Thersites, which the beggar, which the knight;—­for they are all suited in the same form of a kind of nasty poverty.  Only to be out at elbows is in fashion here, and a great indecorum not to be thread-bare.  Every man shews here like so many wrecks upon the sea, here the ribs of a thousand pound, here the relicks of so many manors, a doublet without buttons; and ’tis a spectacle of more pity than executions are.  The company one with the other is but a vying of complaints, and the causes they have to rail on fortune and fool themselves, and there is a great deal of good fellowship in this.  They are commonly, next their creditors, most bitter against the lawyers, as men that have had a great stroke in assisting them hither.  Mirth here is stupidity or hardheartedness, yet they feign it sometimes to slip melancholy, and keep off themselves from themselves, and the torment of thinking what they have been.  Men huddle up their life here as a thing of no use, and wear it out like an old suit, the faster the better; and he that deceives the time best, best spends it.  It is the place where new comers are most welcomed, and, next them, ill news, as that which extends their fellowship in misery, and leaves few to insult:—­and they breath their discontents more securely here, and have their tongues at more liberty than abroad.  Men see here much sin and much calamity; and where the last does not mortify, the other hardens; as those that are worse here, are desperately worse, and those from whom the horror of sin is taken off and the punishment familiar:  and commonly a hard thought passes on all that come from this school; which though it teach much wisdom, it is too late, and with danger:  and it is better be a fool than come here to learn it.

A SERVING MAN

Is one of the makings up of a gentleman as well as his clothes, and somewhat in the same nature, for he is cast behind his master as fashionably as his sword and cloak are, and he is but in querpo[79] without him.  His properness[80] qualifies him, and of that a good leg; for his head he has little use but to keep it bare.  A good dull wit best suits with him to comprehend commonsense and a trencher; for any greater store of brain it makes him but tumultuous, and seldom thrives with him.  He follows his master’s steps, as well in conditions as the street:  if he wench or drink, he comes him in an under kind, and thinks it a part of his duty to be like him.  He is indeed wholly his master’s; of his faction,—­of his cut,—­of his pleasures:—­he is handsome for his credit, and drunk for his credit, and if he have power in the cellar, commands the parish.  He is one that keeps the best company, and is none of it; for he knows all the gentlemen his master knows, and picks from thence some hawking and horse-race terms,[81] which he swaggers with in the ale-house, where he is only called master.  His mirth is evil jests with the wenches, and, behind the door, evil earnest.  The best work he does is his marrying, for it makes an honest woman, and if he follows in it his master’s direction, it is commonly the best service he does him.