character of England, as it was lately presented in a Letter to a Nobleman of France" replied to in that year by "A Character of France." These suggested the production in 1659 of "A Perfect Description of the People and Country of Scotland" and, also in 1659, "A Brief Character of the Low Countries under the States, being Three Weeks' Observation of the Vices and Virtues of the Inhabitants." This was written by Owen Feltham, and added to several editions of his "Resolves." In 1660 appeared "The Character of Italy" and "The Character of Spain;" in 1661, "Essays and Characters by L. G.;" in 1662-63, "The Assembly-Man" a Character that had been written by Sir John Birkenhead in 1647. Then came, in 1665, Richard Flecknoe, to whom Dryden ascribed sovereignty as one who
"In prose and verse was owned without dispute,Through all the realms of Nonsense absolute."
As he was equally ready in all forms of writing that his neighbours followed he, of course, wrote Characters. They were "Fifty-five Enigmatical Characters, all very exactly drawn to the Life, from several Persons, Humours, Dispositions. Pleasant and full of Delight. By R. F., Esq." The Duke of Newcastle admired, and wrote, in lines prefixed to the book--
"Flecknoe, thy characters are so full of witAnd fancy, as each word is throng'd with it.Each line's a volume, and who reads would swearWhole libraries were in each character.Nor arrows in a quiver stuck, nor yetLights in the starry skies are thicker set,Nor quills upon the armed porcupine,Than wit and fancy in this work of thine."
This is one of Flecknoe's Characters:--
He is only a man; your coward and rash being but tame and savage beasts. His courage is still the same, and drink cannot make him more valiant, nor danger less. His valour is enough to leaven whole armies; he is an army himself, worth an army of other men. His sword is not always out like children's daggers, but he is always last in beginning quarrels, though first in ending them. He holds honour, though delicate as crystal, yet not so slight and brittle to be broke and cracked with every touch; therefore, though most wary of it, is not querulous nor punctilious. He is never troubled with passion, as knowing no degree beyond clear courage; and is always valiant, but never furious. He is the more gentle in the chamber, more fierce he's in the field, holding boast (the coward's valour), and cruelty (the beast's), unworthy a valiant man. He is only coward in this, that he dares not do an unhandsome action. In fine, he can only be overcome by discourtesy, and has but one defect--he cannot talk much--to recompense which he does the more.
In 1673 there was published "The Character of a Coffee House, with the symptoms of a Town Wit;" and in the same year, "Essays of Love and Marriage ... with some Characters and other Passages of Wit;" in 1675, "The Character of a Fanatick. By a Person of Quality;" a set of eleven Characters appeared in 1675; "A Whip for a Jockey, or a Character of an Horse-Courser," in 1677; "Four for a Penny, or Poor Robin's Character of an unconscionable Pawnbroker and Ear-mark of an oppressing Tally-man, with a friendly description of a Bum-bailey, and his merciless setting cur or Follower," appeared in 1678; and in the same year the Duke of Buckingham's "Character of an Ugly Woman." In 1681 appeared the "Character of a Disbanded Courtier," and in 1684 Oldham's "Character of a certain ugly old P----." In 1686 followed "Twelve ingenious Characters, or pleasant Descriptions of the Properties of sundry Persons and Things." Sir William Coventry's "Character of a Trimmer," published in 1689, had been written before 1659, when it had been answered by a "Character of a Tory," not printed at the time, but included (1721) in the works of George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham. In 1689 appeared "Characters addressed to Ladies of Age," and also "The Ceremony-Monger his Character, in Six Chapters, by E. Hickeringill, Rector of All Saints, Colchester." Ohe! Enough, enough!
Author of "Hudibras," who died in 1680, also exercised his wit in Character writing. When Butler's "Remains" were published in two volumes in 1759 by R. Thyer, Keeper of the Public Library of Manchester, 460 pages of the second volume, (all the volume except forty or fifty pages of "Thoughts on Various Subjects,") was occupied by a collection of 120 Characters that he had written. I close this volume of "Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century" with as many of Samuel Butler's Characters as the book has room for,--none are wittier--space being left for one Character by a poet of our own century, Wordsworth's "Character of the Happy Warrior" to bring us to a happy close.
Is like a turnip, there is nothing good of him but that which is underground; or rhubarb, a contemptible shrub that springs from a noble root. He has no more title to the worth and virtue of his ancestors than the worms that were engendered in their dead bodies, and yet he believes he has enough to exempt himself and his posterity from all things of that nature for ever. This makes him glory in the antiquity of his family, as if his nobility were the better the further off it is, in time as well as desert, from that of his predecessors. He believes the honour that was left him as well as the estate is sufficient to support his quality without troubling himself to purchase any more of his own; and he meddles us little with the management of the one as the other, but trusts both to the government of his servants, by whom he is equally cheated in both. He supposes the empty title of honour sufficient to serve his turn, though he has spent the substance and reality of it, like the fellow that sold his ass but would not part with the shadow of it; or Apicius, that sold his house, and kept only the balcony to see and be seen in. And because he is privileged from being arrested for his debts, supposes he has the same freedom from all obligations he owes humanity and his country, because he is not punishable for his ignorance and want of honour, no more than poverty or unskilfulness is in other professions, which the law supposes to be punishment enough to itself. He is like a fanatic, that contents himself with the mere title of a saint, and makes that his privilege to act all manner of wickedness; or the ruins of a noble structure, of which there is nothing left but the foundation, and that obscured and buried under the rubbish of the superstructure. The living honour of his ancestors is long ago departed, dead and gone, and his is but the ghost and shadow of it, that haunts the house with horror and disquiet where once it lived. His nobility is truly descended from the glory of his forefathers, and may be rightly said to fall to him, for it will never rise again to the height it was in them by his means, and he succeeds them as candles do the office of the sun. The confidence of nobility has rendered him ignoble, as the opinion of wealth makes some men poor, and as those that are born to estates neglect industry and have no business but to spend, so he being born to honour believes he is no further concerned than to consume and waste it. He is but a copy, and so ill done that there is no line of the original in him but the sin only. He is like a word that by ill-custom and mistake has utterly lost the sense of that from which it was derived, and now signifies quite contrary; for the glory of noble ancestors will not permit the good or bad of their posterity to be obscure. He values himself only upon his title, which being only verbal gives him a wrong account of his natural capacity, for the same words signify more or less, according as they are applied to things, as ordinary and extraordinary do at court; and sometimes the greater sound has the less sense, as in accounts, though four be more than three, yet a third in proportion is more than a fourth.