all his lifetime.  He is troubled to think what a disparagement it will be to him to die before those that will be glad to hear he is gone, and desires very charitably they might come to an agreement like good friends and go hand-in-hand out of the world together.  He loves his neighbour as well as he does himself, and is willing to endure any misery so they may but take part with him, and undergo any mischief rather than they should want it.  He is ready to spend his blood and lay down his life for theirs that would not do half so much for him, and rather than fail would give the devil suck, and his soul into the bargain, if he would but make him his plenipotentiary to determine all differences between himself and others.  He contracts enmities, as others do friendships, out of likenesses, sympathies, and instincts; and when he lights upon one of his own temper, as contraries produce the same effects, they perform all the offices of friendship, have the same thoughts, affections, and desires of one another’s destruction, and please themselves as heartily, and perhaps as securely, in hating one another as others do in loving.  He seeks out enemies to avoid falling out with himself, for his temper is like that of a flourishing kingdom; if it have not a foreign enemy it will fall into a civil war and turn its arms upon itself, and so does but hate in his own defence.  His malice is all sorts of gain to him, for as men take pleasure in pursuing, entrapping, and destroying all sorts of beasts and fowl, and call it sport, so would he do men, and if he had equal power would never be at a loss, nor give over his game without his prey; and in this he does nothing but justice, for as men take delight to destroy beasts, he, being a beast, does but do as he is done by in endeavouring to destroy men.  The philosopher said, “Man to man is a god and a wolf;” but he, being incapable of the first, does his endeavour to make as much of the last as he can, and shows himself as excellent in his kind as it is in his power to do.

A KNAVE

Is like a tooth-drawer, that maintains his own teeth in constant eating by pulling out those of other men.  He is an ill moral philosopher, of villainous principles, and as bad practice.  His tenets are to hold what he can get, right or wrong.  His tongue and his heart are always at variance, and fall out like rogues in the street, to pick somebody’s pocket.  They never agree but, like Herod and Pilate, to do mischief.  His conscience never stands in his light when the devil holds a candle to him, for he has stretched it so thin that it is transparent.  He is an engineer of treachery, fraud, and perfidiousness, and knows how to manage matters of great weight with very little force by the advantage of his trepanning screws.  He is very skilful in all the mechanics of cheat, the mathematical magic of imposture, and will outdo the expectation of the most credulous to