a well-managed horse, reins in his neck, and walks terra-terra.  He carries his elbows backward, as if he were pinioned like a trussed-up fowl, and moves as stiff as if he was upon the spit.  His legs are stuck in his great voluminous breeches like the whistles in a bagpipe, those abundant breeches in which his nether parts are not clothed but packed up.  His hat has been long in a consumption of the fashion, and is now almost worn to nothing; if it do not recover quickly it will grow too little for a head of garlic.  He wears garniture on the toes of his shoes to justify his pretensions to the gout, or such other malady that for the time being is most in fashion or request.  When he salutes a friend he pulls off his hat, as women do their vizard-masks.  His ribbons are of the true complexion of his mind, a kind of painted cloud or gaudy rainbow, that has no colour of itself but what it borrows from reflection.  He is as tender of his clothes as a coward is of his flesh, and as loth to have them disordered.  His bravery is all his happiness, and, like Atlas, he carries his heaven on his back.  He is like the golden fleece, a fine outside on a sheep’s back.  He is a monster or an Indian creature, that is good for nothing in the world but to be seen.  He puts himself up into a sedan, like a fiddle in a case, and is taken out again for the ladies to play upon, who, when they have done with him, let down his treble-string till they are in the humour again.  His cook and valet de chambre conspire to dress dinner and him so punctually together that the one may not be ready before the other.  As peacocks and ostriches have the gaudiest and finest feathers, yet cannot fly, so all his bravery is to flutter only.  The beggars call him “my lord,” and he takes them at their words and pays them for it.  If you praise him, he is so true and faithful to the mode that he never fails to make you a present of himself, and will not be refused, though you know not what to do with him when you have him.

A COURT BEGGAR

Waits at Court, as a dog does under a table, to catch what falls, or force it from his fellows if he can.  When a man is in a fair way to be hanged that is richly worth it, or has hanged himself, he puts in to be his heir and succeed him, and pretends as much merit as another, as no doubt he has great reason to do if all things were rightly considered.  He thinks it vain to deserve well of his Prince as long as he can do his business more easily by begging, for the same idle laziness possesses him that does the rest of his fraternity, that had rather take an alms than work for their livings, and therefore he accounts merit a more uncertain and tedious way of rising, and sometimes dangerous.  He values himself and his place not upon the honour or allowances of it, but the convenient opportunity of begging, as King Clause’s courtiers do when they have obtained of the superior powers