never found but in some extreme or other.  Whatsoever he takes to he is very full of, and believes every man else to be so too, as if his own taste were the same in every man’s palate.  If he be a virtuoso, he applies himself with so much earnestness to what he undertakes that he puts his reason out of joint and strains his judgment; and there is hardly anything in the world so slight or serious that some one or other has not squandered away his brains and time and fortune upon to no other purpose but to be ridiculous.  He is exempted from a dark room and a doctor, because there is no danger in his frenzy; otherwise he has as good a title to fresh straw as another.  Humour is but a crookedness of the mind, a disproportioned swelling of the brain, that draws the nourishment from the other parts to stuff an ugly and deformed crup-shoulder.  If it have the luck to meet with many of its own temper, instead of being ridiculous it becomes a church, and from jest grows to earnest.

A LEADER OF A FACTION

Sets the psalm, and all his party sing after him.  He is like a figure in arithmetic; the more ciphers he stands before the more his value amounts to.  He is a great haranguer, talks himself into authority, and, like a parrot, climbs with his beak.  He appears brave in the head of his party, but braver in his own; for vainglory leads him, as he does them, and both, many times out of the King’s highway, over hedges and ditches, to find out by-ways and shorter cuts, which generally prove the farthest about, but never the nearest home again.  He is so passionate a lover of the Liberty of the People that his fondness turns to jealousy.  He interprets every trifle in the worst sense, to the prejudice of her honesty, and is so full of caprices and scruples that, if he had his will, he would have her shut up and never suffered to go abroad again, if not made away, for her incontinence.  All his politics are speculative and for the most part impracticable, full of curious niceties, that tend only to prevent future imaginary inconveniences with greater real and present.  He is very superstitious of having the formalities and punctilios of law held sacred, that, while they are performing, those that would destroy the very being of it may have time to do their business or escape.  He bends all his forces against those that are above him, and, like a free-born English mastiff, plays always at the head.  He gathers his party as fanatics do a church, and admits all his admirers how weak and slight soever; for he believes it is argument of wisdom enough in them to admire, or, as he has it, to understand him.  When he has led his faction into any inconvenience they all run into his mouth, as young snakes do into the old ones, and he defends them with his oratory as well as he is able; for all his confidence depends upon his tongue more than his brain or heart, and if that fail the others surrender immediately; for though David says it is a two-edged sword, a wooden dagger is a better weapon to fight with.  His judgment is like a nice balance that will turn with the twentieth part of a grain, but a little using renders it false, and it is not so good for use as one that will not stir without a greater weight.