The following sections of this BookRags Literature Study Guide is offprint from Gale's For Students Series: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Works: Introduction, Author Biography, Plot Summary, Characters, Themes, Style, Historical Context, Critical Overview, Criticism and Critical Essays, Media Adaptations, Topics for Further Study, Compare & Contrast, What Do I Read Next?, For Further Study, and Sources.
(c)1998-2002; (c)2002 by Gale. Gale is an imprint of The Gale Group, Inc., a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Gale and Design and Thomson Learning are trademarks used herein under license.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction: "Social Concerns", "Thematic Overview", "Techniques", "Literary Precedents", "Key Questions", "Related Titles", "Adaptations", "Related Web Sites". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults: "About the Author", "Overview", "Setting", "Literary Qualities", "Social Sensitivity", "Topics for Discussion", "Ideas for Reports and Papers". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
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Sir Thomas Overbury
A Good Woman
A Very Woman
Her Next Part
A Dissembler
A Courtier
A Golden Ass
A Flatterer
An Ignorant Glory-Hunter
A Timist
An Amorist
An Affected Traveller
A Wise Man
A Noble Spirit
An Old Man
A Country Gentleman
A Fine Gentleman
An Elder Brother
A Braggadocio Welshman
A Pedant
A Serving-Man
An Host
An Ostler
The True Character of a Dunce
A Good Wife
A Melancholy Man
A Sailor
A Soldier
A Tailor
A Puritan
A Mere Common Lawyer
A Mere Scholar
A Tinker
An Apparitor
An Almanac-Maker
A Hypocrite
A Chambermaid
A Precisian
An Inns of Court Man
A Mere Fellow of a House
A Worthy Commander in the Wars
A Vainglorious Coward in Command
A Pirate
An Ordinary Fence
A Puny Clerk
A Footman
A Noble and Retired Housekeeper
An Intruder into Favour
A Fair and Happy Milkmaid
An Arrant Horse-Courser
A Roaring Boy
A Drunken Dutchman resident in England
A Phantastique: An Improvident Young
Gallant
A Button-Maker of Amsterdam
A Distaster of the Time
A Mere Fellow of a House
A Mere Pettifogger
An Ingrosser of Corn
A Devilish Usurer
A Waterman
A Reverend Judge
A Virtuous Widow
An Ordinary Widow
A Quack-Salver
A Canting Rogue
A French Cook
A Sexton
A Jesuit
An Excellent Actor
A Franklin
A Rhymer
A Covetous Man
The Proud Man
A Prison
A Prisoner
A Creditor
A Sergeant
His Yeoman
A Common Cruel Jailer
What a Character is
The Character of a Happy Life
An Essay on Valour
His satires—
A Domestic Chaplain
The Witless Gallant
His characters of virtues and vices
I. Virtues—
Character of the Wise Man
Of an Honest Man
Of the Faithful Man
Of the Humble Man
Of a Valiant Man
Of a Patient Man
Of the True Friend
Of the Truly Noble
Of the Good Magistrate
Of the Penitent
The Happy Man
II. Vices—
Character of the Hypocrite
Of the Busybody
Of the Superstitious
Of the Profane
Of the Malcontent
Of the Inconstant
Of the Flatterer
Of the Slothful
Of the Covetous
Of the Vainglorious
Of the Presumptuous
Of the Distrustful
Of the Ambitious
Of the Unthrift
Of the Envious
JOHN STEPHENS
Microcosmography——
A Child
A Young Raw Preacher
A Grave Divine
A Mere Dull Physician
An Alderman
A Discontented Man
An Antiquary
A Younger Brother
A Mere Formal Man
A Church-Papist
A Self-Conceited Man
A Too Idly Reserved Man
A Tavern
A Shark
A Carrier
A Young Man
An Old College Butler
An Upstart Country Knight
An Idle Gallant
A Constable
A Downright Scholar
A Plain Country Fellow
A Player
A Detractor
A Young Gentleman of the University
A Weak Man
A Tobacco-Seller
A Pot Poet
A Plausible Man
A Bowl-Alley
The World’s Wise Man
A Surgeon
A Contemplative Man
A She Precise Hypocrite
A Sceptic in Religion
An Attorney
A Partial Man
A Trumpeter
A Vulgar-Spirited Man
A Plodding Student
Paul’s Walk
A Cook
A Bold Forward Man
A Baker
A Pretender to Learning
A Herald
The Common Singing-Men in Cathedral Churches
A Shopkeeper
A Blunt Man
A Handsome Hostess
A Critic
A Sergeant or Catchpole
A University Dun
A Staid Man
A Modest Man
A Mere Empty Wit
A Drunkard
A Prison
A Serving-Man
An Insolent Man
Acquaintance
A Mere Complimental Man
A Poor Fiddler
A Meddling Man
A Good Old Man
A Flatterer
A High-Spirited Man
A Mere Gull Citizen
A Lascivious Man
A Rash Man
An Affected Man
A Profane Man
A Coward
A Sordid Rich Man
A Mere Great Man
A Poor Man
An Ordinary Honest Man
A Suspicious or Jealous Man
NICHOLAS BRETON
Characters upon essays, moral
and divine
Wisdom
Learning
Knowledge
Practice
Patience
Love
Peace
War
Valour
Resolution
Honour
Truth
Time
Death
Faith
Fear
The good and the bad.
A Worthy King
An Unworthy King
A Worthy Queen
A Worthy Prince
An Unworthy Prince
A Worthy Privy Councillor
An Unworthy Councillor
A Nobleman
An Unnoble Man
A Worthy Bishop
An Unworthy Bishop
A Worthy Judge
An Unworthy Judge
A Worthy Knight
An Unworthy Knight
A Worthy Gentleman
An Unworthy Gentleman
A Worthy Lawyer
An Unworthy Lawyer
A Worthy Soldier
An Untrained Soldier
A Worthy Physician
An Unworthy Physician
A Worthy Merchant
An Unworthy Merchant
A Good Man
An Atheist or Most Bad Man
A Wise Man
A Fool
An Honest Man.
A Knave
An Usurer
A Beggar
A Virgin
A Wanton Woman
A Quiet Woman
An Unquiet Woman
Essays and characters of
A prison and prisoners
A Character of a Prisoner
Henry Parrott [?]
A Scold
A Good Wife
Micrologia, by R. M.
A Player
Whimzies, or A new cast of
characters
A Corranto-Coiner
John Milton
On the University Carrier
PICTURAE Loquentes, or pictures
drawn forth in characters
The Term
DONALD LUPTON
London and country Carbonadoed
and quartered into several characters
The Horse
Characters published between 1642 and
1646, by sir Francis Wortley, T.
Ford, and others
T. Ford’s Character of Pamphlets
John Cleveland
The Character of a Country Committee-Man,
with the Earmark of a
Sequestrator
The Character of a Diurnal-Maker
The Character of a London Diurnal
RICHARD FLECKNOE
Fifty-five enigmatical characters
The Valiant Man
SAMUEL BUTLER
Characters—
Degenerate Noble, or One that is Proud
of his Birth
A Huffing Courtier
A Court Beggar
A Bumpkin or Country
Squire
An Antiquary
A Proud Man
A Small Poet
A Philosopher
A Melancholy Man
A Curious Man
A Herald
A Virtuoso
An Intelligencer
A Quibbler
A Time-Server
A Prater
A Disputant
A Projector
A Complimenter
A Cheat
A Tedious Man
A Pretender
A Newsmonger
A Modern Critic
A Busy Man
A Pedant
A Hunter
An Affected Man
A Medicine-Taker
The Miser
A Swearer
The Luxurious
An Ungrateful Man
A Squire of Dames
An Hypocrite
An Opinionater
A Choleric Man
A Superstitious Man
A Droll
The Obstinate Man
A Zealot
The Overdoer
The Rash Man
The Affected or Formal
A Flatterer
A Prodigal
The Inconstant
A Glutton
A Ribald
A Modern Politician
William Wordsworth
Character of the Happy Warrior
OF THE
Seventeenth century.
Character writing, as a distinct form of Literature,
had its origin more than two thousand years ago in
the [Greek: aethichoi Chadaaedes]—–Ethic
Characters—of Tyrtamus of Lesbos, a disciple
of Plato, who gave him for his eloquence the name
of Divine Speaker—Theophrastus. Aristotle
left him his library and all his MSS., and named him
his successor in the schools of the Lyceum. Nicomachus,
the son of Aristotle, was among his pupils. He
followed in the steps of Aristotle. Diogenes
Laertius ascribed to Theophrastus two hundred and
twenty books. He founded, by a History of Plants,
the science of Botany; and he is now best known by
the little contribution to Moral Philosophy, in which
he gave twenty-eight short chapters to concise description
of twenty-eight differing qualities in men. The
description in each chapter was not of a man, but
of a quality. The method of Theophrastus, as
Casaubon said, was between the philosophical and the
poetical. He described a quality, but he described
it by personification, and his aim was the amending
of men’s manners. The twenty-eight chapters
that have come down to us are probably no more than
a fragment of a larger work. They describe vices,
and not all of them. Another part, now lost, may
have described the virtues. In a short proem the
writer speaks of himself as ninety-nine years old.
Probably those two nines were only a poetical suggestion
of long experience from which these pictures of the
constituents of human life and action had been drawn.
He had wondered, he said, before he thought of writing
such a book, at the diversities of manners among Greeks
all born under one sky and trained alike. For
many years he had considered and compared the ways
of men; he had lived to be ninety-nine. Our children
may be the better for a knowledge of our ways of daily
life, that they may grow into the best. Observe
and see whether I describe them rightly. I will
begin, he says, with Dissimulation. I will first
define the vice, and then describe the quality and
Page 5
manners of the man who dissembles. After that
I will endeavour to describe also the other qualities
of mind, each in its kind. Then follow the Characters
of these twenty-eight qualities: Dissimulation,
Adulation, Garrulity, Rusticity, Blandishment, Senselessness,
Loquacity, Newsmongering, Impudence, Sordid Parsimony,
Impurity, Ill-timed Approach, Inept Sedulity, Stupidity,
Contumacy, Superstition, Querulousness, Distrust,
Dirtiness, Tediousness, Sordid or Frivolous Desire
for Praise, Illiberality, Ostentation, Pride, Timidity,
Oligarchy, or the vehement desire for honour, without
greed for money, Insolence, and Evil Speaking.
One of these Characters may serve as an example of
their method, and show their place in the ancestry
of Characters as they were written in England in the
Seventeenth Century.
You may define Stupidity as a slowness of mind in word or deed. But the Stupid Man is one who, sitting at his counters, and having made all his calculations and worked out his sum, asks one who sits by him how much it comes to. When any one has a suit against him, and he has come to the day when the cause must be decided, he forgets it and walks out into his field. Often also when he sits to see a play, the rest go out and he is left, fallen asleep in the theatre. The same man, having eaten too much, will go out in the night to relieve himself, and fall over the neighbour’s dog, who bites him. The same man, having hidden away what he has received, is always searching for it, and never finds it. And when it is announced to him that one of his intimate friends is dead, and he is asked to the funeral, then, with a face set to sadness and tears, he says, “Good luck to it!” When he receives money owing to him he calls in witnesses, and in midwinter he scolds his man for not having gathered cucumbers. To train his boys for wrestling he makes them race till they are tired. Cooking his own lentils in the field, he throws salt twice into the pot and makes them uneatable. When it rains he says, “How sweet I find this water of the stars.” And when some one asks, “How many have passed the gates of death?” [proverbial phrase for a great number] answers, “As many, I hope, as will be enough for you and me.”
The first and the best sequence of “Characters”
in English Literature is the series of sketches of
the Pilgrims in the Prologue to Chaucer’s “Canterbury
Tales” The Characters are so varied as to unite
in representing the whole character of English life
in Chaucer’s day; and they are, written upon
one plan, each with suggestion of the outward body
and its dress as well as of the mind within. But
Chaucer owed nothing to Theophrastus. In his
Character Writing he drew all from nature with his
own good wit. La Bruyere in France translated
the characters of Theophrastus, and his own writing
of Characters in the seventeenth century followed
a fashion that had its origin in admiration of the
Page 6
wit of those Greek Ethical Characters. La Bruyere
was born in 1639 and died in 1696. Our Joseph
Hall, whose “Characters of Vices and Virtues”
were written in 1608, and translated into French twenty
years before La Bruyere was born, said, in his Preface
to them, “I have done as I could, following
that ancient Master of Morality who thought this the
fittest task for the ninety-ninth year of his age,
and the profitablest Monument that he could leave
for a farewell to his Grecians.”
There was some aim at short and witty sketches of character in descriptions of the ingenuity of horse-coursers and coney-catchers who used quick wit for beguiling the unwary in those bright days of Elizabeth, when the very tailors and cooks worked fantasies in silk and velvet, sugar and paste. Thomas Harman, whose grandfather had been Clerk of the Crown under Henry vii., and who himself inherited estates in Kent, became greatly interested in the vagrant beggars who came to his door. He made a study of them, came to London to publish his book, and lodged at Whitefriars, within the Cloister, for convenience of nearness to them, and more thorough knowledge of their ways. He first published his book in 1567 as A Caveat or Warning for Common Cursitors, vulgarly called Vagabonds—“A Caveat or Warening for common cursetors, Vulgarely called Vagabones, set forth by Thomas Harman, Esquiere, for the utilite and proffyt of his naturall Cuntrey” and he dedicated it to Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury. It contained twenty-four character sketches, gave the names of the chief tramps then living in England, and a vocabulary of their cant words. This is Harman’s first character_:—
The Ruffler, because he is first in degree of this odious order, and is so called in a statute made for the punishment of Vagabonds in the twenty-seventh year of King Henry viii, late of most famous memory, he shall be first placed as the worthiest of this unruly rabblement. And he is so called when he goeth first abroad. Either he hath served in the wars, or else he hath been a serving-man, and weary of well-doing, shaking off all pain, doth choose him this idle life; and wretchedly wanders about the most shires of this realm, and with stout audacity demandeth, where he thinketh he may be bold, and circumspect enough where he seeth cause, to ask charity ruefully and lamentably, that it would make a flinty heart to relent and pity his miserable estate, how he hath been maimed and bruised in the wars. Peradventure one will show you some outward wound which he got at some drunken fray, either halting of some privy wound festered with a filthy fiery flankard [brand]. For be well assured that the hardiest soldiers be either slain or maimed, either and [or if] they escape all hazards and return home again, if they be without relief of their friends they will surely desperately rob and steal, and either shortly be hanged or miserably die
I had of late years an old man to my tenant who customably a great time went twice in the week to London, either with fruit or with peascods, when time served therefor. And as he was coming homeward, on Blackheath, at the end thereof next to Shooter’s Hill, he overtook two Rufflers, the one mannerly waiting on the other, as one had been the master and the other his man or servant, carrying his master’s cloak. This old man was very glad that he might have their company over the hill, because that day he had made a good market. For he had seven shillings in his purse and an old angel, which this poor man had thought had not been in his purse; for he willed his wife overnight to take out the same angel and lay it up until his coming home again, and he verily thought his wife had so done, which indeed forgot to do it. Thus, after salutations had, this Master Ruffler entered into communication with this simple old man, who, riding softly beside them, communed of many matters. Thus feeding this old man with pleasant talk until they were on the top of the hill, where these Rufflers might well behold the coast about them clear, quickly steps unto this poor man and taketh hold of his horse bridle and leadeth him into the wood, and demandeth of him what and how much money he had in his purse. “Now, by my troth,” quoth this old man, “you are a merry gentleman! I know you mean not to take anything from me, but rather to give me some, if I should ask it of you.”
By and by [immediately] this servant thief casteth the cloak that he carried on his arm about this poor man’s face that he should not mark or view them, with sharp words to deliver quickly that he had, and to confess truly what was in his purse. This poor man then all abashed yielded, and confessed that he had seven shillings in his purse; and the truth is, he knew of no more. This old angel was fallen out of a little purse into the bottom of a great purse. Now this seven shillings in white money they quickly found, thinking indeed that there had been no more; yet farther groping and searching, found this old angel. And with great admiration this gentleman thief began to bless him, saying—
“Good Lord, what a world is this! How may,” quoth he, “a man believe or trust in the same? See you not,” quoth he, “this old knave told me that he had but seven shillings, and here is more by an angel! What an old knave and a false knave have we here!” quoth this Ruffler. “Our Lord have mercy on us, will this world never be better?” and therewith went their way and left the old man in the wood, doing him no more harm.
But sorrowfully sighing this old man, returning home, declared his misadventure with all the words and circumstances above showed. Whereat for the time was great laughing, and this poor man, for his losses, among his loving neighbours well considered in the end.
Such character-painting simply came of the keen interest in life that was at the same time developing an energetic drama. But at the end of Elizabeth’s reign a writing of brief witty characters appears to have come into fashion as one of the many forms of ingenuity that pleased society, and might be distantly related to the Euphuism of the day.
Ben Jonson’s “Cynthia’s Revels,” first acted in 1600, two or three years before the end of Elizabeth’s reign, has little character sketches set into the text. Here are two of them_:—
One so made out of the mixture of shreds and forms that himself is truly deformed. He walks most commonly with a clove or pick-tooth in his mouth, he is the very mint of compliment, all his behaviours are printed, his face is another volume of essays, and his beard is an Aristarchus. He speaks all cream skimmed, and more affected than a dozen waiting-women. He is his own promoter in every place. The wife of the ordinary gives him his diet to maintain her table in discourse; which, indeed, is a mere tyranny over her other guests, for he will usurp all the talk; ten constables are not so tedious. He is no great shifter; once a year his apparel is ready to revolt. He doth use much to arbitrate quarrels, and fights himself, exceeding well, out at a window. He will lie cheaper than any beggar, and louder than most clocks; for which he is right properly accommodated to the whetstone, his page. The other gallant is his zany, and doth most of these tricks after him; sweats to imitate him in everything to a hair, except a beard, which is not yet extant. He doth learn to make strange sauces, to eat anchovies, maccaroni, bovoli, fagioli, and caviare, because he loves them; speaks as he speaks, looks, walks, goes so in clothes and fashion: is in all as if he were moulded of him. Marry, before they met, he had other very pretty sufficiencies, which yet he retains some light impression of; as frequenting a dancing-school, and grievously torturing strangers with inquisition after his grace in his galliard. He buys a fresh acquaintance at any rate. His eyes and his raiment confer much together as he goes in the street. He treads nicely, like the fellow that walks upon ropes, especially the first Sunday of his silk stockings; and when he is most neat and new, you shall strip him with commendations.
A creature of a most perfect and divine temper: one in whom the humours and elements are peaceably met, without emulation of precedency. He is neither too fantastically melancholy, too slowly phlegmatic, too lightly sanguine, nor too rashly choleric; but in all so composed and ordered, as it is clear Nature went about some full work, she did more than make a man when she made him. His discourse is like his behaviour, uncommon, but not unpleasing; he is prodigal of neither. He strives rather to be that which men call judicious, than to be thought so; and is so truly learned, that he affects not to show it. He will think and speak his thought both freely; but as distant from depraving another man’s merit, as proclaiming his own. For his valour, ’tis such that he dares as little to offer any injury as receive one. In sum, he hath a most ingenuous and sweet spirit, a sharp and seasoned wit, a straight judgment and a strong mind. Fortune could never break him, nor make him less. He counts it his pleasure to despise pleasures, and is more delighted with good deeds than goods. It is a competency to him that he can be virtuous. He doth neither covet nor fear; he hath too much reason to do either; and that commends all things to him.
The play that preceded “Cynthia’s Revels” was “Every Man Out of his Humour.” It was first printed in 1600, and Ben Jonson amused himself by adding to its list of Dramatis Personae this piece of Character Writing:—
Asper. He is of an ingenious and free spirit, eager and constant in reproof, without fear controlling the world’s abuses. One whom no servile hope of gain, or frosty apprehension of danger, can make to be a parasite, either to time, place, or opinion.
Macilente. A man well parted, a sufficient scholar, and travelled; who, wanting that place in the world’s account which he thinks his merit capable of, falls into such an envious apoplexy, with which his judgment is so dazzled and distasted, that he grows violently impatient of any opposite happiness in another.
Puntarvolo. A vainglorious knight, over-Englishing his travels, and wholly consecrated to singularity; the very Jacob’s staff of compliment; a sir that hath lived to see the revolution of time in most of his apparel. Of presence good enough, but so palpably affected to his own praise, that for want of flatterers he commends himself, to the floutage of his own family. He deals upon returns, and strange performances, resolving, in despite of public derision, to stick to his own particular fashion, phrase, and gesture.
Carlo Buffone. A public, scurrilous, and profane jester, that more swift than Circe, with absurd similes, will transform any person into deformity. A good feast-hound or banquet-beagle, that will scent you out a supper some three miles off, and swear to his patrons, damn him! he came in oars, when he was but wafted over in a sculler. A slave that hath an extraordinary gift in pleasing his palate, and will swill up more sack at a sitting than would make all the guard a posset. His religion is railing, and his discourse ribaldry. They stand highest in his respect whom he studies most to reproach.
Fastidious Brisk. A neat, spruce, affecting courtier, one that wears clothes well, and in fashion; practiseth by his glass how to salute; speaks good remnants, notwithstanding the base viol and tobacco; swears tersely, and with variety; cares not what lady’s favour he belies, or great man’s familiarity; a good property to perfume the boot of a coach. He will borrow another man’s horse to praise, and backs him as his own. Or, for a need, on foot can post himself into credit with his merchant, only with the jingle of his spur, and the jerk of his wand.
Deliro. A good doting citizen, who, it is thought, might be of the common-council for his wealth; a fellow sincerely besotted on his own wife, and so wrapt with a conceit of her perfections, that he simply holds himself unworthy of her. And, in that hoodwinked humour, lives more like a suitor than a husband; standing in as true dread of her displeasure, as when he first made love to her. He doth sacrifice twopence in juniper to her every morning before she rises, and wakes her with villainous out-of-tune music, which she out of her contempt (though not out of her judgment) is sure to dislike.
Fallace. Deliro’s wife, and idol; a proud mincing peat, and as perverse as he is officious. She dotes as perfectly upon the courtier, as her husband doth on her, and only wants the face to be dishonest.
Saviolina. A court-lady, whose weightiest praise is a light wit, admired by herself, and one more, her servant Brisk.
Sordido. A wretched hobnailed chuff, whose recreation is reading of almanacks; and felicity, foul weather. One that never prayed but for a lean dearth, and ever wept in a fat harvest.
Fungoso. The son of Sordido, and a student; one that has revelled in his time, and follows the fashion afar off, like a spy. He makes it the whole bent of his endeavours to wring sufficient means from his wretched father, to put him in the courtiers’ cut; at which he earnestly aims, but so unluckily, that he still lights short a suit.
Sogliardo. An essential clown, brother to Sordido, yet so enamoured of the name of a gentleman, that he will have it though he buys it. He comes up every term to learn to take tobacco, and see new motions. He is in his kingdom when he can get himself into company where he may be well laughed at.
Shift. A threadbare shark; one that never was a soldier, yet lives upon lendings. His profession is skeldring and odling, his bank Paul’s, and his warehouse Picthatch. Takes up single testons upon oath, till doomsday. Falls under executions of three shillings, and enters into five-groat bonds. He waylays the reports of services, and cons them without book, damning himself he came new from them, when all the while he was taking the diet in the bawdy-house, or lay pawned in his chamber for rent and victuals. He is of that admirable and happy memory, that he will salute one for an old acquaintance that he never saw in his life before. He usurps upon cheats, quarrels, and robberies, which he never did, only to get him a name. His chief exercises are, taking the whiff, squiring a cockatrice, and making privy searches for imparters.
Clove and Orange. An inseparable case of coxcombs, city born; the Gemini, or twins of foppery; that, like a pair of wooden foils, are fit for nothing but to be practised upon. Being well flattered they’ll lend money, and repent when they have done. Their glory is to invite players, and make suppers. And in company of better rank, to avoid the suspect of insufficiency, will enforce their ignorance most desperately, to set upon the understanding of anything. Orange is the most humorous of the two, whose small portion of juice being squeezed out, Clove serves to stick him with commendations.
Cordatus. The author’s friend; a man inly acquainted with the scope and drift of his plot; of a discreet and understanding judgment; and has the place of a moderator.
Mitis. Is a person of no action, and therefore we have reason to afford him no character.
Of this kind are the
CHARACTERS
BY
SIR THOMAS OVERBURY,
which were not published until_ 1614, the year after their writer’s death, at the age of thirty-two; but they may have been written earlier than the “Characters of Virtues and Vices”—ethical characters—written by Joseph Hall, which were first published in 1609.
Sir Thomas Overbury died poisoned in the Tower
on the 15_th of September_ 1613. On the
5_th of January_ 1606, by desire of James the First,
the young Earl of Essex, aged fourteen, had been married
to the Lady Frances Howard, aged thirteen, the younger
daughter of the Earl of Suffolk. Ben Jonson’s
“Masque of Hymen” was produced at Court
in celebration of that union. The young Robert
Devereux, third Earl of Essex, had good qualities
too solid for the taste of a frivolous girl; and when,
after travel abroad, the husband of eighteen claimed
the wife of seventeen, he found her happy in flirtation
with the King’s favourite, Sir Robert Carr.
Though compelled to live with her husband, she repelled
all his advances, and after three years of this repugnance
tried for a divorce. The King’s Scotch favourite,
Carr, had been made, in March 1611, an English peer,
as Viscount Rochester, when the age of the young Countess
of Essex was nineteen. He was the man highest
in King James’s favour. If the divorce
sought by the Countess early in 1613 were obtained
for her, it was understood that Carr would marry her,
and that support of the divorce would be a way to
future benefit through his good offices. Thus
she obtained the support of her father and uncle, the
Earls of Suffolk and Northampton. The King’s
influence went with the wishes of the favourite.
The trial, in 1613, ending in a decree of nullity
of marriage, was a four months’ scandal in the
land. Among the familiar friends of Robert Carr,
Lord Rochester, was Sir Thomas Overbury, born in Warwickshire
in 1581, and knighted by King James in 1608.
He strongly opposed the policy of a divorce obtained
Page 12
on false pretences followed by his patron’s
marriage to the divorced wife. The grounds of
his opposition may have been part private, part political.
His opposition was determined, and if he offered himself
as witness before the Commission, he probably knew
enough about the lady’s secret practisings to
give such evidence as would frustrate her designs.
It was thought desirable, therefore, to get Overbury
out of the way. The King offered him a post abroad.
He was unwilling to accept it, and at last was driven
to an explicit refusal. The King was angry, and
caused his Council to commit Sir Thomas Overbury to
the Tower for contempt of His Majesty’s commands.
He was to be seen by no one, and to have no servant
with him. Sir William Wood, the Lieutenant of
the Tower, was superseded, and Sir Gervase Helwys
was put in his place with secret understandings, of
which the design may only have been to prevent Sir
Thomas Overbury from saying anything that could come
to the ears of the world until the divorce was granted.
But Lady Essex wished Sir Thomas Overbury to be more
effectually silenced. She had tried and failed
to get him assassinated. Now she resolved to
get him poisoned. She obtained the employment
of a creature of her own, named Weston, as his immediate
keeper. Weston falsely professed to Lady Essex
that he had administered the poison she had given
him, and that the result had been not death but loss
of health. There is much uncertainty about the
evidence of detail and of the privity of others in
the designs of Lady Essex, who seems at last to have
completed her work by the agency of an apothecary’s
assistant. He gave the fatal dose in an injection,
by which Overbury was killed ten days before the Commission
gave judgment in favour of the divorce. At Christmas
the favourite married the divorced wife, having been
created Earl of Somerset, that as his wife she might
be Countess still. In the following year, 1614,
Sir Thomas Overbury’s “Characters”
were published, together with his Character in verse
of A Wife, who was described as “A Wife, now
a Widow.” This had been published a little
earlier in the same year separately, without any added
“Characters.” When the Characters
appeared they were described as “Many Witty
Characters and conceited Newes written by himselfe
and other learned Gentlemen his Friends.”
The twenty-one Characters in that edition were, therefore,
not all from one hand. Their popularity is indicated
by the fact that in the next year, 1615, they reached
a sixth edition. Three more editions were published
in 1616. This was because interest in the book
had been heightened by the Great Oyer of Poisoning,
the trial in May 1616 of the Earl and Countess of
Somerset for Overbury’s murder, of which both
were found guilty, though the Countess took all guilt
upon herself. Then followed a tenth edition in
1618, an eleventh in 1622, a twelfth in 1627, a thirteenth
in 1628, a fourteenth in 1630, a fifteenth in 1632,
a sixteenth in 1638; and then a pause, the seventeenth
Page 13
being in 1664, two years before the fire of London.
By this time the original set of twenty-one Characters
had been considerably increased, “with additions
of New Characters and many other Witty Conceits never
before Printed;” so that Overbury’s Characters,
which had from the first included a few pieces written
by his friends, became a name for the most popular
miscellany of pieces of Character Writing current in
the Seventeenth Century, and shows how wit was exercised
in this way by half-a-dozen or more of the mob of
gentlemen who wrote with ease. These are the
pieces thus at last made current as
OR,
WITTY DESCRIPTIONS OF THE PROPERTIES OF SUNDRY PERSONS.
* * * * *
A GOOD WOMAN.
A Good Woman is a comfort, like a man. She lacks of him nothing but heat. Thence is her sweetness of disposition, which meets his stoutness more pleasingly; so wool meets iron easier than iron, and turns resisting into embracing. Her greatest learning is religion, and her thoughts are on her own sex, or on men, without casting the difference. Dishonesty never comes nearer than her ears, and then wonder stops it out, and saves virtue the labour. She leaves the neat youth telling his luscious tales, and puts back the serving-man’s putting forward with a frown: yet her kindness is free enough to be seen, for it hath no guilt about it; and her mirth is clear, that you may look through it into virtue, but not beyond. She hath not behaviour at a certain, but makes it to her occasion. She hath so much knowledge as to love it; and if she have it not at home, she will fetch it, for this sometimes in a pleasant discontent she dares chide her sex, though she use it never the worse. She is much within, and frames outward things to her mind, not her mind to them. She wears good clothes, but never better; for she finds no degree beyond decency. She hath a content of her own, and so seeks not an husband, but finds him. She is indeed most, but not much of description, for she is direct and one, and hath not the variety of ill. Now she is given fresh and alive to a husband, and she doth nothing more than love him, for she takes him to that purpose. So his good becomes the business of her actions, and she doth herself kindness upon him. After his, her chiefest virtue is a good husband. For she is he.
A Very Woman is a dough-baked man, or a She meant well towards man, but fell two bows short, strength and understanding. Her virtue is the hedge, modesty, that keeps a man from climbing over into her faults. She simpers as if she had no teeth but lips; and she divides her eyes, and keeps half for herself, and gives the other to her neat youth. Being set down, she casts her face into a platform, which dureth the meal, and is taken away with the voider.
Her lightness gets her to swim at top of the table, where her wry little finger bewrays carving; her neighbours at the latter end know they are welcome, and for that purpose she quencheth her thirst. She travels to and among, and so becomes a woman of good entertainment, for all the folly in the country comes in clean linen to visit her; she breaks to them her grief in sugar cakes, and receives from their mouths in exchange many stories that conclude to no purpose. Her eldest son is like her howsoever, and that dispraiseth him best; her utmost drift is to turn him fool, which commonly she obtains at the years of discretion. She takes a journey sometimes to her niece’s house, but never thinks beyond London. Her devotion is good clothes—they carry her to church, express their stuff and fashion, and are silent if she be more devout; she lifts up a certain number of eyes instead of prayers, and takes the sermon, and measures out a nap by it, just as long. She sends religion afore to sixty, where she never overtakes it, or drives it before her again. Her most necessary instruments are a waiting gentlewoman and a chambermaid; she wears her gentlewoman still, but most often leaves the other in her chamber window. She hath a little kennel in her lap, and she smells the sweeter for it. The utmost reach of her providence is the fatness of a capon, and her greatest envy is the next gentlewoman’s better gown. Her most commendable skill is to make her husband’s fustian bear her velvet. This she doth many times over, and then is delivered to old age and a chair, where everybody leaves her.
Is an essence needing a double definition, for he is not that he appears. Unto the eye he is pleasing, unto the ear he is harsh, but unto the understanding intricate and full of windings; he is the prima materia, and his intents give him form; he dyeth his means and his meaning into two colours; he baits craft with humility, and his countenance is the picture of the present disposition. He wins not by battery but undermining, and his rack is smoothing. He allures, is not allured by his affections, for they are the breakers of his observation. He knows passion only by sufferance, and resisteth by obeying. He makes his time an accountant to his memory, and of the humours of men weaves a net for occasion; the inquisitor must look through his judgment, for to the eye only he is not visible.
To all men’s thinking, is a man, and to most men the finest; all things else are defined by the understanding, but this by the senses; but his surest mark is, that he is to be found only about princes. He smells, and putteth away much of his judgment about the situation of his clothes. He knows no man that is not generally known. His wit, like the marigold, openeth with the sun, and therefore he riseth not before ten of the clock. He puts more confidence in his words than meaning, and more in his pronunciation than his words. Occasion is his Cupid, and he hath but one receipt of making love. He follows nothing but inconstancy, admires nothing but beauty, honours nothing but fortune: Loves nothing. The sustenance of his discourse is news, and his censure, like a shot, depends upon the charging. He is not, if he be out of court, but fish-like breathes destruction if out of his element. Neither his motion or aspect are regular, but he moves by the upper spheres, and is the reflection of higher substances.
If you find him not here, you shall in Paul’s, with a pick-tooth in his hat, cape-cloak, and a long stocking.
Is a young thing, whose father went to the devil; he is followed like a salt bitch, and limbed by him that gets up first; his disposition is cut, and knaves rend him like tenter-hooks; he is as blind as his mother, and swallows flatterers for friends. He is high in his own imagination, but that imagination is as a stone that is raised by violence, descends naturally. When he goes, he looks who looks; if he find not good store of vailers, he comes home stiff and sere, until he be new oiled and watered by his husbandmen. Wheresoever he eats he hath an officer to warn men not to talk out of his element, and his own is exceeding sensible, because it is sensual; but he cannot exchange a piece of reason, though he can a piece of gold. He is not plucked, for his feathers are his beauty, and more than his beauty, they are his discretion, his countenance, his all. He is now at an end, for he hath had the wolf of vainglory, which he fed until himself became the food.
Is the shadow of a fool. He is a good woodman, for he singleth out none but the wealthy. His carriage is ever of the colour of his patient; and for his sake he will halt or wear a wry neck. He dispraiseth nothing but poverty and small drink, and praiseth his Grace of making water. He selleth himself with reckoning his great friends, and teacheth the present how to win his praises by reciting the other gifts; he is ready for all employments, but especially before dinner, for his courage and his stomach go together. He will play any upon his countenance, and where he cannot be admitted for a counsellor he will serve as a fool. He frequents the Court of Wards and Ordinaries, and fits these guests of Togae viriles with wives or worse. He entereth young men into aquaintance with debt-books. In a word, he is the impression of the last term, and will be so until the coming of a new term or termer.
Is an insectum animal, for he is the maggot of opinion; his behaviour is another thing from himself, and is glued and but set on. He entertains men with repetitions, and returns them their own words. He is ignorant of nothing, no not of those things where ignorance is the lesser shame. He gets the names of good wits, and utters them for his companions. He confesseth vices that he is guiltless of, if they be in fashion; and dares not salute a man in old clothes, or out of fashion. There is not a public assembly without him, and he will take any pains for an acquaintance there. In any show he will be one, though he be but a whiffler or a torch-bearer, and bears down strangers with the story of his actions. He handles nothing that is not rare, and defends his wardrobe, diet, and all customs, with intituling their beginnings from princes, great soldiers, and strange nations. He dare speak more than he understands, and adventures his words without the relief of any seconds. He relates battles and skirmishes as from an eyewitness, when his eyes thievishly beguiled a ballad of them. In a word, to make sure of admiration, he will not let himself understand himself, but hopes fame and opinion will be the readers of his riddles.
Is a noun adjective of the present tense. He hath no more of a conscience than fear, and his religion is not his but the prince’s. He reverenceth a courtier’s servant’s servant; is first his own slave, and then whosesoever looketh big. When he gives he curseth, and when he sells he worships. He reads the statutes in his chamber, and wears the Bible in the streets; he never praiseth any, but before themselves or friends; and mislikes no great man’s actions during his life. His New Year’s gifts are ready at Allhallowmas, and the suit he meant to meditate before them. He pleaseth the children
Is a man blasted or planet-stricken, and is the dog that leads blind Cupid; when he is at the best his fashion exceeds the worth of his weight. He is never without verses and musk confects, and sighs to the hazard of his buttons. His eyes are all white, either to wear the livery of his mistress’ complexion or to keep Cupid from hitting the black. He fights with passion, and loseth much of his blood by his weapon; dreams, thence his paleness. His arms are carelessly used, as if their best use was nothing but embracements. He is untrussed, unbuttoned, and ungartered, not out of carelessness, but care; his farthest end being but going to bed. Sometimes he wraps his petition in neatness, but he goeth not alone; for then he makes some other quality moralise his affection, and his trimness is the grace of that grace. Her favour lifts him up as the sun moisture; when she disfavours, unable to hold that happiness, it falls down in tears. His fingers are his orators, and he expresseth much of himself upon some instrument. He answers not, or not to the purpose, and no marvel, for he is not at home. He scotcheth time with dancing with his mistress, taking up of her glove, and wearing her feather; he is confined to her colour, and dares not pass out of the circuit of her memory. His imagination is a fool, and it goeth in a pied coat of red and white. Shortly, he is translated out of a man into folly; his imagination is the glass of lust, and himself the traitor to his own discretion.
Is a speaking fashion; he hath taken pains to be ridiculous, and hath seen more than he hath perceived. His attire speaks French or Italian, and his gait cries, Behold me. He censures all things by countenances and shrugs, and speaks his own language with shame and lisping; he will choke rather than confess beer good drink, and his pick-tooth is a main part of his behaviour. He chooseth rather to be counted a spy than not a politician, and maintains his reputation by naming great men familiarly. He chooseth rather to tell lies than not wonders, and talks with men singly; his discourse sounds big, but means nothing; and his boy is bound to admire him howsoever. He comes still from great personages, but goes with mean. He takes occasion to show jewels given him in regard of his virtue, that were bought in St. Martin’s;
Is the truth of the true definition of man, that is, a reasonable creature. His disposition alters; he alters not. He hides himself with the attire of the vulgar; and in indifferent things is content to be governed by them. He looks according to nature; so goes his behaviour. His mind enjoys a continual smoothness; so cometh it that his consideration is always at home. He endures the faults of all men silently, except his friends, and to them he is the mirror of their actions; by this means, his peace cometh not from fortune, but himself. He is cunning in men, not to surprise, but keep his own, and beats off their ill-affected humours no otherwise than if they were flies. He chooseth not friends by the Subsidy-book, and is not luxurious after acquaintance. He maintains the strength of his body, not by delicates but temperance; and his mind, by giving it pre-eminence over his body. He understands things, not by their form, but qualities; and his comparisons intend not to excuse but to provoke him higher. He is not subject to casualties, for fortune hath nothing to do with the mind, except those drowned in the body; but he hath divided his soul from the case of his soul, whose weakness he assists no otherwise than commiseratively—not that it is his, but that it is. He is thus, and will be thus; and lives subject neither to time nor his frailties, the servant of virtue, and by virtue the friend of the highest.
Hath surveyed and fortified his disposition, and converts all occurrents into experience, between which experience and his reason there is marriage; the issue are his actions. He circuits his intents, and seeth the end before he shoot. Men are the instruments of his art, and there is no man without his use. Occasion incites him, none enticeth him; and he moves by affection, not for affection. He loves glory, scorns shame, and governeth and obeyeth with one countenance, for it comes from one consideration. He calls
Is a thing that hath been a man in his days. Old men are to be known blindfolded, for their talk is as terrible as their resemblance. They praise their own times as vehemently as if they would sell them. They become wrinkled with frowning and facing youth; they admire their old customs, even to the eating of red herring and going wetshod. They cast the thumb under the girdle, gravity; and because they can hardly smell at all their posies are under their girdles. They count it an ornament of speech to close the period with a cough; and it is venerable (they say) to spend time in wiping their drivelled beards. Their discourse is unanswerable, by reason of their obstinacy; their speech is much, though little to the purpose. Truths and lies pass with an unequal affirmation; for their memories several are won into one receptacle, and so they come out with one sense. They teach their servants their duties with as much scorn and tyranny as some people teach their dogs to fetch. Their envy is one of their diseases. They put off and on their clothes with that certainty, as if they knew their heads would not direct them, and therefore custom should. They take a pride in halting and going stiffly, and therefore their staves are carved and tipped; they trust their attire with much of their gravity; and they dare not go without a gown in summer. Their hats are brushed, to draw men’s eyes off from their faces; but of all, their pomanders are worn to most purpose, for their putrified breath ought not to want either a smell to defend or a dog to excuse.
Is a thing, out of whose corruption the generation of a Justice of Peace is produced. He speaks statutes and husbandry well enough to make his neighbours think him a wise man; he is well skilled in arithmetic or rates, and hath eloquence enough to save twopence. His conversation amongst his tenants is desperate, but amongst his equals full of doubt. His travel is seldom farther than the next market town, and his inquisition is about the price of corn. When he travelleth he will go ten miles out of the way to a cousin’s house of his to save charges; he rewards the servant by taking him by the hand when he departs. Nothing under a subpoena can draw him to London; and when he is there he sticks fast upon every object, casts his eyes away upon gazing, and becomes the prey of every cutpurse. When he comes home, those wonders serve him for his holiday talk. If he go to court it is in yellow stockings; and if it be in winter, in a slight taffety cloak, and pumps and pantofles. He is chained that woos the usher for his coming into the presence, where he becomes troublesome with the ill-managing of his rapier, and the wearing of his girdle of one fashion, and the hangers of another. By this time he hath learned to kiss his hand, and make a leg both together, and the names of lords and councillors. He hath thus much toward entertainment and courtesy, but of the last he makes more use, for, by the recital of my lord, he conjures his poor countrymen. But this is not his element; he must home again, being like a dor, that ends his flight in a dunghill.
Is the cinnamon tree, whose bark is more worth than his body. He hath read the book of good manners, and by this time each of his limbs may read it. He alloweth of no judge but the eye: painting, bolstering, and bombasting are his orators. By these also he proves his industry, for he hath purchased legs, hair, beauty, and straightness, more than nature left him. He unlocks maidenheads with his language, and speaks Euphues, not so gracefully as heartily. His discourse makes not his behaviour; but he buys it at court, as countrymen their clothes in Birchin Lane. He is somewhat like the salamander, and lives in the flame of love, which pains he expresseth comically. And nothing grieves him so much as the want of a poet to make an issue in his love. Yet he sighs sweetly and speaks lamentably, for his breath is perfumed and his words are wind. He is best in season at Christmas, for the boar’s head and reveller come together. His hopes are laden in his quality; and, lest fiddlers should take him unprovided, he wears pumps in his pocket; and, lest he should take fiddlers unprovided, he whistles his own galliard. He is a calendar of ten years, and marriage rusts him. Afterwards he maintains himself an implement of household, by carving and ushering. For all this, he is judicial only in tailors and barbers; but his opinion is ever ready, and ever idle. If you will know more of his acts, the broker’s shop is the witness of his valour, where lies wounded, dead rent, and out of fashion, many a spruce suit, overthrown by his fantasticness.
Is a creature born to the best advantage of things without him; that hath the start at the beginning, but loiters it away before the ending. He looks like his land, as heavily and dirtily, as stubbornly. He dares do anything but fight, and fears nothing but his father’s life, and minority. The first thing he makes known is his estate, and the loadstone that draws him is the upper end of the table. He wooeth by a particular, and his strongest argument is all about the jointure. His observation is all about the fashion, and he commends partlets for a rare device. He speaks no language, but smells of dogs or hawks, and his ambition flies justice-height. He loves to be commended; and he will go into the kitchen but he’ll have it. He loves glory, but is so lazy as he is content with flattery. He speaks most of the precedency of age, and protests fortune the greatest virtue. He summoneth the old servants, and tells what strange acts he will do when he reigns. He verily believes housekeepers the best commonwealths-men, and therefore studies baking, brewing, greasing, and such, as the limbs of goodness. He judgeth it no small sign of wisdom to talk much; his tongue therefore goes continually his errand, but never speeds. If his understanding were not honester than his will, no man should keep good conceit by him, for he thinks it no theft to sell all he can to opinion. His pedigree and his father’s seal-ring are the stilts of his crazed disposition. He had rather keep company with the dregs of men than not to be the best man. His insinuation is the inviting of men to his house; and he thinks it a great modesty to comprehend his cheer under a piece of mutton and a rabbit. If he by this time be not known, he will go home again, for he can no more abide to have himself concealed than his land. Yet he is (as you see) good for nothing, except to make a stallion to maintain the race.
Is the oyster that the pearl is in, for a man may be picked out of him. He hath the abilities of the mind in potentia, and actu nothing but boldness. His clothes are in fashion before his body, and he accounts boldness the chiefest virtue. Above all men he loves an herald, and speaks pedigrees naturally. He accounts none well descended that call him not cousin, and prefers Owen Glendower before any of the Nine Worthies. The first note of his familiarity is the confession of his valour, and so he prevents quarrels. He voucheth Welsh a pure and unconquered language, and courts ladies with the story of their chronicle. To conclude, he is precious in his own conceit, and upon St. David’s Day without comparison.
He treads in a rule, and one hand scans verses, and the other holds his sceptre. He dares not think a thought that the nominative case governs not the verb; and he never had meaning in his life, for he travelled only for words. His ambition is criticism, and his example Tully. He values phrases, and elects them by the sound, and the eight parts of speech are his servants. To be brief, he is a Heteroclite, for he wants the plural number, having only the single quality of words.
Is a creature, which, though he be not drunk, yet is not his own man. He tells without asking who owns him, by the superscription of his livery. His life is for ease and leisure, much about gentleman-like. His wealth enough to suffice nature, and sufficient to make him happy, if he were sure of it, for he hath little, and wants nothing; he values himself higher or lower as his master is. He hates or loves the men as his master doth the master. He is commonly proud of his master’s horses or his Christmas; he sleeps when he is sleepy, is of his religion, only the clock of his stomach is set to go an hour after his. He seldom breaks his own clothes. He never drinks but double, for he must be pledged; nor commonly without some short sentence nothing to the purpose, and seldom abstains till he comes to a thirst. His discretion is to be careful for his master’s credit, and his sufficiency to marshal dishes at a table, and to carve well; his neatness consists much in his hair and outward linen; his courting language, visible coarse jests; and against his matter fail, he is always ready furnished with a song. His inheritance is the chambermaid, but often purchaseth his master’s daughter, by reason of opportunity, or for want of a better, he always cuckolds himself, and never marries but his own widow. His master being appeased, he becomes a retainer, and entails himself and his posterity upon his heir-males for ever.
Is the kernel of a sign; or the sign is the shell, and mine host is the snail. He consists of double beer and fellowship, and his vices are the bawds of his thirst. He entertains humbly, and gives his guests power, as well of himself as house. He answers all men’s expectations to his power, save in the reckoning; and hath gotten the trick of greatness, to lay all mislikes upon his servants. His wife is the common seed of his dove-house; and to be a good guest is a warrant for her liberty. He traffics for guests by men-friends’ friends’ friends, and is sensible only of his purse. In a word, he is none of his own; for he neither eats, drinks, or thinks, but at other men’s charges and appointments.
Is a thing that scrubbeth unreasonably his horse, reasonably himself. He consists of travellers, though he be none himself. His highest ambition is to be host, and the invention of his sign is his greatest wit, for the expressing whereof he sends away the painters for want of understanding. He hath certain charms for a horse mouth, that he should not eat his hay; and behind your back he will cozen your horse to his face. His curry-comb is one of his best parts, for he expresseth much by the jingling; and his mane-comb is a spinner’s card turned out of service. He puffs and blows over your horse, to the hazard of a double jug, and leaves much of the dressing to the proverb of muli mutuo scabient, one horse rubs another. He comes to him that calls loudest, not first; he takes a broken head patiently, but the knave he feels it not; utmost honesty is good fellowship, and he speaks northern, what countryman soever. He hath a pension of ale from the next smith and saddler for intelligence; he loves to see you ride, and hold your stirrup in expectation.
He hath a soul drowned in a lump of flesh, or is a piece of earth that Prometheus put not half his proportion of fire into. A thing that hath neither edge of desire nor feeling of affection in it; the most dangerous creature for confirming an atheist, who would swear his soul were nothing but the bare temperature of his body. He sleeps as he goes, and his thoughts seldom reach an inch further than his eyes. The most part of the faculties of his soul lie fallow, or are like the restive jades that no spur can drive forward towards the pursuit of any worthy designs. One of the most unprofitable of God’s creatures, being as he is a thing put clean beside the right use; made fit for the cart and the flail, and by mischance entangled amongst books and papers. A man cannot tell possibly what he is now good for, save to move up and down and fill room, or to serve as animatum instrumentum, for others to work withal in base employments, or to be foil for better wits, or to serve (as they say monsters do) to set out the variety of nature, and ornament of the universe. He is mere nothing of himself, neither eats, nor drinks, nor goes, nor spits, but by imitation, for all which he hath set forms and fashions, which he never varies, but sticks to with the like plodding constancy that a mill-horse follows his trace. But the Muses and the Graces are his hard mistresses; though he daily invocate them, though he sacrifice hecatombs, they still look asquint. You shall note him (besides his dull eye, and lowering head, and a certain clammy benumbed pace) by a fair displayed beard, a night-cap, and a gown, whose very wrinkles proclaim him the true genius of familiarity. But of all others, his discourse and compositions best speak him, both of them are much of one stuff and fashion. He speaks just what his books or last company said unto him, without varying one whit, and very seldom understands himself. You may know by his discourse where he was last; for what he heard or read yesterday, he now dischargeth his memory or note-book of—not his understanding, for it never came there. What he hath he flings abroad at all adventures, without accommodating it to time, place, or persons, or occasions. He commonly loseth himself in his tale, and flutters up and down windless without recovery, and whatsoever next presents itself, his heavy conceit seizeth upon, and goeth along with, however heterogeneal to his matter in hand. His jests are either old fled proverbs, or lean-starved hackney apophthegms, or poor verbal quips, outworn by serving-men, tapsters, and milkmaids, even laid aside by balladers. He assents to all men that bring any shadow of reason, and you may make him when he speaks most dogmatically even with one breath, to aver poor contradictions. His compositions differ only terminorum positione from dreams; nothing but rude heaps of immaterial,
Is a man’s best movable, a scion incorporate with the stock, bringing sweet fruit; one that to her husband is more than a friend, less than trouble; an equal with him in the yoke. Calamities and troubles she shares alike, nothing pleaseth her that doth not him. She is relative in all, and he without her but half himself. She is his absent hands, eyes, ears, and mouth; his present and absent all. She frames her nature unto his howsoever; the hyacinth follows not the sun more willingly. Stubbornness and obstinacy are herbs that grow not in her garden. She leaves tattling to the gossips of the town, and is more seen than heard. Her household is her charge; her care to that makes her seldom non-resident. Her pride is but to be cleanly, and her thrift not to be prodigal. By her discretion she hath children not wantons; a husband without her is a misery to man’s apparel: none but she hath an aged husband, to whom she is both a staff and a chair. To conclude, she is both wise and religious, which makes her all this.
Is a strayer from the drove: one that Nature made a sociable, because she made him man, and a crazed disposition hath altered. Unpleasing to all, as all to him; straggling thoughts are his content, they make him dream waking, there’s his pleasure. His imagination is never idle, it keeps his mind in a continual motion, as the poise the clock: he winds up his thoughts often, and as often unwinds them; Penelope’s web thrives faster. He’ll seldom be found without the shade of some grove, in whose bottom a river dwells. He carries a cloud in his face, never fair weather; his outside is framed to his inside, in that he keeps a decorum, both unseemly. Speak to him; he hears with his eyes, ears follow his mind, and that’s not at leisure. He thinks business, but never does any; he is all contemplation,
Is a pitched piece of reason caulked and tackled, and only studied to dispute with tempests. He is part of his own provision, for he lives ever pickled. A fore-wind is the substance of his creed, and fresh water the burden of his prayers. He is naturally ambitious, for he is ever climbing; out of which as naturally he fears, for he is ever flying. Time and he are everywhere ever contending who shall arrive first; he is well-winded, for he tires the day, and outruns darkness. His life is like a hawk’s, the best part mewed; and if he live till three coats, is a master. He sees God’s wonders in the deep, but so as rather they appear his playfellows than stirrers of his zeal. Nothing but hunger and hard rocks can convert him, and then but his upper deck neither; for his hold neither fears nor hopes, his sleeps are but reprievals of his dangers, and when he wakes ’tis but next stage to dying. His wisdom is the coldest part about him, for it ever points to the north, and it lies lowest, which makes his valour every tide overflow it. In a storm it is disputable whether the noise be more his or the elements, and which will first leave scolding; on which side of the ship he may be saved best, whether his faith be starboard faith or larboard, or the helm at that time not all his hope of heaven. His keel is the emblem of his conscience, till it be split he never repents, then no farther than the land allows him, and his language is a new confusion, and all his thoughts new nations. His body and his ship are both one burden, nor is it known who stows most wine or rolls most; only the ship is guided, he has no stern. A barnacle and he are bred together, both of one nature, and it is feared one reason. Upon any but a wooden horse he cannot ride, and if the wind blow against him he dare not. He swerves up to his seat as to a sail-yard, and cannot sit unless he bear a flagstaff. If ever he be broken to the saddle, it is but a voyage still, for he mistakes the bridle for a bowline, and is ever turning his horse-tail. He can pray, but it is by rote, not faith, and when he would he dares not, for his brackish belief hath made that ominous. A rock or a quicksand plucks him before he be ripe, else he is gathered to his friends at Wapping.
Is the husbandman of valour; his sword is his plough, which honour and aqua vita, two fiery-metalled jades, are ever drawing. A younger brother best becomes arms, an elder the thanks for them. Every heat makes him a harvest, and discontents abroad are his sowers. He is actively his prince’s, but passively his anger’s servant. He is often a desirer of learning, which once arrived at, proves his strongest armour. He is a lover at all points, and a true defender of the faith of women. More wealth than makes him seem a handsome foe, lightly he covets not, less is below him. He never truly wants but in much having, for then his ease and lechery afflict him. The word peace, though in prayer, makes him start, and God he best considers by His power. Hunger and cold rank in the same file with him, and hold him to a man; his honour else, and the desire of doing things beyond him, would blow him greater than the sons of Anak. His religion is, commonly, as his cause is, doubtful, and that the best devotion keeps best quarter. He seldom sees grey hairs, some none at all, for where the sword fails, there the flesh gives fire. In charity he goes beyond the clergy, for he loves his greatest enemy best, much drinking. He seems a full student, for he is a great desirer of controversies; he argues sharply, and carries his conclusion in his scabbard. In the first refining of mankind this was the gold, his actions are his amel. His alloy (for else you cannot work him perfectly) continual duties, heavy and weary marches, lodgings as full of need as cold diseases. No time to argue, but to execute. Line him with these, and link him to his squadrons, and he appears a most rich chain for princes.
Is a creature made up of threads that were pared off from Adam, when he was rough cast; the end of his being differeth from that of others, and is not to serve God, but to cover sin. Other men’s pride is the best patron, and their negligence a main passage to his profit. He is a thing of more than ordinary judgment: for by virtue of that he buyeth land, buildeth houses, and raiseth the set roof of his cross-legged fortune. His actions are strong encounters, and for their notoriousness always upon record. It is neither Amadis de Gaul, nor the Knight of the Sun, that is able to resist them. A ten-groat fee setteth them on foot, and a brace of officers bringeth them to execution. He handleth the Spanish pike to the hazard of many poor Egyptian vermin; and in show of his valour, scorneth a greater gauntlet than will cover the top of his middle finger. Of all weapons he most affecteth the long bill; and this he will manage to the great prejudice of a customer’s estate. His spirit, notwithstanding, is not so much as to make you think him man; like a true mongrel, he neither bites nor barks but when your back is towards him. His
Is a diseased piece of apocalypse: bind him to the Bible, and he corrupts the whole text. ’Ignorance and fat feed are his founders; his nurses, railing, rabies, and round breeches. His life is but a borrowed blast of wind: for between two religions, as between two doors, he is ever whistling. Truly, whose child he is is yet unknown; for, willingly, his faith allows no father: only thus far his pedigree is found, Bragger and he flourished about a time first. His fiery zeal keeps him continually costive, which withers him into his own translation; and till he eat a schoolman he is hide-bound. He ever prays against non-residents, but is himself the greatest discontinuer, for he never keeps near his text. Anything that the law allows, but marriage and March beer, he murmurs at; what it disallows and holds dangerous, makes him a discipline. Where the gate stands open, he is ever seeking a stile; and where his learning ought to climb, he creeps through. Give him advice, you run into traditions; and urge a modest course, he cries out counsel. His greatest care is to contemn obedience; his last care to serve God handsomely and cleanly. He is now become so cross a kind of teaching, that should the Church enjoin clean shirts, he were lousy. More sense than single prayers is not his; nor more in those than still the same petitions: from which he either fears a learned faith, or doubts God understands not at first hearing. Show him a ring, he runs back like a bear; and hates square dealing as allied to caps. A pair of organs blow him out of the parish, and are the only glyster-pipes to cool him. Where the meat is best, there he confutes most, for his arguing is but the efficacy of his eating: good bits he holds breed good positions, and the Pope he best concludes against in plum-broth. He is often
Is the best shadow to make a discreet one show the fairer. He is a materia prima informed by reports, actuated by statutes, and hath his motion by the favourable intelligence of the Court. His law is always furnished with a commission to arraign his conscience; but, upon judgment given, he usually sets it at large. He thinks no language worth knowing but his Barragouin: only for that point he hath been a long time at wars with Priscian for a northern province. He imagines that by sure excellency his profession only is learning, and that it is a profanation of the Temple to his Themis dedicated, if any of the liberal arts be there admitted to offer strange incense to her. For, indeed, he is all for money. Seven or eight years squires him out, some of his nation less standing; and ever since the night of his call, he forgot much what he was at dinner. The next morning his man (in actu or potentia) enjoys his pickadels. His laundress is then shrewdly troubled in fitting him a ruff, his perpetual badge. His love-letters of the last year of his gentlemanship are stuffed with discontinuances, remitters, and uncore priests; but, now being enabled to speak in proper person, he talks of a French hood instead of a jointure, wags his law, and joins issue. Then he begins to stick his letters in his ground chamber-window, that so the superscription may make his squireship transparent. His heraldry gives him place before the minister, because the Law was before the Gospel. Next term he walks his hoopsleeve gown to the hall; there it proclaims him. He feeds fat in the reading, and till it chance to his turn, dislikes no house order so much as that the month is so contracted to a fortnight. Amongst his country neighbours he arrogates as much honour for being reader of an Inn of Chancery, as if it had been of his own house; for they, poor souls, take law and conscience, Court and Chancery, for all one. He learned to frame his case from putting riddles and imitating Merlin’s prophecies, and to set all the Cross Row together by the ears; yet his whole law is not able to decide Lucan’s one old controversy betwixt Tau and Sigma. He accounts no man of his cap and coat idle, but who trots not the circuit. He affects no life or quality for itself, but for gain; and that, at least, to the stating him in a Justice of Peace-ship,
A mere scholar is an intelligible ass, or a silly fellow in black that speaks sentences more familiarly than sense. The antiquity of his University is his creed, and the excellency of his college (though but for a match at football) an article of his faith. He speaks Latin better than his mother-tongue, and is a stranger in no part of the world but his own country. He does usually tell great stories of himself to small purpose, for they are commonly ridiculous, be they true or false. His ambition is that he either is or shall be a graduate; but if ever he get a fellowship, he has then no fellow. In spite of all logic he dares swear and maintain it, that a cuckold and a town’s-man are termini convertibles, though his mother’s husband be an alderman. He was never begotten (as it seems) without much wrangling, for his whole life is spent in pro et contra. His tongue goes always before his wit, like gentleman-usher,
Is a movable, for he hath no abiding-place; by his motion he gathers heat, thence his choleric nature. He seems to be very devout, for his life is a continual pilgrimage, and sometimes in humility goes barefoot, thereon making necessity a virtue. His house is as ancient as Tubal Cain’s, and so is a renegade by antiquity: yet he proves himself a gallant, for he carries all his wealth upon his back; or a philosopher, for he bears all his substance about him. From his art was music first invented, and therefore he is always furnished with a song, to which his hammer keeping tune, proves that he was the first founder for the kettledrum. Note, that where the best ale is, there stands his music most upon crochets. The companion of his travels is some foul sun-burnt quean, that, since the terrible statute, recanted gipseyism and is turned pedlaress. So marches he all over England with his bag and baggage. His conversation is unreprovable, for he is ever mending. He observes truly the statutes, and therefore he can rather steal than beg, in which he is unremovably constant in spite
Is a chick of the egg abuse, hatched by the warmth of authority; he is a bird of rapine, and begins to prey and feather together. He croaks like a raven against the death of rich men, and so gets a legacy unbequeathed. His happiness is in the multitude of children, for their increase is his wealth, and to that end he himself yearly adds one. He is a cunning hunter, uncoupling his intelligencing hounds under hedges, in thickets and cornfields, who follow the chase to city suburbs, where often his game is at covert; his quiver hangs by his side stuffed with silver arrows, which he shoots against church-gates and private men’s doors, to the hazard of their purses and credit. There went but a pair of shears between him and the pursuivant of hell, for they both delight in sin, grow richer by it, and are by justice appointed to punish it; only the devil is more cunning, for he picks a living out of others’ gains. His living lieth in his eye, which (like spirits) he sends through chinks and keyholes to survey the places of darkness; for which purpose he studieth the optics, but can discover no colour but black, for the pure white of chastity dazzleth his eyes. He is a Catholic, for he is everywhere; and with a politic, for he transforms himself into all shapes. He travels on foot to avoid idleness, and loves the Church entirely, because it is the place of his edification. He accounts not all sins mortal, for fornication with him is a venial sin, and to take bribes a matter of charity; he is collector for burnings and losses at sea, and in casting account readily subtracts the lesser from the greater sum. Thus lives he in a golden age, till death by a process summons him to appear.
Is the worst part of an astronomer; a certain compact of figures, characters, and ciphers, out of which he scores the fortune of a year, not so profitably as doubtfully. He is tenant by custom to the planets, of whom he holds the twelve houses by lease parol; to them he pays yearly rent, his study and time, yet lets them out again with all his heart for 40s. per annum. His life is merely contemplative; for his practice, ’tis worth nothing, at least not worthy of credit, and if by chance he purchase any, he loseth it again at the year’s end, for time brings truth to light. Ptolemy and Tycho Brahe are his patrons, whose volumes he understands not but admires, and the rather because they are strangers, and so easier to be credited than controlled. His life is upright, for he is always looking upward, yet dares believe nothing above primum mobile, for ’tis out of the reach of his Jacob’s staff. His charity extends no further than to mountebanks and sow-gelders, to whom he bequeaths the seasons of the year to kill or torture by. The verses of his book have a worse pace than ever had Rochester hackney; for his prose, ’tis dappled with ink-horn terms, and may serve for an almanac; but for his judging at the uncertainty of weather, any old shepherd shall make a dunce of him. He would be thought the devil’s intelligencer for stolen goods, if ever he steal out of that quality. As a fly turns to a maggot, so the corruption of the cunning man is the generation of an empiric; his works fly forth in small volumes, yet not all, for many ride post to chandlers and tobacco shops in folio. To be brief, he falls three degrees short of his promises, yet is he the key to unlock terms and law days, a dumb mercury to point out highways, and a bailiff of all marts and fairs in England. The rest of him you shall know next year, for what he will be then he himself knows not.
Is a gilded pill, composed of two virtuous ingredients, natural dishonesty and artificial dissimulation. Simple fruit, plant, or drug he is none, but a deformed mixture bred betwixt evil nature and false art by a monstrous generation, and may well be put into the reckoning of those creatures that God never made. In Church or commonwealth (for in both these this mongrel weed will shoot) it is hard to say whether he be physic or a disease, for he is both in divers respects.
As he is gilt with an outside of seeming purity, or as he offereth himself to you to be taken down in a cup or taste of golden zeal and simplicity, you may call him physic. Nay, and never let potion give patient good stool if, being truly tasted and relished, he be not as loathsome to the stomach of any honest man.
He is also physic in being as commodious for use as he is odious in taste, if the body of the company into which he is taken can make true use of him. For the malice of his nature makes him so informer-like-dangerous, in taking advantage of anything done or said, yea, even to the ruin of his makers, if he may have benefit, that such a creature in a society makes men as careful of their speeches and actions as the sight of a known cut-purse in a throng makes them watchful over their purses and pockets. He is also in this respect profitable physic, that his conversation being once truly tasted and discovered, the hateful foulness of it will make those that are not fully like him to purge all such diseases as are rank in him out of their own lives, as the sight of some citizens on horseback make a judicious man amend his own faults in horsemanship. If one of these uses can be made of him, let him not long offend the stomach of your company; your best way is to spue him out. That he is a disease in the body where he liveth were as strange a thing to doubt as whether there be knavery in horse-coursers. For if among sheep, the rot; amongst dogs, the mange; amongst horses, the glanders; amongst men and women, the Northern itch and the French ache, be diseases, an hypocrite cannot but be the like in all States and societies that breed him. If he be a clergy hypocrite, then all manner of vice is for the most part so proper to him as he will grudge any man the practice of it but himself; like that grave burgess, who being desired to lend his clothes to represent a part in a comedy, answered: No, by his leave, he would have nobody play the fool in his clothes but himself. Hence are his so austere reprehensions of drinking healths, lascivious talk, usury, and unconscionable dealing; whenas himself, hating the profane mixture of malt and water, will, by his good will, let nothing come within him but the purity of the grape, when he can get it of another’s cost. But this must not be done neither without a preface of seeming soothness, turning up the eyes, moving the head, laying hand on the breast, and protesting that he would not do it but to strengthen his body, being even consumed with dissembled zeal, and tedious and thankless babbling to God and his auditors. And for the other vices, do but venture the making yourself private with him or trusting of him, and if you come off without a savour of the air which his soul is infected with you have great fortune. The fardel of all this ware that is in him you shall commonly see carried upon the back of these two beasts that live within him, Ignorance and Imperiousness, and they may well serve to carry other vices, for of themselves they are insupportable. His Ignorance acquits him of all science, human or divine, and of all language but his mother’s; holding nothing pure, holy, or sincere but the senseless recollections of his own crazed brain, the zealous fumes of his inflamed spirit, and the endless labours of his eternal tongue, the
She is her mistress’s she secretary, and keeps the box of her teeth, her hair, and her painting very private. Her industry is upstairs and downstairs, like a drawer; and by her dry hand you may know she is a sore starcher. If she lie at her master’s bed’s feet, she is quit of the green sickness for ever, for she hath terrible dreams when she’s awake, as if she were troubled with the nightmare. She hath a good liking to dwell in the country, but she holds London the goodliest forest in England to shelter a great belly. She reads Greene’s works over and over, but is so carried away with the “Mirror of Knighthood,” she is many times resolved to run out of her self and become a lady-errant. The pedant of the house, though he promise her marriage, cannot grow further inward with her; she hath paid for her credulity often, and now grows weary. She likes the form of our marriage very well, in that a woman is not tied to answer to any articles concerning questions of virginity. Her mind, her body, and clothes are parcels loosely tacked together, and for want of good utterance she perpetually laughs out her meaning. Her mistress and she help to make away time to the idlest purpose that can be, either for love or money. In brief, these chambermaids are like lotteries: you may draw twenty ere one worth anything.
To speak no otherwise of this varnished rottenness than in truth and verity he is, I must define him to be a demure creature, full of oral sanctity and mental impiety; a fair object to the eye, but stark naught for the understanding, or else a violent thing much given to contradiction. He will be sure to be in opposition with the Papist, though it be sometimes accompanied with an absurdity, like the islanders near adjoining unto China, who salute by putting off their shoes, because the men of China do it by their hats. If at any time he fast, it is upon Sunday, and he is sure to feast upon Friday. He can better afford you ten lies than one oath, and dare commit any sin gilded with a pretence of sanctity. He will not stick to commit fornication or adultery so it be done in the fear of God and for the propagation of the godly, and can find in his heart to lie with any whore save the whore of Babylon. To steal he holds it lawful, so it be from the wicked and Egyptians. He had rather see Antichrist than a picture in the church window, and chooseth sooner to be half hanged than see a leg at the name of Jesus or one stand at the Creed. He conceives his prayer in the kitchen rather than in the church, and is of so good discourse that he dares challenge the Almighty to talk with him extempore. He thinks every organist is in the state of damnation, and had rather hear one of Robert Wisdom’s psalms than the best hymn a cherubim can sing. He will not break wind without an apology or asking forgiveness, nor kiss a gentlewoman for fear of lusting after her. He hath nicknamed all the prophets and apostles with his sons, and begets nothing but virtues for daughters. Finally, he is so sure of his salvation, that he will not change places in heaven with the Virgin Mary, without boot.
He is distinguished from a scholar by a pair of silk stockings and a beaver hat, which makes him condemn a scholar as much as a scholar doth a schoolmaster. By that he hath heard one mooting and seen two plays, he thinks as basely of the university as a young sophister doth of the grammar-school. He talks of the university with that state as if he were her chancellor; finds fault with alterations and the fall of discipline with an “It was not so when I was a student,” although that was within this half year. He will talk ends of Latin, though it be false, with as great confidence as ever Cicero could pronounce an oration, though his best authors for it be taverns and ordinaries. He is as far behind a courtier in his fashion as a scholar is behind him, and the best grace in his behaviour is to forget his acquaintance.
He laughs at every man whose band fits not well, or that hath not a fair shoe-tie, and he is ashamed to be seen in any man’s company that wears not his clothes well. His very essence he placeth in his outside, and his chiefest prayer is, that his revenues may hold out for taffety cloaks in the summer and velvet in the winter. To his acquaintance he offers two quarts of wine for one he gives. You shall never see him melancholy but when he wants a new suit or fears a sergeant, at which times he only betakes himself to Ploydon. By that he hath read Littleton, he can call Solon, Lycurgus, and Justinian fools, and dares compare his law to a lord chief-justice’s.
He is one whose hopes commonly exceed his fortunes and whose mind soars above his purse. If he hath read Tacitus Guicciardine or Gallo-Belgicus, he condemns the late Lord-Treasurer for all the state policy he had, and laughs to think what a fool he could make of Solomon if he were now alive. He never wears new clothes but against a commencement or a good time, and is commonly a degree behind the fashion. He hath sworn to see London once a year, though all his business be to see a play, walk a turn in Paul’s, and observe the fashion. He thinks it a discredit to be out of debt, which he never likely clears without resignation money. He will not leave his part he hath in the privilege over young gentlemen in going bare to him, for the empire of Germany. He prays as heartily for a sealing as a cormorant doth for a dear year, yet commonly he spends that revenue before he receives it.
At meals he sits in as great state over his penny commons as ever Vitellius did at his greatest banquet, and takes great delight in comparing his fare to my Lord Mayor’s.
If he be a leader of a faction, he thinks himself greater than ever Caesar was or the Turk at this day is. And he had rather lose an inheritance than an office when he stands for it.
If he be to travel, he is longer furnishing himself for a five miles’ journey than a ship is rigging for a seven years’ voyage. He is never more troubled than when he has to maintain talk with a gentlewoman, wherein he commits more absurdities than a clown in eating of an egg.
He thinks himself as fine when he is in a clean band and a new pair of shoes, as any courtier doth when he is first in a new fashion.
Lastly, he is one that respects no man in the university, and is respected by no man out of it.
Is one that accounts learning the nourishment of military virtue, and lays that as his first foundation. He never bloodies his sword but in heat of battle, and had rather save one of his own soldiers than kill ten of his enemies. He accounts it an idle, vainglorious, and suspected bounty to be full of good words; his rewarding, therefore, of the deserver arrives so timely, that his liberality can never be said to be gouty-handed. He holds it next his creed that no coward can be an honest man, and dare die in it. He doth not think, his body yields a more spreading shadow after a victory than before; and when he looks upon his enemy’s dead body ’tis a kind of noble heaviness—no insultation. He is so honourably merciful to women in surprisal, that only that makes him an excellent courtier. He knows the hazard of battles, not the pomp of ceremonies, are soldiers’ best theatres, and strives to gain reputation, not by the multitude but by the greatness of his actions. He is the first in giving the charge and the last in retiring his foot. Equal toil he endures with the common soldier; from his examples they all take fire, as one torch lights many. He understands in war there is no mean to err twice, the first and last fault being sufficient to ruin an army: faults, therefore, he pardons none; they that are precedents of disorder or mutiny repair it by being examples of his justice. Besiege him never so strictly, so long as the air is not cut from him, his heart faints not. He hath learned as well to make use of a victory as to get it, and pursuing his enemies like a whirlwind, carries all before him; being assured if ever a man will benefit himself upon his foe, then is the time when they have lost force, wisdom, courage, and reputation. The goodness of his cause is the special motive to his valour; never is he known to slight the weakest enemy that comes armed against him in the band of justice. Hasty and overmuch heat he accounts the step-dame to all great actions that will not suffer them to drive; if he cannot overcome his enemy by force, he does it by time. If ever he shake hands with war, he can die more calmly than most courtiers, for his continual dangers have been, as it were, so many meditations of death. He thinks not out of his own calling when he accounts life a continual warfare, and his prayers then best become him when armed cap-a-fie. He utters them like the great Hebrew general, on horseback. He casts a smiling contempt upon calumny; it meets him as if glass should encounter adamant. He thinks war is never to be given o’er, but on one of these three conditions: an assured peace, absolute victory, or an honest death. Lastly, when peace folds him up, his silver head should lean near the golden sceptre and die in his prince’s bosom.
Is one that hath bought his place, or come to it by some nobleman’s letter. He loves alive dead pays, yet wishes they may rather happen in his company by the scurvy than by a battle. View him at a muster, and he goes with such a nose as if his body were the wheelbarrow that carried his judgment rumbling to drill his soldiers. No man can worse design between pride and noble courtesy. He that salutes him not, so far as a pistol carries level, gives him the disgust or affront, choose you whether. He trains by the book, and reckons so many postures of the pike and musket as if he were counting at noddy. When he comes at first upon a camisado, he looks, like the four winds in painting, as if he would blow away the enemy; but at the very first onset suffers fear and trembling to dress themselves in his face apparently. He scorns any man should take place before him, yet at the entering of a breach he hath been so humble-minded as to let his lieutenant lead his troops for him. He is so sure armed for taking hurt that he seldom does any; and while he is putting on his arms, he is thinking what sum he can make to satisfy his ransom. He will rail openly against all the great commanders of the adverse party, yet in his own conscience allows them for better men. Such is the nature of his fear that, contrary to all other filthy qualities, it makes him think better of another man than himself. The first part of him that is set a running is his eye-sight; when that is once struck with terror all the costive physic in the world cannot stay him. If ever he do anything beyond his own heart ’tis for a knighthood, and he is the first kneels for it without bidding.
Truly defined, is a bold traitor, for he fortifies a castle against the king. Give him sea-room in never so small a vessel, and like a witch in a sieve, you would think he were going to make merry with the devil. Of all callings his is the most desperate, for he will not leave off his thieving, though he be in a narrow prison, and look every day, by tempest or fight, for execution. He is one plague the devil hath added to make the sea more terrible than a storm, and his heart is so hardened in that rugged element that he cannot repent, though he view his grave before him continually open. He hath so little of his own that the house he sleeps in is stolen: all the necessities of life he filches but one; he cannot steal a sound sleep for his troubled conscience. He is very gentle to those under him, yet his rule is the horriblest tyranny in the world, for he gives licence to all rape, murder, and cruelty in his own example. What he gets is small use to him, only lives by it somewhat the longer to do a little more service to his belly, for he throws away his treasure upon the shore in riot, as if he cast it into the sea. He is a cruel hawk that
Is a fellow that, beside shaving of cudgels, hath a good insight into the world, for he hath long been beaten to it. Flesh and blood he is like other men, but surely nature meant him stockfish. His and a dancing-school are inseparable adjuncts, and are bound, though both stink of sweat most abominable, neither shall complain of annoyance. Three large bavins set up his trade, with a bench, which, in the vacation of the afternoon, he used for his day-bed. When he comes on the stage at his prize he makes a leg seven several ways, and scrambles for money, as if he had been born at the Bath in Somersetshire. At his challenge he shows his metal, for, contrary to all rules of physic, he dares bleed, though it be in the dog-days. He teaches devilish play in his school, but when he fights himself he doth it in the fear of a good Christian; he compounds quarrels among his scholars, and when he hath brought the business to a good upshot he makes the reckoning. His wounds are seldom above skin deep; for an inward bruise lamb-stones and sweetbreads are his only spermaceti, which he eats at night next his heart fasting. Strange schoolmasters they are that every day set a man as far backward as he went forward, and throwing him into a strange posture, teach him to thresh satisfaction out of injury. One sign of a good nature is that he is still open-breasted to his friends; for his foil and his doublet wear not out above two buttons, and resolute he is, for he so much scorns to take blows that he never wears cuffs; and he lives better contented with a little than other men, for if he have two eyes in his head he thinks nature hath overdone him. The Lord Mayor’s triumph makes him a man, for that’s his best time to flourish. Lastly, these fencers are such things that care not if all the world were ignorant of more letters than only to read their patent.
He is taken from grammar-school half coddled, and can hardly shake off his dreams of breeching in a twelvemonth. He is a farmer’s son, and his father’s utmost ambition is to make him an attorney. He doth itch towards a poet, and greases his breeches extremely with feeding without a napkin. He studies false dice to cheat costermongers. He eats gingerbread at a playhouse, and is so saucy that he ventures fairly for a broken pate at the banqueting-house, and hath it. He would never come to have any wit but for
Let him be never so well made, yet his legs are not matches, for he is still setting the best foot forward. He will never be a staid man, for he has had a running head of his own ever since his childhood. His mother, which out of question was a light-heeled wench, knew it, yet let him run his race thinking age would reclaim him from his wild courses. He is very long-winded, and without doubt but that he hates naturally to serve on horseback, he had proved an excellent trumpet. He has one happiness above all the rest of the serving-men, for when he most overreaches his master he is best thought of. He lives more by his own heat than the warmth of clothes, and the waiting-woman hath the greatest fancy to him when he is in his close trouses. Guards he wears none, which makes him live more upright than any cross-gartered gentleman-usher. ’Tis impossible to draw his picture to the life, because a man must take it as he’s running, only this, horses are usually let blood on St. Steven’s Day. On St. Patrick’s he takes rest, and is drenched for all the year after.
Is one whose bounty is limited by reason, not ostentation; and to make it last he deals it discreetly, as we sow the furrow, not by the sack, but by the handful. His word and his meaning never shake hands and part, but always go together. He can survey good and love it, and loves to do it himself for its own sake, not for thanks. He knows there is no such misery as to outlive good name, nor no such folly as to put it in practice. His mind is so secure that thunder rocks him asleep, which breaks other men’s slumbers; nobility lightens in his eyes, and in his face and gesture is painted the god of hospitality. His great houses bear in their front more durance than state, unless this add the greater state to them, that they promise to outlast much of our new fantastical buildings. His heart never grows old, no more than his memory, whether at his book or on horseback. He passeth his time in such noble exercise, a man
Is one that builds his reputation on others’ infamy, for slander is most commonly his morning prayer. His passions are guided by pride and followed by injustice. An inflexible anger against some poor tutor he falsely calls a courageous constancy, and thinks the best part of gravity to consist in a ruffled forehead. He is the most slavishly submissive, though envious to those that are in better place than himself; and knows the art of words so well that (for shrouding dishonesty under a fair pretext) he seems to preserve mud in crystal. Like a man of a kind nature, he is the first good to himself, in the next file to his French tailor, that gives him all his perfection; for indeed, like an estridge, or bird of paradise, his feathers are more worth than his body. If ever he do good deed (which is very seldom) his own mouth is the chronicle of it, lest it should die forgotten. His whole body goes all upon screws, and his face is the vice that moves them. If his patron be given to music, he opens his chops and sings, or with a wry neck falls to tuning his instrument; if that fail, he takes the height of his lord with a hawking pole. He follows the man’s fortune, not the man, seeking thereby to increase his own. He pretends he is most undeservedly envied, and cries out, remembering the game, chess, that a pawn before a king is most played on. Debts he owns none but shrewd turns, and those he pays ere he be sued. He is a flattering glass to conceal age and wrinkles. He is mountain’s monkey that, climbing a tree and skipping from bough to bough, gives you back his face; but come once to the top, he holds his nose up into the wind and shows you his tail. Yet all this gay glitter shows on him as if the sun shone in a puddle, for he is a small wine that will not last; and when he is falling, he goes of himself faster than misery can drive him.
Is a country wench, that is so far from making herself beautiful by art, that one look of hers is able to put all face physic out of countenance. She knows a fair look is but a dumb orator to commend virtue, therefore minds it not. All her excellences stand in her so silently, as if they had stolen upon her without her knowledge. The lining of her apparel (which is herself) is far better than outsides of tissue; for though she be not arrayed in the spoil of the silk-worm, she is decked in innocency, a far better wearing. She doth not, with lying long a-bed, spoil both her complexion and conditions; Nature hath taught her too immoderate sleep is rust to the soul; she rises therefore with chanticleer, her dame’s cock, and at night makes lamb her curfew. In milking a cow and straining the teats through her fingers, it seems that so sweet a milk-press makes the milk the whiter or sweeter; for never came almond glove or aromatic ointment off her palm to taint it. The golden ears of corn fall and kiss her feet when she reaps them, as if they wished to be bound and led prisoners by the same hand that felled them. Her breath is her own, which scents all the year long of June, like a new made haycock. She makes her hand hard with labour, and her heart soft with pity; and when winter’s evenings fall early (sitting at her merry wheel) she sings a defiance to the giddy wheel of fortune. She doth all things with so sweet a grace, it seems ignorance will not suffer her to do ill, because her mind is to do well. She bestows her year’s wages at next fair; and, in choosing her garments, counts no bravery in the world like decency. The garden and beehive are all her physic and chirurgery, and she lives the longer for it. She dares go alone and unfold sheep in the night, and fears no manner of ill because she means none; yet, to say truth, she is never alone, for she is still accompanied with old songs, honest thoughts, and prayers, but short ones; yet they have their efficacy, in that they are not palled with ensuing idle cogitations. Lastly, her dreams are so chaste that she dare tell them: only a Friday’s dream is all her superstition; that she conceals for fear of anger. Thus lives she, and all her care is that she may die in the spring-time, to have store of flowers stuck upon her winding-sheet.
Hath the trick to blow up horse-flesh, as the butcher doth veal, which shall wash out again in twice riding betwixt Waltham and London. The trade of spur-making had decayed long since, but for this ungodly tireman. He is cursed all over the four ancient highways of England; none but the blind men that sell switches in the road are beholding to him. His stable is filled with so many diseases, one would think most part about Smithfield was an hospital for horses, or a slaughter-house of the common hunt. Let him furnish you with a hackney, it is as much as if the
His life is a mere counterfeit patent, which, nevertheless, makes many a country justice tremble. Don Quixote’s water-mills are still Scotch bagpipes to him. He sends challenges by word of mouth, for he protests (as he is a gentleman and a brother of the sword) he can neither write nor read. He hath run through divers parcels of land, and great houses, beside both the counters. If any private quarrel happen among our great courtiers, he proclaims the business—that’s the word, the business—as if the united force of the Romish Catholics were making up for Germany. He cheats young gulls that are newly come to town; and when the keeper of the ordinary blames him for it he answers him in his own profession, that a woodcock must be plucked ere he be dressed. He is a supervisor to brothels, and in them is a more unlawful reformer of vice than prentices on Shrove-Tuesday. He loves his friend as a counsellor at law loves the velvet breeches he was first made barrister in, he will be sure to wear him threadbare ere he forsake him. He sleeps with a tobacco-pipe in his mouth; and his first prayer in the morning is he may remember whom he fell out with over night. Soldier he is none, for he cannot distinguish between onion-seed and gunpowder; if he have worn it in his hollow tooth for the toothache and so come to the knowledge of it, that is all. The tenure by which he holds his means is an estate at will, and that’s borrowing. Landlords have but four quarter-days, but he three hundred and odd. He keeps very good company, yet is a man of no reckoning; and when he goes not drunk to bed he is very sick next morning. He commonly dies like Anacreon, with a grape in his throat; or Hercules, with fire in his marrow. And I have heard of some that have escaped hanging begged for anatomies, only to deter man from taking tobacco.
Is but a quarter-master with his wife. He stinks of butter as if he were anointed all over for the itch. Let him come over never so lean, and plant him but one month near the brew-houses in St Catherine’s, and he will be puffed up to your hand like a bloat herring. Of all places of pleasure he loves a common garden, and with the swine of the parish had need be ringed for rooting. Next to these he affects lotteries naturally, and bequeaths the best prize in his will aforehand; when his hopes fall he’s blank. They swarm in great tenements like flies; six households will live in a garret. He was wont, only to make us fools, to buy the fox skin for threepence, and sell the tail for a shilling. Now his new trade of brewing strong waters makes a number of madmen. He loves a Welshman extremely for his diet and orthography; that is, for plurality of consonants, and cheese. Like a horse, he is only guided by the mouth; when he’s drunk you may thrust your hand into him like an eel’s-skin, and strip him, his inside outwards. He hoards up fair gold, and pretends ’tis to seethe in his wife’s broth for consumption; and loves the memory of King Henry the Eighth, most especially for his old sovereigns. He says we are unwise to lament the decay of timber in England; for all manner of buildings or fortification whatsoever, he desires no other thing in the world than barrels and hop-poles. To conclude, the only two plagues he trembles at is small beer and the Spanish Inquisition.
There is a confederacy between him and his clothes, to be made a puppy: view him well and you will say his gentry sits as ill upon him as if he had bought it with his penny. He hath more places to send money to than the devil hath to send his spirits; and to furnish each mistress would make him run besides his wits, if he had any to lose. He accounts bashfulness the wickedest thing in the world, and therefore studies impudence. If all men were of his mind all honesty would be out of fashion. He withers his clothes on a stage, as a saleman is forced to do his suits in Birchin Lane; and when the play is done, if you mark his rising, ’tis with a kind of walking epilogue between the two candles, to know if his suit may pass for current. He studies by the discretion of his barber, to frizzle like a baboon; three such would keep three the nimblest barbers in the town from ever having leisure to wear net-garters, for when they have to do with him, they have many irons in the fire. He is travelled, but to little purpose; only went over for a squirt and came back again, yet never the more mended in his conditions, because he carried himself along with him. A scholar he pretends himself, and says he hath sweat for it, but the truth is he knows Cornelius far better than Tacitus. His ordinary sports are cock-fights, but the most frequent, horse-races, from whence he comes home dry-foundered. Thus when his purse hath cast her calf he goes down into the country, where he is brought to milk and white cheese like the Switzers.
Is one that is fled over for his conscience, and left his wife and children upon the parish. For his knowledge he is merely a Horn-book without a Christ-cross before it; and his zeal consists much in hanging his Bible in a Dutch button. He cozens men in the purity of his clothes; and ’twas his only joy when he was on this side, to be in prison. He cries out, ’tis impossible for any man to be damned that lives in his religion, and his equivocation is true—as long as a man lives in it, he cannot; but if he die in it, there’s the question. Of all feasts in the year he accounts St. George’s feast the profanest, because of St. George’s cross, yet sometimes he doth sacrifice to his own belly, provided that he put off the wake of his own nativity or wedding till Good Friday. If there be a great feast in the town, though most of the wicked (as he calls them) be there, he will be sure to be a guest, and to out-eat six of the fattest burghers. He thinks, though he may not pray with a Jew, he may eat with a Jew. He winks when he prays, and thinks he knows the way so now to heaven, that he can find it blindfold. Latin he accounts the language of the beast with seven heads; and when he speaks of his own country, cries, he is fled out of Babel. Lastly, his devotion is obstinacy; the only solace of his heart, contradiction; and his main end, hypocrisy.
Is a winter grasshopper all the year long that looks back upon harvest with a lean pair of cheeks, never sets forward to meet it; his malice sucks up the greatest part of his own venom, and therewith impoisoneth himself: and this sickness rises rather of self-opinion or over-great expedition; so in the conceit of his own over-worthiness, like a coistrel he strives to fill himself with wind, and flies against it. Any man’s advancement is the most capital offence that can be to his malice, yet this envy, like Phalaris’ bull, makes that a torment first for himself he prepared for others. He is a day-bed for the devil to slumber on. His blood is of a yellowish colour, like those that have been bitten by vipers, and his gall flows as thick in him as oil in a poisoned stomach. He infects all society, as thunder sours wine: war or peace, dearth or plenty, makes him equally discontented. And where he finds no cause to tax the State, he descends to rail against the rate of salt-butter. His wishes are whirlwinds, which breathed forth return into himself, and make him a most giddy and tottering vessel. When he is awake, and goes abroad, he doth but walk in his sleep, for his visitation is directed to none, his business is nothing. He is often dumb-mad, and goes fettered in his own entrails. Religion is commonly his pretence of discontent, though he can be of all religions, therefore truly of none. Thus by naturalising himself some would think him a very dangerous fellow to the State; but he is not greatly to be feared, for this dejection of his is only like a rogue that goes on his knees and elbows in the mire to further his cogging.
Examines all men’s carriage but his own, and is so kind-natured to himself, he finds fault with all men’s but his own. He wears his apparel much after the fashion; his means will not suffer him to come too nigh. They afford him mock-velvet or satinisco, but not without the college’s next lease’s acquaintance. His inside is of the self-same fashion, not rich; but as it reflects from the glass of self-liking, there Croesus is Irus to him. He is a pedant in show, though his title be tutor, and his pupils in a broader phrase are schoolboys. On these he spends the false gallop of his tongue, and with senseless discourse tows them alone, not out of ignorance. He shows them the rind, conceals the sap; by this means he keeps them the longer, himself the better. He hath learnt to cough and spit and blow his nose at every period, to recover his memory, and studies chiefly to set his eyes and beard to a new form of learning. His religion lies in wait for the inclination of his patron, neither ebbs nor flows, but just standing water, between Protestant and Puritan. His dreams are of plurality of benefices and non-residency, and when he rises acts a long grace to his looking-glass. Against he comes to be some great man’s chaplain he hath a habit of boldness, though a very coward. He speaks swords, fights ergos. His peace on foot is a measure, on horseback a gallop, for his legs are his own, though horse and spurs are borrowed. He hath less use than possession of books. He is not so proud but he will call the meanest author by his name; nor so unskilled in the heraldry of a study but he knows each man’s place. So ends that fellowship and begins another.
Is one of Samson’s foxes; he sets men together by the ears, more shamefully than pillories, and in a long vacation his sport is to go a fishing with the penal statutes. He cannot err before judgment, and then you see it, only writs of error are the tariers that keep his client undoing somewhat the longer. He is a vestryman in his parish, and easily sets his neighbour at variance with the vicar, when his wicked counsel on both sides is like weapons put into men’s hands by a fencer, whereby they get blows, he money. His honesty and learning bring him to Under-Shrieveship, which, having thrice run through, he does not fear the Lieutenant of the Shire; nay more, he fears not God. Cowardice holds him a good commonwealth’s-man; his pen is the plough and parchment the soil whence he reaps both coin and curses. He is an earthquake that willingly will let no ground lie in quiet. Broken titles makes him whole; to have half in the country break their bonds were the only liberty of conscience. He would wish, though he be a Brownist, no neighbour of his should pay his tithes duly, if such suits held continual plea at Westminster.
There is no vermin in the land like him: he slanders both heaven and earth with pretended dearths when there is no cause of scarcity. He hoarding in a dear year, is like Erysicthon’s bowels in Ovid: Quodque urbibus esset, quodque satis poterat populo, non sufficit uni. He prays daily for more inclosures, and knows no reason in his religion why we should call our forefathers’ days the time of ignorance, but only because they sold wheat for twelve pence a bushel. He wishes that Dantzig were at the Moluccas, and had rather be certain of some foreign invasion than of the setting up of the steelyard. When his barns and garners are full, if it be a time of dearth, he will buy half a bushel in the market to serve his household, and winnows his corn in the night, lest, as the chaff thrown upon the water showed plenty in Egypt, so his carried by the wind should proclaim his abundance. No painting pleases him so well as Pharaoh’s dream of the seven lean kine that ate up the fat ones, that he has in his parlour, which he will describe to you like a motion, and his comment ends with a smothered prayer for a like scarcity. He cannot away with tobacco, for he is persuaded (and not much amiss), that ’tis a sparer of bread-corn, which he could find in his heart to transport without license; but, weighing the penalty, he grows mealy-mouthed, and dares not. Sweet smells he cannot abide; wishes that the pure air were generally corrupted; nay, that the spring had lost her fragrancy for ever, or we our superfluous sense of smelling (as he terms it), that his corn might not be found musty. The poor he accounts the Justices’ intelligencers, and cannot abide them. He complains of our negligence of discovering new parts of the world, only to rid them from our climate. His son, by a certain kind of instinct, he binds prentice to a tailor, who, all the term of his indenture, hath a dear year in his belly, and ravens bread exceedingly. When he comes to be a freeman, if it be a dearth, he marries him to a baker’s daughter.
Is sowed as cummin or hempseed, with curses, and he thinks he thrives the better. He is far better read in the penal statutes than in the Bible, and his evil angel persuades him he shall sooner be saved by them. He can be no man’s friend, for all men he hath most interest in he undoes. And a double dealer he is certainly, for by his good will he ever takes the forfeit. He puts his money to the unnatural act of generation, and his scrivener is the supervisor bawd to it. Good deeds he loves none, but sealed and delivered; nor doth he wish anything to thrive in the country but beehives, for they make him wax rich. He hates all but law-Latin, yet thinks he might be drawn to love a scholar, could he reduce the year to a shorter compass, that his use money might come in the faster. He seems to be the son of a jailor, for all his estate is in most heavy and cruel bonds. He doth not give, but sell, days of payment, and those at the rate of a man’s undoing. He doth only fear the Day of Judgment should fall sooner than the payment of some great sum of money due to him. He removes his lodging when a subsidy comes; and if he be found out, and pay it, he grumbles treason: but ’tis in such a deformed silence as witches raise their spirits in. Gravity he pretends in all things but in his private vice, for he will not in a hundred pound take one light sixpence. And it seems he was at Tilbury Camp, for you must not tell him of a Spaniard. He is a man of no conscience, for (like the Jakes-farmer that swooned with going into Bucklersbury) he falls into a cold sweat if he but look into the Chancery; thinks, in his religion, we are in the right for everything, if that were abolished. He hides his money as if he thought to find it again at the last day, and then begin’s old trade with it. His clothes plead prescription, and whether they or his body are more rotten is a question. Yet, should he live to be hanged in them, this good they would do him: the very hangman would pity his case. The table he keeps is able to starve twenty tall men. His servants have not their living, but their dying from him, and that’s of hunger. A spare diet he commends in all men but himself. He comes to cathedrals only for love of the singing-boys, because they look hungry. He likes our religion best because ’tis best cheap, yet would fain allow of purgatory, cause ’twas of his trade, and brought in so much money. His heart goes with the same snaphance his purse doth: ’tis seldom open to any man. Friendship he accounts but a word without any signification; nay, he loves all the world so little, that an it were possible he would make himself his own executor. For certain, he is made administrator to his own good name while he is in perfect memory, for that dies long before him; but he is so far from being at the charge of a funeral for it, that he lets it stink above-ground. In conclusion, for neighbourhood you were better dwell by a contentious lawyer. And for his death, ’tis either surfeit, the pox, or despair; for seldom such as he die of God’s making, as honest men should do.
Is one that hath learnt to speak well of himself, for always he names himself “the first man.” If he had betaken himself to some richer trade, he could not have choosed but done well; for in this, though a mean one, he is still plying it, and putting himself forward. He is evermore telling strange news, most commonly lies. If he be a sculler, ask him if he be married: he’ll equivocate, and swear he’s a single man. Little trust is to be given to him, for he thinks that day he does best when he fetches most men over. His daily labour teaches him the art of dissembling, for, like a fellow that rides to the pillory, he goes not that way he looks. He keeps such a bawling at Westminster, that, if the lawyers were not acquainted with it, an order would be taken with him. When he is upon the water he is fair company; when he comes ashore he mutinies, and, contrary to all other trades, is most surly to gentlemen when they tender payment. The playhouses only keep him sober, and, as it doth many other gallants, make him an afternoon’s man. London Bridge is the most terrible eyesore to him that can be. And, to conclude, nothing but a great press makes him fly from the river, nor anything but a great frost can teach him any good manners.
Is one that desires to have his greatness only measured by his goodness. His care is to appear such to the people as he would have them be, and to be himself such as he appears; for virtue cannot seem one thing and be another. He knows that the hill of greatness yields a most delightful prospect; but, withal, that it is most subject to lightning and thunder, and that the people, as in ancient tragedies, sit and censure the actions of those in authority. He squares his own, therefore, that they may far be above their pity. He wishes fewer laws, so they were better observed; and for those are mulctuary, he understands their institution not to be like briers or springs, to catch everything they lay hold of, but, like sea-marks on our dangerous Goodwin, to avoid the shipwreck of innocent passengers. He hates to wrong any man: neither hope nor despair of preferment can draw him to such an exigent. He thinks himself most honourably seated when he gives mercy the upper hand. He rather strives to purchase good name than land; and of all rich stuffs forbidden by the statute, loathes to have his followers wear their clothes cut out of bribes and extortions. If his Prince call him to higher place, there he delivers his mind plainly and freely, knowing for truth there is no place wherein dissembling ought to have less credit than in a prince’s council. Thus honour keeps peace with him to the grave, and doth not (as with many) there forsake him, and go back with the heralds; but fairly sits over him, and broods out of his memory many right excellent commonwealth’s-men.
Is the palm-tree, that thrives not after the supplanting of her husband. For her children’s sake she first marries; for she married that she might have children; and for their sakes she marries no more. She is like the purest gold, only employed for princes’ medals: she never receives but one man’s impression. The largest jointure moves her not, titles of honour cannot sway her. To change her name were (she thinks) to commit a sin should make her ashamed of her husband’s calling. She thinks she hath travelled all the world in one man; the rest of her time, therefore, she directs to heaven. Her main superstition is, she thinks her husband’s ghost would walk, should she not perform his will. She would do it were there no Prerogative Court. She gives much to pious uses, without any hope to merit by them; and as one diamond fashions another, so is she wrought into works of charity, with the dust or ashes of her husband. She lives to see herself full of time; being so necessary for earth, God calls her not to heaven till she be very aged, and even then, though her natural strength fail her, she stands like an ancient pyramid, which, the less it grows to man’s eye, the nearer it reaches to heaven. This latter chastity of hers is more grave and reverend than that ere she was married, for in it is neither hope, nor longing, nor fear, nor jealousy. She ought to be a mirror for our youngest dames to dress themselves by, when she is fullest of wrinkles. No calamity can now come near her, for in suffering the loss of her husband she accounts all the rest trifles. She hath laid his dead body in the worthiest monument that can be: she hath buried it in her one heart. To conclude, she is a relic, that, without any superstition in the world, though she will not be kissed, yet may be reverenced.
Is like the herald’s hearse-cloth; she serves to many funerals, with a very little altering the colour. The end of her husband begins in tears, and the end of her tears begins in a husband. She uses to cunning women to know how many husbands she shall have, and never marries without the consent of six midwives. Her chiefest pride is in the multitude of her suitors, and by them she gains; for one serves to draw on another, and with one at last she shoots out another, as boys do pellets in eldern guns. She commends to them a single life, as horse-coursers do their jades, to put them away. Her fancy is to one of the biggest of the Guard, but knighthood makes her draw in in a weaker bow. Her servants or kinsfolk are the trumpeters that summon any to his combat. By them she gains much credit, but loseth it again in the old proverb, Fama est mendax. If she live to be thrice married, she seldom fails to cozen her second husband’s creditors. A churchman she dare not venture upon, for she hath
Is a mountebank of a larger bill than a tailor: if he can but come by names enough of diseases to stuff it with, ’tis all the skill he studies for. He took his first beginning from a cunning woman, and stole this black art from her, while he made her sea-coal fire. All the diseases ever sin brought upon man doth he pretend to be a curer of, when the truth is, his main cunning is corn-cutting. A great plague makes him, what with railing against such as leave their cures for fear of infection, and in friendly breaking cake-bread with the fishwives at funerals. He utters a most abominable deal of carduus water, and the conduits cry out, All the learned doctors may cast their caps at him. He parts stakes witn some apothecary in the suburbs, at whose house he lies; and though he be never so familiar with his wife, the apothecary dares not (for the richest horn in his shop) displease him. All the midwives in the town are his intelligencers; but nurses and young merchants’ wives that would fain conceive with child, these are his idolaters. He is a more unjust bone-setter than a dice-maker. He hath put out more eyes than the small-pox; more deaf than the cataracts of Nilus; lamed more than the gout; shrunk more sinews than one that makes bowstrings, and killed more idly than tobacco. A magistrate that had any-way so noble a spirit as but to love a good horse well, would not suffer him to be a farrier. His discourse is vomit, and his ignorance the strongest purgation in the world. To one that would be speedily cured, he hath more delays and doubles than a hare or a lawsuit. He seeks to set us at variance with nature, and rather than he shall want diseases, he’ll beget them. His especial practice (as I said before) is upon women; labours to make their minds sick, ere their bodies feel it, and then there’s work for the dog-leech. He pretends the cure of madmen; and sure he gets most by them, for no man in his perfect wit would meddle with him. Lastly, he is such a juggler with urinals, so dangerously unskilful, that if ever the city will have recourse to him for diseases that need purgation, let them employ him in scouring Moorditch.
’Tis not unlikely but he was begot by some intelligencer under a hedge, for his mind is wholly given to travel. He is not troubled with making of jointures; he can divorce himself without the fee of a proctor, nor fears he the cruelty of overseers of his will. He leaves his children all the world to cant in, and all the people to their fathers. His language is a constant tongue; the northern speech differs from the south, Welsh from the Cornish; but canting is general, nor ever could be altered by conquest of the Saxon, Dane, or Norman. He will not beg out of his limit though he starve, nor break his oath, if he swear by his Solomon, though you hang him; and he pays his custom as truly to his grand rogue as tribute is paid to the great Turk. The March sun breeds agues in others, but he adores it like the Indians, for then begins his progress after a hard winter. Ostlers cannot endure him, for he is of the infantry, and serves best on foot. He offends not the statute against the excess of apparel, for he will go naked, and counts it a voluntary penance. Forty of them lie together in a barn, yet are never sued upon the Statute of Inmates. If he were learned no man could make a better description of England, for he hath travelled it over and over. Lastly, he brags that his great houses are repaired to his hands when churches go to ruin, and those are prisons.
He learnt his trade in a town of garrison near famished, where he practised to make a little go far. Some derive it from more antiquity, and say, Adam, when he picked salads, was of his occupation. He doth not feed the belly, but the palate; and though his command lie in the kitchen, which is but an inferior place, yet shall you find him a very saucy companion. Ever since the wars in Naples, he hath so minced the ancient and bountiful allowance as if his nation should keep a perpetual diet. The serving-men call him the last relic of popery, that makes men fast against their conscience. He can be truly said to be no man’s fellow but his master’s, for the rest of the servants are starved by him. He is the prime cause why noblemen build their houses so great, for the smallness of their kitchen makes the house the bigger; and the lord calls him his alchemist, that can extract gold out of herbs, mushrooms, or anything. That which he dresses we may rather call a drinking than a meal, yet he is so full of variety that he brags, and truly, that he gives you but a taste of what he can do. He dares not for his life come among the butchers, for sure they would quarter and bake him after the English fashion, he’s such an enemy to beef and mutton. To conclude, he were only fit to make, a funeral feast, where men should eat their victuals in mourning.
Is an ill-wilier to human nature. Of all proverbs he cannot endure to hear that which says, We ought to live by the quick, not by the dead. He could willingly all his lifetime be confined to the churchyard; at least, within five foot on’t, for at every church stile commonly there’s an alehouse, where, let him be found never so idle-pated, he is still a grave drunkard. He breaks his fast heartiest while he is making a grave, and says the opening of the ground makes him hungry. Though one would take him to be a sloven, yet he loves clean linen extremely, and for that reason takes an order that fine Holland sheets be not made worms’-meat. Like a nation called the Cusani, he weeps when any are born and laughs when they die; the reason, he gets by burials not christenings. He will hold an argument in a tavern over sack till the dial and himself be both at a stand; he never observes any time but sermon-time, and there he sleeps by the hour-glass. The ropemaker pays him a pension, and he pays tribute to the physician; for the physician makes work for the sexton, as the ropemaker for the hangman. Lastly, he wishes the dog-days would last all year long; and a great plague is his year of jubilee.
Is a larger spoon for a traitor to feed with the devil than any other order; unclasp him, and he’s a grey wolf with a golden star in the forehead; so superstitiously he follows the pope that he forsakes Christ in not giving Caesar his due. His vows seem heavenly, but in meddling with state business he seems to mix heaven and earth together. His best elements are confession and penance: by the first he finds out men’s inclinations, and by the latter heaps wealth to his seminary. He sprang from Ignatius Loyola, a Spanish soldier; and though he were found out long since the invention of the cannon, ’tis thought he hath not done less mischief. He is a half-key to open princes’ cabinets and pry in their councils; and where the pope’s excommunication thunders, he holds it no more sin the decrowning of kings than our Puritans do the suppression of bishops. His order is full of irregularity and disobedience, ambitious above all measure; for of late days, in Portugal and the Indies, he rejected the name of Jesuit, and would be called disciple. In Rome and other countries that give him freedom, he wears a mask upon his heart; in England he shifts it, and puts it upon his face. No place in our climate holds him so securely as a lady’s chamber; the modesty of the pursuivant hath only forborne the bed, and so missed him. There is no disease in Christendom that may so properly be called the King’s evil. To conclude, would you know him beyond sea? In his seminary he’s a fox, but in the inquisition a lion rampant.
Whatsoever is commendable to the grave orator is most exquisitely perfect in him, for by a full and significant action of body he charms our attention. Sit in a full theatre and you will think you see so many lines drawn from the circumference of so many ears, while the actor is the centre. He doth not strive to make nature monstrous; she is often seen in the same scene with him, but neither on stilts nor crutches; and for his voice, ’tis not lower than the prompter, nor louder than the foil or target. By his action he fortifies moral precepts with examples, for what we see him personate we think truly done before us: a man of a deep thought might apprehend the ghost of our ancient heroes walked again, and take him at several times for many of them. He is much affected to painting, and ’tis a question whether that make him an excellent player, or his playing an exquisite painter. He adds grace to the poet’s labours, for what in the poet is but ditty, in him is both ditty and music. He entertains us in the best leisure of our life—that is, between meals; the most unfit time for study or bodily exercise. The flight of hawks and chase of wild beasts, either of them are delights noble; but some think this sport of men the worthier, despite all calumny. All men have been of his occupation; and indeed, what he doth feignedly, that do others essentially. This day one plays a monarch, the next a private person; here one acts a tyrant, on the morrow an exile; a parasite this man tonight, tomorrow a precisian; and so of divers others. I observe, of all men living, a worthy actor in one kind is the strongest motive of affection that can be; for, when he dies, we cannot be persuaded any man can do his parts like him. But, to conclude, I value a worthy actor by the corruption of some few of the quality as I would do gold in the ore—I should not mind the dross, but the purity of the metal.
His outside is an ancient yeoman of England, though his inside may give arms with the best gentleman and never see the herald. There is no truer servant in the house than himself. Though he be master, he says not to his servants, “Go to field,” but “Let us go;” and with his own eye doth both fatten his flock and set forward all manner of husbandry. He is taught by nature to be contented with a little; his own fold yields him both food and raiment; he is pleased with any nourishment God sends, whilst curious gluttony ransacks, as it were, Noah’s ark for food only to feed the riot of one meal. He is never known to go to law; understanding, to be law-bound among men is to be hide-bound among his beasts; they thrive not under it, and that such men sleep as unquietly as if their pillows were stuffed with lawyers’ penknives. When he builds no poor tenant’s cottage hinders his prospect: they are indeed his almshouses, though there be painted on them no such superscription. He never sits
Is a fellow whose face is hatched all over with impudence, and should he be hanged or pilloried, ’tis armed for it. He is a juggler with words, yet practises the art of most uncleanly conveyance. He doth boggle very often, and because himself winks at it, thinks ’tis not perceived. The main thing that ever he did was the tune he sang to. There is nothing in the earth so pitiful—no, not an ape-carrier; he is not worth thinking of, and, therefore, I must leave him as nature left him—a dunghill not well laid together.
This man would love, honour, and adore God if there were an I more in his name. He hath coffined up his soul in his chests before his body: he could wish he were in Midas his taking for hunger, on condition he had his chemical quality. At the grant of a new subsidy he would gladly hang himself, were it not for the charge of buying a rope, and begins to take money upon use when he hears of a privy seal. His morning prayer is to overlook his bags, whose every parcel begets his adoration. Then to his studies, which are how to cozen this tenant, beggar that widow, or to undo some orphan. Then his bonds are viewed, the well-known days of payment conned by heart; and if he ever pray, it is some one may break his day that the beloved forfeiture may be obtained. His use is doubled, and no one sixpence begot or born but presently, by an untimely thrift, it is getting more. His chimney must not be acquainted with fire for fear of mischance; but if extremity of cold pinch him, he gets him heat with looking on, and sometime removing his aged wood-pile, which he means to leave to many descents, till it hath outlived all the woods
Is one in whom pride is a quality that condemns every one besides his master, who, when he wears new clothes, thinks himself wronged if they be not observed, imitated, and his discretion in the choice of his fashion and stuff applauded. When he vouchsafes to bless the air with his presence, he goes as near the wall as his satin suit will give him leave, and every passenger he views under the eyebrows, to observe whether he vails his bonnet low enough, which he returns with an imperious nod. He never salutes first, but his farewell is perpetual. In his attire he is effeminate; every hair knows his own station, which if it chance to lose it is checked in again with his pocket-comb. He had rather have the whole commonwealth out of order than the least member of his muchato, and chooses rather to lose his patrimony than to have his band ruffled. At a feast, if he be not placed in the highest seat, he eats nothing howsoever; he drinks to no man, talks with no man for fear of familiarity. He professeth to keep his stomach for the pheasant or the quail, and when they come he can eat little; he hath been so cloyed with them that year, although they be the first he saw. In his discourse he talks of none but privy councillors, and is as prone to belie their acquaintance as he is a lady’s favours. If he have but twelve pence in his purse, he will give it for the best room in a playhouse. He goes to sermons only to show his gay clothes, and if on other inferior days he chance to meet his friend, he is sorry he sees him not in his best suit.
It should be Christ’s Hospital, for most of your wealthy citizens are good benefactors to it; and yet it can hardly be so, because so few in it are kept upon alms. Charity’s house and this are built many miles asunder. One thing notwithstanding is here praiseworthy, for men in this persecution cannot choose but prove good Christians, in that they are a kind of martyrs, and suffer for the truth. And yet it is so cursed a piece of land that the son is ashamed to be his father’s heir in it. It is an infected pest-house all the year long; the plague-sores of the law are the diseases here hotly reigning. The surgeons are atomies and pettifoggers, who kill more than they cure. Lord have mercy upon us, may well stand over these doors, for debt is a most dangerous and catching city pestilence. Some take this place for the walks in Moorfields (by reason the madmen are so near), but the crosses here and there are not alike. No, it is not half so sweet an air. For it is the dunghill of the law, upon which are thrown the ruins of gentry, and the nasty heaps of voluntary decayed bankrupts, by which means it comes to be a perfect medal of the iron age, since nothing but jingling of keys, rattling of shackles, bolts, and grates are here to be heard. It is the horse of Troy, in whose womb are shut up all the mad Greeks that were men of action. The nullum vacuum (unless in prisoners’ bellies) is here truly to be proved. One excellent effect is wrought by the place itself, for the arrantest coward breathing, being posted hither, comes in three days to an admirable stomach. Does any man desire to learn music; every man here sings “Lachrymse” at first sight, and is hardly out. He runs division upon every note, and yet (to their commendations be it spoken) none of them for all that division do trouble the Church. They are no Anabaptists; if you ask under what horizon this climate lies, the Bermudas and it are both under one and the same height. And whereas some suppose that this island like that is haunted with devils, it is not so. For those devils so talked of and feared are none else but hoggish jailors. Hither you need not sail, for it is a ship of itself; the master’s side is the upper deck. They in the common jail lie under hatches, and help to ballast it. Intricate cases are the tacklings, executions the anchors, capiases the cables, chancery bills the huge sails, a long term the mast, law the helm, a judge the pilot, a counsel the purser, an attorney the boatswain, his Setting clerk the swabber, bonds the waves, outlawries gust, the verdict of juries rough wind, extents the knocks that split all in pieces. Or if it be not a ship, yet this and a ship differ not much in the building; the one is moving misery, the other a standing. The first is seated on a spring, the second on piles. Either this place is an emblem of a bawdy house, or a bawdy house of it; for nothing is to be seen in any room but scurvy beds and bare walls. But (not so much to dishonour it) it is an university of poor scholars, in which three arts are chiefly studied: to pray, to curse, and to write letters.
Is one that hath been a monied man, and is still a very close fellow; whosoever is of his acquaintance, let them make much of him, for they shall find him as fast a friend as any in England: he is a sure man, and you know where to find him. The corruption of a bankrupt is commonly the generation of this creature. He dwells on the back side of the world, or in the suburbs of society, and lives in a tenement which he is sure none will go about to take over his head. To a man that walks abroad, he is one of the antipodes, that goes on the top of the world, and this under it. At his first coming in, he is a piece of new coin, all sharking old prisoners lie sucking at his purse. An old man and he are much alike, neither of them both go far. They are still angry and peevish, and they sleep little. He was born at the fall of Babel, the confusion of languages is only in his mouth. All the vacations he speaks as good English as any man in England, but in term times he breaks out of that hopping one-legged pace into a racking trot of issues, bills, replications, rejoinders, demures, querelles, subpoenas, &c., able to fright a simple country fellow, and make him believe he conjures. Whatsoever his complexion was before, it turns in this place to choler or deep melancholy, so that he needs every hour to take physic to loose his body; for that, like his estate, is very foul and corrupt, and extremely hard bound. The taking of an execution off his stomach give him five or six stools, and leaves his body very soluble. The withdrawing of an action is a vomit. He is no sound man, and yet an utter barrister, nay, a sergeant of the case, will feed heartily upon him; he is very good picking meat for a lawyer. The barber-surgeons may, if they will, beg him for an anatomy after he hath suffered an execution. An excellent lecture may be made upon his body; for he is a kind of dead carcase—creditors, lawyers, and jailors devour it: creditors peck out his eyes with his own tears; lawyers flay off his own skin, and lap him in parchment; and jailors are the Promethean vultures that gnaw his very heart. He is a bond-slave to the law, and, albeit he were a shopkeeper in London, yet he cannot with safe conscience write himself a freeman. His religion is of five or six colours: this day he prays that God would turn the hearts of his creditors, and to-morrow he curseth the time that ever he saw them. His apparel is daubed commonly with statute lace, the suit itself of durance, and the hose full of long pains. He hath many other lasting suits which he himself is never able to wear out, for they wear out him. The zodiac of his life is like that of the sun, marry not half so glorious. It begins in Aries and ends in Pisces. Both head and feet are, all the year long, in troublesome and laborious motions, and Westminster Hall is his sphere. He lives between the two tropics Cancer and Capricorn, and by that means is
Is a fellow that torments men for their good conditions. He is one of Deucalion’s sons, begotten of a stone. The marble images in the Temple Church that lie cross-legged do much resemble him, saving that this is a little more cross. He wears a forfeited bond under that part of his girdle where his thumb sticks, with as much pride as a Welshman does a leek on St. David’s Day, and quarrels more and longer about it. He is a catchpole’s morning’s draught, for the news that such a gallant has come yesternight to town, draws out of him both muscadel and money too. He says the Lord’s Prayer backwards, or, to speak better of him, he hath a Paternoster by himself, and that particle, Forgive us our debts, as we forgive others, &c., he either quite leaves out, or else leaps over it. It is a dangerous rub in the alley of his conscience. He is the bloodhound of the law, and hunts counter, very swiftly and with great judgment. He hath a quick scent to smell out his game, and a good deep mouth to pursue it, yet never opens till he bites, and bites not till he kills, or at least draws blood, and then he pincheth most doggedly. He is a lawyer’s mule, and the only beast upon which he ambles so often to Westminster. And a lawyer is his God Almighty, in him only he trusts. To him he flies in all his troubles; from him he seeks succour. To him he prays, that he may by his means overcome his enemies. Him does he worship both in the temple and abroad, and hopes by him and good angels to prosper in all his actions. A scrivener is his farrier, and helps to recover all his diseased and maimed obligations. Every term he sets up a tenters in Westminster Hall, upon which he racks and stretches gentlemen like English broadcloth, beyond the staple of the wool, till the threads crack, and that causeth them with the least wet to shrink, and presently to wear bars. Marry, he handles a citizen (at least if himself be one) like a piece of Spanish cloth, gives him only a twitch, and strains him not too hard, knowing how apt he is to break of himself, and then he can cut nothing out
Was once taken, when he bare office in his parish, for an honest man. The spawn of a decayed shopkeeper begets this fry; out of that dunghill is this serpent’s egg hatched. It is a devil made sometime out of one of the twelve companies, and does but study the part and rehearse it on earth, to be perfect when he comes to act it in hell; that is his stage. The hangman and he are twins; only the hangman is the elder brother, and he dying without issue, as commonly he does, for none but a ropemaker’s widow will marry him, this then inherits. His habit is a long gown, made at first to cover his knavery, but that growing too monstrous, he now goes in buff; his conscience and that being both cut out of one hide, and are of one toughness. The Counter-gate is his kennel, the whole city his Paris gardens; the misery of a poor man, but especially a bad liver, is the offals on which he feeds. The devil calls him his white son; he is so like him that he is the worse for it, and he takes after his father, for the one torments bodies as fast as the other tortures souls. Money is the crust he leaps at; cry, “a duck! a duck!” and he plunges not so eagerly as at this. The dog’s chaps water to fetch nothing else; he hath his name for the same quality. For sergeant is quasi See argent, look you, rogue, here is money. He goes muffled like a thief, and carries still the marks of one; for he steals upon man cowardly, plucks him by the throat, makes him stand, and fleeces him. In this they differ, the thief is more valiant and more honest. His walks in term times are up Fleet Street, at the end of the term up Holborn, and so to Tyburn; the gallows are his purlieus, in which the hangman and he are quarter rangers—the one turns off, and the other cuts down. All the vacation he lies imbogued behind the lattice of some blind drunken, bawdy ale-house,
Is the hanger that a sergeant wears by his side; it is a false die of the same ball but not the same cut, for it runs somewhat higher and does more mischief. It is a tumbler to drive in the conies. He is yet but a bungler, and knows not how to cut up a man without tearing, but by a pattern. One term fleshes him, or a Fleet Street breakfast. The devil is but his father-in-law, and yet for the love he bears him will leave him as much as if he were his own child. And for that cause (instead of prayers) he does every morning at the Counter-gate ask him blessing, and thrives the better in his actions all the day after. This is the hook that hangs under water to choke the fish, and his sergeant is the quill above water, which pops down so soon as ever the bait is swallowed. It is indeed an otter, and the more terrible destroyer of the two. This counter-rat hath a tail as long as his fellows, but his teeth are more sharp and he more hungry, because he does but snap, and hath not his full half-share of the booty. The eye of this wolf is as quick in his head as a cutpurse’s in a throng, and as nimble is he at his business as an hangman at an execution. His office is as the dogs do worry the sheep first, or drive him to the shambles; the butcher that cuts his throat steps out afterwards, and that’s his sergeant. His living lies within the city, but his conscience lies bed-rid in one of the holes of a counter. This eel is bred too out of the mud of a bankrupt, and dies commonly with his guts ripped up, or else a sudden stab sends him of his last errand. He will very greedily take a cut with a sword, and suck more silver out of the wound than his surgeon shall. His beginning is detestable, his courses desperate, and his end damnable.
Is a creature mistaken in the making, for he should be a tiger; but the shape being thought too terrible, it is covered, and he wears the vizor of a man, yet retains the qualities of his former fierceness, currishness, and ravening. Of that red earth of which man was fashioned this piece was the basest, of the rubbish which was left and thrown by came this jailor; his descent is then more ancient, but more ignoble, for he comes of the race of those angels that fell with Lucifer from heaven, whither he never (or very hardly) returns. Of all his bunches of keys not one hath wards to open that door, for this jailor’s soul stands not upon those two pillars that support heaven (justice and mercy), it rather sits upon those two footstools of hell, wrong and cruelty. He is a judge’s slave, and a prisoner’s his. In this they differ; he is a voluntary one, the other compelled. He is the hangman of the law with a lame hand, and if the law gave him all his limbs perfect he would strike those on whom he is glad to fawn. In fighting against a debtor he is a creditor’s second, but observes not the laws of the duello; his play is foul, and on all base advantages. His conscience and his shackles hang up together, and are made very near of the same metal, saving that the one is harder than the other and hath one property above iron, for that never melts. He distils money out of the poor men’s tears, and grows fat by their curses. No man coming to the practical part of hell can discharge it better, because here he does nothing but study the theory of it. His house is the picture of hell in little, and the original of the letters patent of his office stands exemplified there. A chamber of lousy beds is better worth to him than the best acre of corn-land in England. Two things are hard to him (nay, almost impossible), viz., to save all his prisoners that none ever escape, and to be saved himself. His ears are stopped to the cries of others, and God’s to his; and good reason, for lay the life of a man in one scale and his fees on the other, he will lose the first to find the second. He must look for no mercy if he desires justice to be done to him, for he shows none; and I think he cares the less, because he knows heaven hath no need of such tenants—the doors there want no porters, for they stand ever open. If it were possible for all creatures in the world to sleep every night, he only and a tyrant cannot. That blessing is taken from them, and this curse comes in the stead, to be ever in fear and ever hated: what estate can be worse?
If I must speak the schoolmaster’s language, I will confess that character comes of this infinitive mood, [Greek: charassen], which signifies to engrave, or make a deep impression. And for that cause a letter (as A, B) is called a character: those elements which we learn first, leaving a strong seal in our memories.
Character is also taken for an Egyptian hieroglyphic, for an impress or short emblem; in little comprehending much.
To square out a character by our English level, it is a picture (real or personal) quaintly drawn in various colours, all of them heightened by one shadowing.
It is a quick and soft touch of many strings, all shutting up in one musical close; it is wit’s descant on any plain song.
BY SIR H. W.[1]
How happy is he born or taught
That serveth not another’s
will;
Whose armour is his honest thought,
And silly truth his highest skill!
Whose passions not his masters are,
Whose soul is still prepared for
death;
Untied unto the world with care
Of princely love or vulgar breath.
Who hath his life from rumours freed,
Whose conscience is his strong retreat;
Whose state can neither flatterers
feed,
Nor ruin make accusers great.
Who envieth none whom chance doth
raise
Or vice, who never understood
How deepest wounds are given with
praise;
Not rules of State, but rules of
good.
Who God doth late and early pray
More of His grace than gifts to
lend;
Who entertains the harmless day
With a well-chosen book or friend.
This man is free from servile bands,
Of hope to rise, or fear to fall;
Lord of himself, though not of lands,
And having nothing he hath all.
I am of opinion that nothing is so potent either to procure or merit love as valour, and I am glad I am so, for thereby I shall do myself much ease, because valour never needs much wit to maintain it. To speak of it in itself, it is a quality which he that hath shall have least need of; so the best league between princes is a mutual fear of each other. It teacheth a man to value his reputation as his life, and chiefly to hold the lie insufferable, though being alone he finds no hurt it doth him. It leaves itself to other’s censures; for he that brags of his own, dissuades others from believing it. It feareth a sword no more than an ague. It always makes good the owner; for though he be generally held a fool, he shall seldom hear so much by word of mouth, and that enlargeth him more than any spectacles, for it makes a little fellow to be called a tall man. It yields the wall to none but a woman, whose weakness is her prerogative; or a man seconded with a woman, as an usher which always goes before his betters. It makes a man become the witness of his own words, to stand to whatever he hath said, and thinketh it a reproach to commit his reviling unto the law. It furnisheth youth with action, and age with discourse, and both by futures; for a man must never boast himself
CHARACTERS OF VICES AND VIRTUES
were published four years earlier than Overbury’s, but Overbury’s were posthumous, and in actual time of writing there can have been no very material difference. Hall’s age was thirty-four when he first published his Characters. He was born on the 1st July 1574, at Ashby de la Zouch, in Leicestershire. His father was governor of this town under the Earl of Huntingdon, when he was President of the North. His mother, Winifred, was a devout Puritan, and he was from infancy intended for the Church. In 1589, at the age of fifteen, Joseph Hall was sent to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he was maintained at the cost of an uncle. He passed all his degrees with applause, obtained a Fellowship of his college in 1595, and proceeded to M.A. in 1596, and having already obtained credit at Cambridge as an English poet, he published in 1597 “Virgidemiarum, Sixe Bookes, First Three Books of Toothlesse Satyrs, Poetical, Academical, Moral, followed in the next year by Three last Bookes of Byting Satyres.” Of these Satires he said in their Prologue—
“I first adventure, with foolhardy
might,
To tread the steps of perilous despite.
I first adventure, follow me who
list,
And be the second English satirist.”
He could only have meant by this to claim that he was the first in England to write Satires in the manner of the Latins. He would not bend, he said, to Lady or to Patron—
“Rather had I, albe in careless
rhymes,
Check the misordered world and lawless
times.”
Some of these Satires were, of course, of the nature of Characters, and I quote two or three in passing.
A gentle squire would gladly entertain
Into his house some trencher-chaplain;
Some willing man that might instruct
his sons,
And that would stand to good conditions.
First, that he lie upon the truckle-bed,
Whilst his young master lieth o’er
his head.
Secondly, that he do, on no default,
Ever presume to sit above the salt.
Third, that he never change his
trencher twice.
Fourth, that he use all common courtesies;
Sit bare at meals, and one half
rise and wait.
Last, that he never his young master
beat
But he must ask his mother to define
How many jerks she would his breech
should line.
All these observed, he could contented
be,
To give five marks and winter livery.
THE WITLESS GALLANT.
Seest thou how gaily my young master
goes,
Vaunting himself upon his rising
toes;
And pranks his hand upon his dagger’s
side;
And picks his glutted teeth since
late noon-tide?
’Tis Ruffio: Trow’st
thou where he dined to-day?
In sooth I saw him sit with Duke
Humfray.
Many good welcomes, and much gratis
cheer,
Keeps he for every straggling cavalier.
An open house, haunted with great
resort;
Long service mixed with musical
disport.
Many fair younker with a feathered
crest,
Chooses much rather be his shot-free
guest,
To fare so freely with so little
cost,
Than stake his twelve-pence to a
meaner host.
Hadst thou not told me, I should
surely say
He touched no meat of all this live-long
day.
For sure methought, yet that was
but a guess,
His eyes seem sunk for very hollowness,
But could he have (as I did it mistake)
So little in his purse, so much
upon his back?
So nothing in his maw? yet seemeth
by his belt,
That his gaunt gut not too much
stuffing felt.
Seest thou how side it hangs beneath
his hip?
Hunger and heavy iron makes girdles
slip.
Yet for all that, how stiffly struts
he by,
All trapped in the new-found bravery.
The nuns of new-won Cales his bonnet
lent,
In lieu of their so kind a conquerment.
What needed he fetch that from farthest
Joseph Hall obtained in 1601 the living of Halsted in Suffolk, and married in 1603. In an autobiographical sketch of “Some Specialities in the Life of Joseph Hall,” he thus tells us himself the manner of his marrying:—
“Being now, therefore, settled in that sweet and civil country of Suffolk, near to St. Edmundsbury, my first work was to build up my house, which was extremely ruinous; which done, the uncouth solitariness of my life, and the extreme incommodity of that single housekeeping, drew my thoughts, after two years, to condescend to the necessity of a married estate, which God no less strangely provided for me; for, walking from the church on Monday in the Whitsun-week, with a grave and reverend minister, Mr. Grandidge, I saw a comely and modest gentlewoman standing at the door of that house where we were invited to a wedding dinner, and inquiring of that worthy friend whether he knew
In 1605 Joseph Hall published at Frankfort in Latin a witty satire on the weak side of the world, which had been written several years earlier, entitled “Mundus Alter et Idem.” Of this book I have given a description in the volume of “Ideal Commonwealths,” which forms one of the series of the “Universal Library.” Hall had obtained reputation as a divine, by publishing two centuries of religious “Meditations,” which united wit with piety. Prince Henry, having sought an opportunity of hearing him preach, made Hall his chaplain, and the Earl of Norwich gave him the living of Waltham in Essex. At the same time, 1608, a translation of Hall’s Latin Satire, printed twice abroad, was published in London as “The Discovery of a New World;” he himself published also two volumes of Epistles, and this book of “Characters.” There was a long career before him as a leader among churchmen fallen upon troubled days. He became Bishop of Exeter and was translated to Norwich. He was committed to the Tower, released, and ejected from his see, and after ten years of retirement, living upon narrow means at the village of Higham near Norwich, he died in the Commonwealth time at the age of eighty-two, on the 8th of September 1656. He took a conspicuous part in the controversy of 1641 about the bishops, but twenty years before that date a collection of his earlier works had formed a substantial folio of more than eleven hundred pages. His “Characters of Virtues and Vices,” written in early manhood, follow next in our collection.
IN TWO BOOKS.
BY JOSEPH HALL.
A PREMONITION or THE TITLE AND USE OF CHARACTERS.
Reader,—The divines of the old heathens were their moral philosophers. These received the acts of an inbred law, in the Sinai of nature, and delivered them with many expositions to the multitude. These were the overseers of manners, correctors of vices, directors of lives, doctors of virtue, which yet taught their people the body of their natural divinity, not after one manner: while some spent themselves in deep discourses of human felicity and the way to it in common, others thought it best to
CHARACTERISMS OF VIRTUES.
Virtue is not loved enough, because she is not seen; and vice loseth much detestation, because her ugliness is secret. Certainly, my lords, there are so many beauties, and so many graces in the face of goodness, that no eye can possibly see it without affection, without ravishment; and the visage of evil is so monstrous through loathsome deformities, that if her lovers were not ignorant they would be mad with disdain and astonishment. What need we more than to discover these two to the world? This work shall save the labour of exhorting and dissuasion. I have here done it as I could, following that ancient master of morality, who thought this the fittest task for the ninety and ninth year of his age, and the profitablest monument that he could leave for a farewell visit to his Grecians. Lo here then virtue and vice stripped naked to the open view, and despoiled, one of her rags the other of her ornaments, and nothing left them but bare presence to plead for affection: see now whether shall find more suitors. And if still the vain minds of lewd men shall dote upon their old mistress, it will appear to be, not because she is not foul, but for that they are blind and bewitched. And first behold the goodly features of wisdom, an amiable virtue, and worthy to lead this stage; which as she extends herself to all the following graces, so amongst the rest is for her largeness most conspicuous.
There is nothing that he desires not to know, but most and first himself, and not so much his own strength as his weaknesses; neither is his knowledge reduced to discourse, but practice. He is a skilful logician, not by nature so much as use; his working mind doth nothing all his time but make syllogisms and draw out conclusions; everything that he sees and hears serves for one of the premisses; with these he cares first to inform himself, then to direct others. Both his eyes are never at once from home, but one keeps house while the other roves abroad for intelligence. In material and weighty points he abides not his mind suspended in uncertainties, but hates doubting where he may, where he should be resolute: and first he makes sure work for his soul, accounting it no safety to be unsettled in the foreknowledge of his small estate. The best is first regarded; and vain is that regard which endeth not in security. Every care hath his just order; neither is there any one either neglected or misplaced. He is seldom ever seen with credulity; for, knowing the falseness of the world, he hath learned to trust himself always, others so far as he may not be damaged by their disappointment. He seeks his quietness in secrecy, and is wont both to hide himself in retiredness, and his tongue in himself. He loves to be guessed at, not known; and to see the world unseen; and when he is forced into the light, shows by his actions that his obscurity was neither from affectation nor weakness. His purposes are neither so variable as may argue inconstancy, nor obstinately unchangeable, but framed according to his after-wits, or the strength of new occasions. He is both an apt scholar and an excellent master; for both everything he sees informs him, and his mind, enriched with plentiful observation, can give the best precepts. His free discourse runs back to the ages past, and recovers events out of memory, and then preventeth time in flying forward to future things; and comparing one with the other, can give a verdict well near prophetical, wherein his conjectures are better than another’s judgments. His passions are so many good servants, which stand in a diligent attendance ready to be commanded by reason, by religion; and if at any time forgetting their duty, they be miscarried to rebel, he can first conceal their mutiny, then suppress it. In all his just and worthy designs he is never at a loss, but hath so projected all his courses that a second begins where the first failed, and fetcheth strength from that which succeeded not. There be wrongs which he will not see, neither doth he always look that way which he meaneth, nor take notice of his secret smarts, when they come from great ones. In good turns he loves not to owe more than he must; in evil, to owe and not pay. Just censures he deserves not, for he lives without the compass of an adversary; unjust he contemneth, and had rather suffer false infamy
He looks not to what he might do, but what he should. Justice is his first guide, the second law of his actions is expedience. He had rather complain than offend, and hates sin more for the indignity of it than the danger. His simple uprightness works in him that confidence which ofttimes wrongs him, and gives advantage to the subtle, when he rather pities their faithlessness than repents of his credulity. He hath but one heart, and that lies open to sight; and were it not for discretion, he never thinks aught whereof he would avoid a witness. His word is his parchment, and his yea his oath, which he will not violate for fear or for loss. The mishaps of following events may cause him to blame his providence, can never cause him to eat his promise: neither saith he, This I saw not; but, This I said. When he is made his friend’s executor, he defrays debts, pays legacies, and scorneth to gain by orphans, or to ransack graves, and therefore will be true to a dead friend, because he sees him not. All his dealings are square and above the board; he bewrays the fault of what he sells, and restores the overseen gain of a false reckoning. He esteems a bribe venomous, though it come gilded over with the colour of gratuity. His cheeks are never stained with the blushes of recantation, neither doth his tongue falter to make good a lie with the secret glosses of double or reserved senses, and when his name is traduced his innocency bears him out with courage: then, lo, he goes on the plain way of truth, and will either triumph in his integrity or suffer with it. His conscience overrules his providence; so as in all things good or ill, he respects the nature of the actions, not the sequel. If he see what he must do, let God see what shall follow. He never loadeth himself with burdens above his strength, beyond his will; and once bound, what he can he will do, neither doth he will but what he can do. His ear is the sanctuary of his absent friend’s name, of his present friend’s secret; neither of them can miscarry in his trust. He remembers the wrongs of his youth, and repays them with that usury which he himself would not take. He would rather want than borrow, and beg than not to pay: his fair conditions are without dissembling, and he loves actions above words. Finally, he hates falsehood worse than death: he is a faithful client of truth, no man’s enemy, and it is a question whether more another man’s friend or his own; and if there were no heaven, yet he would be virtuous.
His eyes have no other objects but absent and invisible, which they see so clearly as that to them sense is blind. That which is present they see not; if I may not rather say, that what is past or future is present to them. Herein he exceeds all others, that to him nothing is impossible, nothing difficult, whether to bear or undertake. He walks every day with his Maker, and talks with Him familiarly, and lives ever in heaven, and sees all earthly things beneath him. When he goes in to converse with God, he wears not his own clothes, but takes them still out of the rich wardrobe of his Redeemer, and then dares boldly press in and challenge a blessing. The celestial spirits do not scorn his company; yea, his service. He deals in these worldly affairs as a stranger, and hath his heart ever at home. Without a written warrant he dare do nothing, and with it anything. His war is perpetual, without truce, without intermission, and his victory certain; he meets with the infernal powers, and tramples them under feet. The shield that he ever bears before him can neither be missed nor pierced; if his hand be wounded, yet his heart is safe. He is often tripped, seldom foiled, and, if sometimes foiled, never vanquished. He hath white hands, and a clean soul fit to lodge God in, all the rooms whereof are set apart for His holiness. Iniquity hath oft called at the door and craved entertainment, but with a repulse; or, if sin of force will be his tenant, his Lord he cannot. His faults are few, and those he hath God will not see. He is allied so high, that he dare call God father, his Saviour brother, heaven his patrimony, and thinks it no presumption to trust to the attendance of angels. His understanding is enlightened with the beams of divine truth. God hath acquainted him with His will; and what he knows he dare confess: there is not more love in his heart than liberty in his tongue. If torments stand betwixt him and Christ, if death, he contemns them; and if his own parents lie in his way to God, his holy carelessness makes them his footsteps. His experiments have drawn forth rules of confidence, which he dares oppose against all the fears of distrust; wherein he thinks it safe to charge God with what he hath done, with what he hath promised. Examples are his proofs, and instances his demonstrations. What hath God given which he cannot give? What have others suffered which he may not be enabled to endure? Is he threatened banishment? there he sees the dear Evangelist in Patmos. Cutting in pieces? he sees Esai under the saw. Drowning? he sees Jonah diving into the living gulf? Burning? he sees the three children in the hot walk of the furnace. Devouring? he sees Daniel in the sealed den amidst his terrible companions. Stoning? he sees the first martyr under his heap of many gravestones. Heading? lo, there the Baptist’s neck bleeding in Herodias’ platter. He emulates their
He is a friendly enemy to himself; for, though he be not out of his own favour, no man sets so low a value of his worth as himself—not out of ignorance or carelessness, but of a voluntary and meek dejectedness. He admires everything in another, while the same or better in himself he thinks not unworthily contemned. His eyes are full of his own wants, and others’ perfections. He loves rather to give than take honour; not in a fashion of complimental courtesy, but in simplicity of his judgment. Neither doth he fret at those on whom he forceth precedence, as one that hoped their modesty would have refused; but holds his mind unfeignedly below his place, and is ready to go lower (if need be) without discontent. When he hath his due, he magnifieth courtesy, and disclaims his deserts. He can be more ashamed of honour than grieved with contempt; because he thinks that causeless, this deserved. His face, his carriage, his habit, savour of lowliness without affectation, and yet he is much under that he seemeth. His words are few and soft, never either peremptory or censorious; because he thinks both each man more wise, and none more faulty than himself. And, when he approacheth to the throne of God, he is so taken up with the Divine greatness that, in his own eyes, he is either vile or nothing. Places of public charge are fain to sue to him, and hail him out of his chosen obscurity; which he holds ofif, not cunningly, to cause importunity, but sincerely, in the conscience of his defects. He frequenteth not the stages of common resorts, and then alone thinks himself in his natural element when he is shrouded within his own walls. He is ever jealous over himself, and still suspecteth that which others applaud. There is no better object of beneficence; for what he receives he ascribes merely to the bounty of the giver, nothing to merit. He emulates no man in anything but goodness, and that with more desire than hope to overtake. No man is so contented with his little, and so patient under miseries; because he knows the greatest evils are below his sins, and the least favours above his deservings. He walks ever in awe, and dare not but subject every word and action to an high and just censure. He is a lowly valley, sweetly planted and well watered; the proud man’s earth, whereon he trampleth; but secretly full of wealthy mines, more worth than he that walks over them; a rich stone set in lead; and, lastly, a true temple of God built with a low roof.
He undertakes without rashness, and performs without fear; he seeks not for dangers, but, when they find him, he bears them over with courage, with success. He hath ofttimes looked death in the face, and passed by it with a smile; and when he sees he must yield, doth at once welcome and contemn it. He forecasts the worst of all events, and encounters them before they come in a secret and mental war. And if the suddenness of an unexpected evil have surprised his thoughts, and infected his cheeks with paleness, he hath no sooner digested it in his conceit than he gathers up himself, and insults over mischief. He is the master of himself, and subdues his passions to reason, and by this inward victory works his own peace. He is afraid of nothing but the displeasure of the Highest, and runs away from nothing but sin: he looks not on his hands, but his cause; not how strong he is, but how innocent: and, where goodness is his warrant, he may be over-mastered; he cannot be foiled. The sword is to him the last of all trials, which he draws forth still as defendant, not as challenger, with a willing kind of unwillingness: no man can better manage it, with more safety, with more favour; he had rather have his blood seen than his back, and disdains life upon base conditions. No man is more mild to a relenting or vanquished adversary, or more hates to set his foot on a carcase. He had rather smother an injury than revenge himself of the impotent, and I know not whether he more detests cowardliness or cruelty. He talks little, and brags less; and loves rather the silent language of the hand, to be seen than heard. He lies ever close within himself, armed with wise resolution, and will not be discovered but by death or danger. He is neither prodigal of blood to misspend it idly, nor niggardly to grudge it, when either God calls for it, or his country; neither is he more liberal of his own life than of others. His power is limited by his will, and he holds it the noblest revenge, that he might hurt and doth not. He commands without tyranny and imperiousness, obeys without servility, and changes not his mind with his estate. The height of his spirits overlooks all casualties, and his boldness proceeds neither from ignorance nor senselessness; but first he values evils, and then despises them. He is so balanced with wisdom that he floats steadily in the midst of all tempests. Deliberate in his purposes, firm in resolution, bold in enterprising, unwearied in achieving, and howsoever happy in success; and if ever he be overcome, his heart yields last.
The patient man is made of a metal, not so hard as flexible: his shoulders are large, fit for a load of injuries; which he bears not out of baseness and cowardliness, because he dare not revenge, but out of Christian fortitude, because he may not: he has so conquered himself that wrongs cannot conquer him; and herein alone finds that victory consists in yielding. He is above nature, while he seems below himself. The vilest creature knows how to turn again; but to command himself not to resist being urged is more than heroical. His constructions are ever full of charity and favour; either this wrong was not done, or not with intent of wrong; or if that, upon mis-information; or if none of these, rashness (though a fault) shall serve for an excuse. Himself craves the offender’s pardon before his confession; and a slight answer contents where the offended desires to forgive. He is God’s best witness; and when he stands before the bar for truth his tongue is calmly free, his forehead firm, and he with erect and settled countenance hears his just sentence, and rejoices in it. The jailors that attend him are to him his pages of honour; his dungeon, the lower part of the vault of heaven; his rack or wheel, the stairs of his ascent to glory: he challenges his executioners, and encounters the fiercest pains with strength of resolution; and while he suffers the beholders pity him, the tormentors complain of weariness, and both of them wonder. No anguish can master him, whether by violence or by lingering. He accounts expectation no punishment, and can abide to have his hopes adjourned till a new day. Good laws serve for his protection, not for his revenge; and his own power, to avoid indignities, not to return them. His hopes are so strong that they can insult over the greatest discouragements; and his apprehensions so deep that, when he hath once fastened, he sooner leaveth his life than his hold. Neither time nor perverseness can make him cast off his charitable endeavours and despair of prevailing; but in spite of all crosses and all denials, he redoubleth his beneficial offers of love. He trieth the sea after many shipwrecks, and beats still at that door which he never saw opened. Contrariety of events doth but exercise, not dismay him; and when crosses afflict him, he sees a divine hand invisibly striking with these sensible scourges, against which he dares not rebel nor murmur. Hence all things befall him alike; and he goes with the same mind to the shambles and to the fold. His recreations are calm and gentle, and not more full of relaxation than void of fury. This man only can turn necessity into virtue, and put evil to good use. He is the surest friend, the latest and easiest enemy, the greatest conqueror, and so much more happy than others, by how much he could abide to be more miserable.
His affections are both united and divided; united to him he loveth, divided betwixt another and himself; and his one heart is so parted, that whilst he has some his friend hath all. His choice is led by virtue, or by the best of virtues, religion; not by gain, not by pleasure; yet not without respect of equal condition, of disposition not unlike; which, once made, admits of no change, except he whom he loveth be changed quite from himself; nor that suddenly, but after long expectation. Extremity doth but fasten him, whilst he, like a well-wrought vault, lies the stronger, by how much more weight he bears. When necessity calls him to it, he can be a servant to his equal, with the same will wherewith he can command his inferior; and though he rise to honour, forgets not his familiarity, nor suffers inequality of estate to work strangeness of countenance; on the other side, he lifts up his friend to advancement with a willing hand, without envy, without dissimulation. When his mate is dead, he accounts himself but half alive; then his love, not dissolved by death, derives itself to those orphans which never knew the price of their father; they become the heirs of his affection, and the burden of his cares. He embraces a free community of all things, save those which either honesty reserves proper, or nature; and hates to enjoy that which would do his friend more good. His charity serves to cloak noted infirmities, not by untruth, not by flattery, but by discreet secrecy; neither is he more favourable in concealment, than round in his private reprehensions; and when another’s simple fidelity shows itself in his reproof, he loves his monitor so much the more, by how much more he smarteth. His bosom is his friend’s closet, where he may safely lay up his complaints, his doubts, his cares; and look how he leaves, so he finds them; save for some addition of seasonable counsel for redress. If some unhappy suggestion shall either disjoint his affection or break it, it soon knits again, and grows the stronger by that stress. He is so sensible of another’s injuries, that when his friend is stricken he cries out and equally smarteth untouched, as one affected not with sympathy, but with a real feeling of pain: and in what mischief may be prevented, he interposeth his aid, and offers to redeem his friend with himself. No hour can be unseasonable, no business difficult, nor pain grievous in condition of his ease: and what either he doth or suffers, he neither cares nor desires to have known, lest he should seem to look for thanks. If he can therefore steal the performance of a good office unseen, the conscience of his faithfulness herein is so much sweeter as it is more secret. In favours done, his memory is frail; in benefits received, eternal: he scorneth either to regard recompense or not to offer it. He is the comfort of miseries, the guide of difficulties, the joy of life, the treasure of earth, and no other than a good angel clothed in flesh.
He stands not upon what he borrowed of his ancestors, but thinks he must work out his own honour: and if he cannot reach the virtue of them that gave him outward glory by inheritance, he is more abashed of his impotency than transported with a great name. Greatness doth not make him scornful and imperious, but rather like the fixed stars; the higher he is, the less he desires to seem. Neither cares he so much for pomp and frothy ostentation as for the solid truth of nobleness. Courtesy and sweet affability can be no more severed from him than life from his soul; not out of a base and servile popularity, and desire of ambitious insinuation, but of a native gentleness of disposition, and true value of himself. His hand is open and bounteous, yet not so as that he should rather respect his glory than his estate; wherein his wisdom can distinguish betwixt parasites and friends, betwixt changing of favours and expending them. He scorneth to make his height a privilege of looseness, but accounts his titles vain if he be inferior to others in goodness: and thinks he should be more strict the more eminent he is, because he is more observed, and now his offences are become more exemplar. There is no virtue that he holds unfit for ornament, for use; nor any vice which he condemns not as sordid, and a fit companion of baseness; and whereof he doth not more hate the blemish, than affect the pleasure. He so studies as one that knows ignorance can neither purchase honour nor wield it; and that knowledge must both guide and grace, him. His exercises are from his childhood ingenious, manly, decent, and such as tend still to wit, valour, activity: and if (as seldom) he descend to disports of chance, his games shall never make him either pale with fear or hot with desire of gain. He doth not so use his followers, as if he thought they were made for nothing but his servitude, whose felicity were only to be commanded and please: wearing them to the back, and then either finding or framing excuses to discard them empty; but upon all opportunities lets them feel the sweetness of their own serviceableness and his bounty. Silence in officious service is the best oratory to plead for his respect: all diligence is but lent to him, none lost. His wealth stands in receiving, his honour in giving. He cares not either how many hold of his goodness, or to how few he is beholden: and if he have cast away favours, he hates either to upbraid them to his enemy, or to challenge restitution. None can be more pitiful to the distressed, or more prone to succour; and then most where is least means to solicit, least possibility of requital. He is equally addressed to war and peace; and knows not more how to command others, than how to be his country’s servant in both. He is more careful to give true honour to his Maker than to receive civil honour from men. He knows that this service is free and noble, and ever loaded with sincere glory; and how vain it is to hunt after applause from the world till he be sure of Him that mouldeth all hearts, and poureth contempt on princes; and shortly, so demeans himself as one that accounts the body of nobility to consist in blood, the soul in the eminence of virtue.
He is the faithful deputy of his Maker, whose obedience is the rule whereby he ruleth. His breast is the ocean, whereinto all the cares of private men empty themselves; which, as he receives without complaint and overflowing, so he sends them forth again by a wise conveyance in the streams of justice. His doors, his ears, are ever open to suitors; and not who comes first speeds well, but whose cause is best. His nights, his meals, are short and interrupted; all which he bears well, because he knows himself made for a public servant of peace and justice. He sits quietly at the stern, and commands one to the topsail, another to the main, a third to the plummet, a fourth to the anchor, as he sees the needs of their course and weather requires; and doth no less by his tongue than all the mariners with their hands. On the bench he is another from himself at home; now all private respects of blood, alliance, amity are forgotten; and if his own son come under trial he knows him not. Pity, which in all others is wont to be the best praise of humanity and the fruit of Christian love, is by him thrown over the bar for corruption. As for Favour, the false advocate of the gracious, he allows him not to appear in the court; there only causes are heard speak, not persons. Eloquence is then only not dis-couraged when she serves for a client of truth. Mere narrations are allowed in this oratory, not proems, not excursions, not glosses. Truth must strip herself and come in naked to his bar, without false bodies or colours, without disguises. A bribe in his closet, or a letter on the bench, or the whispering and winks of a great neighbour, are answered with an angry and courageous repulse. Displeasure, Revenge, Recompense stand on both sides the bench, but he scorns to turn his eye towards them, looking only right forward at Equity, which stands full before him. His sentence is ever deliberate and guided with ripe wisdom, yet his hand is slower than his tongue; but when he is urged by occasion either to doom or execution, he shows how much he hateth merciful injustice. Neither can his resolution or act be reversed with partial importunity. His forehead is rugged and severe, able to discountenance villainy, yet his words are more awful than his brow, and his hand than his words. I know not whether he be more feared or loved, both affections are so sweetly contempered in all hearts. The good fear him lovingly, the middle sort love him fearfully, and only the wicked man fears him slavishly without love. He hates to pay private wrongs with the advantage of his office; and if ever he be partial, it is to his enemy. He is not more sage in his gown than valorous in arms, and increaseth in the rigour of discipline as the times in danger. His sword hath neither rusted for want of use, nor surfeiteth of blood; but after many threats is unsheathed, as the dreadful instrument of divine revenge. He is the guard of good laws, the refuge of innocence, the comet of the guilty, the paymaster of good deserts, the champion of justice, the patron of peace, the tutor of the Church, the father of his country, and as it were another God upon earth.
He has a wounded heart and a sad face, yet not so much for fear as for unkindness. The wrong of his sin troubles him more than the danger. None but he is the better for his sorrow; neither is any passion more hurtful to others than this is gainful to him: the more he seeks to hide his grief, the less it will be hid; every man may read it not only in his eyes, but in his bones. Whilst he is in charity with all others, he is so fallen out with himself that none but God can reconcile him. He hath sued himself in all courts, accuseth, arraigneth, sentenceth, punisheth himself impartially, and sooner may find mercy at any hand than at his own. He only hath pulled off the fair visor of sin; so as that which appears not but masked unto others, is seen of him barefaced, and bewrays that fearful ugliness, which none can conceive but he that hath viewed it. He hath looked into the depth of the bottomless pit, and hath seen his own offence tormented in others, and the same brands shaken at him. He hath seen the change of faces in that cool one, as a tempter, as a tormentor; and hath heard the noise of a conscience, and is so frightened with all these, that he can never have rest till he have run out of himself to God, in whose face at first he find rigour, but afterwards sweetness in his bosom; he bleeds first from the hand that heals him. The law of God hath made work for mercy, which he hath no sooner apprehended than he forgets his wounds, and looks carelessly upon all these terrors of guiltiness. When he casts his eye back upon himself, he wonders where he was and how he came there; and grants that if there were not some witchcraft in sin, he could not have been so sottishly graceless. And now, in the issue, Satan finds (not without indignation and repentance) that he hath done him a good turn in tempting him: for he had never been so good if he had not sinned; he had never fought with such courage, if he had not seen his blood and been ashamed of his folly. Now he is seen and felt in the front of the spiritual battle; and can teach others how to fight, and encourage them in fighting. His heart was never more taken up with the pleasure of sin, than now with care of avoiding it: the very sight of that cup, wherein such a fulsome portion was brought him, turns his stomach: the first offers of sin make him tremble more now than he did before at the judgments of his sin; neither dares he so much as look towards Sodom. All the powers and craft of hell cannot fetch him in for a customer to evil; his infirmity may yield once, his resolution never. There is none of his senses or parts, which he hath not within covenants for their good behaviour, which they cannot ever break with impunity. The wrongs of his sin he repays to men with recompense, as hating it should be said he owes anything to his offence; to God (what in him lies) with sighs, tears, vows, and endeavours of amendment. No heart is
That hath learned to read himself more than all books, and hath so taken out this lesson that he can never forget it; that knows the world, and cares not for it; that, after many traverses of thoughts, is grown to know what he may trust to, and stands now equally armed for all events; that hath got the mastery at home, so as he can cross his will without a mutiny, and so please it that he makes it not a wanton; that in earthly things wishes no more than nature, in spiritual is ever graciously ambitious; that for his condition stands on his own feet, not needing to lean upon the great, and can so frame his thoughts to his estate that when he hath least he cannot want, because he is as free from desire as superfluity; that hath seasonably broken the headstrong restiness of prosperity, and can now manage it at pleasure; upon whom all smaller crosses light as hailstones upon a roof; and for the greater calamities, he can take them as tributes of life and tokens of love; and if his ship be tossed, yet he is sure his anchor is fast. If all the world were his, he could be no other than he is, no whit gladder of himself, no whit higher in his carriage, because he knows contentment lies not in the things he hath, but in the mind that values them. The powers of his resolution can either multiply or subtract at pleasure. He can make his cottage a manor or a palace when he lists, and his home-close a large dominion, his stained cloth arras, his earth plate, and can see state in the attendance of one servant, as one that hath learned a man’s greatness or baseness is in himself; and in this he may even contest with the proud, that he thinks his own the best. Or if he must be outwardly great, he can but turn the other end of the glass, and make his stately manor a low and straight cottage, and in all his costly furniture he can see not richness but use; he can see dross in the best metal and earth through the best clothes, and in all his troupe he can see himself his own servant. He lives quietly at home out of the noise of the world, and loves to enjoy himself always, and sometimes his friend, and hath as full scope to his thought as to his eyes. He walks ever even in the midway betwixt hopes and fears, resolved to fear nothing but God, to hope for nothing but what which he must have. He hath a wise and virtuous mind in a serviceable body, which that better part affects as a present servant and a future companion, so cherishing his flesh as one that would scorn to be all flesh. He hath no enemies; not for that all love him, but because he knows to make a gain of malice. He is not so engaged to any earthly thing that they two cannot part on even terms; there is neither laughter in their meeting, nor in their shaking of hands tears. He keeps ever the best company, the God of Spirits and the spirits of that God, whom he entertains continually in an awful familiarity, not being hindered either with too much light or with none at all. His conscience and his hand are friends,
CHARACTERISMS OF VICES.
I have showed you many fair virtues: I speak not for them; if their sight cannot command affection let them lose it. They shall please yet better after you have troubled your eyes a little with the view of deformities; and by how much more they please, so much more odious and like themselves shall these deformities appear. This light contraries give to each other in the midst of their enmity, that one makes the other seem more good or ill. Perhaps in some of these (which thing I do at once fear and hate) my style shall seem to some less grave, more satirical: if you find me, not without cause, jealous, let it please you to impute it to the nature of those vices which will not be otherwise handled. The fashions of some evils are, besides the odiousness, ridiculous, which to repeat is to seem bitterly merry. I abhor to make sport with wickedness, and forbid any laughter here but of disdain. Hypocrisy shall lead this ring worthily, I think, because both she cometh nearest to virtue and is the worst of vices.
An hypocrite is the worst kind of player, by so much as he acts the better part, which hath always two faces, ofttimes two hearts; that can compose his forehead to sadness and gravity, while he bids his heart be wanton and careless within, and in the meantime laughs within himself to think how smoothly he hath cozened the beholder. In whose silent face are written the characters of religion, which his tongue and gestures pronounce but his hands recant. That hath a clean face and garment with a foul soul, whose mouth belies his heart, and his fingers belie his mouth. Walking early up into the city, he turns into the great church, and salutes one of the pillars on one knee, worshipping that God which at home he cares not for, while his eye is fixed on some window, on some passenger, and his heart knows not whither his lips go. He rises, and looking about with admiration, complains on our frozen charity, commends the ancient. At church he will ever sit where he may be seen best, and in the midst of the sermon pulls out his tables in haste, as if he feared to lose that note; when he writes either his forgotten errand or nothing. Then he turns his Bible with a noise to seek an omitted quotation, and folds the leaf as if he had found it, and asks aloud the name of the preacher, and repeats it, whom he publicly salutes, thanks, praises, invites, entertains with tedious good counsel, with good discourse, if it had come from an honester mouth. He can command tears when he speaks of his youth, indeed because it is past, not because it was sinful; himself is now better, but the times are worse. All other sins he reckons up with detestation, while he loves and hides his darling in his bosom. All his speech returns to himself, and every occurrence draws in a story to his own praise. When he should give, he looks about him and says, “Who sees me?”
His estate is too narrow for his mind, and therefore he is fain to make himself room in others’ affairs, yet ever in pretence of love. No news can stir but by his door, neither can he know that which he must not tell. What every man ventures in Guiana voyage, and what they gained, he knows to a hair. Whether Holland will have peace he knows, and on what conditions, and with what success, is familiar to him ere it be concluded. No post can pass him without a question, and rather than he will lose the news, he rides back with him to apprise him of tidings; and then to the next man he meets he supplies the wants of his hasty intelligence and makes up a perfect tale, wherewith he so haunteth the patient auditor, that after many excuses he is fain to endure rather the censure of his manners in running away than the tediousness of an impertinent discourse. His speech is oft broken off with a succession of long parentheses, which he ever vows to fill up ere the conclusion, and perhaps would effect it if the other’s ear were as umveariable as his tongue. If he see but two men talk and read a letter in the street, he runs to them and asks if he may not be partner of that secret relation; and if they deny it, he offers to tell, since he may not hear, wonders, and then falls upon
Superstition is godless religion, devout impiety. The superstitious is fond in observation, servile in fear; he worships God but as he lists; he gives God what He asks not more than He asks, and all but what he should give; and makes more sins than the Ten Commandments. This man dares not stir forth till his breast be crossed and his face sprinkled: if but an hare cross him the way, he returns; or if his journey began unawares on the dismal day, or if he stumble at the threshold. If he see a snake unkilled, he fears a mischief; if the salt fall towards him, he looks pale and red, and is not quiet till one of the waiters have poured wine on his lap; and when he sneezeth, thinks them not his friends that uncover not. In the morning he listens whether the crow crieth even or odd, and by that token presages
The superstitious hath too many gods; the profane man hath none at all, unless perhaps himself be his own deity, and the world his heaven. To matter of religion his heart is a piece of dead flesh, without feeling of love, of fear, of care, or of pain from the deaf strokes of a revenging conscience. Custom of sin hath wrought this senselessness, which now hath so long entertained that it pleads prescription and knows not to be altered. This is no sudden evil; we are born sinful, but have made ourselves profane; through many degrees we climb to this height of impiety. At first he sinned and cared not, now he sinneth and knoweth not. Appetite is his lord, and reason his servant, and religion his drudge. Sense is the rule of his belief; and if piety may be an advantage, he can at once counterfeit and deride it. When aught succeedeth to him he sacrifices to his net, and thanks either his fortune or his wit;
He is neither well full nor fasting; and though he abound with complaints, yet nothing dislikes him but the present; for what he condemned while it was, once past he magnifies, and strives to recall it out of the jaws of time. What he hath he seeth not, his eyes are so taken up with what he wants; and what he sees he cares not for, because he cares so much for that which is not. When his friend carves him the best morsel, he murmurs that it is an happy feast wherein each one may cut for himself. When a present is sent him he asks, Is this all? and, What, no better? and so accepts it, as if he would have his friend know how much he is bound to him for vouchsafing to receive it. It is hard to entertain him with a proportionable gift. If nothing, he cries out of unthankfulness; if little, that he is basely regarded; if much, he exclaims of flattery, and expectation of a large requital. Every blessing hath somewhat to disparage and distaste it; children bring cares, single life is wild and solitary, eminency is envious, retiredness obscure, fasting painful, satiety unwieldy, religion nicely severe, liberty is lawless, wealth
The inconstant man treads upon a moving earth and keeps no pace. His proceedings are ever heady and peremptory, for he hath not the patience to consult with reason, but determines merely upon fancy. No man is so hot in the pursuit of what he liketh, no man sooner wearies. He is fiery in his passions, which yet are not more violent than momentary; it is a wonder if his love or hatred last so many days as a wonder. His heart is the inn of all good motions, wherein, if they lodge for a night, it is well; by morning they are gone, and take no leave; and if they
Flattery is nothing but false friendship, fawning hypocrisy, dishonest civility, base merchandise of words, a plausible discord of the heart and lips. The flatterer is blear-eyed to ill, and cannot see vices; and his tongue walks ever in one track of unjust praises, and can no more tell how to discommend than to speak true. His speeches are full of wondering interjections, and all his titles are superlative, and both of them seldom ever but in presence. His base mind is well matched with a mercenary tongue, which is a willing slave to another man’s ear; neither regardeth he how true, but how pleasing. His art is nothing but delightful cozenage, whose rules are smoothing and guarded with perjury; whose scope is to make men fools in teaching them to overvalue themselves, and to tickle his friends to death. This man is a porter of all good tales, and mends them in the carriage; one of Fame’s best friends and his own, that helps to furnish her with those rumours that may advantage himself. Conscience hath no greater adversary, for when she is about to play her
He is a religious man, and wears the time in his cloister, and, as the cloak of his doing nothing, pleads contemplation; yet is he no whit the leaner for his thoughts, no whit learneder. He takes no less care how to spend time than others how to gain by the expense; and when business importunes him, is more troubled to forethink what he must do, than another to effect it. Summer is out of his favour for nothing but long days that make no haste to their even. He loves still to have the sun witness of his rising, and lies long, more for lothness to dress him than will to sleep; and after some streaking and yawning, calls for dinner unwashed, which having digested with a sleep in his chair, he walks forth to the bench in the market-place, and looks for companions.
He is a servant to himself, yea, to his servant; and doth base homage to that which should be the worst drudge. A lifeless piece of earth is his master, yea his god, which he shrines in his coffer, and to which he sacrifices his heart. Every face of his coin is a new image, which he adores with the highest veneration; yet takes upon him to be protector of that he worshippeth, which he fears to keep and abhors to lose, not daring to trust either any other
All his humour rises up into the froth of ostentation, which if it once settle falls down into a narrow room. If the excess be in the understanding part, all his wit is in print; the press hath left his head empty, yea, not only what he had, but what he could borrow without leave. If his glory be in his devotion, he gives not an alms but on record; and if he have once done well, God hears of it often, for upon every unkindness he is ready to upbraid Him with merits. Over and above his own discharge, he hath some satisfactions to spare for the common treasure. He can fulfil the law with ease, and earn God with superfluity. If he hath bestowed but a little sum in the glazing, paving, parieting of God’s house, you shall find it in the church window. Or if a more gallant humour possess him, he wears all his land on his back, and walking high, looks over his left shoulder, to see if the point of his rapier follow him with a grace. He is proud of another man’s horse, and well mounted, thinks every man wrongs him that looks not at him. A bare head in the street doth him more good than a meal’s meat. He swears big at an ordinary, and talks of the court with a sharp accent; neither vouchsafes to name any not honourable, nor those without some term of familiarity, and likes well to see the hearer look upon him amazedly, as if he said, How happy is this man that is so great with great ones! Under pretence of seeking for a scroll of news, he draws out an handful of letters endorsed with his own style to the height, and half reading every title, passes over the latter part with a murmur, not without signifying what lord sent this, what great lady the other, and for what suits; the last paper (as it happens) is his news from his honourable friend in the French court. In the midst of dinner, his lackey comes sweating in with a sealed note from his creditor, who now threatens a speedy arrest, and whispers the ill news in his master’s ear, when he aloud names a counsellor of state, and professes to know the employment. The same messenger he calls with an imperious nod, and after expostulation, where he hath left his fellows, in his ear, sends him for some new spur-leathers or stockings by this time footed; and when he is gone half the room, recalls him, and sayeth aloud, It is no matter, let the greater bag alone till I come. And yet again calling him closer, whispers (so that all the table may hear), that if his crimson suit be ready against the day, the rest need no haste. He picks his teeth when his stomach is empty, and calls for pheasants at a common inn. You shall find him prizing the richest jewels and fairest horses, when his purse yields not money enough for earnest. He thrusts himself into the press before some great ladies, and loves to be seen near the head of a great train. His talk is how many mourners he furnished with gowns at his father’s funeral, how many messes, how
Presumption is nothing but hope out of his wits, an high house upon weak pillars. The presumptuous man loves to attempt great things, only because they are hard and rare. His actions are bold and venturous, and more full of hazard than use. He hoisteth sail in a tempest, and sayeth never any of his ancestors were drowned. He goes into an infected house, and says the plague dares not seize on noble blood. He runs on high battlements, gallops down steep hills, rides over narrow bridges, walks on weak ice, and never thinks, What if I fall? but, What if I run over and fall not? He is a confident alchemist, and braggeth that the womb of his furnace hath conceived a burden that will do all the world good; which yet he desires secretly borne, for fear of his own bondage. In the meantime his glass breaks, yet he upon better luting lays wagers of the success, and promiseth wedges beforehand to his friend. He saith, I will sin, and be sorry, and escape; either God will not see, or not be angry, or not punish it, or remit the measure. If I do well, He is just to reward; if ill, He is merciful to forgive. Thus his praises wrong God no less than his offence, and hurt himself no less than they wrong God. Any pattern is enough to encourage him. Show him the way where any foot hath trod, he dare follow, although he see no steps returning; what if a thousand have attempted, and miscarried, if but one hath prevailed it sufficeth. He suggests to himself false hopes of never too late, as if he could command either time or repentance, and dare defer the expectation of mercy, till betwixt the bridge and the water. Give him but where to set his foot, and he will remove the earth. He foreknows the mutations of states, the events of war, the temper of the seasons; either his old prophecy tells it him, or his stars. Yea, he is no stranger to the records of God’s secret counsel, but he turns them over, and copies them out at pleasure. I know not whether in all his enterprises he show less fear or wisdom; no man promises himself more, no man more believes himself. I will go and sell,
The distrustful man hath his heart in his eyes or in his hand; nothing is sure to him but what he sees, what he handles. He is either very simple or very false, and therefore believes not others, because he knows how little himself is worthy of belief. In spiritual things, either God must leave a pawn with him or seek some other creditor. All absent things and unusual have no other but a conditional entertainment; they are strange, if true. If he see two neighbours whisper in his presence, he bids them speak out, and charges them to say no more than they can justify. When he hath committed a message to his servant, he sends a second after him to listen how it is delivered. He is his own secretary, and of his own counsel for what he hath, for what he purposeth. And when he tells over his bags, looks through the keyhole to see if he have any hidden witness, and asks aloud, Who is there? when no man hears him. He borrows money when he needs not, for fear lest others should borrow of him. He is ever timorous and cowardly, and asks every man’s errand at the door ere he opens. After his first sleep he starts up and asks if the furthest gate were barred, and out of a fearful sweat calls up his servant and bolts the door after him, and then studies whether it were better to lie still and believe, or rise and see. Neither is his heart fuller of fears than his head of strange projects and far-fetched constructions. What means the state, think you, in such an action, and whither tends this course? Learn of me (if you know not) the ways of deep policies are secret, and full of unknown windings; that is their act, this will be their issue: so casting beyond the moon, he makes wise and just proceedings suspected. In all his predictions and imaginations he ever lights upon the worst; not what is most likely will fall out, but what is most ill. There is nothing that he takes not with the left hand; no text which his gloss corrupts not. Words, oaths, parchments, seals, are but broken reeds; these shall never deceive him, he loves no payments but real. If but one in an age have miscarried by a rare casualty, he misdoubts the same event. If but a tile fallen from an high roof have brained a passenger, or the breaking of a coach-wheel have endangered the burden, he swears he will keep home, or take him to his horse. He dares not come to church for fear of the crowd, nor spare the Sabbath’s labour for fear of the
Ambition is a proud covetousness, a dry thirst of honour, the longing disease of reason, an aspiring and gallant madness. The ambitious climbs up high and perilous stairs, and never cares how to come down; the desire of rising hath swallowed up his fear of a fall. Having once cleaved like a burr to some great man’s coat, he resolves not to be shaken off with any small indignities, and, finding his hold thoroughly fast, casts how to insinuate yet nearer. And therefore he is busy and servile in his endeavours to please, and all his officious respects turn home to himself. He can be at once a slave to command, an intelligencer to inform, a parasite to soothe and flatter, a champion to defend, an executioner to revenge anything for an advantage of favour. He hath projected a plot to rise, and woe be to the friend that stands in his way. He still haunteth the court, and his unquiet spirit haunteth him, which, having fetched him from the secure peace of his country rest, sets him new and impossible tasks, and, after many disappointments, encourages him to try the same sea in spite of his shipwrecks, and promise better success. A small hope gives him heart against great difficulties, and draws on new expense, new servility, persuading him like foolish boys to shoot away a second shaft, that he may find the first. He yieldeth, and now secure of the issue, applauds himself in that honour, which he still affecteth, still misseth; and, for the last of all trials, will rather bribe for a troublesome preferment than return void of a title. But now, when he finds himself desperately crossed, and at once spoiled both of advancement and hope, both of fruition and possibility, all his desire is turned into rage, his thirst is now only of revenge, his tongue sounds of nothing but detraction and slander. Now the place he fought for is base, his rival unworthy, his adversary injurious, officers corrupt, court infectious; and how well is he that may be his own man, his own master, that may live safely in a mean distance, at pleasure, free from starving, free from burning? But if his designs speed well, ere he be warm in that feat, his mind is possessed of an higher. What he hath is but a degree to what he would have. Now he scorneth what he formerly aspired to. His success doth not give him so much contentment as provocation; neither can he be at rest so long as he hath one,
He ranges beyond his pale, and lives without compass. His expense is measured, not by ability, but will. His pleasures are immoderate, and not honest. A wanton eye, a liquorish tongue, a gamesome hand, have impoverished him. The vulgar sort call him bountiful, and applaud him when he spends; and recompense him with wishes when he gives, with pity when he wants. Neither can it be denied that he raught true liberality, but overwent it. No man could have lived more laudably, if, when he was at the best, he had stayed there. While he is present, none of the wealthier guests may pay aught to the shot without much vehemence, without danger of unkindness. Use hath made it unpleasant to him not to spend. He is in all things more ambitious of the title of good fellowship than of wisdom. When he looks into the wealthy chest of his father, his conceit suggests that it cannot be emptied; and while he takes out some deal every day, he perceives not any diminution; and when the heap is sensibly abated, yet still flatters himself with enough. One hand cozens the other, and the belly deceives both. He doth not so much bestow benefits as scatter them. True merit doth not carry them, but smoothness of adulation. His
He feeds on others’ evils, and hath no disease but his neighbour’s welfare. Whatsoever God do for him, he cannot be happy with company; and if he were put to choose whether he would rather have equals in a common felicity, or superiors in misery, he would demur upon the election. His eye casts out too much, and never returns home, but to make comparisons with another’s good. He is an ill prizer of foreign commodity; worse of his own, for that he rates too high, this under value. You shall have him ever inquiring into the estates of his equals and betters, wherein he is not more desirous to hear all than loth to hear anything over good; and if just report relate aught better than he would, he redoubles the question, as being hard to believe what he likes not, and hopes yet, if that be averred again to his grief, that there is somewhat concealed in the relation, which, if it were known, would argue the commended party miserable, and blemish him with secret shame. He is ready to quarrel with God, because the next field is fairer grown, and angrily calculates his cost, and time, and tillage. Whom he dares not openly backbite, nor wound with a direct censure, he strikes smoothly with an over cold praise; and when he sees that he must either maliciously impugn the just praise of another (which were unsafe), or approve it by assent, he yieldeth; but shows withal that his means were such, both by nature and education, that he could not, without much neglect, be less commendable. So his happiness shall be made the colour of detraction. When an wholesome law is propounded, he crosseth it either by open or close opposition, not for any incommodity
* * * * *
JOHN STEPHENS,
The younger, a lawyer of Lincoln’s Inn, published in 1615 “Satyrical Essayes, Characters, and others, or accurate and quick Descriptions fitted to the life of their Subjects.” He had published two years before a play called “Cinthia’s Revenge, or Maenander’s Extasie,” which Langbaine described as one of the longest he had ever read, and the most tedious. Somebody seems to have attacked him and his Characters. A second edition, in 1631, was entitled “New Essays and Characters, with a new Satyre in defence of the Common Law, and Lawyers: mixt with Reproofe against their enemy Ignoramus."
Is the next of our Character writers. His “Microcosmography, or a Piece of the World discovered, in Essays and Characters” was first printed in 1628. John Earle was born in the city of York, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, probably in the year 1601. His father, who was Registrar of the Archbishop’s Court, sent him to Oxford in 1619, and he was said to be eighteen years old when he matriculated, that year, as a commoner at Christchurch. He graduated as Master of Arts in 1624. He was a Fellow of Merton, and wrote in his younger days several occasional poems that won credit before he published anonymously, still as an Oxford man, when he was about twenty-seven years old, his famous Characters. But he remembered York when adding to their title that they were “newly composed for the northern part of this Kingdom.” This first edition contained fifty-four characters, which precede the others in the following collection. In the next year, 1629, the book reached a fifth edition, printed for Robert Allot, in which the number of the characters was increased to seventy-six. Two more characters—a Herald, and a Suspicious or Jealous Man—were added in the sixth edition, which was printed for Allot in 1633. The seventh edition was printed for Andrew Coolie in 1638, the eighth in 1650. Other editions followed in 1669, 1676, 1732, and at Salisbury in 1786. In 1811 the little book was edited carefully by Dr. Philip Bliss, and it was edited again by Professor Edward Arber in 1868, in his valuable series of English Reprints.
John Earle, after the production of his “Microcosmography,” wrote in April 1630 a short poem upon the death of William, third Earl of Pembroke, son of Sidney’s sister. The third Earl’s younger brother Philip succeeded as fourth Earl, and was Chancellor of the University of Oxford. He was then, or thereafter became, Earle’s patron, and made him his chaplain. About the same time, in 1631, Earle acted as proctor of the University. In 1639 the Earl of Pembroke presented John Earle to the living of Bishopston in Wiltshire, as successor to Chillingworth. Pembroke being Lord Chamberlain was entitled also to a residence at Court for his chaplain, and thus Earle was brought under the immediate notice of Charles I., who appointed him to be his own chaplain, and made him tutor to Prince Charles in 1641, when Dr. Brian Duppa, the preceding tutor, had been made Bishop of Salisbury. In 1642 Earle proceeded to the degree of D.D. In 1643 he was elected Chancellor of the Cathedral at Salisbury, but he was presently deprived by the Parliament of that office, and of his living at Bishopston. He then lived in retirement abroad, made a translation into Latin of Hooker’s “Ecclesiastical Polity” which his servants negligently used, after his death, as waste paper, and of the “Eikon Basilike” which was published in 1649. After the Restoration, Dr. Earle was made Dean of Westminster; then, in 1662, Bishop of Worcester. He was translated to Salisbury in 1663, died in November 1665, and was buried near the altar in Merton College Church.
Earle was a man so gentle and liberal, that while Clarendon described him as “among the few excellent men who never had and never could have an enemy,” Baxter wrote in the margin of a kindly letter from him, “O, that they were all such!” and Calamy described him as “a man that could do good against evil, forgive much out of a charitable heart.” The Parliament, even just before depriving him as a malignant, had put him to the trouble of declining its nomination as one of the Westminster Assembly of Divines. As a Bishop in the early days of Charles the Second he did all he could to oppose the persecuting spirit of the first Conventicle Act and of the Five Mile Act.
Dr. Philip Bliss, who died in 1857, after a life marked by many services to English Literature, chose Bishop Earle’s “Characters” for one of his earlier studies, published in 1811, when his own age was twenty-four. His book[2] included an account of Bishop Earle himself, a list of his writings, publication for the first time of some of his early verses, his correspondence with Baxter, and a Chronological List of Books of Characters from 1567 to 1700, which was the first contribution to a study of this feature in our Seventeenth Century Literature. Bliss took his text of Earle from the edition of 1732, collated with the first impression in 1628. As the Characters which now follow are given with Bliss’s text and notes, I add what the editor himself says of his method. The variations of the 1732 text from the first impressions in 1628 are thus distinguished: “Those words or passages which have been added since the first edition are contained between brackets_ [and printed in the common type]; those which have received some alteration are printed in italic; and the passages, as they stand in the first edition, are always given in a note."
OR,
A PIECE OF THE WORLD CHARACTERIZED.
Is a man in a small letter, yet the best copy of Adam before he tasted of Eve or the apple; and he is happy whose small practice in the world can only write this character. He is nature’s fresh picture newly drawn in oil, which time, and much handling, dims and defaces. His soul is yet a white paper[3] unscribbled with observations of the world, wherewith, at length, it becomes a blurred note-book. He is purely happy, because he knows no evil, nor hath made means by sin to be acquainted with misery. He arrives not at the mischief of being wise, nor endures evils to come, by foreseeing them. He kisses and loves all, and, when the smart of the rod is past, smiles on his beater. Nature and his parents alike dandle him, and tice him on with a bait of sugar to a draught of wormwood. He plays yet, like a young prentice the first day, and is not come to his task of melancholy. [4][All the language he speaks yet is tears, and they serve him well enough to express
Is a bird not yet fledged, that hath hopped out of his nest to be chirping on a hedge, and will be straggling abroad at what peril soever. His backwardness in the university hath set him thus forward; for had he not truanted there, he had not been so hasty a divine. His small standing, and time, hath made him a proficient only in boldness, out of which, and his table-book, he is furnished for a preacher. His collections of study are the notes of sermons, which, taken up at St. Mary’s,[6] he utters in the country: and if he write brachigraphy,[7] his stock is so much the better. His writing is more than his reading, for he reads only what he gets without book. Thus accomplished he comes down to his friends, and his first salutation is grace and peace out of the pulpit. His prayer is conceited, and no man remembers his college more at large,[8] The pace of his sermon is a full career, and he runs wildly over hill and dale, till the clock stop him. The labour of it is chiefly in his lungs; and the only thing he has made in[9] it himself, is the faces. He takes on against the pope without mercy, and has a jest still in lavender for Bellarmine: yet he preaches heresy, if it comes in his way, though with a mind, I must needs say, very orthodox. His action is all passion, and his speech interjections. He has an excellent faculty in bemoaning the people, and spits with a very good grace. [His stile is compounded of twenty several men’s, only his body imitates some one extraordinary.] He will not draw his handkercher out of his place, nor blow his nose without discretion. His commendation is, that he never looks upon book; and indeed he was never used to it. He preaches but once a year, though twice on Sunday; for the stuff is still the same, only the dressing a little altered: he has more tricks with a sermon, than a tailor with an old cloak, to turn it, and piece it, and at last quite disguise it with a new preface. If he have waded farther in his profession, and would show reading of his own, his authors are postils, and his school-divinity
Is one that knows the burthen of his calling, and hath studied to make his shoulders sufficient; for which he hath not been hasty to launch forth of his port, the university, but expected the ballast of learning, and the wind of opportunity. Divinity is not the beginning but the end of his studies; to which he takes the ordinary stair, and makes the arts his way. He counts it not profaneness to be polished with human reading, or to smooth his way by Aristotle to school-divinity. He has sounded both religions, and anchored in the best, and is a protestant out of judgment, not faction; not because his country, but his reason is on this side. The ministry is his choice, not refuge, and yet the pulpit not his itch, but fear. His discourse is substance, not all rhetoric, and he utters more things than words. His speech is not helped with inforced action, but the matter acts itself. He shoots all his meditations at one butt; and beats upon his text, not the cushion; making his hearers, not the pulpit, groan. In citing of popish errors, he cuts them with arguments, not cudgels them with barren invectives; and labours more to shew the truth of his cause than the spleen. His sermon is limited by the method, not the hourglass; and his devotion goes along with him out of the pulpit. He comes not up thrice a week, because he would not be idle; nor talks three hours together, because he would not talk nothing: but his tongue preaches at fit times, and his conversation is the every day’s exercise. In matters of ceremony, he is not ceremonious, but thinks he owes that reverence to the Church to bow his judgment to it, and make more conscience of schism, than a surplice. He esteems the Church hierarchy as the Church’s glory, and however we jar with Rome, would not have our confusion distinguish us. In simoniacal purchases he thinks his soul goes in the bargain, and is loath to come by promotion so dear: yet his worth at length advances him, and the price of his own merit buys him a living. He is no base grater of his tithes, and will not wrangle for the odd egg. The lawyer is the only man he hinders, by whom he is spited for taking up quarrels. He is a main pillar of our church, though not yet dean or canon, and his life our religion’s best apology. His death is the last sermon, where, in the pulpit of his bed, he instructs men to die by his example.[10]
His practice is some business at bedsides, and his speculation an urinal: he is distinguished from an empiric, by a round velvet cap and doctor’s gown, yet no man takes degrees more superfluously, for he is doctor howsoever. He is sworn to Galen and Hippocrates, as university men to their statutes, though they never saw them; and his discourse is all aphorisms, though his reading be only Alexis of Piedmont,[11] or the Regiment of Health.[12] The best cure he has done is upon his own purse, which from a lean sickliness he hath made lusty, and in flesh. His learning consists much in reckoning up the hard names of diseases, and the superscriptions of gallipots in his apothecary’s shop, which are ranked in his shelves and the doctor’s memory. He is, indeed, only languaged in diseases, and speaks Greek many times when he knows not. If he have been but a bystander at some desperate recovery, he is slandered with it though he be guiltless; and this breeds his reputation, and that his practice, for his skill is merely opinion. Of all odours he likes best the smell of urine, and holds Vespasian’s[13] rule, that no gain is unsavory. If you send this once to him you must resolve to be sick howsoever, for he will never leave examining your water, till he has shaked it into disease:[l4] then follows a writ to his drugger in a strange tongue, which he understands, though he cannot construe. If he see you himself, his presence is the worst visitation: for if he cannot heal your sickness, he will be sure to help it. He translates his apothecary’s shop into your chamber, and the very windows and benches must take physic. He tells you your malady in Greek, though it be but a cold, or head-ache; which by good endeavour and diligence he may bring to some moment indeed. His most unfaithful act is, that he leaves a man gasping, and his pretence is, death and he have a quarrel and must not meet; but his fear is, lest the carcase should bleed.[15] Anatomies, and other spectacles of mortality, have hardened him, and he is no more struck with a funeral than a grave-maker. Noblemen use him for a director of their stomach, and the ladies for wantonness,[16] especially if he be a proper man. If he be single, he is in league with his she-apothecary; and because it is the physician, the husband is patient. If he have leisure to be idle (that is to study), he has a smatch at alchemy, and is sick of the philosopher’s stone; a disease uncurable, but by an abundant phlebotomy of the purse. His two main opposites are a mountebank and a good woman, and he never shews his learning so much as in an invective against them and their boxes. In conclusion, he is a sucking consumption, and a very brother to the worms, for they are both ingendered out of man’s corruption.
He is venerable in his gown, more in his beard, wherewith he sets not forth so much his own, as the face of a city. You must look on him as one of the town gates, and consider him not as a body, but a corporation. His eminency above others hath made him a man of worship, for he had never been preferred, but that he was worth thousands. He over-sees the commonwealth, as his shop, and it is an argument of his policy, that he has thriven by his craft. He is a rigorous magistrate in his ward; yet his scale of justice is suspected, lest it be like the balances in his warehouse. A ponderous man he is, and substantial, for his weight is commonly extraordinary, and in his preferment nothing rises so much as his belly. His head is of no great depth, yet well furnished; and when it is in conjunction with his brethren, may bring forth a city apophthegm, or some such sage matter. He is one that will not hastily run into error, for he treads with great deliberation, and his judgment consists much as his pace. His discourse is commonly the annals of his mayoralty, and what good government there was in the days of his gold chain, though the door posts were the only things that suffered reformation. He seems most sincerely religious, especially on solemn days; for he comes often to church to make a shew, [and is a part of the quire hangings.] He is the highest star of his profession, and an example to his trade, what in time they may come to. He makes very much of his authority, but more of his satin doublet, which, though of good years, bears its age very well, and looks fresh every Sunday: but his scarlet gown is a monument, and lasts from generation to generation.
Is one that is fallen out with the world, and will be revenged on himself. Fortune has denied him in something, and he now takes pet, and will be miserable in spite. The root of his disease is a self-humouring pride, and an accustomed tenderness not to be crossed in his fancy; and the occasion commonly of one of these three, a hard father, a peevish wench, or his ambition thwarted. He considered not the nature of the world till he felt it, and all blows fall on him heavier, because they light not first on his expectation. He has now foregone all but his pride, and is yet vain-glorious in the ostentation of his melancholy. His composure of himself is a studied carelessness, with his arms across, and a neglected hanging of his head and cloak; and he is as great an enemy to a hat-band, as fortune. He quarrels at the time and up-starts, and sighs at the neglect of men of parts, that is, such as himself. His life is a perpetual satire, and he is still girding the age’s vanity, when this very anger shews he too much esteems it. He is much displeased to see men merry, and wonders what they can find to laugh at. He never draws his own lips higher than a smile, and frowns wrinkle him before forty. He at last falls into that deadly melancholy to be a bitter hater of men, and is the most apt companion for any mischief. He is the spark that kindles the commonwealth, and the bellows himself to blow it: and if he turn any thing, it is commonly one of these, either friar, traitor, or mad-man.
He is a man strangely thrifty of time past, and an enemy indeed to his maw, whence he fetches out many things when they are now all rotten and stinking. He is one that hath that unnatural disease to be enamoured of old age and wrinkles, and loves all things (as Dutchmen do cheese), the better for being mouldy and worm-eaten. He is of our religion, because we say it is most antient; and yet a broken statue would almost make him an idolater. A great admirer he is of the rust of old monuments, and reads only those characters, where time hath eaten out the letters. He will go you forty miles to see a saint’s well or a ruined abbey; an there be but a cross or stone foot-stool in the way, he’ll be considering it so long, till he forget his journey. His estate consists much in shekels, and Roman coins; and he hath more pictures of Caesar, than James or Elizabeth. Beggars cozen him with musty things which they have raked from dung-hills, and he preserves their rags for precious relics. He loves no library, but where there are more spiders’ volumes than authors’, and looks with great admiration on the antique work of cobwebs. Printed books he contemns, as a novelty of this latter age, but a manuscript he pores on everlastingly, especially if the cover be all moth-eaten, and the dust make a parenthesis between every syllable. He would give all the books in his study (which are rarities all), for one of the old Roman binding, or six-lines of Tully in his own hand. His chamber is hung commonly with strange beasts’ skins, and is a kind of charnel-house of bones extraordinary; and his discourse upon them, if you will hear him, shall last longer. His very attire is that which is the eldest out of fashion, [[17] and you may pick a criticism out of his breeches.] He never looks upon himself till he is grey-haired, and then he is pleased with his own antiquity. His grave does not fright him, for he has been used to sepulchres, and he likes death the better, because it gathers him to his fathers.
His elder brother was the Esau, that came out first and left him like Jacob at his heels. His father has done with him as Pharaoh to the children of Israel, that would have them make brick and give them no straw, so he tasks him to be a gentleman, and leaves him nothing to maintain it. The pride of his house has undone him, which the elder’s knighthood must sustain, and his beggary that knighthood. His birth and bringing up will not suffer him to descend to the means to get wealth; but he stands at the mercy of the world, and which is worse, of his brother. He is something better than the serving-men; yet they more saucy with him than he bold with the master, who beholds him with a countenance of stern awe, and checks him oftener than his liveries. His brother’s old suits and he are much alike in request, and cast off now
Is somewhat more than the shape of a man, for he has his length, breadth, and colour. When you have seen his outside, you have looked through him, and need employ your discovery no farther. His reason is merely example, and his action is not guided by his understanding, but he sees other men do thus, and he follows them. He is a negative, for we cannot call him a wise man, but not a fool; nor an honest man, but not a knave; nor a protestant, but not a papist. The chief burden of his brain is the carriage of his body and the setting of his face in a good frame; which he performs the better, because he is not disjointed with other meditations. His religion is a good quiet subject, and he prays as he swears, in the phrase of the land. He is a fair guest, and a fair inviter, and can excuse his good cheer in the accustomed apology. He has some faculty in the mangling of a rabbit, and the distribution of his morsel to a neighbour’s trencher. He apprehends a jest by seeing men smile, and laughs orderly himself, when it comes to his turn. His businesses with his friends are to visit them, and whilst the business is no more, he can perform this well enough. His discourse is the news that he hath gathered in his walk, and for other matters his discretion is, that he will only what he can, that is, say nothing. His life is like one that runs to the church-walk,[20] to take a turn or two, and so passes. He hath staid in the world to fill a number; and when he is gone, there wants one, and there’s an end.
Is one that parts his religion betwixt his conscience and his purse, and comes to church not to serve God but the king. The face of the law makes him wear the mask of the gospel, which he uses not as a means to save his soul, but charges. He loves Popery well, but is loth to lose by it; and though he be something scared with the bulls of Rome, yet they are far off, and he is struck with more terror at the apparitor. Once a month he presents himself at the church, to keep off the church-warden, and brings in his body to save his bail. He kneels with the congregation, but prays by himself, and asks God forgiveness for coming thither. If he be forced to stay out a sermon, he pulls his hat over his eyes, and frowns out the hour; and when he comes home, thinks to make amends for this fault by abusing the preacher. His main policy is to shift off the communion, for which he is never unfurnished of a quarrel, and will be sure to be out of charity at Easter; and indeed he lies not, for he has a quarrel to the sacrament. He would make a bad martyr and good traveller, for his conscience is so large he could never wander out of it; and in Constantinople would be circumcised with a reservation. His wife is more zealous and therefore more costly, and he bates her in tires what she stands him in religion. But we leave him hatching plots against the state, and expecting Spinola.[21]
Is one that knows himself so well, that he does not know himself. Two excellent well-dones have undone him, and he is guilty of it that first commended him to madness. He is now become his own book, which he pores on continually, yet like a truant reader skips over the harsh places, and surveys only that which is pleasant. In the speculation of his own good parts, his eyes, like a drunkard’s, see all double, and his fancy, like an old man’s spectacles, make a great letter in a small print. He imagines every place where he comes his theatre, and not a look stirring but his spectator; and conceives men’s thoughts to be very idle, that is, [only] busy about him. His walk is still in the fashion of a march, and like his opinion unaccompanied, with his eyes most fixed upon his own person, or on others with reflection to himself. If he have done any thing that has passed with applause, he is always re-acting it alone, and conceits the extasy his hearers were in at every period. His discourse is all positions and definitive decrees, with thus it must be and thus it is, and he will not humble his authority to prove it. His tenet is always singular and aloof from the vulgar as he can, from which you must not hope to wrest him. He has an excellent humour for an heretic, and in these days made the first Arminian. He prefers Ramus before Aristotle, and Paracelsus before Galen,[22] [and whosoever with most paradox is commended.] He much pities the world that has
Is one that is a fool with discretion, or a strange piece of politician, that manages the state of himself. His actions are his privy-council, wherein no man must partake beside. He speaks under rule and prescription, and dare not show his teeth without Machiavel. He converses with his neighbours as he would in Spain, and fears an inquisitive man as much as the inquisition. He suspects all questions for examinations, and thinks you would pick something out of him, and avoids you. His breast is like a gentlewoman’s closet, which locks up every toy or trifle, or some bragging mountebank that makes every stinking thing a secret. He delivers you common matters with great conjuration of silence, and whispers you in the ear acts of parliament. You may as soon wrest a tooth from him as a paper, and whatsoever he reads is letters. He dares not talk of great men for fear of bad comments, and he knows not how his words may be misapplied. Ask his opinion, and he tells you his doubt; and he never hears any thing more astonishedly than what he knows before. His words are like the cards at primivist,[23] where 6 is 18, and 7, 21; for they never signify what they sound; but if he tell you he will do a thing, it is as much as if he swore he would not. He is one, indeed, that takes all men to be craftier than they are, and puts himself to a great deal of affliction to hinder their plots and designs, where they mean freely. He has been long a riddle himself, but at last finds OEdipuses; for his over-acted dissimulation discovers him, and men do with him as they would with Hebrew letters, spell him backwards and read him.
Is a degree, or (if you will,) a pair of stairs above an ale-house, where men are drunk with more credit and apology. If the vintner’s nose[24] be at door, it is a sign sufficient, but the absence of this is supplied by the ivy-bush: the rooms are ill breathed like the drinkers that have been washed well over night, and are smelt-to fasting next morning; not furnished with beds apt to be defiled, but more necessary implements, stools, table, and a chamber-pot. It is a broacher of more news than hogsheads, and more jests than news, which are sucked up here by some spungy brain, and from thence squeezed into a comedy. Men come here to make merry, but indeed make a noise, and this musick above
Is one whom all other means have failed, and he now lives of himself. He is some needy cashiered fellow, whom the world hath oft flung off, yet still clasps again, and is like one a drowning, fastens upon any thing that is next at hand. Amongst other of his shipwrecks he has happily lost shame, and this want supplies him. No man puts his brain to more use than he, for his life is a daily invention, and each meal a new stratagem. He has an excellent memory for his acquaintance, though there passed but how do you betwixt them seven years ago, it shall suffice for an embrace, and that for money. He offers you a pottle of sack out of joy to see you, and in requital of his courtesy you can do no less than pay for it. He is fumbling with his purse-strings, as a school-boy with his points, when he is going to be whipped, ’till the master, weary with long stay, forgives him. When the reckoning is paid, he says, It must not be so, yet is straight pacified, and cries, What remedy? His borrowings are like subsidies, each man a shilling or two, as he can well dispend; which they lend him, not with a hope to be repaid, but that he will come no more. He holds a strange tyranny over men, for he is their debtor, and they fear him as a creditor. He is
Is his own hackney-man; for he lets himself out to travel as well as his horses. He is the ordinary embassador between friend and friend, the father and the son, and brings rich presents to the one, but never returns any back again. He is no unlettered man, though in show simple; for questionless, he has much in his budget, which he can utter too in fit time and place. He is [like] the vault in[29] Gloster church, that conveys whispers at a distance, for he takes the sound out of your mouth at York, and makes it be heard as far as London. He is the young student’s joy and expectation, and the most accepted guest, to whom they lend a willing hand to discharge him of his burden. His first greeting is commonly, Your friends are well; [and to prove it[30]] in a piece of gold delivers their blessing. You would think him a churlish blunt fellow, but they find in him many tokens of humanity. He is a great afflicter of the high-ways, and beats them out of measure; which injury is sometimes revenged by the purse-taker, and then the voyage miscarries. No man domineers more in his inn, nor calls his host unreverently with more presumption, and this arrogance proceeds out of the strength of his horses. He forgets not his load where he takes his ease, for he is drunk commonly before he goes to bed. He is like the prodigal child, still packing away and still returning again. But let him pass.
A YOUNG MAN.
He is now out of nature’s protection, though not yet able to guide himself; but left loose to the world and fortune, from which the weakness of his childhood preserved him; and now his strength exposes him. He is, indeed, just of age to be miserable, yet in his own conceit first begins to be happy; and he is happier in this imagination, and his misery not felt is less. He sees yet but the outside of the world and men, and conceives them, according to their appearing, glister, and out of this ignorance believes them. He pursues all vanities for happiness, and[31] [enjoys them best in this fancy.] His reason serves, not to curb but understand his appetite, and prosecute the motions thereof with a more eager earnestness. Himself is his own temptation, and
Is none of the worst students in the house, for he keeps the set hours at his book more duly than any. His authority is great over men’s good names, which he charges many times with shrewd aspersions, which they hardly wipe off without payment. [His box and counters prove him to be a man of reckoning, yet] he is stricter in his accounts than a usurer, and delivers not a farthing without writing. He doubles the pains of Gallobelgicus[32], for his books go out once a quarter, and they are much in the same nature, brief notes and sums of affairs, and are out of request as soon. His comings in are like a taylor’s, from the shreds of bread, [the] chippings and remnants of a broken crust; excepting his vails from the barrel, which poor folks buy for their hogs but drink themselves. He divides an halfpenny loaf with more subtlety than Keckerman[33], and sub-divides the a prima ortum so nicely, that a stomach of great capacity can hardly apprehend it. He is a very sober man, considering his manifold temptations of drink and strangers; and if he be overseen, ’tis within his own liberties, and no man ought to take exception. He is never so well pleased with his place as when a gentleman is beholden to him for showing him the buttery, whom he greets with a cup of single beer and sliced manchet[34], and tells him it is the fashion of the college. He domineers over freshmen when they first come to the hatch, and puzzles them with strange language of cues and cees, and some broken Latin which he has learned at his bin. His faculties extraordinary are the warming of a pair of cards, and telling out a dozen of counters for post and pair, and no man is more methodical in these businesses. Thus he spends his age till the tap of it is run out, and then a fresh one is set abroach.
[Is a holiday clown, and differs only in the stuff of his clothes, not the stuff of himself,[35]] for he bare the king’s sword before he had arms to wield it; yet being once laid o’er the shoulder with a knighthood, he finds the herald his friend. His father was a man of good stock, though but a tanner or usurer; he purchased the land, and his son the title. He has doffed off the name of a [country fellow,[36]] but the look not so easy, and his face still bears a relish of churn-milk. He is guarded with more gold lace than all the gentlemen of the country, yet his body makes his clothes still out of fashion. His house-keeping is seen much in the distinct families of dogs, and serving-men attendant on their kennels, and the deepness of their throats is the depth of his discourse. A hawk he esteems the true burden of nobility,[37] and is exceeding ambitious to seem delighted in the sport, and have his fist gloved with his jesses.[38] A justice of peace he is to domineer in his parish, and do his neighbour wrong with more right.[39] He will be drunk with his hunters for company, and stain, his gentility with droppings of ale. He is fearful of being sheriff of the shire by instinct, and dreads the assize-week as much as the prisoner. In sum, he’s but a clod of his own earth, or his land is the dunghill and he the cock that crows over it: and commonly his race is quickly run, and his children’s children, though they scape hanging, return to the place from whence they came.
Is one that was born and shaped for his cloaths; and, if Adam had not fallen, had lived to no purpose. He gratulates therefore the first sin, and fig-leaves that were an occasion of [his] bravery. His first care is his dress, the next his body, and in the uniting of these two lies his soul and its faculties. He observes London trulier then the terms, and his business is the street, the stage, the court, and those places where a proper man is best shown. If he be qualified in gaming extraordinary, he is so much the more genteel and compleat, and he learns the best oaths for the purpose. These are a great part of his discourse, and he is as curious in their newness as the fashion. His other talk is ladies and such pretty things, or some jest at a play. His pick-tooth bears a great part in his discourse, so does his body, the upper parts whereof are as starched as his linen, and perchance use the same laundress. He has learned to ruffle his face from his boot, and takes great delight in his walk to hear his spurs gingle. Though his life pass somewhat slidingly, yet he seems very careful of the time, for he is still drawing his watch out of his pocket, and spends part of his hours in numbering them. He is one never serious but with his tailor, when he is in conspiracy for the next device. He is furnished with his
Is a viceroy in the street, and no man stands more upon’t that he is the king’s officer. His jurisdiction extends to the next stocks, where he has commission for the heels only, and sets the rest of the body at liberty. He is a scarecrow to that ale-house, where he drinks not his morning draught, and apprehends a drunkard for not standing in the king’s name. Beggars fear him more than the justice, and as much as the whip-stock, whom he delivers over to his subordinate magistrates, the bridewell-man and the beadle. He is a great stickler in the tumults of double jugs, and ventures his head by his place, which is broke many times to keep whole the peace. He is never so much in his majesty as in his night-watch, where he sits in his chair of state, a shop-stall, and environed with a guard of halberts, examines all passengers. He is a very careful man in his office, but if he stay up after midnight you shall take him napping.
Is one that has much learning in the ore, unwrought and untried, which time and experience fashions and refines. He is good metal in the inside, though rough and unsecured without, and therefore hated of the courtier, that is quite contrary. The time has got a vein of making him ridiculous, and men laugh at him by tradition, and no unlucky absurdity but is put upon his profession, and done like a scholar. But his fault is only this, that his mind is [somewhat] too much taken up with his mind, and his thoughts not loaden with any carriage besides. He has not put on the quaint garb of the age, which is now a man’s [Imprimis and all the Item.[40]] He has not humbled his meditations to the industry of compliment, nor afflicted his brain in an elaborate leg. His body is not set upon nice pins, to be turning and flexible for every motion, but his scrape is homely and his nod worse. He cannot kiss his hand and cry, madam, nor talk idle enough to bear her company. His smacking of a gentlewoman is somewhat too savoury, and he mistakes her nose for her lips. A very woodcock would puzzle him in carving, and he wants the logick of a capon. He has not the glib faculty
Is one that manures his ground well, but lets himself lie fallow and untilled. He has reason enough to do his business, and not enough to be idle or melancholy. He seems to have the punishment of Nebuchadnezzar, for his conversation is among beasts, and his talons none of the shortest, only he eats not grass, because he loves not salads. His hand guides the plough, and the plough his thoughts, and his ditch and land-mark is the very mound of his meditations. He expostulates with his oxen very understandingly, and speaks gee, and ree, better than English. His mind is not much distracted with objects, but if a good fat cow come in his way, he stands dumb and astonished, and though his haste be never so great, will fix here half an hour’s contemplation. His habitation is some poor thatched roof, distinguished from his barn by the loop-holes that let out smoke, which the rain had long since washed through, but for the double ceiling of bacon on the inside, which has hung there from his grandsire’s time, and is yet to make rashers for posterity. His dinner is his other work, for he sweats at it as much as at his labour; he is a terrible fastener on a piece of beef, and you may hope to stave the guard off sooner. His religion is a part of his copyhold, which he takes from his landlord, and refers it wholly to his discretion: Yet if he give him leave he is a good Christian to his power, (that is,) comes to church in his best clothes, and sits there with his neighbours, where he is capable only of two prayers, for rain, and fair
He knows the right use of the world, wherein he comes to play a part and so away. His life is not idle, for it is all action, and no man need be more wary in his doings, for the eyes of all men are upon him. His profession has in it a kind of contradiction, for none is more disliked, and yet none more applauded; and he has the misfortune of some scholar, too much wit makes him a fool. He is like our painting gentlewomen, seldom in his own face, seldomer in his clothes; and he pleases, the better he counterfeits, except only when he is disguised with straw for gold lace. He does not only personate on the stage, but sometimes in the street, for he is masked still in the habit of a gentleman. His parts find him oaths and good words, which he keeps for his use and discourse, and makes shew with them of a fashionable companion. He is tragical on the stage, but rampant in the tiring-house,[42] and swears oaths there which he never conned. The waiting women spectators are over-ears in love with him, and ladies send for him to act in their chambers. Your inns-of-court men were undone but for him, he is their chief guest and employment, and the sole business that makes them afternoon’s-men. The poet only is his tyrant, and he is bound to make his friend’s friend drunk at his charge. Shrove-Tuesday he fears as much as the banns, and Lent[43] is more damage to him than the butcher. He was never so much discredited as in one act, and that was of parliament, which gives hostlers privilege before him, for which he abhors it more than a corrupt judge. But to give him his due, one well-furnished actor has enough in him for five common gentlemen, and, if he have a good body, [for six, and] for resolution he shall challenge any Cato, for it has been his practice to die bravely.
Is one of a more cunning and active envy, wherewith he gnaws not foolishly himself, but throws it abroad and would have it blister others. He is commonly some weak parted fellow, and worse minded, yet is strangely ambitious to match others, not by mounting their worth, but bringing them down with his tongue to his own poorness. He is indeed like the red dragon that pursued the woman, for when he cannot over-reach another, he opens his mouth and throws a flood after to drown him. You cannot anger him worse than to do well, and he hates you more bitterly for this, than if you had cheated him of his patrimony with your own discredit. He is always slighting the general opinion, and wondering why such and such men should be applauded. Commend a good divine, he cries postilling; a philologer, pedantry; a poet, rhiming; a school-man, dull wrangling; a sharp conceit, boyishness; an honest man, plausibility. He comes to publick things not to learn, but to catch, and if there be but one solecism, that is all he carries away. He looks on all things with a prepared sourness, and is still furnished with a pish beforehand, or some musty proverb that disrelishes all things whatsoever. If fear of the company make him second a commendation, it is like a law-writ, always with a clause of exception, or to smooth his way to some greater scandal. He will grant you something, and bate more; and this bating shall in conclusion take away all he granted. His speech concludes still with an Oh! but,—and I could wish one thing amended; and this one thing shall be enough to deface all his former commendations. He will be very inward with a man to fish some bad out of him, and make his slanders hereafter more authentic, when it is said a friend reported it. He will inveigle you to naughtiness to get your good name into his clutches; he will be your pandar to have you on the hip for a whore-master, and make you drunk to shew you reeling. He passes the more plausibly because all men have a smatch of his humour, and it is thought freeness which is malice. If he can say nothing of a man, he will seem to speak riddles, as if he could tell strange stories if he would; and when he has racked his invention to the utmost, he ends;—but I wish him well, and therefore must hold my peace. He is always listening and enquiring after men, and suffers not a cloak to pass by him unexamined. In brief, he is one that has lost all good himself, and is loth to find it in another.
Is one that comes there to wear a gown, and to say hereafter, he has been at the university. His father sent him thither because he heard there were the best fencing and dancing-schools; from these he has his education, from his tutor the over-sight. The first element of his knowledge is to be shewn the colleges, and initiated in a tavern by the way, which hereafter he will learn of himself. The two marks of his seniority, is the bare velvet of his gown, and his proficiency at tennis, where when he can once play a set, he is a freshman no more. His study has commonly handsome shelves, his books neat silk strings, which he shews to his father’s man, and is loth to untie[44] or take down for fear of misplacing. Upon foul days for recreation he retires thither, and looks over the pretty book his tutor reads to him, which is commonly some short history, or a piece of Euphormio; for which his tutor gives him money to spend next day. His main loytering is at the library, where he studies arms and books of honour, and turns a gentleman critic in pedigrees. Of all things he endures not to be mistaken for a scholar, and hates a black suit though it be made of sattin. His companion is ordinarily some stale fellow, that has been notorious for an ingle to gold hatbands,[45] whom he admires at first, afterwards scorns. If he have spirit or wit he may light of better company, and may learn some flashes of wit, which may do him knight’s service in the country hereafter. But he is now gone to the inns-of-court, where he studies to forget what he learned before, his acquaintance and the fashion.
Is a child at man’s estate, one whom nature huddled up in haste, and left his best part unfinished. The rest of him is grown to be a man, only his brain stays behind. He is one that has not improved his first rudiments, nor attained any proficiency by his stay in the world: but we may speak of him yet as when he was in the bud, a good harmless nature, a well meaning mind[46] [and no more] It is his misery that he now wants a tutor, and is too old to have one. He is two steps above a fool, and a great many more below a wise man: yet the fool is oft given him, and by those whom he esteems most. Some tokens of him are,—he loves men better upon relation than experience, for he is exceedingly enamoured of strangers, and none quicklier aweary of his friend. He charges you at first meeting with all his secrets, and on better acquaintance grows more reserved. Indeed he is one that mistakes much his abusers for friends, and his friends for enemies, and he apprehends your hate in nothing so much as in good counsel. One that is flexible with any thing but reason, and then only perverse. [A servant to every tale and flatterer, and whom the last man still works over.] A great affecter of wits and such prettinesses; and his company is costly to him, for he seldom has it but invited. His friendship
Is the only man that finds good in it which others brag of but do not; for it is meat, drink, and clothes to him. No man opens his ware with greater seriousness, or challenges your judgment more in the approbation. His shop is the rendezvous of spitting, where men dialogue with their noses, and their communication is smoke.[47] It is the place only where Spain is commended and preferred before England itself. He should be well experienced in the world, for he has daily trial of men’s nostrils, and none is better acquainted with humours. He is the piecing commonly of some other trade, which is bawd to his tobacco, and that to his wife, which is the flame that follows this smoke.
Is the dregs of wit, yet mingled with good drink may have some relish. His inspirations are more real than others, for they do but feign a God, but he has his by him. His verse runs like the tap, and his invention as the barrel, ebbs and flows at the mercy of the spigot. In thin drink he aspires not above a ballad, but a cup of sack inflames him, and sets his muse and nose a-fire together. The press is his mint, and stamps him now and then a sixpence or two in reward of the baser coin his pamphlet. His works would scarce sell for three half-pence, though they are given oft for three shillings, but for the pretty title that allures the country gentleman; for which the printer maintains him in ale a fortnight. His verses are like his clothes miserable centoes[48] and patches, yet their pace is not altogether so hobbling as an almanack’s. The death of a great man or the burning[49] of a house furnish him with an argument, and the nine Muses are out strait in mourning gowns, and Melpomene cries fire! fire! [His other poems are but briefs in rhyme, and like the poor Greeks collections to redeem from captivity.] He is a man now much employed in commendations of our navy, and a bitter inveigher against the Spaniard.
Is one that would fain run an even path in the world, and jut against no man. His endeavour is not to offend, and his aim the general opinion. His conversation is a kind of continued compliment, and his life a practice of manners. The relation he bears to others, a kind of fashionable respect, not friendship but friendliness, which is equal to all and general, and his kindnesses seldom exceed courtesies. He loves not deeper mutualities, because he would not take sides, nor hazard himself on displeasures, which he principally avoids. At your first acquaintance with him he is exceedingly kind and friendly, and at your twentieth meeting after but friendly still. He has an excellent command over his patience and tongue, especially the last, which he accommodates always to the times and persons, and speaks seldom what is sincere, but what is civil. He is one that uses all companies, drinks all healths, and is reasonable cool in all religions. [He considers who are friends to the company, and speaks well where he is sure to hear of it again.] He can listen to a foolish discourse with an applausive attention, and conceal his laughter at nonsense. Silly men much honour and esteem him, because by his fair reasoning with them as with men of understanding, he puts them into an erroneous opinion of themselves, and makes them forwarder hereafter to their own discovery. He is one rather well[52] thought on than beloved, and that love he has is more of whole companies together than any one in particular. Men gratify him notwithstanding with a good report, and whatever vices he has besides, yet having no enemies, he is sure to be an honest fellow.
Is the place where there are three things thrown away beside bowls, to wit, time, money, and curses, and the last ten for one. The best sport in it is the gamesters, and he enjoys it that looks on and bets not. It is the school of wrangling, and worse than the schools, for men will cavil here for a hair’s breadth, and make a stir where a straw would end the controversy. No antick screws men’s bodies into such strange flexures, and you would think them here senseless, to speak sense to their bowl, and put their trust in entreaties for a good cast. The betters are the factious noise of the alley, or
Is an able and sufficient wicked man: It is a proof of his sufficiency that he is not called wicked, but wise. A man wholly determined in himself and his own ends, and his instruments herein any thing that will do it. His friends are a part of his engines, and as they serve to his works, used or laid by: Indeed he knows not this thing of friend, but if he give you the name, it is a sign he has a plot on you. Never more active in his businesses, than when they are mixed with some harm to others; and it is his best play in this game to strike off and lie in the place. Successful commonly in these undertakings, because he passes smoothly those rubs which others stumble at, as conscience and the like; and gratulates himself much in this advantage. Oaths and falsehood he counts the nearest way, and loves not by any means to go about. He has many fine quips at this folly of plain dealing, but his “tush!” is greatest at religion; yet he uses this too, and virtue and good words, but is less dangerously a devil than a saint. He ascribes all honesty to an unpractisedness in the world, and conscience a thing merely for children. He scorns all that are so silly to trust[53] him, and only not scorns his enemy, especially if as bad as himself: he fears him as a man well armed and provided, but sets boldly on good natures, as the most vanquishable. One that seriously admires those worst princes, as Sforza, Borgia, and Richard the Third; and calls matters of deep villany things of difficulty. To whom murders are but resolute acts, and treason a business of great consequence. One whom two or three countries make up to this completeness, and he has travelled for the purpose. His deepest endearment is a communication of mischief, and then only you have him fast. His conclusion is commonly one of these two, either a great man, or hanged.
Is one that has some business about this building or little house of man, whereof nature is as it were the tiler, and he the plaisterer. It is ofter out of reparations than an old parsonage, and then he is set on work to patch it again. He deals most with broken commodities, as a broken head or a mangled face, and his gains are very ill got, for he lives by the hurts of the commonwealth. He differs from a physician as a sore does from a disease, or the sick from those that are not whole, the one distempers you within, the other blisters you without. He complains of the decay of valour in these days, and sighs for that slashing age of sword and buckler; and thinks the law against duels was made merely to wound his vocation. He had been long since undone if the charity of the stews had not relieved him, from whom he has his tribute as duly as the pope; or a wind-fall sometimes from a tavern, if a quart pot hit right. The rareness of his custom makes him pitiless when it comes, and he holds a patient longer than our [spiritual] courts a cause. He tells you what danger you had been in if he had staid but a minute longer, and though it be but a pricked finger, he makes of it much matter. He is a reasonable cleanly man, considering the scabs he has to deal with, and your finest ladies are now and then beholden to him for their best dressings. He curses old gentlewomen and their charity that makes his trade their alms; but his envy is never stirred so much as when gentlemen go over to fight upon Calais sands,[54] whom he wishes drowned ere they come there, rather than the French shall get his custom.
Is a scholar in this great university the world; and the same his book and study. He cloisters not his meditations in the narrow darkness of a room, but sends them abroad with his eyes, and his brain travels with his feet. He looks upon man from a high tower, and sees him trulier at this distance in his infirmities and poorness. He scorns to mix himself in men’s actions, as he would to act upon a stage; but sits aloft on the scaffold a censuring spectator. [He will not lose his time by being busy, or make so poor a use of the world as to hug and embrace it.] Nature admits him as a partaker of her sports, and asks his approbation, as it were, of her own works and variety. He comes not in company, because he would not be solitary; but finds discourse enough with himself, and his own thoughts are his excellent play-fellows. He looks not upon a thing as a yawning stranger at novelties, but his search is more mysterious and inward, and he spells heaven out of earth. He knits his observations together, and makes a ladder of them all to climb to God. He is free from vice, because he has no occasion to employ it, and is above those ends that make man wicked. He has learnt all that can here be taught him, and comes now to heaven to see more.
Is one in whom good women suffer, and have their truth misinterpreted by her folly. She is one, she knows not what herself if you ask her, but she is indeed one that has taken a toy at the fashion of religion, and is enamoured of the new fangle. She is a nonconformist in a close stomacher and ruff of Geneva print, [55] and her purity consists much in her linen. She has heard of the rag of Rome, and thinks it a very sluttish religion, and rails at the whore of Babylon for a very naughty woman. She has left her virginity as a relick of popery, and marries in her tribe without a ring. Her devotion at the church is much in the turning up of her eye; and turning down the leaf in her book, when she hears named chapter and verse. When she comes home, she commends the sermon for the Scripture, and two hours. She loves preaching better than praying, and of preachers, lecturers; and thinks the week day’s exercise far more edifying than the Sunday’s. Her oftest gossipings are sabbath-day’s journeys, where (though an enemy to superstition), she will go in pilgrimage five mile to a silenced minister, when there is a better sermon in her own parish. She doubts of the virgin Mary’s salvation, and dares not saint her, but knows her own place in heaven as perfectly as the pew she has a key to. She is so taken up with faith she has no room for charity, and understands no good works but what are wrought on the sampler. She accounts nothing vices but superstition and an oath, and thinks adultery a less sin than to swear by my truly. She rails at other women by the names of Jezebel and Delilah; and calls her own daughters Rebecca and Abigail, and not Ann but Hannah. She suffers them not to learn on the virginals, [56] because of their affinity with organs, but is reconciled to the bells for the chimes’ sake, since they were reformed to the tune of a psalm. She overflows so with the Bible, that she spills it upon every occasion, and will not cudgel her maids without Scripture. It is a question whether she is more troubled with the Devil, or the Devil with her: she is always challenging and daring him, and her weapon [57] [is The Practice of Piety.] Nothing angers her so much as that women cannot preach, and in this point only thinks the Brownist erroneous; but what she cannot at the church she does at the table, where she prattles more than any against sense and Antichrist, ’till a capon’s wing silence her. She expounds the priests of Baal, reading ministers, and thinks the salvation of that parish as desperate as the Turk’s. She is a main derider to her capacity of those that are not her preachers, and censures all sermons but bad ones. If her husband be a tradesman, she helps him to customers, howsoever to good cheer, and they are a most faithful couple at these meetings, for they never fail. Her conscience is like others’ lust, never satisfied, and you might better answer Scotus than her scruples. She is one that thinks she performs all her duties to God in hearing, and shows the fruits of it in talking. She is more fiery against the maypole than her husband, and thinks she might do a Phineas’ act to break the pate of the fiddler. She is an everlasting argument, but I am weary of her.
Is one that hangs in the balance with all sorts of opinions, whereof not one but stirs him and none sways him. A man guiltier of credulity than he is taken to be; for it is out of his belief of everything, that he fully believes nothing. Each religion scares him from its contrary: none persuades him to itself. He would be wholly a Christian, but that he is something of an atheist, and wholly an atheist, but that he is partly a Christian; and a perfect heretic, but that there are so many to distract him. He finds reason in all opinions, truth in none: indeed the least reason perplexes him, and the best will not satisfy him. He is at most a confused and wild Christian, not specialized by any form, but capable of all. He uses the land’s religion, because it is next him, yet he sees not why he may not take the other, but he chuses this, not as better, but because there is not a pin to choose. He finds doubts and scruples better than resolves them, and is always too hard for himself. His learning is too much for his brain, and his judgment too little for his learning, and his over-opinion of both, spoils all. Pity it was his mischance of being a scholar; for it does only distract and irregulate him, and the world by him. He hammers much in general upon our opinion’s uncertainty, and the possibility of erring makes him not venture on what is true. He is troubled at this naturalness of religion to countries, that protestantism should be born so in England and popery abroad, and that fortune and the stars should so much share in it. He likes not this connection with the commonweal and divinity, and fears it may be an arch-practice of state. In our differences with Rome he is strangely unfixed, and a new man every new day, as his last discourse-book’s meditations transport him. He could like the gray hairs of popery, did not some dotages there stagger him: he would come to us sooner, but our new name affrights him. He is taken with their miracles, but doubts an imposture; he conceives of our doctrine better, but it seems too empty and naked. He cannot drive into his fancy the circumscription of truth to our corner, and is as hardly persuaded to think their old legends true. He approves well of our faith, and more of their works, and is sometimes much affected at the zeal of Amsterdam. His conscience interposes itself betwixt duellers, and whilst it would part both, is by both wounded. He will sometimes propend much to us upon the reading a good writer, and at Bellarmine [58] recalls as far back again; and the fathers justle him from one side to another. Now Socinus [59] and Vorstius [60] afresh torture him, and he agrees with none worse than himself. He puts his foot into heresies tenderly, as a cat in the water, and pulls it out again, and still something unanswered delays him; yet he bears away some parcel of each, and you may sooner pick all religions out
His antient beginning was a blue coat, since a livery, and his hatching under a lawyer; whence, though but pen-feathered, he hath now nested for himself, and with his hoarded pence purchased an office. Two desks and a quire of paper set him up, where he now sits in state for all comers. We can call him no great author, yet he writes very much and with the infamy of the court is maintained in his libels[61]. He has some smatch of a scholar, and yet uses Latin very hardly; and lest it should accuse him, cuts it off in the midst, and will not let it speak out. He is, contrary to great men, maintained by his followers, that is, his poor country clients, that worship him more than their landlord, and be they never such churls, he looks for their courtesy. He first racks them soundly himself, and then delivers them to the lawyer for execution. His looks are very solicitous, importing much haste and dispatch: he is never without his hands full of business, that is—of paper. His skin becomes at last as dry as his parchment, and his face as intricate as the most winding cause. He talks statutes as fiercely as if he had mooted[62] seven years in the inns of court, when all his skill is stuck in his girdle, or in his office-window. Strife and wrangling have made him rich, and he is thankful to his benefactor, and nourishes it. If he live in a country village, he makes all his neighbours good subjects; for there shall be nothing done but what there is law for. His business gives him not leave to think of his conscience, and when the time, or term, of his life is going out, for doomsday he is secure; for he hopes he has a trick to reverse judgment.
Is the opposite extreme to a defamer, for the one speaks ill falsely, and the other well, and both slander the truth. He is one that is still weighing men in the scale of comparisons, and puts his affections, in the one balance, and that sways. His friend always shall do best, and you shall rarely hear good of his enemy. He considers first the man and then the thing, and restrains all merit to what they deserve of him. Commendations he esteems not the debt of worth, but the requital of kindness; and if you ask his reason, shows his interest, and tells you how much he is beholden to that man. He is one that ties his judgment to the wheel of fortune, and they determine giddily both alike. He prefers
Is the elephant with the great trunk, for he eats nothing but what comes through this way. His profession is not so worthy as to occasion insolence, and yet no man so much puffed up. His face is as brazen as his trumpet, and (which is worse) as a fiddler’s, from whom he differeth only in this, that his impudence is dearer. The sea of drink and much wind make a storm perpetually in his cheeks, and his look is like his noise, blustering and tempestuous. He was whilom the sound of war, but now of peace; yet as terrible as ever, for wheresoever he comes they are sure to pay for it. He is the common attendant of glittering folks, whether in the court or stage, where he is always the prologue’s prologue.[63] He is somewhat in the nature of a hogshead, shrillest when he is empty; when his belly is full he is quiet enough. No man proves life more to be a blast, or himself a bubble, and he is like a counterfeit bankrupt, thrives best when he is blown up.
Is one of the herd of the world. One that follows merely the common cry, and makes it louder by one. A man that loves none but who are publickly affected, and he will not be wiser than the rest of the town. That never owns a friend after an ill name, or some general imputation, though he knows it most unworthy. That opposes to reason, “thus men say;” and “thus most do;” and “thus the world goes;” and thinks this enough to poise the other. That worships men in place, and those only; and thinks all a great man speaks oracles. Much taken with my lord’s jest, and repeats you it all to a syllable. One that justifies nothing out of fashion, nor any opinion out of the applauded way. That thinks certainly all Spaniards and Jesuits very villains, and is still cursing the pope and Spinola. One that thinks the gravest cassock the best scholar; and the best clothes the finest man. That is taken only with broad and obscene wit, and hisses any thing too deep for him. That cries, Chaucer for his money above all our English poets, because the voice has gone so, and he has read
Is a kind of alchymist or persecutor of nature, that would change the dull lead of his brain into finer metal, with success many times as unprosperous, or at least not quitting the cost, to wit, of his own oil and candles. He has a strange forced appetite to learning, and to achieve it brings nothing but patience and a body. His study is not great but continual, and consists much in the sitting up till after midnight in a rug-gown and a nightcap, to the vanquishing perhaps of some six lines; yet what he has, he has perfect, for he reads it so long to understand it, till he gets it without book. He may with much industry make a breach into logic, and arrive at some ability in an argument; but for politer studies he dare not skirmish with them, and for poetry accounts it impregnable. His invention is no more than the finding out of his papers, and his few gleanings there; and his disposition of them is as just as the book-binder’s, a setting or gluing of them together. He is a great discomforter of young students, by telling them what travel it has cost him, and how often his brain turned at philosophy, and makes others fear studying as a cause of duncery. He is a man much given to apophthegms, which serve him for wit, and seldom breaks any jest but which belonged to some Lacedemonian or Roman in Lycosthenes. He is like a dull carrier’s horse, that will go a whole week together, but never out of a foot pace; and he that sets forth on the Saturday shall overtake him.
Is the land’s epitome, or you may call it the lesser isle of Great Britain. It is more than this, the whole world’s map, which you may here discern in its perfectest motion, justling and turning. It is a heap of stones and men, with a vast confusion of languages; and were the steeple not sanctified, nothing liker Babel. The noise in it is like that of bees, a strange humming or buzz mixed of walking tongues and feet: it is a kind of still roar or loud whisper. It is the great exchange of all discourse, and no business whatsoever but is here stirring and a-foot. It is the synod of all pates politick, jointed and laid together in most serious posture, and they are not half so busy at the parliament. It is the antic of tails to tails, and backs to backs, and for vizards you need go no farther than faces. It is the market of young lecturers, whom you may cheapen here at all rates and sizes. It is the general mint of all famous lies, which are here like the legends of popery, first coined and stamped in the church. All inventions are emptied here, and not few pockets. The best sign of a temple in it is, that it is the thieves’ sanctuary, which rob more safely in the crowd than a wilderness, whilst every searcher is a bush to hide them. It is the other expence of the day, after plays and tavern; and men have still some oaths left to swear here. The visitants are all men without exceptions, but the principal inhabitants and possessors are stale knights and captains[65] out of service; men of long rapiers and breeches, which after all turn merchants here and traffic for news. Some make it a preface to their dinner, and travel for a stomach: but thriftier men make it their ordinary, and board here very cheap[66]. Of all such places it is least haunted with hobgoblins, for if a ghost would walk more, he could not.
The kitchen is his hell, and he the devil in it, where his meat and he fry together. His revenues are showered down from the fat of the land, and he interlards his own grease among, to help the drippings. Choleric he is not by nature so much as his art, and it is a shrewd temptation that the chopping-knife is so near. His weapons ofter offensive are a mess of hot broth and scalding water, and woe be to him that comes in his way. In the kitchen he will domineer and rule the roast in spite of his master, and curses in the very dialect of his calling. His labour is mere blustering and fury, and his speech like that of sailors in a storm, a thousand businesses at once; yet, in all this tumult, he does not love combustion, but will be the first man that shall go and quench it. He is never a good Christian till a hissing pot of ale has slacked him, like water cast on a firebrand, and for that time he is tame and dispossessed. His cunning is not small in architecture, for he builds strange fabrics in paste, towers and castles, which are offered to the assault of valiant teeth, and like
Is a lusty fellow in a crowd, that is beholden more to his elbow than his legs, for he does not go, but thrusts well. He is a good shuffler in the world, wherein he is so oft putting forth, that at length he puts on. He can do some things, but dare do much more, and is like a desperate soldier, who will assault any thing where he is sure not to enter. He is not so well opinioned of himself, as industrious to make others, and thinks no vice so prejudicial as blushing. He is still citing for himself, that a candle should not be hid under a bushel; and for his part he will be sure not to hide his, though his candle be but a snuff or rush-candle. Those few good parts he has, he is no niggard in displaying, and is like some needy flaunting goldsmith, nothing in the inner room, but all on the cupboard. If he be a scholar, he has commonly stepped into the pulpit before a degree, yet into that too before he deserved it. He never defers St. Mary’s beyond his regency, and his next sermon is at Paul’s cross,[68] [and that printed.] He loves publick things alive; and for any solemn entertainment he will find a mouth, find a speech who will. He is greedy of great acquaintance and many, and thinks it no small advancement to rise to be known. [He is one that has all the great names at court at his fingers’ ends, and their lodgings; and with a saucy, “my lord,” will salute the best of them.] His talk at the table is like Benjamin’s mess, five times to his part, and no argument shuts him out for a quarreller. Of all disgraces he endures not to be nonplussed, and had rather fly for sanctuary to nonsense which few descry, than to nothing, which all. His boldness is beholden to other men’s modesty, which rescues him many times from a baffle; yet his face is good armour, and he is dashed out of anything sooner than countenance. Grosser conceits are puzzled in him for a rare man; and wiser men, though they know him, [yet] take him [in] for their pleasure, or as they would do a sculler for being next at hand. Thus preferment at last stumbles on him, because he is still in the way. His companions that flouted him before, now envy him, when they see him come ready for scarlet, whilst themselves lie musty in their old clothes and colleges.
No man verifies the proverb more, that it is an alms-deed to punish him; for his penalty is a dole,[69] and does the beggars as much good as their dinner. He abhors, therefore, works of charity, and thinks his bread cast away when it is given to the poor. He loves not justice neither, for the weigh-scale’s sake, and hates the clerk of the market as his executioner; yet he finds mercy in his offences, and his basket only is sent to prison.[70] Marry, a pillory is his deadly enemy, and he never hears well after.
Is one that would make all others more fools than himself, for though he knew nothing, he would not have the world know so much. He conceits nothing in learning but the opinion, which he seeks to purchase without it, though he might with less labour cure his ignorance than hide it. He is indeed a kind of scholar-mountebank, and his art our delusion. He is tricked out in all the accoutrements of learning, and at the first encounter none passes better. He is oftener in his study than at his book, and you cannot pleasure him better than to deprehend him: yet he hears you not till the third knock, and then comes out very angry as interrupted. You find him in his slippers[71] and a pen in his ear, in which formality he was asleep. His table is spread wide with some classick folio, which is as constant to it as the carpet, and hath laid open in the same page this half year. His candle is always a longer sitter up than himself, and the boast[72] of his window at midnight. He walks much alone in the posture of meditation, and has a book still before his face in the fields. His pocket is seldom without a Greek testament or Hebrew Bible, which he opens only in the church, and that when some stander-by looks over. He has sentences for company, some scatterings of Seneca and Tacitus, which are good upon all occasions. If he reads any thing in the morning, it comes up all at dinner; and as long as that lasts, the discourse is his. He is a great plagiary of tavern wit, and comes to sermons only that he may talk of Austin. His parcels are the mere scrapings from company, yet he complains at parting what time he has lost. He is wondrously capricious to seem a judgment, and listens with a sour attention to what he understands not. He talks much of Scaliger, and Casaubon, and the Jesuits, and prefers some unheard of Dutch name before them all. He has verses to bring in upon these and these hints, and it shall go hard but he will wind in his opportunity. He is critical in a language he cannot construe, and speaks seldom under Arminius in divinity. His business and retirement and caller away is his study, and he protests no delight to it comparable. He is a great nomenclator of authors, which he has read in general in the catalogue, and in particular in the title, and goes seldom so far as the dedication. He never talks of anything but learning, and learns all from talking. Three encounters with the same men pump him, and then he only puts in or gravely says nothing. He has taken pains to be an ass, though not to be a scholar, and is at length discovered and laughed at.
Is the spawn or indeed but the resultancy of nobility, and to the making of him went not a generation but a genealogy. His trade is honour, and he sells it and gives arms himself, though he be no gentleman. His bribes are like those of a corrupt judge, for they are the prices of blood. He seems very rich in discourse, for he tells you of whole fields of gold and silver, or, and argent, worth much in French but in English nothing. He is a great diver in the streams or issues of gentry, and hot a by-channel or bastard escapes him; yea he does with them like some shameless quean, fathers more children on them than ever they begot. His traffick is a kind of pedlary-ware, scutchions, and pennons, and little daggers and lions, such as children esteem and gentlemen; but his pennyworths are rampant, for you may buy three whole brawns cheaper than three boar’s heads of him painted. He was sometimes the terrible coat of Mars, but is now for more merciful battles in the tilt-yard, where whosoever is victorious, the spoils are his. He is an art in England but in Wales nature, where they are born with heraldry in their mouths, and each name is a pedigree.
Are a bad society, and yet a company of good fellows, that roar deep in the quire, deeper in the tavern. They are the eight parts of speech which go to the syntaxis of service, and are distinguished by their noises much like bells, for they make not a concert but a peal. Their pastime or recreation is prayers, their exercise drinking, yet herein so religiously addicted that they serve God oftest when they are drunk. Their humanity is a leg to the residencer, their learning a chapter, for they learn it commonly before they read it; yet the old Hebrew names are little beholden to them, for they miscall them worse than one another. Though they never expound the scripture, they handle it much, and pollute the gospel with two things, their conversation and their thumbs. Upon worky-days, they behave themselves at prayers as at their pots, for they swallow them down in an instant. Their gowns are laced commonly with streamings of ale, superfluities of a cup or throat above measure. Their skill in melody makes them the better companions abroad, and their anthems abler to sing catches. Long lived for the most part they are not, especially the bass, they overflow their bank so oft to drown the organs. Briefly, if they escape arresting, they die constantly in God’s service; and to take their death with more patience, they have wine and cakes at their funeral, and now they keep[73] the church a great deal better and help to fill it with their bones as before with their noise.
A SHOPKEEPER.
His shop is his well stuft book, and himself the title-page of it, or index. He utters much to all men, though he sells but to a few, and intreats for his own necessities, by asking others what they lack. No man speaks more and no more, for his words are like his wares, twenty of one sort, and he goes over them alike to all comers. He is an arrogant commender of his own things; for whatsoever he shows you is the best in the town, though the worst in his shop. His conscience was a thing that would have laid upon his hands, and he was forced to put it off, and makes great use of honesty to profess upon. He tells you lies by rote, and not minding, as the phrase to sell in and the language he spent most of his years to learn. He never speaks so truly as when he says he would use you as his brother; for he would abuse his brother, and in his shop thinks it lawful. His religion is much in the nature of his customer’s, and indeed the pander to it: and by a mis-interpreted sense of scripture makes a gain of his godliness. He is your slave while you pay him ready money, but if he once befriend you, your tyrant, and you had better deserve his hate than his trust.
Is one whose wit is better pointed than his behaviour, and that coarse and unpolished, not out of ignorance so much as humour. He is a great enemy to the fine gentleman, and these things of compliment, and hates ceremony in conversation, as the Puritan in religion. He distinguishes not betwixt fair and double dealing, and suspects all smoothness for the dress of knavery. He starts at the encounter of a salutation as an assault, and beseeches you in choler to forbear your courtesy. He loves not any thing in discourse that comes before the purpose, and is always suspicious of a preface. Himself falls rudely still on his matter without any circumstance, except he use an old proverb for an introduction. He swears old out-of date innocent oaths, as, by the mass! by our lady! and such like, and though there be lords present, he cries, my masters! He is exceedingly in love with his humour, which makes him always profess and proclaim it, and you must take what he says patiently, because he is a plain man. His nature is his excuse still, and other men’s tyrant; for he must speak his mind, and that is his worst, and craves your pardon most injuriously for not pardoning you. His jests best become him, because they come from him rudely and unaffected; and he has the luck commonly to have them famous. He is one that will do more than he will speak, and yet speak more than he will hear; for though he love to touch others, he is touchy himself, and seldom to his own abuses replies but with his fists. He is as squeazy[74] of his commendations, as his courtesy, and his good word is like an eulogy in a satire. He is generally better favoured than he favours, as being commonly well expounded in his bitterness,
Is the fairer commendation of an inn, above the fair sign, or fair lodgings. She is the loadstone that attracts men of iron, gallants and roarers, where they cleave sometimes long, and are not easily got off. Her lips are your welcome, and your entertainment her company, which is put into the reckoning too, and is the dearest parcel in it. No citizen’s wife is demurer than she at the first greeting, nor draws in her mouth with a chaster simper; but you may be more familiar without distaste, and she does not startle at anything. She is the confusion of a pottle of sack more than would have been spent elsewhere, and her little jugs are accepted to have her kiss excuse them. She may be an honest woman, but is not believed so in her parish, and no man is a greater infidel in it than her husband.
Is one that has spelled over a great many books, and his observation is the orthography. He is the surgeon of old authors, and heals the wounds of dust and ignorance. He converses much in fragments and desunt multa’s, and if he piece it up with two lines he is more proud of that book than the author. He runs over all sciences to peruse their syntaxis, and thinks all learning com-prised in writing Latin. He tastes styles as some discreeter palates do wine; and tells you which is genuine, which sophisticate and bastard. His own phrase is a miscellany of old words, deceased long before the Caesars, and entombed by Varro, and the modernest man he follows is Plautus. He writes omneis at length, and quidquid, and his gerund is most inconformable. He is a troublesome vexer of the dead, which after so long sparing must rise up to the judgment of his castigations. He is one that makes all books sell dearer, whilst he swells them into folios with his comments.
Is one of God’s judgments; and which our roarers do only conceive terrible. He is the properest shape wherein they fancy Satan; for he is at most but an arrester, and hell a dungeon. He is the creditors’ hawk, wherewith they seize upon flying birds, and fetch them again in his talons. He is the period of young gentlemen, or their full stop, for when he meets with them they can go no farther.
Is a gentleman’s follower cheaply purchased, for his own money has hired him. He is an inferior creditor of some ten shillings downwards, contracted for horse-hire, or perchance for drink, too weak to be put in suit, and he arrests your modesty. He is now very expensive of his time, for he will wait upon your stairs a whole afternoon, and dance attendance with more patience than a gentleman-usher. He is a sore beleaguerer of chambers, and assaults them sometimes with furious knocks; yet finds strong resistance commonly, and is kept out. He is a great complainer of scholars loitering, for he is sure never to find them within, and yet he is the chief cause many times that makes them study. He grumbles at the ingratitude of men that shun him for his kindness, but indeed it is his own fault, for he is too great an upbraider. No man puts them more to their brain than he; and by shifting him off they learn to shift in the world. Some chuse their rooms on purpose to avoid his surprisals, and think the best commodity in them his prospect. He is like a rejected acquaintance, hunts those that care not for his company, and he knows it well enough, and yet will not keep away. The sole place to supple him is the buttery, where he takes grievous use upon your name,[76] and he is one much wrought with good beer and rhetoric. He is a man of most unfortunate voyages, and no gallant walks the streets to less purpose.
Is a man: one that has taken order with himself, and sets a rule to those lawlessnesses within him: whose life is distinct and in method, and his actions, as it were, cast up before: not loosed into the world’s vanities, but gathered up and contracted in his station: not scattered into many pieces of business, but that one course he takes, goes through with. A man firm and standing in his purposes, not heaved off with each wind and passion: that squares his expense to his coffers, and makes the total first, and then the items. One that thinks what he does, and does what he says, and foresees what he may do before he purposes. One whose
Is a far finer man than he knows of, one that shews better to all men than himself, and so much the better to all men, as less to himself;[77] for no quality sets a man off like this, and commends him more against his will: and he can put up any injury sooner than this (as he calls it) your irony. You shall hear him confute his commenders, and giving reasons how much they are mistaken, and is angry almost if they do not believe him. Nothing threatens him so much as great expectation, which he thinks more prejudicial than your under-opinion, because it is easier to make that false, than this true. He is one that sneaks from a good action, as one that had pilfered, and dare not justify it; and is more blushingly reprehended in this, than others in sin: that counts all publick declarings of himself, but so many penances before the people; and the more you
Is like one that spends on the stock without any revenues coming in, and will shortly be no wit at all; for learning is the fuel to the fire of wit, which, if it wants this feeding, eats out itself. A good conceit or two bates of such a man, and makes a sensible weakening in him; and his brain recovers it not a year after. The rest of him are bubbles and flashes, darted out on a sudden, which, if you take them while they are warm, may be laughed at; if they are cool, are nothing. He speaks best on the present apprehension, for meditation stupefies him, and the more he is in travail, the less he brings forth. His things come off then, as in a nauseateing stomach, where there is nothing to cast up, strains and convulsions, and some astonishing bombast, which men only, till they understand, are scared with. A verse or some such work he may sometimes get up to, but seldom above the stature of an epigram, and that with some relief out of Martial, which is the ordinary companion of his pocket, and he reads him as he were inspired. Such men are commonly the trifling things of the world, good to make merry the company, and whom only men
Is one that will be a man to-morrow morning, but is now what you will make him, for he is in the power of the next man, and if a friend the better. One that hath let go himself from the hold and stay of reason, and lies open to the mercy of all temptations. No lust but finds him disarmed and fenceless, and with the least assault enters. If any mischief escape him, it was not his fault, for he was laid as fair for it as he could. Every man sees him, as Cham saw his father the first of this sin, an uncovered man, and though his garment be on, uncovered; the secretest parts of his soul lying in the nakedest manner visible: all his passions come out now, all his vanities, and those shamefuller humours which discretion clothes. His body becomes at last like a miry way, where the spirits are beclogged and cannot pass: all his members are out of office, and his heels do but trip up one another. He is a blind man with eyes, and a cripple with legs on. All the use he has of this vessel himself, is to hold thus much; for his drinking is but a scooping in of so many quarts, which are filled out into his body, and that filled out again into the room, which is commonly as drunk as he. Tobacco serves to air him after a washing, and is his only breath and breathing while. He is the greatest enemy to himself, and the next to his friend, and then most in the act of his kindness, for his kindness is but trying a mastery, who shall sink down first: and men come from him as a battle, wounded and bound up. Nothing takes a man off more from his credit, and business, and makes him more recklessly careless what becomes of all. Indeed he dares not enter on a serious thought, or if he do, it is such melancholy that it sends him to be drunk again.
Is the grave of the living,[78] where they are shut up from the world and their friends; and the worms that gnaw upon them their own thoughts and the jailor. A house of meagre looks and ill smells, for lice, drink, and tobacco are the compound. Plato’s court was expressed from this fancy; and the persons are much about the same parity that is there. You may ask, as Menippus in Lucian, which is Nireus, which
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.
Is a fellow newly great and newly proud; one that hath put himself into another face upon his preferment, for his own was not bred to it; one whom fortune hath shot up to some office or authority, and he shoots up his neck to his fortune, and will not bate you an inch of either. His very countenance and gesture bespeak how much he is, and if you understand him not, he tells you, and concludes every period with his place, which you must and shall know. He is one that looks on all men as if he were angry, but especially on those of his acquaintance, whom he beats off with a surlier distance, as men apt to mistake him, because they have known him: and for this cause he knows not you ’till you have told him your name, which he thinks he has heard, but forgot, and with much ado seems to recover. If you have any thing to use him in, you are his vassal for that time, and must give him the patience of any injury, which he does only to shew what he may do. He snaps you up bitterly, because he will be offended, and tells you, you are saucy and troublesome, and sometimes takes your money in this language. His very courtesies are intolerable, they are done with such an arrogance and imputation; and he is the only man you may hate after a good turn, and not be ungrateful; and men reckon it among their calamities to be beholden unto him. No vice draws with it a more general hostility, and makes men readier to search into his faults, and of them, his beginning; and no tale so unlikely but is willingly heard of him and believed. And commonly such men are of no merit at all, but make out in pride what they want in worth, and fence themselves with a stately kind of behaviour from that contempt which would pursue them. They are men whose preferment does us a great deal of wrong, and when they are down, we may laugh at them without breach of good-nature.
Is the first draught of a friend, whom we must lay down oft thus, as the foul copy, before we can write him perfect and true: for from hence, as from a probation, men take a degree in our respect, till at last they wholly possess us: for acquaintance is the hoard, and friendship the pair chosen out of it; by which at last we begin to impropriate and inclose to ourselves what before lay in common with others. And commonly where it grows not up to this, it falls as low as may be; and no poorer relation than old acquaintance, of whom we only ask how they do for fashion’s sake, and care not. The ordinary use of acquaintance is but somewhat a more boldness of society, a sharing of talk, news, drink, mirth together; but sorrow is the right of a friend, as a thing nearer our heart, and to be delivered with it. Nothing easier than to create acquaintance, the mere being in company once does it; whereas friendship, like children, is engendered by a more inward mixture
Some men are familiar with all, and those commonly friends to none; for friendship is a sullener thing, is a contractor and taker up of our affections to some few, and suffers them not loosely to be scattered on all men. The poorest tie of acquaintance is that of place and country, which are shifted as the place, and missed but while the fancy of that continues. These are only then gladdest of other, when they meet in some foreign region, where the encompassing of strangers unites them closer, till at last they get new, and throw off one another. Men of parts and eminency, as their acquaintance is more sought for, so they are generally more staunch of it, not out of pride only, but fear to let too many in too near them: for it is with men as with pictures, the best show better afar off and at distance, and the closer you come to them the coarser they are. The best judgment of a man is taken from his acquaintance, for friends and enemies are both partial; whereas these see him truest because calmest, and are no way so engaged to lie for him. And men that grow strange after acquaintance seldom piece together again, as those that have tasted meat and dislike it, out of a mutual experience disrelishing one another.
Is one to be held off still at the same distance you are now; for you shall have him but thus, and if you enter on him farther you lose him. Methinks Virgil well expresses him in those well-behaved ghosts that AEneas met with, that were friends to talk with, and men to look on, but if he grasped them, but air.[82] He is one that lies kindly to you, and for good fashion’s sake, and ’tis discourtesy in you to believe him. His words are so many fine phrases set together, which serve equally for all men, and are equally to no purpose. Each fresh encounter with a man puts him to the same part again, and he goes over to you what he said to him was last with him: he kisses your hands as he kissed his before, and is your servant to be commanded, but you shall intreat of him nothing. His proffers are universal and general, with exceptions against all particulars. He will do any thing for you, but if you urge him to this, he cannot, or to that, he is engaged; but he will do any thing. Promises he accounts but a kind of mannerly words, and in the expectation of your manners not to exact them: if you do, he wonders at your ill breeding, that cannot distinguish betwixt what is spoken and what is meant. No man gives better satisfaction at the first, and comes off more with the elegy of a kind gentleman, till you know him better, and then you know him for nothing. And commonly those most rail at him, that have before most commended him. The best is, he cozens you in a fair manner, and abuses you with great respect.
Is a man and a fiddle out of case, and he in worse case than his fiddle. One that rubs two sticks together (as the Indians strike fire), and rubs a poor living out of it; partly from this, and partly from your charity, which is more in the hearing than giving him, for he sells nothing dearer than to be gone. He is just so many strings above a beggar, though he have but two; and yet he begs too, only not in the downright ‘for God’s sake,’ but with a shrugging ‘God bless you,’ and his face is more pined than the blind man’s. Hunger is the greatest pain he takes, except a broken head sometimes, and the labouring John Dory.[83] Otherwise his life is so many fits of mirth, and ’tis some mirth to see him. A good feast shall draw him five miles by the nose, and you shall track him again by the scent. His other pilgrimages are fairs and good houses, where his devotion is great to the Christmas; and no man loves good times better. He is in league with the tapsters for the worshipful of the inn, whom he torments next morning with his art, and has their names more perfect than their men. A new song is better to him than a new jacket, especially if bawdy, which he calls merry; and hates naturally the puritan, as an enemy to this mirth. A country wedding and Whitsun-ale are the two main places he domineers in, where he goes for a musician, and overlooks the bag-pipe. The rest of him is drunk, and in the stocks.
Is one that has nothing to do with his business, and yet no man busier than he, and his business is most in his face. He is one thrusts himself violently into all employments, unsent for, unfeed, and many times unthanked; and his part in it is only an eager bustling, that rather keeps ado than does any thing. He will take you aside, and question you of your affair, and listen with both ears, and look earnestly, and then it is nothing so much yours as his. He snatches what you are doing out of your hands, and cries “give it me,” and does it worse, and lays an engagement upon you too, and you must thank him for this pains. He lays you down an hundred wild plots, all impossible things, which you must be ruled by perforce, and he delivers them with a serious and counselling forehead; and there is a great deal more wisdom in this forehead than his head. He will woo for you, solicit for you, and woo you to suffer him; and scarce any thing done, wherein his letter, or his journey, or at least himself is not seen: if he have no task in it else, he will rail yet on some side, and is often beaten when he need not. Such men never thoroughly weigh any business, but are forward only to shew their zeal, when many times this forwardness spoils it, and then they cry they have done what they can, that is, as much hurt. Wise men still deprecate these men’s kindnesses, and are beholden to them rather to let them alone; as being one trouble more in all business, and which a man shall be hardest rid of.
Is the best antiquity, and which we may with least vanity admire. One whom time hath been thus long a working, and like winter fruit, ripened when others are shaken down. He hath taken out as many lessons of the world as days, and learnt the best thing in it; the vanity of it. He looks over his former life as a danger well past, and would not hazard himself to begin again. His lust was long broken before his body, yet he is glad this temptation is broke too, and that he is fortified from it by this weakness. The next door of death sads him not, but he expects it calmly as his turn in nature; and fears more his recoiling back to childishness than dust. All men look on him as a common father, and on old age, for his sake, as a reverent thing. His very presence and face puts vice out of countenance, and makes it an indecorum in a vicious man. He practises his experience on youth without the harshness of reproof, and in his counsel is good company. He has some old stories still of his own seeing to confirm what he says, and makes them better in the telling; yet is not troublesome neither with the same tale again, but remembers with them how oft he has told them. His old sayings and morals seem proper to his beard; and the poetry of Cato does well out of his mouth, and he speaks it as if he were the author. He is not apt to put the boy on a younger man, nor the fool on a boy, but can distinguish gravity from a sour look; and the less testy he is, the more regarded. You must pardon him if he like his own times better than these, because those things are follies to him now that were wisdom then; yet he makes us of that opinion too when we see him, and conjecture those times by so good a relic. He is a man capable of a dearness with the youngest men, yet he not youthfuller for them, but they older for him; and no man credits more his acquaintance. He goes away at last too soon whensoever, with all men’s sorrow but his own; and his memory is fresh, when it is twice as old.
Is the picture of a friend, and as pictures flatter many times, so he oft shews fairer than the true substance: his look, conversation, company, and all the outwardness of friendship more pleasing by odds, for a true friend dare take the liberty to be sometimes offensive, whereas he is a great deal more cowardly, and will not let the least hold go, for fear of losing you. Your mere sour look affrights him, and makes him doubt his cashiering. And this is one sure mark of him, that he is never first angry, but ready though upon his own wrong to make satisfaction. Therefore he is never yoked with a poor man, or any that stands on the lower ground, but whose fortunes may tempt his pains to deceive him. Him he learns first, and learns well, and grows perfecter in his humours than himself, and by this door enters upon his soul, of
Is one that looks like a proud man, but is not: you may forgive him his looks for his worth’s sake, for they are only too proud to be base. One whom no rate can buy off from the least piece of his freedom, and make him digest an unworthy thought an hour. He cannot crouch to a great man to possess him, nor fall low to the earth to rebound never so high again. He stands taller on his own bottom, than others on the advantage ground of fortune, as having solidly that honour of which title is but the pomp. He does homage to no man for his great style’s sake, but is strictly just in the exaction of respect again, and will not bate you a compliment. He is more sensible of a neglect than an undoing, and scorns no man so much as his surly threatener. A man quickly fired, and quickly laid down with satisfaction, but remits any injury sooner than words: only to himself he is irreconcileable, whom he never forgives a disgrace, but is still stabbing himself with the thought of it, and no disease that he dies of sooner. He is one had rather perish than be beholden for his life, and strives more to quit with his friend than his enemy. Fortune may kill him but not deject him, nor make him fall into an humbler key than before, but he is now loftier than ever in his own defence; you shall hear him talk still after thousands, and he becomes it better than those that have it. One that is above the world and its drudgery, and cannot pull down his thoughts to the pelting businesses of life. He would sooner accept the gallows than
Is one much about the same model and pitch of brain that the clown is, only of somewhat a more polite and finical ignorance, and as sillily scorns him as he is sillily admired by him. The quality of the city hath afforded him some better dress of clothes and language, which he uses to the best advantage, and is so much the more ridiculous. His chief education is the visits of his shop, where if courtiers and fine ladies resort, he is infected with so much more eloquence, and if he catch one word extraordinary, wears it forever. You shall hear him mince a compliment sometimes that was never made for him; and no man pays dearer for good words,—for he is oft paid with them. He is suited rather fine than in the fashion, and has still something to distinguish him from a gentleman, though his doublet cost more; especially on Sundays, bridegroom-like, where he carries the state of a very solemn man, and keeps his pew as his shop; and it is a great part of his devotion to feast the minister. But his chiefest guest is a customer, which is the greatest relation he acknowledges, especially if you be an honest gentleman, that is trust him to cozen you enough. His friendships are a kind of gossiping friendships, and those commonly within the circle of his trade, wherein he is careful principally to avoid two things, that is poor men and suretyships. He is a man will spend his sixpence with a great deal of imputation,[85] and no man makes more of a pint of wine than he. He is one bears a pretty kind of foolish love to scholars, and to Cambridge especially for Sturbridge[86] fair’s sake; and of these all are truants to him that are not preachers, and of these the loudest the best; and he is much ravished with the noise of a rolling tongue. He loves to hear discourses out of his element, and the less he understands the better pleased, which he expresses in a smile and some fond protestation. One that does nothing without his chuck,[87] that is his wife, with whom he is billing still in conspiracy, and the wantoner she is, the more power she has over him; and she never stoops so low after him, but is the only woman goes better of a widow than a maid. In the education of his child no man fearfuller, and the danger he fears is a harsh school-master, to whom he is alledging still the weakness of the boy, and pays a fine extraordinary for his mercy. The first whipping rids him to the university, and from thence rids him again for fear of starving, and the best
Is the servant he says of many mistresses, but all are but his lust, to which only he is faithful, and none besides, and spends his best blood and spirits in the service. His soul is the bawd to his body, and those that assist him in this nature the nearest to it. No man abuses more the name of love, or those whom he applies this name to; for his love is like his stomach to feed on what he loves, and the end of it to surfeit and loath, till a fresh appetite rekindle him; and it kindles on any sooner than who deserve best of him. There is a great deal of malignity in this vice, for it loves still to spoil the best things, and a virgin sometimes rather than beauty, because the undoing here is greater, and consequently his glory. No man laughs more at his sin than he, or is so extremely tickled with the remembrance of it; and he is more violence to a modest ear than to her he defloured. An unclean jest enters deep into him, and whatsoever you speak he will draw to lust, and his wit is never so good as here. His unchastest part is his tongue, for that commits always what he must act seldomer; and that commits with all what he acts with few; for he is his own worst reporter, and men believe as bad of him, and yet do not believe him. Nothing harder to his persuasion than a chaste man; and makes a scoffing miracle at it, if you tell him of a maid. And from this mistrust it is that such men fear marriage, or at least marry such as are of bodies to be trusted, to whom only they sell that lust which they buy of others, and make their wife a revenue to their mistress. They are men not easily reformed, because they are so little ill-persuaded of their illness, and have such pleas from man and nature. Besides it is a jeering and flouting vice, and apt to put jests on the reprover. Their disease only converts them, and that only when it kills them.
Is a man too quick for himself; one whose actions put a leg still before his judgement, and out-run it. Every hot fancy or passion is the signal that sets him forward, and his reason comes still in the rear. One that has brain enough, but not patience to digest a business, and stay the leisure of a second thought. All deliberation is to him a kind of sloth and freezing of action, and it shall
Is an extraordinary man in ordinary things. One that would go a strain beyond himself, and is taken in it. A man that overdoes all things with great solemnity of circumstance; and whereas with more negligence he might pass better, makes himself with a great deal of endeavour ridiculous. The fancy of some odd quaintnesses have put him clean beside his nature; he cannot be that he would, and hath lost what he was. He is one must be point-blank in every trifle, as if his credit and opinion hung upon it; the very space of his arms in an embrace studied before and premeditated, and the figure of his countenance of a fortnight’s contriving; he will not curse you without-book and extempore, but in some choice way, and perhaps as some great man curses. Every action of his cries,—“Do ye mark me?” and men do mark him how absurd he is: for affectation is the most betraying humour, and nothing that puzzles a man less to find out than this. All the actions of his life are like so many things bodged in without any natural cadence or connection at all. You shall track him all through like a school-boy’s theme, one piece from one author and this from another, and join all in this general, that they are none of his own. You shall observe his mouth not made for that tone, nor his face for that simper; and it is his luck that his finest things most misbecome him. If he affect the gentleman as the humour most commonly lies that way, not the least punctilio of a fine man, but he
Is one that denies God as far as the law gives him leave; that is, only does not say so in downright terms, for so far he may go. A man that does the greatest sins calmly, and as the ordinary actions of life, and as calmly discourses of it again. He will tell you his business is to break such a commandment, and the breaking of the commandment shall tempt him to it. His words are but so many vomitings cast up to the loathsomeness of the hearers, only those of his company[91] loath it not. He will take upon him with oaths to pelt some tenderer man out of his company, and makes good sport at his conquest over the puritan fool. The Scripture supplies him for jests, and he reads it on purpose to be thus merry: he will prove you his sin out of the Bible, and then ask if you will not take that authority. He never sees the church but of purpose to sleep in it, or when some silly man preaches, with whom he means to make sport, and is most jocund in the church. One that nick-names clergymen with all the terms of reproach, as “rat, black-coat” and the like; which he will be sure to keep up, and never calls them by other: that sings psalms when he is drunk, and cries “God mercy” in mockery, for he must do it. He is one seems to dare God in all his actions, but indeed would out-dare the opinion of Him, which would else turn him desperate; for atheism is the refuge of such sinners, whose repentance would be only to hang themselves.
Is the man that is commonly most fierce against the coward, and labouring to take off this suspicion from himself; for the opinion of valour is a good protection to those that dare not use it. No man is valianter than he is in civil company, and where he thinks no danger may come on it, and is the readiest man to fall upon a drawer and those that must not strike again: wonderful exceptious and cholerick where he sees men are loth to give him occasion, and you cannot pacify him better than by quarrelling with him. The hotter you grow, the more temperate man is he; he protests he always honoured you, and the more you rail upon him, the more he honours you, and you threaten him at last into a very honest quiet man. The sight of a sword wounds him more sensibly than the stroke, for before that come he is dead already. Every man is his master that dare beat him, and every
Is a beggar of a fair estate, of whose wealth we may say as of other men’s unthriftiness, that it has brought him to this: when he had nothing he lived in another kind of fashion. He is a man whom men hate in his own behalf for using himself thus, and yet, being upon himself, it is but justice, for he deserves it. Every accession of a fresh heap bates him so much of his allowance, and brings him a degree nearer starving. His body had been long since desperate, but for the reparation of other men’s tables, where he hoards meats in his belly for a month, to maintain him in hunger so long. His clothes were never young in our memory; you might make long epochas from them, and put them into the almanack with the dear year[92] and the great frost,[93] and he is known by them longer than his face. He is one never gave alms in his life, and yet is as charitable to his neighbour as himself. He will redeem a penny with his reputation, and lose all his friends to boot; and his reason is, he will not be undone. He never pays anything but with strictness of law, for fear of which only he steals not. He loves to pay short a shilling or two in a great sum, and is glad to gain that when he can no more. He never sees friend but in a journey to save the charges of an inn, and then only is not sick; and his friends never see him but to abuse him. He is a fellow indeed of a kind of frantic thrift, and one of the strangest things that wealth can work.
Is so much heraldry without honour, himself less real than his title. His virtue is, that he was his father’s son, and all the expectation of him to beget another. A man that lives merely to preserve another’s memory, and let us know who died so many years ago. One of just as much use as his images, only he differs in this, that he can speak himself, and save the fellow of Westminster[94] a labour: and he remembers nothing better than what was out of his life. His grandfathers and their acts are his discourse, and he tells them with more glory than they did them; and it is well they did enough, or else he had wanted matter. His other studies are his sports and those vices that are fit for great men. Every vanity of his has his officer, and is a serious employment for his servants.
Is the most impotent man, though neither blind nor lame, as wanting the more necessary limbs of life, without which limbs are a burden. A man unfenced and unsheltered from the gusts of the world, which blow all in upon him, like an unroofed house; and the bitterest thing he suffers is his neighbours. All men put on to him a kind of churlisher fashion, and even more plausible natures are churlish to him, as who are nothing advantaged by his opinion. Men fall out with him before-hand to prevent friendship, and his friends too to prevent engagements, or if they own him ’tis in private and a by-room, and on condition not to know them before company. All vice put together is not half so scandalous, nor sets off our acquaintance farther; and even those that are not friends for ends do not love any dearness with such men. The least courtesies are upbraided to him, and himself thanked for none, but his best services suspected as handsome sharking and tricks to get money. And we shall observe it in knaves themselves, that your beggarliest knaves are the greatest, or thought so at least, for those that have wit to thrive by it have art not to seem so. Now a poor man has not vizard enough to mask his vices, nor ornament enough to set forth his virtues, but both are naked and unhandsome; and though no man is necessitated to more ill, yet no man’s ill is less excused, but it is thought a kind of impudence in him to be vicious, and a presumption above his fortune. His good parts lie dead upon his hands, for want of matter to employ them, and at the best are not commended but pitied, as virtues ill placed, and we may say of him, “Tis an honest man, but tis pity;” and yet those that call him so will trust a knave before him. He is a man that has the truest speculation of the world, because all men shew to him in their plainest and worst, as a man they have no plot on, by appearing good to; whereas rich men are entertained with a more holiday behaviour, and see only the best we can dissemble. He is the only he that tries the true strength of wisdom, what it can do of itself without the help of fortune; that with a great deal of virtue conquers extremities; and with a great deal more; his own impatience, and obtains of himself not to hate men.
Is one whom it concerns to be called honest, for if he were not this, he were nothing: and yet he is not this neither, but a good dull vicious fellow, that complies well with the debauchments of the time, and is fit for it. One that has no good part in him to offend his company, or make him to be suspected a proud fellow; but is sociably a dunce, and sociably a drinker. That does it fair and above-board without legermain, and neither sharks for a cup or a reckoning: that is kind over his beer, and protests he loves you, and begins to you again, and loves you again. One that quarrels with no man, but for not pledging him, but takes all absurdities and commits as many, and is no tell-tale next morning, though he remember it. One that will fight for his friend if he hear him abused, and his friend commonly is he that is most likely, and he lifts up many a jug in his defence. He rails against none but censurers, against whom he thinks he rails lawfully, and censurers are all those that are better than himself. These good properties qualify him for honesty enough, and raise him high in the ale-house commendation, who, if he had any other good quality, would be named by that. But now for refuge he is an honest man, and hereafter a sot: only those that commend him think him not so, and those that commend him are honest fellows.
Is one that watches himself a mischief, and keeps a lear eye still, for fear it should escape him. A man that sees a great deal more in every thing than is to be seen, and yet he thinks he sees nothing: his own eye stands in his light. He is a fellow commonly guilty of some weaknesses, which he might conceal if he were careless:—now his over-diligence to hide them makes men pry the more. Howsoever he imagines you have found him, and it shall go hard but you must abuse him whether you will or no. Not a word can be spoke but nips him somewhere; not a jest thrown out but he will make it hit him. You shall have him go fretting out of company, with some twenty quarrels to every man, stung and galled, and no man knows less the occasion than they that have given it. To laugh before him is a dangerous matter, for it cannot be at any thing but at him, and to whisper in his company plain conspiracy. He bids you speak out, and he will answer you, when you thought not of him. He expostulates with you in passion, why you should abuse him, and explains to your ignorance wherein, and gives you very good reason at last to laugh at him hereafter. He is one still accusing others when they are not guilty, and defending himself when he is not accused: and no man is undone more with apologies, wherein he is so elaborately excessive, that none will believe him; and he is never thought worse of, than when he has given satisfaction. Such men can never have friends, because they cannot trust so far; and this humour hath this infection with it, it makes all men to them suspicious. In conclusion, they are men always in offence and vexation with themselves and their neighbours, wronging others in thinking they would wrong them, and themselves most of all in thinking they deserve it.
Published in 1615 “Characters upon Essays, Moral and Divine” and in 1616 a set of Characters called “The Good and the Bad.” He was of a good Essex family, second son of William Breton of Redcross Street, in the parish of St. Giles without Cripplegate. His father was well-to-do, and died in January 1559 (new style) when Nicholas was a boy. His mother took for second husband George Gascoigne the poet. Only a chance note in a diary informs us that Nicholas Breton was once of Oriel College, Oxford. In 1577, when his stepfather Gascoigne died, Breton was living in London, and he then published the first of his many books. He married Ann Sutton in the church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, on the 14th of January 1593 (new style), had a son Henry, born in 1603, a son Edward in 1606, and a daughter Matilda in 1607, who died in her nineteenth year. He was from 1577 onward an active writer both of prose and verse, and a poet of real mark in the days of Elizabeth and James the First, though it was left to Dr. A. B. Grosart to be, in 1875-79, the first editor of his collected works in an edition limited to a hundred copies. The date of Breton’s last publication, “Fantastics,” is 1626, but of the time of his death there is no record, Nicholas Breton’s “Characters upon Essaies” published in 1615, were entitled in full “Characters upon Essaies Morall and Divine, written for those good spirits that will take them ’in good part, and make use of them to good purpose.” In recognition of the kinship between Bacon’s Essays and Character writings, they were dedicated
To the Honourable, and my
much worthy honoured,
truly learned, and Judicious Knight, SIR FRANCIS BACON,
his
Maties. Attorney General,
Increase of honour, health,
and eternal happiness.
Worthy knight, I have read of many essays and a kind of charactering of them, by such, as when I looked unto the form or nature of their writing I have been of the conceit that they were but imitators of your breaking the ice to their inventions, which, how short they fall of your worth, I had rather think than speak, though truth need not blush at her blame. Now, for myself, unworthy to touch near the rock of those diamonds, or to speak in their praise, who so far exceed the power of my capacity, vouchsafe me leave yet, I beseech you, among those apes that would counterfeit the actions of men, to play the like part with learning, and as a monkey that would make a face like a man and cannot, so to write like a scholar and am not; and thus not daring to adventure the print under your patronage, without your favourable allowance in the devoted service of my bounden duty, I leave these poor travails of my spirit to the perusing of your pleasing leisure, with the further fruits of my humble affection, to the happy employment of your honourable pleasure.—At your service in all humbleness,
NICH. BRETON.
Breton prefixed also this address—
TO THE READER.
Read what you list, and understand what you can. Characters are not every man’s construction, though they be writ in our mother tongue; and what I have written, being of no other nature, if they fit not your humour they may please a better. I make no comparison, because I know you not, but if you will vouchsafe to look into them, it may be you may find something in them; their natures are diverse, as you may see, if your eyes be open, and if you can make use of them to good purpose, your wits may prove the better. In brief, fearing the fool will be put upon me for being too busy with matters too far above my understanding, I will leave my imperfection to pardon or correction, and my labour to their liking that will not think ill of a well-meaning, and so rest,—Your well-willing friend,
N.B.
MORAL AND DIVINE.
BY NICHOLAS BRETON.
Wisdom is a working grace in the souls of the elect, by whom the spirit is made capable of those secrets that neither nature nor reason is able to comprehend; who, by a powerful virtue she hath from the Divine Essence, worketh in all things according to the will of the Almighty, and, being before beginning, shall exceed time in an eternal proceeding. She is a light in the intellectual part, by which reason is led to direct the senses in their due course, and nature is preserved from subjecting herself to imperfection. In the Creation she was of counsel with the Trinity in the pleasing of the Deity; in the Redemption the inventor of mercy for the preservation of the elect; and in the Glorification the treasurer of life for the reward of the faithful, who, having committed to her care the carriage of the whole motion, finding the disposition of earth in all the children of her womb, by such a measure as she finds fitting their quality, she gives them either the grace of nature or the glory of reason. While being the mother of the graces, she gives them that holy instruction that, in the knowledge of the highest love, through the paths of virtue, makes a passage to heaven. Learning hath from her that knowledge without the which all knowledge is mere ignorance, while only in the grace of truth is seen the glory of understanding. Knowledge hath from her that learning whereby she is taught the direction of her love in the way of life. Understanding hath from her that knowledge that keeps conceit always in the spirit’s comfort; and judgment from understanding, that rule of justice that by the even weight of impartiality shows the hand of Heaven in the heart of humanity. In the heavens she keeps the angels in their orders, teacheth them the natures of their offices, and employs them in the service of their Creator. In the firmament
Learning is the life of reason and the light of nature, where time, order, and measure square out the true course of knowledge; where discretion in the temper of passion brings experience to the best fruit of affection; while both the Theory and Practice labour in the life of judgment, till the perfection of art show the honour of understanding. She is the key of knowledge that unlocketh the cabinet of conceit, wherein are laid up the labours of virtue for the use of the scholars of wisdom; where every gracious spirit may find matter enough worthy of the record of the best memory. She is the nurse of nature, with that milk of reason that would make a child of grace never lie from the dug. She is the schoolmistress of wit and the gentle governor of will, when the delight of understanding gives the comfort of study. She is unpleasing to none that knows her, and unprofitable to none that loves her. She fears not to wet her feet, to wade through the waters of comfort, but comes not near the seas of iniquity, where folly drowns affection in the delight of vanity. She opens her treasures to the travellers in virtue, but keeps
Knowledge is a collection of understanding gathered in the grounds of learning by the instruction of wisdom. She is the exercise of memory in the actions of the mind, and the employer of the senses in the will of the spirit: she is the notary of time and the trier of truth, and the labour of the spirit in the love of virtue: she is the pleasure of wit and the paradise of reason, where conceit gathereth the sweet of understanding. She is the king’s counsellor and the council’s grace, youth’s guard and age’s glory. It is free from doubts and fears no danger, while the care of Providence cuts off the cause of repentance. She is the enemy of idleness and the maintainer of labour in the care of credit and pleasure of profit: she needs no advice in the resolution of action, while experience in observation finds perfection infallible. It clears errors and cannot be deceived, corrects impurity and will not be corrupted. She hath a wide ear and a close mouth, a pure eye and a perfect heart. It is begotten by grace, bred by virtue, brought up by learning, and maintained by love. She converseth with the best capacities and communicates with the soundest judgments, dwells with the divinest natures and loves the most patient dispositions. Her hope is a kind of assurance, her faith a continual expectation, her love an apprehension of joy, and her life the light of eternity. Her labours are infinite, her ways are unsearchable, her graces incomparable, and her excellencies inexplicable; and therefore, being so little acquainted with her worth as makes me blush at my unworthiness to speak in the least of her praise, I will only leave her advancement to virtue, her honour to wisdom, her grace to truth, and to eternity her glory.
Practice is the motion of the spirit, where the senses are all set to work in their natures, where, in the fittest employment of time, reason maketh the best use of understanding. She is the continuance of knowledge in the ease of memory, and the honour of resolution in the effect of judgment. She plants the spring and reaps the harvest, makes labour sweet and patience comfortable. She hath a foot on the earth but an eye at heaven, where the prayer of faith finds the felicity of the soul. In the fruit of charity she shows the nature of devotion, and in the mercy of justice the glory of government. She gives time honour in the fruit of action, and reason grace in the application of knowledge. She takes the height of the sun, walks about the world, sounds the depth of the sea, and makes her passage through the waters. She is ready for all occasions, attendeth all persons, works with all instruments, and finisheth all actions. She takes invention for her teacher, makes time her servant, method her direction, and place her habitation. She hath a wakeful eye and a working brain, which fits the members of the body to the service of the spirit. She is the physician’s agent and the apothecary’s benefactor, the chirurgeon’s wealth and the patient’s patience. She brings time to labour and care to contentment, learning to knowledge and virtue to honour: in idleness she hath no pleasure, nor acquaintance with ignorance, but in industry is her delight and in understanding her grace. She hath a passage through all the predicaments, she hath a hand in all the arts, a property in all professions, and a quality in all conditions. In brief, so many are the varieties of the manners of her proceedings as makes me fearful to follow her too far in observation, lest being never able to come near the height of her commendation, I be enforced as I am to leave her wholly to admiration.
Patience is a kind of heavenly tenure, whereby the soul is held in possession, and a sweet temper in the spirit, which restraineth nature from exceeding reason in passion. Her hand keeps time in his right course, and her eye passeth into the depth of understanding. She attendeth wisdom in all her works, and proportioneth time to the necessity of matter. She is the poison of sorrow in the hope of comfort, and the paradise of conceit in the joy of peace. Her tongue speaks seldom but to purpose, and her foot goeth slowly but surely. She is the imitator of the Incomprehensible in His passage to perfection, and a servant of His will in the map of His workmanship: in confusion she hath no operation, while she only aireth her conceit with the consideration of experience. She travels far and is never weary, and gives over no work but to better a beginning. She makes the king merciful and the subject loyal, honour gracious and wisdom glorious. She pacifieth wrath and puts off revenge, and in the humility of
Love is the life of Nature and the joy of reason in the spirit of grace; where virtue drawing affection, the concord of sense makes an union inseparable in the divine apprehension of the joy of election. It is a ravishment of the soul in the delight of the spirit, which, being carried above itself into inexplicable comfort, feels that heavenly sickness that is better than the world’s health, when the wisest of men in the swounding delight of his sacred inspiration could thus utter the sweetness of his passion, “My soul is sick of love.” It is a healthful sickness in the soul, a pleasing passion in the heart, a contentive labour in the mind, and a peaceful trouble of the senses. It alters natures in contrarieties, when difficulty is made easy; pain made a pleasure; poverty, riches; and imprisonment, liberty; for the content of conceit, which regards not to be an abject, in being subject but to an object. It rejoiceth in truth, and knows no inconstancy: it is free from jealousy, and feareth no fortune: it breaks the rule of arithmetic by confounding of number, where the conjunction of thoughts makes one mind in two bodies, where neither figure nor cipher can make division of union. It sympathises with life, and participates with light, when the eye of the mind sees the joy of the heart. It is a predominant power which endures no equality, and yet communicates with reason in the rules of concord: it breeds safety in a king and peace in a kingdom, nation’s unity, and Nature’s gladness. It sings in labour, in the joy of hope; and makes a paradise in reward of desert. It pleads but mercy in the justice of the Almighty, and but mutual amity in the nature of humanity. In sum, having no eagle’s eye to look upon the sun, and fearing to look too high, for fear of a chip in mine eye, I will in these few words speak in praise of this peerless virtue:—Love is the grace of Nature and the glory of reason, the blessing of God and the comfort of the world.
Peace is a calm in conceit, where the senses take pleasure in the rest of the spirit. It is Nature’s holiday after reason’s labour, and wisdom’s music in the concords of the mind. It is a blessing of grace, a bounty of mercy, a proof of love, and a preserver of life. It holds no arguments, knows no quarrels, is an enemy to sedition, and a continuance of amity. It is the root of plenty, the tree of pleasure, the fruit of love, and the sweetness of life. It is like the still night, where all things are at rest, and the quiet sleep, where dreams are not troublesome; or the resolved point, in the perfection of knowledge, where no cares nor doubts make controversies in opinion. It needs no watch where is no fear of enemy, nor solicitor of causes where agreements are concluded. It is the intent of law and the fruit of justice, the end of war and the beginning of wealth. It is a grace in a court, and a glory in a kingdom, a blessing in a family, and a happiness in a commonwealth. It fills the rich man’s coffers, and feeds the poor man’s labour. It is the wise man’s study, and the good man’s joy: who love it are gracious, who make it are blessed, who keep it are happy, and who break it are miserable. It hath no dwelling with idolatry, nor friendship with falsehood; for her life is in truth, and in her all is Amen. But lest in the justice of peace I may rather be reproved for my ignorance of her work than thought worthy to speak in her praise, with this only conclusion in the commendation of peace I will draw to an end and hold my peace:—It was a message of joy at the birth of Christ, a song of joy at the embracement of Christ, an assurance of joy at the death of Christ, and shall be the fulness of joy at the coming of Christ.
War is a scourge of the wrath of God, which by famine, fire, or sword humbleth the spirits of the repentant, trieth the patience of the faithful, and hardeneth the hearts of the ungodly. It is the misery of time and the terror of Nature, the dispeopling of the earth and the ruin of her beauty. Her life is action, her food blood, her honour valour, and her joy conquest. She is valour’s exercise and honour’s adventure, reason’s trouble and peace’s enemy: she is the stout man’s love and the weak man’s fear, the poor man’s toil and the rich man’s plague: she is the armourer’s benefactor and the chirurgeon’s agent, the coward’s ague and the desperate’s overthrow. She is the wish of envy, the plague of them that wish her, the shipwreck of life, and the agent for death. The best of her is, that she is the seasoner of the body and the manager of the mind for the enduring of labour in the resolution of action. She thunders in the air, rips up the earth, cuts through the seas, and consumes with the fire: she is indeed the invention of malice, the work of mischief, the music of hell, and the dance of the devil. She makes the end of youth untimely
Valour is a ’virtue in the spirit which keeps the flesh in subjection, resolves without fear, and travails without fainting: she vows no villainy nor breaks her fidelity: she is patient in captivity and pitiful in conquest. Her gain is honour and desert her mean, fortune her scorn and folly her hate; wisdom is her guide and conquest her grace, clemency her praise and humility her glory: she is youth’s ornament and age’s honour, nature’s blessing and virtue’s love. Her life is resolution and her love victory, her triumph truth, and her fame virtue. Her arms are from antiquity and her coat full of honour, where the title of grace hath her heraldry from heaven. She makes a walk of war and a sport of danger, an ease of labour and a jest of death: she makes famine but abstinence, want but a patience, sickness but a purge, and death a puff. She is the maintainer of war, the general of an army, the terror of an enemy, and the glory of a camp. She is the nobleness of the mind and the strength of the body, the life of hope and the death of fear. With a handful of men she overthrows a multitude, and with a sudden amazement she discomfits a camp. She is the revenge of wrong and the defence of right, religion’s champion and virtue’s choice. In brief, let this suffice in her commendation:—She strengthened David and conquered Goliath, she overthrows her enemies and conquers herself.
Resolution is the honour of valour, in the quarrel of virtue, for the defence of right and redress of wrong. She beats the march, pitcheth the battle, plants the ordnance, and maintains the fight. Her ear is stopped for dissuasions, her eye aims only at honour, her hand takes the sword of valour, and her heart thinks of nothing but victory. She gives the charge, makes the stand, assaults the fort, and enters the breach. She breaks the pikes, faceth the shot, damps the soldier, and defeats the army. She loseth no time, slips no occasion, dreads no danger, and cares for no force. She is valour’s life and virtue’s love, justice’s honour and mercy’s glory. She beats down castles, fires ships, wades through the sea, and walks through the world. She makes wisdom her guide and will
Honour is a title or grace given by the spirit of virtue to the desert of valour in the defence of truth; it is wronged in baseness and abused in unworthiness, and endangered in wantonness and lost in wickedness. It nourisheth art and crowneth wit, graceth learning and glorifieth wisdom; in the heraldry of heaven it hath the richest coat, being in nature allied unto all the houses of grace, which in the heaven of heavens attend the King of kings. Her escutcheon is a heart, in which in the shield of faith she bears on the anchor of hope the helmet of salvation: she quarters with wisdom in the resolution of valour, and in the line of charity she is the house of justice. Her supporters are time and patience, her mantle truth, and her crest Christ treading upon the globe of the world, her impress Corona mea Christus. In brief, finding her state so high that I am not able to climb unto the praise of her perfection, I will leave her royalty to the register of most princely spirits, and in my humble heart thus only deliver my opinion of her:—She is virtue’s due and grace’s gift, valour’s wealth and reason’s joy.
Truth is the glory of time and the daughter of eternity, a title of the highest grace, and a note of a divine nature. She is the life of religion, the light of love, the grace of wit, and the crown of wisdom: she is the beauty of valour, the brightness of honour, the blessing of reason, and the joy of faith. Her truth is pure gold, her time is right precious, her word is most gracious, and her will is most glorious. Her essence is in God and her dwelling with His servants, her will in His wisdom and her work to His glory. She is honoured in love and graced in constancy, in patience admired and in charity beloved. She is the angel’s worship, the virgin’s fame, the saint’s bliss, and the martyr’s crown: she is the king’s greatness and his counsel’s goodness, his subject’s peace and his kingdom’s praise: she is the life of learning and the light
Time is a continual motion, which from the highest Mover hath his operation in all the subjects of Nature, according to their quality or disposition. He is in proportion like a circle, wherein he walketh with an even passage to the point of his prefixed place. He attendeth none, and yet is a servant to all; he is best employed by wisdom, and most abused by folly. He carrieth both the sword and the sceptre, for the use both of justice and mercy. He is present in all inventions, and cannot be spared from action. He is the treasury of graces in the memory of the wise, and brings them forth to the world upon necessity of their use. He openeth the windows of heaven to give light unto the earth, and spreads the cloak of the night to cover the rest of labour. He closeth the eye of Nature and waketh the spirit of reason; he travelleth through the mind, and is visible but to the eye of understanding. He is swifter than the wind, and yet is still as a stone; precious in his right use, but perilous in the contrary. He is soon found of the careful soul, and quickly missed in the want of his comfort: he is soon lost in the lack of employment, and not to be recovered without a world of endeavour. He is the true man’s peace and the thief’s perdition, the good man’s blessing and the wicked man’s curse. He is known to be, but his being unknown, but only in his being in a being above knowledge. He is a riddle not to be read but in the circumstance of description, his name better known than his nature, and he that maketh best use of him hath the best understanding of him. He is like the study of the philosopher’s stone, where a man may see wonders and yet short of his expectation. He is at the invention of war, arms the soldier, maintains the quarrel, and makes the peace. He is the courtier’s playfellow and the soldier’s schoolmaster, the lawyer’s gain and the merchant’s hope. His life is motion and his love action, his honour patience and his glory perfection. He masketh modesty and blusheth virginity, honoureth humility and graceth charity. In sum, finding it a world to walk through the wonder of his worth, I will thus briefly deliver what I find truly of him:—He is the agent of the living and the register of the dead, the direction of God and a great work-master in the world.
Death is an ordinance of God for the subjecting of the world, which is limited to his time for the correction of pride: in his substance he is nothing, being but only ii deprivation, and in his true description a name without a nature. He is seen but in a picture, heard but in a tale, feared but in a passion, and felt but in a pinch. He is a terror but to the wicked, and a scarecrow but to the foolish; but to the wise a way of comfort, and to the godly the gate to life. He is the ease of pain and the end of sorrow, the liberty of the imprisoned and the joy of the faithful; it is both the wound of sin and the wages of sin, the sinner’s fear and the sinner’s doom. He is the sexton’s agent and the hangman’s revenue, the rich man’s dirge and the mourner’s merry-day. He is a course of time but uncertain till he come, and welcome but to such as are weary of their lives. It is a message from the physician when the patient is past cure, and if the writ be well made, it is a supersedeas for all diseases. It is the heaven’s stroke and the earth’s steward, the follower of sickness and the forerunner to hell In sum, having no pleasure to ponder too much of the power of it, I will thus conclude my opinion of it:—It is a sting of sin and the terror of the wicked, the crown of the godly, the stair of vengeance, and a stratagem of the devil.
Faith is the hand of the soul which layeth hold of the promises of Christ in the mercy of the Almighty. She hath a bright eye and a holy ear, a clear heart and sure foot: she is the strength of hope, the trust of truth, the honour of amity, and the joy of love. She is rare among the sons of men and hardly found among the daughters of women; but among the sons of God she is a conveyance of their inheritance, and among the daughters of grace she is the assurance of their portions. Her dwelling is in the Church of God, her conversation with the saints of God, her delight with the beloved of God, and her life is in the love of God. She knows no falsehood, distrusts no truth, breaks no promise, and coins no excuse; but as bright as the sun, as swift as the wind, as sure as the rock, and as pure as the gold, she looks toward heaven but lives in the world, in the souls of the elect to the glory of election. She was wounded in Paradise by a dart of the devil, and healed of her hurt by the death of Christ Jesus. She is the poor man’s credit and the rich man’s praise, the wise man’s care and the good man’s cognisance. In sum, finding her worth in words hardly to be expressed, I will in these few words only deliver my opinion of her:—She is God’s blessing and man’s bliss, reason’s comfort and virtue’s glory.
Fear is a fruit of sin, which drove the first father of our flesh from the presence of God, and hath bred an imperfection in a number of the worse part of his posterity. It is the disgrace of nature, the foil of reason, the maim of wit, and the slur of understanding. It is the palsy of the spirit where the soul wanteth faith, and the badge of a coward that cannot abide the sight of a sword. It is weakness in nature and a wound in patience, the death of hope and the entrance into despair. It is children’s awe and fools’ amazement, a worm in conscience and a curse to wickedness. In brief, it makes the coward stagger, the liar stammer, the thief stumble, and the traitor start. It is a blot in arms, a blur in honour, the shame of a soldier, and the defeat of an army.
* * * * *
Breton’s next little prose book, published in the following year, 1616—year of the death of Shakespeare—was a set of Characters, “The Good and the Bad,” without suggestion that they were built upon the lines of Bacon’s Essays. Bacon’s Essays first appeared as a set of ten in 1597, became a set of forty in the revised edition of 1612, and of fifty-eight in the edition of 1625, published a year before their author’s death. In their sententious brevity Bacon’s Essays have, of course, a style more nearly allied to the English Character Writing of the Seventeenth Century than to the Sixteenth Century Essays of Montaigne, which were altogether different in style, matter, and aim. This, for example, was Bacon’s first Essay in the 1597 edition:—
Studies serve for pastimes, for ornaments, for abilities; their chief use for pastimes is in privateness and retiring, for ornaments in discourse, and for ability in judgment; for expert men can execute, but learned men are more fit to judge and censure. To spend too much time in them is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humour of a scholar; they perfect nature, and are themselves perfected by experience; crafty men contemn them, wise men use them, simple men admire them; for they teach not their own use, but that there is a wisdom without them and above them won by observation. Read not to contradict nor to believe, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some are to be read only in parts, others to be read but curiously, and some few to be read wholly with diligence and attention. Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready, and writing an exact man; therefore, if a man write little, he had need of a great memory; if he confer little, he had need of a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning to seem to know that he doth not know. Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtile; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend.
OR,
UNWORTHIES OF THIS AGE.
BY NICHOLAS BRETON.
A worthy king is a figure of God, in the nature of government. He is the chief of men and the Church’s champion, Nature’s honour and earth’s majesty: is the director of law and the strength of the same, the sword of justice and the sceptre of mercy, the glass of grace and the eye of honour, the terror of treason and the life of loyalty. His command is general and his power absolute, his frown a death and his favour a life: his charge is his subjects, his care their safety, his pleasure their peace, and his joy their love. He is not to be paralleled, because he is without equality, and the prerogative of his crown must not be contradicted. He is the Lord’s anointed, and therefore must not be touched, and the head of a public body, and therefore must be preserved. He is a scourge of sin and a blessing of grace, God’s vicegerent over His people, and under Him supreme governor. His safety must be his council’s care, his health his subjects’ prayer, his pleasure his peers’ comfort, and his content his kingdom’s gladness. His presence must be reverenced, his person attended, his court adorned, and his state maintained. His bosom must not be searched, his will not disobeyed, his wants not unsupplied, nor his place unregarded. In sum, he is more than a man, though not a god, and next under God to be honoured above man.
An unworthy king is the usurper of power, where tyranny in authority loseth the glory of majesty, while the fear of terror frighteneth love from obedience; for when the lion plays with the wolf, the lamb dies with the ewe. He is a messenger of wrath to be the scourge of sin, or the trial of patience in the hearts of the religious. He is a warrant of woe in the execution of his fury, and in his best temper a doubt of grace. He is a dispeopler of his kingdom and a prey to his enemies, an undelightful friend and a tormentor of himself. He knows no God, but makes an idol of Nature, and useth reason but to the ruin of sense. His care is but his will, his pleasure but his ease, his exercise but sin, and his delight but inhuman. His heaven is his pleasure, and his gold is his god. His presence is terrible, his countenance horrible, his words uncomfortable, and his actions intolerable. In sum, he is the foil of a crown, the disgrace of a court, the trouble of a council, and the plague of a kingdom.
A worthy queen is the figure of a king who, under God in His grace, hath a great power over His people. She is the chief of women, the beauty of her court, and the grace of her sex in the royalty of her spirit. She is like the moon, that giveth light among the stars, and, but unto the sun, gives none place in her brightness. She is the pure diamond upon the king’s finger, and the orient pearl unprizeable in his eye, the joy of the court in the comfort of the king, and the wealth of the kingdom in the fruit of her love. She is reason’s honour in nature’s grace, and wisdom’s love in virtue’s beauty. In sum, she is the handmaid of God, and the king’s second self, and in his grace, the beauty of a kingdom.
A worthy prince is the hope of a kingdom, the richest jewel in a king’s crown, and the fairest flower in the queen’s garden. He is the joy of nature in the hope of honour, and the love of wisdom in the life of worthiness. In the secret carriage of his heart’s intention, till his designs come to action, he is a dumb show to the world’s imagination. In his wisdom he startles the spirits of expectation in his valour, he subjects the hearts of ambition in his virtue, he wins the love of the noblest, and in his bounty binds the service of the most sufficient. He is the crystal glass, where nature may see her comfort, and the book of reason, where virtue may read her honour. He is the morning star that hath light from the sun, and the blessed fruit of the tree of earth’s paradise. He is the study of the wise in the state of honour, and is the subject of learning, the history of admiration. In sum, he is the note of wisdom, the aim of honour, and in the honour of virtue the hope of a kingdom.
An unworthy prince is the fear of a kingdom. When will and power carry pride in impatience, in the close carriage of ambitious intention, he is like a fearful dream to a troubled spirit. In his passionate humours he frighteneth the hearts of the prudent, in the delight of vanities he loseth the love of the wise, and in the misery of avarice is served only with the needy. He is like a little mist before the rising of the sun, which, the more it grows, the less good it doth. He is the king’s grief and the queen’s sorrow, the court’s trouble and the kingdom’s curse. In sum, he is the seed of unhappiness, the fruit of ungodliness, the taste of bitterness, and the digestion of heaviness.
A worthy privy councillor is the pillar of a realm, in whose wisdom and care, under God and the king, stands the safety of a kingdom. He is the watch-tower to give warning of the enemy, and a hand of provision for the preservation of the state. He is an oracle in the king’s ear, and a sword in the king’s hand; an even weight in the balance of justice, and a light of grace in the love of truth. He is an eye of care in the course of law, a heart of love in his service to his sovereign, a mind of honour in the order of his service, and a brain of invention for the good of the commonwealth. His place is powerful while his service is faithful, and his honour due in the desert of his employment. In sum, he is as a fixed planet among the stars of the firmament, which through the clouds in the air shows the nature of his light.
An unworthy councillor is the hurt of a king and the danger of a state, when the weakness of judgment may commit an error, or the lack of care may give way to unhappiness. He is a wicked charm in the king’s ear, a sword of terror in the advice of tyranny. His power is perilous in the partiality of will, and his heart full of hollowness in the protestation of love. Hypocrisy is the cover of his counterfeit religion, and traitorous invention is the agent of his ambition. He is the cloud of darkness that threateneth foul weather; and if it grow to a storm, it is fearful where it falls. He is an enemy to God in the hate of grace, and worthy of death in disloyalty to his sovereign. In sum, he is an unfit person for the place of a councillor and an unworthy subject to look a king in the face.
A nobleman is a mark of honour, where the eye of wisdom in the observation of desert sees the fruit of grace. He is the orient pearl that reason polisheth for the beauty of nature, and the diamond spark where divine grace gives virtue honour. He is the notebook of moral discipline, where the conceit of care may find the true courtier. He is the nurse of hospitality, the relief of necessity, the love of charity, and the life of bounty. He is learning’s grace and valour’s fame, wisdom’s fruit and kindness’ love. He is the true falcon that feeds on no carrion, the true horse that will be no hackney, the true dolphin that fears not the whale, and the true man of God that fears not the devil. In sum, he is the darling of nature in reason’s philosophy, the loadstar of light in love’s astronomy, the ravishing sweet in the music of honour, and the golden number in grace’s arithmetic.
An unnoble man is the grief of reason, when the title of honour is put upon the subject of disgrace; when either the imperfection of wit or the folly of will shows an unfitness in nature for the virtue of advancement. He is the eye of baseness and spirit of grossness, and in the demean of rudeness the scorn of nobleness. He is a suspicion of a right generation in the nature of his disposition, and a miserable plague to a feminine patience. Wisdom knows him not, learning bred him not, virtue loves him not, and honour fits him not. Prodigality or avarice are the notes of his inclination, and folly or mischief are the fruits of his invention. In sum, he is the shame of his name, the disgrace of his place, the blot of his title, and the ruin of his house.
A worthy bishop is an ambassador from God unto man, in the midst of war to make a treaty of peace; who with a general pardon upon confession of sin, upon the fruit of repentance gives assurance of comfort. He brings tidings from heaven of happiness to the world, where the patience of mercy calls nature to grace. He is the silver trumpet in the music of love, where faith hath a life that never fails the beloved. He is the director of life in the laws of God, and the chirurgeon of the soul in lancing the sores of sin; the terror of the reprobate in pronouncing their damnation, and the joy of the faithful in the assurance of their salvation. In sum, he is in the nature of grace, worthy of honour; and in the message of life, worthy of love; a continual agent betwixt God and man, in the preaching of His Word and prayer for His people.
An unworthy bishop is the disgrace of learning, when the want of reading or the abuse of understanding, in the speech of error may beget idolatry. He is God’s enemy, in the hurt of His people, and his own woe in abuse of the Word of God. He is the shadow of a candle that gives no light, or, if it be any, it is but to lead into darkness. The sheep are unhappy that live in his fold, when they shall either starve or feed on ill ground. He breeds a war in the wits of his audience when his life is contrary to the nature of his instruction. He lives in a room where he troubles a world, and in the shadow of a saint is little better than a devil. He makes religion a cloak of sin, and with counterfeit humility covereth incomparable pride. He robs the rich to relieve the poor, and makes fools of the wise with the imagination of his worth. He is all for the Church but nothing for God, and for the ease of nature loseth the joy of reason. In sum, he is the picture of hypocrisy, the spirit of heresy, a wound in the Church, and a woe in the world.
A judge is a doom, whose breath is mortal upon the breach of law, where criminal offences must be cut off from a commonwealth. He is a sword of justice in the hand of a king, and an eye of wisdom in the walk of a kingdom. His study is a square for the keeping of proportion betwixt command and obedience, that the king may keep his crown on his head, and the subject his head on his shoulders. He is feared but of the foolish, and cursed but of the wicked; but of the wise honoured, and of the gracious beloved. He is a surveyor of rights and revenger of wrongs, and in the judgment of truth the honour of justice. In sum, his word is law, his power grace, his labour peace, and his desert honour.
An unworthy judge is the grief of justice in the error of judgment, when through ignorance or will the death of innocency lies upon the breath of opinion. He is the disgrace of law in the desert of knowledge, and the plague of power in the misery of oppression. He is more moral than divine in the nature of policy, and more judicious than just in the carriage of his conceit. His charity is cold when partiality is resolved; when the doom of life lies on the verdict of a jury, with a stern look he frighteth an offender and gives little comfort to a poor man’s cause. The golden weight overweighs his grace, when angels play the devils in the hearts of his people. In sum, where Christ is preached he hath no place in His Church; and in this kingdom out of doubt God will not suffer any such devil to bear sway.
A worthy knight is a spirit of proof in the advancement of virtue, by the desert of honour, in the eye of majesty. In the field he gives courage to his soldiers, in the court grace to his followers, in the city reputation to his person, and in the country honour to his house. His sword and his horse make his way to his house, and his armour of best proof is an undaunted spirit. The music of his delight is the trumpet and the drum, and the paradise of his eye is an army defeated; the relief of the oppressed makes his conquest honourable, and the pardon of the submissive makes him famous in mercy. He is in nature mild and in spirit stout, in reason judicious, and in all honourable. In sum, he is a yeoman’s commander and a gentleman’s superior, a nobleman’s companion and a prince’s worthy favourite.
An unworthy knight is the defect of nature in the title of honour, when to maintain valour his spurs have no rowels nor his sword a point. His apparel is of proof, that may wear like his armour, or like an old ensign that hath his honour in rags. It may be he is the tailor’s trouble in fitting an ill shape, or a mercer’s wonder in wearing of silk. In the court he stands for a cipher,
A worthy gentleman is a branch of the tree of honour, whose fruits are the actions of virtue, as pleasing to the eye of judgment as tasteful to the spirit of understanding. Whatsoever he doeth it is not forced, except it be evil, which either through ignorance unwillingly, or through compulsion unwillingly, he falls upon. He is in nature kind, in demeanour courteous, in allegiance loyal, and in religion zealous; in service faithful, and in reward bountiful. He is made of no baggage stuff, nor for the wearing of base people; but it is woven by the spirit of wisdom to adorn the court of honour. His apparel is more comely than costly, and his diet more wholesome than excessive; his exercise more healthful than painful, and his study more for knowledge than pride; his love not wanton nor common, his gifts not niggardly nor prodigal, and his carriage neither apish nor sullen. In sum, he is an approver of his pedigree by the nobleness of his passage, and in the course of his life an example to his posterity.
An unworthy gentleman is the scoff of wit and the scorn of honour, where more wealth than wit is worshipped of simplicity; who spends more in idleness than would maintain thrift, or hides more in misery than might purchase honour; whose delights are vanities and whose pleasures fopperies, whose studies fables and whose exercise worse than follies. His conversation is base, and his conference ridiculous; his affections ungracious, and his actions ignominious; his apparel out of fashion, and his diet out of order; his carriage out of square, and his company out of request. In sum, he is like a mongrel dog with a velvet collar, a cart-horse with a golden saddle, a buzzard kite with a falcon’s bells, or a baboon with a pied jerkin.
A worthy lawyer is the student of knowledge how to bring controversies into a conclusion of peace, and out of ignorance to gain understanding. He divides time into uses, and cases into constructions. He lays open obscurities, and is praised for the speech of truth; and in the court of conscience pleads much in forma pauperis, for small fees. He is a mean for the preservation of titles and the holding of possessions, and a great instrument of peace in the judgment of impartiality. He is the client’s hope in his case’s pleading, and his heart’s comfort in a happy issue. He is the finder out of tricks in the craft of ill conscience, and the joy of the distressed in the relief of justice. In sum, he is a maker of peace among spirits of contention, and a continuer of quiet in the execution of the law.
An unlearned and unworthily called a lawyer, is the figure of a foot-post, who carries letters but knows not what is in them, only can read the superscriptions to direct them to their right owners. So trudgeth this simple clerk, that can scarce read a case when it is written, with his handful of papers from one court to another, and from one counsellor’s chamber to another, when by his good payment for his pains he will be so saucy as to call himself a solicitor. But what a taking are poor clients in when this too much trusted cunning companion, better read in Piers Plowman than in Plowden, and in the play of “Richard the Third” than in the pleas of Edward the Fourth, persuades them all is sure when he is sure of all! and in what a misery are the poor men when upon a Nihil dicit, because indeed this poor fellow Nihil potest dicere, they are in danger of an execution before they know wherefore they are condemned. But I wish all such more wicked than witty unlearned in the law and abusers of the same, to look a little better into their consciences, and to leave their crafty courses, lest when the law indeed lays them open, instead of carrying papers in their hands, they wear not papers on their heads; and instead of giving ear to their client’s causes or rather eyes into their purses, they have never an ear left to hear withal, nor good eye to see withal, or at least honest face to look out withal; but as the grasshoppers of Egypt, be counted the caterpillars of England, and not the fox that stole the goose, but the great fox that stole the farm from the gander.
A worthy soldier is the child of valour, who was born for the service of necessity, and to bear the ensign of honour in the actions of worth. He is the dyer of the earth with blood, and the ruin of the erections of pride. He is the watch of wit, the advantage of time, and the executioner of wrath upon the wilful offender. He disputes questions with the point of a sword, and prefers death to indignities. He is a lion to ambition, and a lamb to submission; he hath hope fast by the hand, and treads upon the head of fear. He is the king’s champion, and the kingdom’s guard; peace’s preserver, and rebellion’s terror. He makes the horse trample at the sound of a trumpet, and leads on to a battle as if he were going to a breakfast. He knows not the nature of cowardice, for his rest is set up upon resolution; his strongest fortification is his mind, which beats off the assaults of idle humours, and his life is the passage of danger, where an undaunted spirit stoops to no fortune. With his arms he wins his arms, and by his desert in the field his honour in the court. In sum, in the truest manhood he is the true man, and in the creation of honour a most worthy creature.
An untrained soldier is like a young hound, that when he first falls to hunt, he knows not how to lay his nose to the earth; who, having his name but in a book, and marched twice about a market-place, when he comes to a piece of service knows not how to bestow himself. He marches as if he were at plough, carries his pike like a pike-staff, and his sword before him for fear of losing from his side. If he be a shot, he will be rather ready to say a grace over his piece, and so to discharge his hands of it, than to learn how to discharge it with a grace. He puts on his armour over his ears, like a waistcoat, and wears his morion like a nightcap. When he is quartered in the field, he looks for his bed, and when he sees his provant, he is ready to cry for his victuals; and ere he know well where he is, wish heartily he were at home again, with his head hanging down as if his heart were in his hose. He will sleep till a drum or a deadly bullet awake him; and so carry himself in all companies that, till martial discipline have seasoned his understanding, he is like a cipher among figures, an owl among birds, a wise man among fools, and a shadow among men.
A worthy physician is the enemy of sickness, in purging nature from corruption. His action is most in feeling of pulses, and his discourses chiefly of the natures of diseases. He is a great searcher out of simples, and accordingly makes his composition. He persuades abstinence and patience for the benefit of health, while purging and bleeding are the chief courses of his counsel. The apothecary and the chirurgeon are his two chief attendants, with whom conferring upon time, he grows temperate in his cures. Surfeits and wantonness are great agents for his employment, when by the secret of his skill out of others’ weakness he gathers his own strength. In sum, he is a necessary member for an unnecessary malady, to find a disease and to cure the diseased.
An unlearned and so unworthy physician is a kind of horse-leech, whose cure is most in drawing of blood, and a desperate purge, either to cure or kill, as it hits. His discourse is most of the cures that he hath done, and them afar of; and not a receipt under a hundred pounds, though it be not worth three halfpence. Upon the market-day he is much haunted with urinals, where if he find anything (though he know nothing), yet he will say somewhat, which if it hit to some purpose, with a few fustian words he will seem a piece of strange stuff. He is never without old merry tales and stale jests to make old folks laugh, and comfits or plums in his pocket to please little children; yea, and he will be talking of complexions, though he know nothing of their dispositions; and if his medicine do a feat, he is a made man among fools; but being wholly unlearned, and ofttimes unhonest, let me thus briefly describe him:—He is a plain kind of mountebank and a true quack-salver, a danger for the sick to deal withal, and a dizzard in the world to talk withal.
A worthy merchant is the heir of adventure, whose hopes hang much upon wind. Upon a wooden horse he rides through the world, and in a merry gale he makes a path through the seas. He is a discoverer of countries, and a finder out of commodities, resolute in his attempts, and royal in his expenses. He is the life of traffic and the maintainer of trade, the sailor’s master and the soldier’s friend. He is the exercise of the exchange, the honour of credit, the observation of time, and the understanding of thrift. His study is number, his care his accounts, his comfort his conscience, and his wealth his good name. He fears not Scylla, and sails close by Charybdis, and having beaten out a storm, rides at rest in a harbour. By his sea-gain he makes his land purchase, and by the knowledge of trade finds the key of treasure. Out of his travels he makes his discourses, and from his eye observations brings the models of architectures. He plants the earth with foreign fruits, and knows at home what is good abroad. He is neat in apparel, modest in demeanour, dainty in diet, and civil in his carriage. In sum, he is the pillar of a city, the enricher of a country, the furnisher of a court, and the worthy servant of a king.
An unworthy merchant is a kind of pedlar, who (with the help of a broker) gets more by his wit than by his honesty. He doth sometime use to give out money to gamesters, be paid in post, upon a hand at dice. Sometime he gains more by baubles than better stuffs, and rather than fail will adventure a false oath for a fraudulent gain. He deals with no wholesale, but all his honesty is at one word; as for wares and weights, he knows how to hold the balance, and for his conscience he is not ignorant what to do with it. His travel is most by land, for he fears to be too busy with the water, and whatever his ware may be, he will be sure of his money. The most of his wealth is in a pack of trifles, and for his honesty I dare not pass my word for him. If he be rich, it is ten to one of his pride; and if he be poor, he breaks without his fast. In sum, he is the disgrace of a merchant, the dishonour of a city, the discredit of his parish, and the dislike of all.
A good man is an image of God, lord over all His creatures, and created only for His service. He is made capable of reason to know the properties of nature, and by the inspiration of grace to know things supernatural. He hath a face always to look upward, and a soul that gives life to all the senses. He lives in the world as a stranger, while heaven is the home of his spirit. His life is but the labour of sense, and his death the way to his rest. His study is the Word of truth, and his delight is in the law of love. His provision is but to serve necessity,
An atheist is a figure of desperation, who dare do anything even to his soul’s damnation. He is in nature a dog, in wit an ass, in passion a bedlam, and in action a devil. He makes sin a jest, grace a humour, truth a fable, and peace a cowardice. His horse is his pride, his sword is his castle, his apparel his riches, and his punk his paradise. He makes robbery his purchase, lechery his solace, mirth his exercise, and drunkenness his glory. He is the danger of society, the love of vanity, the hate of charity, and the shame of humanity. He is God’s enemy, his parents’ grief, his country’s plague, and his own confusion. He spoils that is necessary and spends that is needless. He spits at the gracious and spurns the godly. The tavern is his palace and his belly is his god; a whore is his mistress and the devil is his master. Oaths are his graces, wounds his badges, shifts are his practices, and beggary his payments. He knows not God, nor thinks of heaven, but walks through the world as a devil towards hell. Virtue knows him not, honesty finds him not, wisdom loves him not, and honour regards him not. He is but the cutler’s friend and the chirurgeon’s agent, the thief’s companion and the hangman’s benefactor. He was begotten untimely and born unhappily, lives ungraciously and dies unchristianly. He is of no religion nor good fashion; hardly good complexion, and most vile in condition. In sum, he is a monster among men, a Jew among Christians, a fool among wise men, and a devil among saints.
A wise man is a clock that never strikes but at his home, or rather like a dial that, being set right with the sun, keeps his true course in his compass. So the heart of a wise man, set in the course of virtue by the spirit of grace, runs the course of life in the compass of eternal comfort. He measureth time and tempereth nature, employeth reason and commandeth sense. He hath a deaf ear to the charmer, a close mouth to the slanderer, an open hand to charity, and an humble mind to piety. Observation and experience are his reason’s labours, and patience with conscience are the lines of his love’s measure; contemplation and meditation are his spirit’s exercise, and God and His Word are the joy of his soul. He knows not the pride of prosperity nor
A fool is the abortive of wit, where nature had more power than reason in bringing forth the fruit of imperfection. His actions are most in extremes, and the scope of his brain is but ignorance. Only nature hath taught him to feed, and use to labour without knowledge. He is a kind of a shadow of a better substance, or like the vision of a dream that yields nothing awake. He is commonly known by one or two special names, derived from their qualities, as from wilful Will-fool, and Hodge from hodge-podge; all meats are alike, all are one to a fool. His exercises are commonly divided into four parts, eating and drinking, sleeping and laughing; four things are his chief loves, a bauble and a bell, a coxcomb and a pied-coat. He was begotten in unhappiness, born to no goodness, lives but in beastliness, and dies but in forgetfulness. In sum, he is the shame of nature, the trouble of wit, the charge of charity, and the loss of liberality.
An honest man is like a plain coat, which, without welt or guard, keepeth the body from wind and weather, and being well made, fits him best that wears it; and where the stuff is more regarded than the fashion, there is not much ado in the putting of it on. So the mind of an honest man, without trick or compliments, keeps the credit of a good conscience from the scandal of the world and the worm of iniquity, which, being wrought by the workman of heaven, fits him best that wears it to his service; and where virtue is more esteemed than vanity, it is put on and worn with that ease that shows the excellency of the workman. His study is virtue, his word truth, his life the passage of patience, and his death the rest of his spirit. His travail is a pilgrimage, his way is plainness, his pleasure peace, and his delight is love. His care is his conscience, his wealth is his credit, his charge is his chanty, and his content is his kingdom. In sum, he is a diamond among jewels, a phrenix among birds, an unicorn among beasts, and a saint among men.
A knave is the scum of wit and the scorn of reason, the hate of wisdom and the dishonour of humanity. He is the danger of society and the hurt of amity, the infection of youth and the corruption of age. He is a traitor to affiance and abuse to employment, and a rule of villainy in a plot of mischief. He hath a cat’s eye and a bear’s paw, a siren’s tongue and a serpent’s sting. His words are lies, his oaths perjuries, his studies subtilties, and his practices villainies; his wealth is his wit, his honour is his wealth, his glory is his gain, and his god is his gold. He is no man’s friend and his own enemy; cursed on earth and banished from heaven. He was begotten ungraciously, born untimely, lives dishonestly, and dies shamefully. His heart is a puddle of poison, his tongue a sting of iniquity, his brain a distiller of deceit, and his conscience a compass of hell. In sum, he is a dog in disposition, a fox in wit, a wolf in his prey, and a devil in his pride.
An usurer is a figure of misery, who hath made himself a slave to his money. His eye is closed from pity, and his hand from charity; his ear from compassion, and his heart from piety. While he lives he is the hate of a Christian, and when he dies he goes with horror to hell. His study is sparing, and his care is getting; his fear is wanting, and his death is losing. His diet is either fasting or poor fare, his clothing the hangman’s wardrobe, his house the receptacle of thievery, and his music the clinking of his money. He is a kind of cancer that with the teeth of interest eats the hearts of the poor, and a venomous fly that sucks out the blood of any flesh that he lights on. In sum, he is a servant of dross, a slave to misery, an agent for hell, and a devil in the world.
A beggar is the child of idleness, whose life is a resolution of ease. His travail is most in the highways, and his rendezvous is commonly in an ale-house. His study is to counterfeit impotency, and his practice to cozen simplicity of charity. The juice of the malt is the liquor of his life, and at bed and at board a louse is his companion. He fears no such enemy as a constable, and being acquainted with the stocks, must visit them as he goes by them. He is a drone that feeds upon the labours of the bee, and unhappily begotten that is born for no goodness. His staff and his scrip are his walking furniture, and what he lacks in meat he will have out in drink. He is a kind of caterpillar that spoils much good fruit, and an unprofitable creature to live in a commonwealth. He is seldom handsome and often noisome, always troublesome and never welcome. He prays for all and preys upon all; begins with blessing but ends often with cursing. If he have a licence he shows it with a grace, but if he have none he is submissive to the ground. Sometime he is a thief, but always a rogue, and in the nature of his profession the shame of humanity. In sum, he is commonly begot in a bush, born in a barn, lives in a highway, and dies in a ditch.
A virgin is the beauty of nature, where the spirit gracious makes the creature glorious. She is the love of virtue, the honour of reason, the grace of youth, and the comfort of age. Her study is holiness, her exercise goodness, her grace humility, and her love is charity. Her countenance is modesty, her speech is truth, her wealth grace, and her fame constancy. Her virtue continence, her labour patience, her diet abstinence, and her care conscience. Her conversation heavenly, her meditations angel-like, her prayers devout, and her hopes divine: her parents’ joy, her kindred’s honour, her country’s fame, and her own felicity. She is the blessed of the highest, the praise of the worthiest, the love of the noblest, and the nearest to the best. She is of creatures the rarest, of women the chiefest, of nature the purest, and of wisdom the choicest. Her life is a pilgrimage, her death but a passage, her description a wonder, and her name an honour. In sum, she is the daughter of glory, the mother of grace, the sister of love, and the beloved of life.
A wanton woman is the figure of imperfection; in nature an ape, in quality a wagtail, in countenance a witch, and in condition a kind of devil. Her beck is a net, her word a charm, her look an illusion, and her company a confusion. Her life is the play of idleness, her diet the excess of dainties, her love the change of vanities, and her exercise the invention of follies. Her pleasures are fancies, her studies fashions, her delight colours, and her wealth her clothes. Her care is to deceive, her comfort her company, her house is vanity, and her bed is ruin. Her discourses are fables, her vows dissimulations, her conceits subtleties, and her contents varieties. She would she knows not what, and spends she cares not what, she spoils she sees not what, and doth she thinks not what. She is youth’s plague and age’s purgatory, time’s abuse and reason’s trouble. In sum, she is a spice of madness, a spark of mischief, a touch of poison, and a fear of destruction.
A quiet woman is like a still wind, which neither chills the body nor blows dust in the face. Her patience is a virtue that wins the heart of love, and her wisdom makes her will well worthy regard. She fears God and flieth sin, showeth kindness and loveth peace. Her tongue is tied to discretion, and her heart is the harbour of goodness. She is a comfort of calamity and in prosperity a companion, a physician in sickness and a musician in help. Her ways are the walk toward heaven, and her guide is the grace of the Almighty. She is her husband’s down-bed, where his heart lies at rest, and her children’s glass in the notes of her grace; her servants’ honour in the keeping of her house, and her neighbours’ example in the notes of a good nature. She scorns fortune and loves virtue, and out of thrift gathereth charity. She is a turtle in her love, a lamb in her meekness, a saint in her heart, and an angel in her soul. In sum, she is a jewel unprizeable and a joy unspeakable, a comfort in nature incomparable, and a wife in the world unmatchable.
An unquiet woman is the misery of man, whose demeanour is not to be described but in extremities. Her voice is the screeching of an owl, her eye the poison of a cockatrice, her hand the claw of a crocodile, and her heart a cabinet of horror. She is the grief of nature, the wound of wit, the trouble of reason, and the abuse of time. Her pride is unsupportable, her anger unquenchable, her will unsatiable, and her malice unmatchable. She fears no colours, she cares for no counsel, she spares no persons, nor respects any time. Her command is must, her reason will, her resolution shall, and her satisfaction so. She looks at no law and thinks of no lord, admits no command and keeps no good order. She is a cross but not of Christ, and a word but not of grace; a creature but not of wisdom, and a servant but not of God. In sum, she is the seed of trouble, the fruit of travail, the taste of bitterness, and the digestion of death.
A good wife is a world of wealth, where just cause of content makes a kingdom in conceit. She is the eye of wariness, the tongue of silence, the hand of labour, and the heart of love; a companion of kindness, a mistress of passion, an exercise of patience, and an example of experience. She is the kitchen physician, the chamber comfort, the hall’s care, and the parlour’s grace. She is the dairy’s neatness, the brew-house’s wholesomeness, the garner’s provision and the garden’s plantation. Her voice is music, her countenance meekness, her mind virtuous, and her soul gracious. She is her husband’s jewel, her children’s joy, her neighbour’s love, and her servant’s honour. She is poverty’s prayer and charity’s praise, religion’s love and devotion’s zeal. She is a care of necessity and a course of thrift, a book of housewifery and a mirror of modesty. In sum, she is God’s blessing and man’s happiness, earth’s honour and heaven’s creature.
An effeminate fool is the figure of a baby. He loves nothing but gay, to look in a glass, to keep among wenches, and to play with trifles; to feed on sweetmeats and to be danced in laps, to be embraced in arms, and to be kissed on the cheek; to talk idly, to look demurely, to go nicely, and to laugh continually; to be his mistress’ servant, and her maid’s master, his father’s love and his mother’s none-child; to play on a fiddle and sing a love-song; to wear sweet gloves and look on fine things; to make purposes and write verses, devise riddles and tell lies; to follow plays and study dances, to hear news and buy trifles; to sigh for love and weep for kindness, and mourn for company and be sick for fashion; to ride in a coach and gallop a hackney, to watch all night and sleep out the morning; to lie on a bed and take tobacco, and to send his page of an idle message to his mistress; to go upon gigs, to have his ruffs set in print, to pick his teeth, and play with a puppet. In sum, he is a man-child and a woman’s man, a gaze of folly, and wisdom’s grief.
A parasite is the image of iniquity, who for the gain of dross is devoted to all villainy. He is a kind of thief in committing of burglary, when he breaks into houses with his tongue and picks pockets with his flattery. His face is brazen that he cannot blush, and his hands are limed to catch hold what he can light on. His tongue is a bell (but not of the church, except it be the devil’s) to call his parish to his service. He is sometimes a pander to carry messages of ill meetings, and perhaps hath some eloquence to persuade sweetness in sin. He is like a dog at a door while the devils dance in the chamber, or like a spider in the house-top that lives on the poison below. He is the hate of honesty and the abuse of beauty, the spoil of youth and the misery of age. In sum, he is a danger in a court, a cheater in a city, a jester in the country, and a jackanapes in all.
A drunkard is a known adjective, for he cannot stand alone by himself; yet in his greatest weakness a great trier of strength, whether health or sickness will have the upper hand in a surfeit. He is a spectacle of deformity and a shame of humanity, a view of sin and a grief of nature. He is the annoyance of modesty and the trouble of civility, the spoil of wealth and the spite of reason. He is only the brewer’s agent and the alehouse benefactor, the beggar’s companion and the constable’s trouble. He is his wife’s woe, his children’s sorrow, his neighbours’ scoff, and his own shame. In sum, he is a tub of swill, a spirit of sleep, a picture of a beast, and a monster of a man.
A coward is the child of fear. He was begotten in cold blood, when Nature had much ado to make up a creature like a man. His life is a kind of sickness, which breeds a kind of palsy in the joints, and his death the terror of his conscience, with the extreme weakness of his faith. He loves peace as his life, for he fears a sword in his soul. If he cut his finger he looketh presently for the sign, and if his head ache he is ready to make his will. A report of a cannon strikes him flat on his face, and a clap of thunder makes him a strange metamorphosis. Rather than he will fight he will be beaten, and if his legs will help him he will put his arms to no trouble. He makes love commonly with his purse, and brags most of his maidenhead. He will not marry but into a quiet family, and not too fair a wife, to avoid quarrels. If his wife frown upon him he sighs, and if she give him an unkind word he weeps. He loves not the horns of a bull nor the paws of a bear, and if a dog bark he will not come near the house. If he be rich he is afraid of thieves, and if he be poor he will be slave to a beggar. In sum, he is the shame of manhood, the disgrace of nature, the scorn of reason, and the hate of honour.
An honest poor man is the proof of misery, where patience is put to the trial of her strength to endure grief without passion, in starving with concealed necessity, or standing in the adventures of charity. If he be married, want rings in his ears and woe watereth his eyes. If single, he droppeth with the shame of beggary, or dies with the passion of penury. Of the rich he is shunned like infection, and of the poor learns but a heart-breaking profession. His bed is the earth and the heaven is his canopy, the sun is his summer’s comfort and the moon is his winter candle. His sighs are the notes of his music, and his song is like the swan before her death. His study, his patience; and his exercise, prayer: his diet the herbs of the earth, and his drink the water of the river. His travel is the walk of the woful and his horse Bayard of ten toes: his apparel but the clothing of nakedness, and his wealth but the hope of heaven. He is a stranger in the world, for no man craves his acquaintance; and his funeral is without ceremony, when there is no mourning for the miss of him: yet may he be in the state of election and in the life of love, and more rich in grace than the greatest of the world. In sum, he is the grief of Nature, the sorrow of reason, the pity of wisdom, and the charge of charity.
A just man is the child of truth, begotten by virtue and kindness; when Nature in the temper of the spirit made even the balance of indifference. His eye is clear from blindness and his hand from bribery, his will from wilfulness and his heart from wickedness; his word and deed are all one; his life shows the nature of his love, his care is the charge of his conscience, and his comfort the assurance of his salvation. In the seat of justice he is the grace of the law, and in the judgment of right the honour of reason. He fears not the power of authority to equal justice with mercy, and joys but in the judgment of grace, to see the execution of justice. His judgment is worthy of honour, and his wisdom is gracious in truth. His honour is famous in virtue, and his virtue is precious in example. In sum, he is a spirit of understanding, a brain of knowledge, a heart of wisdom, and a soul of blessedness.
A repentant sinner is the child of grace, who, being born for service of God, makes no reckoning of the mastership of the world, yet doth he glorify God in the beholding of His creatures, and in giving praise to His holy name in the admiration of His workmanship. He is much of the nature of an angel who, being sent into the world but to do the will of his Master, is ever longing to be at home with his fellows. He desires nothing but that is necessary, and delighteth in nothing that is transitory; but contemplates more
A reprobate is the child of sin who, being born for the service of the devil, cares not what villainy he does in the world. His wit is always in a maze, for his courses are ever out of order; and while his will stands for his wisdom, the best that falls out of him is a fool. He betrays the trust of the simple, and sucks out the blood of the innocent. His breath is the fume of blasphemy, and his tongue the firebrand of hell His desires are the destruction of the virtuous, and his delights are the traps to damnation. He bathes in the blood of murder, and sups up the broth of iniquity. He frighteth the eyes of the godly, and disturbeth the hearts of the religious. He marreth the wits of the wise, and is hateful to the souls of the gracious. In sum, he is an inhuman creature, a fearful companion, a man-monster, and a devil incarnate.
An old man is the declaration of time in the defect of Nature, and the imperfection of sense in the use of reason. He is in the observation of Time, a calendar of experience; but in the power of action, he is a blank among lots. He is the subject of weakness, the agent of sickness, the displeasure of life, and the forerunner of death. He is twice a child and half a man, a living picture, and a dying creature. He is a blown bladder that is only stuffed with wind, and a withered tree that hath lost the sap of the root, or an old lute with strings all broken, or a ruined castle that is ready to fall. He is the eyesore of youth and the jest of love, and in the fulness of infirmity the mirror of misery. Yet in the honour of wisdom he may be gracious in gravity, and in the government of justice deserve the honour of reverence. Yea, his word may be notes for the use of reason, and his actions examples for the imitation of discretion. In sum, in whatsoever estate he is but as the snuff of a candle, that pink it ever so long it will out at last.
A young man is the spring of time, when nature in her pride shows her beauty to the world. He is the delight of the eye and the study of the mind, the labour of instruction and the pupil of reason. His wit is in making or marring, his wealth in gaining or losing, his honour in advancing or declining, and his life in abridging or increasing. He is a bloom that either is blasted in the bud or grows to a good fruit, or a bird that dies in the nest or lives to make use of her wings. He is a colt that must have a bridle ere he be well managed, and a falcon that must be well maned or he will never be reclaimed. He is the darling of nature and the charge of reason, the exercise of patience and the hope of charity. His exercise is either study or action, and his study either knowledge or pleasure. His disposition gives a great note of his generation, and yet his breeding may either better or worse him, though to wish a blackamoor white be the loss of labour, and what is bred in the bone will never out of the flesh. In sum, till experience have seasoned his understanding, he is rather a child than a man, a prey of flattery or a praise of providence, in the way of grace to prove a saint, or in the way of sin to grow a devil.
A holy man is the chiefest creature in the workmanship of the world. He is the highest in the election of love, and the nearest to the image of the human nature of his Maker. He is served of all the creatures in the earth, and created but for the service of his Creator. He is capable of the course of nature, and by the rule of observation finds the art of reason. His senses are but servants to his spirit, which is guided by a power above himself. His time is only known to the eye of the Almighty, and what he is in his most greatness is as nothing but in His mercy. He makes law by the direction of life, and lives but in the mercy of love. He treads upon the face of the earth till in the same substance he be trod upon, though his soul that gave life to his senses live in heaven till the resurrection of his flesh. He hath an eye to look upward towards grace, while labour is only the punishment of sin. His faith is the hand of his soul, which layeth hold on the promise of mercy. His patience is the tenure of the possession of his soul, his charity the rule of his life, and his hope the anchor of his salvation. His study is the state of obedience, and his exercise the continuance of prayer; his life but a passage to a better, and his death the rest of his labours. His heart is a watch to his eye, his wit a door to his mouth, his soul a guard to his spirit, and his limbs are but labourers for his body. In sum, he is ravished with divine love, hateful to the nature of sin, troubled with the vanities of the world, and longing for his joy but in heaven.
After “The Good and the Bad” published in 1616, came, in 1618, “Essays and Characters of a Prison and Prisoners, by G. M. of Grayes Inn, Gent.” G.M. signed his name in full—Geffray Minshul—after the Dedication to his uncle, Mr. Matthew Mainwaring of Nantwich, Cheshire, and he dates from the King’s Bench Prison. Philip Bliss found record in a History of Nantwich of a monument there in St. Mary’s Church, erected by Geoffrey Minshull of Stoke, Esq., to the memory of his ancestors. He quotes also from Geoffrey Minshull’s Characters the folloiuing passage from the Dedication, and the Character of a Prisoner.
FROM THE DEDICATION OF “ESSAYS AND CHARACTERS OF A PRISON AND PRISONERS.”
“Since my coming into this prison, what with the strangeness of the place and strictness of my liberty, I am so transported that I could not follow that study wherein I took great delight and chief pleasure, and to spend my time idly would but add more discontentments to my troubled breast, and being in this chaos of discontentments, fantasies must arise, which will bring forth the fruits of an idle brain, for e malis minimum. It is far better to give some account of time, though to little purpose, than none at all. To which end I gathered a handful of essays, and few characters of such things as by my own experience I could say Probatum est: not that thereby I should either please the reader, or show exquisiteness of invention, or curious style; seeing what I write of is but the child of sorrow, bred by discontentments and nourished up with misfortunes, to whose help melancholy Saturn gave his judgment, the night-bird her invention, and the ominous raven brought a quill taken from his own wing, dipped in the ink of misery, as chief aiders in this architect of sorrow.”
A prisoner is an impatient patient, lingering under the rough hands of a cruel physician: his creditor having cast his water knows his disease, and hath power to cure him, but takes more pleasure to kill him. He is like Tantalus, who hath freedom running by his door, yet cannot enjoy the least benefit thereof. His greatest grief is that his credit was so good and now no better. His land is drawn within the compass of a sheep’s skin, and his own hand the fornication that bars him of entrance: he is fortune’s tossing-ball, an object that would make mirth melancholy: to his friends an abject, and a subject of nine days’ wonder in every barber’s shop, and a mouthful of pity (that he had no better fortune) to midwives and talkative gossips; and all the content that this transitory life can give him seems but to flout him, in respect the restraint of liberty bars the true use. To his familiars he is like a plague, whom they dare scarce come nigh for fear of infection; he is a monument ruined by those which raised him, he spends the day with a hei mihi! vae miserum! and the night with a nullis est medicabilis herbis.
In 1626—year of the death of Francis Bacon—appeared “Cures for the Itch; Characters, Epigrams, Epitaphs by H. P.” with the motto “Scalpat qui Tangitur.” H. P. was read by Philip Bliss into Henry Parrot, who published a collection of epigrams in 1613, as “Laquei Ridiculosi, or Springes for Woodcocks.” The Characters in this little volume are of a Ballad Maker, a Tapster, a Drunkard, a Rectified Young Man, a Young Novice’s New Younger Wife, a Common Fiddler, a Broker, a Jovial Good Fellow, a Humourist, a Malapert Young Upstart, a Scold, a Good Wife, and a Self-Conceited Parcel-Witted Old Dotard.
Is a much more heard of, than least desired to be seen or known, she-kind of serpent; the venomed sting of whose poisonous tongue, worse than the biting of a scorpion, proves more infectious far than can be cured. She’s of all other creatures most untameablest, and covets more the last word in scolding than doth a combater the last stroke for victory. She loudest lifts it standing at her door, bidding, with exclamation, flat defiance to any one says black’s her eye. She dares appear before any justice, nor is least daunted with the sight of constable, nor at worst threatenings of a cucking-stool. There’s nothing mads or moves her more to outrage than but the very naming of a wisp, or if you sing or whistle when she is scolding. If any in the interim chance to come within her reach, twenty to one she scratcheth him by the face; or do but offer to hold her hands, she’ll presently begin to cry out murder. There’s nothing pacifies her but a cup of sack, which taking in full measure of digestion, she presently forgets all wrongs that’s done her, and thereupon falls straight a-weeping. Do but entreat her with fair words, or flatter her, she then confesseth all her imperfections, and lays the guilt upon her maid. Her manner is to talk much in her sleep, what wrongs she hath endured of that rogue her husband, whose hap may be in time to die a martyr; and so I leave them.
Is a world of happiness, that brings with it a kingdom in conceit, and makes a perfect adjunct in society; she’s such a comfort as exceeds content, and proves so precious as cannot be paralleled, yea more inestimable than may be valued. She’s any good man’s better second self, the very mirror of true constant modesty, the careful housewife of frugality, and dearest object of man’s heart’s felicity. She commands with mildness, rules with discretion, lives in repute, and ordereth all things that are good or necessary. She’s her husband’s solace, her house’s ornament, her children’s succour, and her servant’s comfort. She’s (to be brief) the eye of wariness, the tongue of silence, the hand of labour, and the heart of love. Her voice is music, her countenance meekness, her mind virtuous, and her soul gracious. She’s a blessing given from God to man, a sweet companion in his affliction, and joint-copartner upon all occasions. She’s (to conclude) earth’s chiefest paragon, and will be, when she dies, heaven’s dearest creature.
* * * * *
In 1629_ appeared sixteen pieces in fifty-six pages entitled “Micrologia, Characters or Essayes, of Persons, Trades, and Places, offered to the City and Country, by R. M.” There was an “R. M.” who wrote from the coast of Guiana in November 1817 “Newes of Sir W. Raleigh. With the true Description of Guiana: as also relation of the excellent Government, and much hope of the prosperity of the Voyage. Sent from a gentleman of his Fleet (R. M.) to a most especiall Friend of his in London. From the River of Caliana on the Coast of Guiana, Novemb._ 17, 1617,” published in 1618. The Characters of Persons and Trades in “Micrologia” are: a Fantastic Tailor, a Player, a Shoemaker, a Ropemaker, a Smith, a Tobacconist, a Cunning Woman, a Cobbler, a Tooth-drawer, a Tinker, a Fiddler, a Cunning Horse-Courser; and of Places, Bethlem, Ludgate, Bridewell, Newgate.
This is R. M.’s character of a Player—_
Is a volume of various conceits or epitome of time, who by his representation and appearance makes things long past seem present. He is much like the counters in arithmetic, and may stand one while for a king, another while a beggar, many times as a mute or cipher. Sometimes he represents that which in his life he scarce practises—to be an honest man. To the point, he oft personates a rover, and therein conies nearest to himself. If his action prefigure passion, he raves, rages, and protests much by his painted heavens, and seems in the height of this fit ready to pull Jove out of the garret where perchance he lies leaning on his elbows, or is employed to make squibs and crackers to grace the play. His audience are oftentimes judicious, but his chief admirers are commonly young wanton chambermaids, who are so taken with his posture and gay clothes, they never come to be their own women after. He exasperates men’s enormities in public view, and tells them their faults on the stage, not as being sorry for them, but rather wishes still he might find more occasions to work on. He is the general corrupter of spirits yet untainted, inducing them by gradation to much lascivious depravity. He is a perspicuity of vanity in variety, and suggests youth to perpetrate such vices as otherwise they had haply ne’er heard of. He is (for the most part) a notable hypocrite, seeming what he is not, and is indeed what he seems not. And if he lose one of his fellow strolls, in the summer he turns king of the gipsies; if not, some great man’s protection is a sufficient warrant for his peregrination, and a means to procure him the town-hall, where he may long exercise his qualities with clown-claps of great admiration, in a tone suitable to the large ears of his illiterate auditory. He is one seldom takes care for old age, because ill diet and disorder, together with a consumption or some worse disease taken up in his full career, have only chalked out his catastrophe but to a colon; and he scarcely survives to his natural period of days.
* * * * *
In 1631 "Whimzies, or, A new Cast of Characters” inscribed to Sir Alexander Radcliffe by one who signed his dedication Clitus Alexandrinus, gave twenty-four Characters, of which this of the maker of a Courant or news sheet is one:—
Is a state newsmonger; and his own genius is his intelligencer. His mint goes weekly, and he coins money by it. Howsoever, the more intelligent merchants do jeer him, the vulgar do admire him, holding his novels oracular; and these are usually sent for tokens or intermissive courtesies betwixt city and country. He holds most constantly one form or method of discourse. He retains some military words of art, which he shoots at random; no matter where they hit they cannot wound any. He ever leaves some passages doubtful, as if they were some more intimate secrecies of state, closing his sentence abruptly with—hereafter you shall hear more. Which words, I conceive, he only useth as baits, to make the appetite of the reader more eager in his next week’s pursuit fora more satisfying labour. Some general-erring relations he picks up, as crumbs or fragments, from a frequented ordinary; of which shreds he shapes a coat to fit any credulous fool that will wear it. You shall never observe him make any reply in places of public concourse; he ingenuously acknowledges himself to be more bounden to the happiness of a retentive memory, than either ability of tongue or pregnancy of conceit. He carries his table-book still about with him, but dares not pull it out publicly. Yet no sooner is the table drawn than he turns notary, by which means he recovers the charge of his ordinary. Paul’s is his walk in winter, Moorfields in summer, where the whole discipline, designs, projects, and exploits of the States, Netherlands, Poland, Switzer, Crimchan and all, are within the compass of one quadrangle walk most judiciously and punctually discovered. But long he must not walk, lest he make his news-press stand. Thanks to his good invention, he can collect much out of a very little; no matter though more experienced judgments disprove him, he is anonymous, and that will secure him. To make his reports more credible or (which he and his stationer only aims at) more vendible, in the relation of every occurrence he renders you the day of the month; and to approve himself a scholar, he annexeth these Latin parcels, or parcel-gilt sentences, veteri stylo, novo stylo. Palisados, parapets, counter-scarps, forts, fortresses, rampiers, bulwarks, are his usual dialect. He writes as if he would do some mischief, yet the charge of his shot is but paper. He will sometimes start in his sleep, as one affrighted with visions, which I can impute to no other cause but to the terrible skirmishes which he discoursed of in the daytime. He has now tied himself apprentice to the trade of minting,
The other characters in “Whimzies” were an Almanac-maker, a Ballad-monger, a Decoy, an Exchange-man, a Forester, a Gamester, an Hospital-man, a Jailer, a Keeper, a Launderer, a Metal-man, a Neater, an Ostler, a Postmaster, a Quest-man, a Ruffian, a Sailor, a Traveller, an Under-Sheriff, a Wine-Soaker, a Xantippean, a Jealous Neighbour, a Zealous Brother. The collection was enlarged by addition under separate title-page of “A Cater-Character, thrown out of a box by an Experienced Gamester"-which gave Characters of an Apparitor, a Painter, a Pedlar, and a Piper. The author added also some lines “upon the Birthday of his sonne Iohn,” beginning—
“God blesse thee, Iohn,
And make thee such an
one
That I may joy
In calling thee my son.
Thou art my ninth,
And by it I divine
That thou shalt live
To love the Muses Nine."_
when he was at college, ventured down among the Character-writers in his two pieces on the University Carrier. Thomas Hobson had been for sixty years carrier between Cambridge and the Bull Inn, Bishopsgate Street, London. He was a very well-known Cambridge character. Steele, in No. 509 of the “Spectator” ascribed to him the origin of the proverbial phrase, Hobson’s Choice. “Being a man of great ability and invention, and one that saw where there might good profit arise, though the duller men overlooked it, this ingenious man was the first in this island who let out hackney-horses.’” [That is a mistake, but never mind.] “He lived in Cambridge; and, observing that the scholars rid hard, his manner was to keep a large stable of horses, with boots, bridles, and whips, to furnish the gentlemen at once, without going from college to college to borrow. I say, Mr. Hobson kept a stable of forty good cattle, always ready and fit for travelling; but, when a man came for a horse, he was led into the stable, where there was great choice; but he obliged him to take the horse which stood next the stable door; so that every customer was alike well served according to his chance, and every horse ridden with the same justice—from whence it became a proverb, when what ought to be your election was forced upon you, to say ‘Hobson’s Choice!’”
In the spring of 1630 the Plague in Cambridge caused colleges to be closed, and among other precautions against spread of infection, Hobson the Carrier was forbidden to go to and fro between Cambridge and London. At the end of the year, after six or seven, months of forced inaction, Hobson sickened; and he died on the first of January, at the age of eighty-six, leaving his family amply provided for, and money for the maintenance of the town conduit. At the Bull Inn in London there used to be a portrait of him with a money-bag under his arm.
Character-writing being in fashion many a character of the University Carrier was written, no doubt, by Cambridge men after Hobson’s death at the beginning of the year_ 1631 (new style). And these were Milton’s. Their unlikeness to other work of his lies in their likeness to a form of literature which was but fashion of the day, and having travelled out of sight of its old starting-point and forgotten where its true goal lay, had gone astray, and often by idolatry of wit sinned against wisdom.
Who sickened in the time of his Vacancy, being forbid to go to London by reason of the Plague.
Here lies old Hobson. Death
hath broke his girt,
And here, alas, hath laid him in
the dirt;
Or else, the ways being foul, twenty
to one
He’s here stuck in a slough,
and overthrown.
’Twas such a shifter that,
if truth were known,
Death was half glad when he had
got him down;
For he had any time this ten years
Here lieth one that did most truly
prove
That he could never die while he
could move;
So hung his destiny, never to rot
While he might still jog on and
keep his trot;
Made of sphere-metal, never to decay
Until his revolution was at stay.
Time numbers motion, yet (without
a crime
’Gainst old truth) motion
numbered out his time;
And, like an engine moved with wheel
and weight,
His principles being ceased, he
ended straight.
Rest, that gives all men life, gave
him his death,
And too much breathing put him out
of breath;
Nor were it contradiction to affirm
Too long vacation hastened on his
term.
Merely to drive the time away he
sickened,
Fainted, and died, nor would with
ale be quickened.
“Nay,” quoth he, on
his swooning-bed outstretched,
“If I mayn’t carry,
sure I’ll ne’er be fetched,
But vow, though the cross doctors
all stood hearers,
For one carrier put down to make
six bearers.”
Ease was his chief disease; and,
to judge right,
He died for heaviness that his cart
went light.
His leisure told him that his time
was come,
And lack of load made his life burdensome,
That even to his last breath (there
be that say’t)
As he were pressed to death, he
cried. “More weight!”
But, had his doings lasted as they
were,
He had been an immortal carrier.
Obedient to the moon he spent his
date
In course reciprocal, and had his
fate
Linked to the mutual flowing of
the seas;
Yet (strange to think) his wain
was his increase.
His letters are delivered all and
gone,
Only remains the superscription.
How very sure we should all be that Milton did not write these pieces, if he had not given them a place among his published works! Returning to the crowd of Character-writers we find in 1631, the year of Milton’s writing upon Hobson,
author of “Pictures Loquentes, or Pictures drawn forth in Characters. With a Poeme of a Maid” The poem of a Maid was, of course, suggested by the fact that Sir Thomas Overbury’s Characters had joined to them the poem of a Wife. There was a second edition in 1635. Saltonstall’s Characters were the World, an Old Man, a Woman, a Widow, a True Lover, a Country Bride, a Ploughman, a Melancholy Man, a Young Heir, a Scholar in the University, a Lawyers Clerk, a Townsman in Oxford, an Usurer, a Wandering Rogue, a Waterman, a Shepherd, a Jealous Man, a Chamberlain, a Maid, a Bailey, a Country Fair, a Country Ale-house, a Horse Race, a Farmer’s Daughter, a Keeper, a Gentleman’s House in the Country; to which he added in the second edition, a Fine Dame, a Country Dame, a Gardener, a Captain, a Poor Village, a Merry Man, a Scrivener, the Term, a Mower, a Happy Man, an Arrant Knave, and an Old Waiting Gentlewoman. This is one of his Characters as quoted by Philip Bliss in the Appendix to his edition of Earle—
Is a time when Justice keeps open court for all comers, while her sister Equity strives to mitigate the rigour of her positive sentence. It is called the term, because it does end and terminate business, or else because it is the Terminus ad quem, that is, the end of the countryman’s journey, who comes up to the term, and with his hobnail shoes grinds the faces of the poor stones, and so returns again. It is the soul of the year, and makes it quick, which before was dead. Innkeepers gape for it as earnestly as shell-fish do for salt water after a low ebb. It sends forth new books into the world, and replenishes Paul’s Walk with fresh company, where Quid novi? is their first salutation, and the weekly news their chief discourse. The taverns are painted against the term, and many a cause is argued there and tried at that bar, where you are adjudged to pay the costs and charges, and so dismissed with “welcome, gentlemen.” Now the city puts her best side outward, and a new play at the Blackfriars is attended on with coaches. It keeps watermen from sinking, and helps them with many a fare voyage to Westminster. Tour choice beauties come up to it only to see and be seen, and to learn the newest fashion, and for some other recreations. Now many that have been long sick and crazy begins to stir and walk abroad, especially if some young prodigals come to town, who bring more money than wit. Lastly, the term is the joy of the city, a dear friend to countrymen, and is never more welcome than after a long vacation.
We have also, in 1632, “London and Country Carbonadoed and Quartered into Several Characters” by Donald Lupton; in 1633, the “Character of a Gentleman” appended to Brathwaif’s “English Gentleman;” in 1634, “A strange Metamorphosis of Man, transformed into a Wilderness, Deciphered in Characters” of which this is a specimen:—
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. In 1647 there was “The Character of an Agitator,” and also John Cleveland’s Character of a London Diurnal.
The Cavalier poet, born at Loitghborough in Leicestershire in 1613, son of an usher in a free school there, was sent to Milton’s College, Christ’s, at Cambridge in 1627, 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 in 1631, when he took his B.A. degree, and went to St. John’s, of which he was elected a Fellow in March 1634. He proceeded M.A. in 1634, 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 February 1645 (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:—
THE CHARACTER OF A COUNTRY COMMITTEE-MAN, WITH THE EAR-MARK. OF A SEQUESTRATOR.
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 is persona 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 devils solus. 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 a Billa 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 a mene 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
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 a Britannicus; 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 the Pia Mater lie 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 of Scoticus, 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, before materia prima can 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:—
Resolved upon 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; degenerate ab extra by 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 wit
And fancy, as each word is throng’d
with it.
Each line’s a volume, and
who reads would swear
Whole libraries were in each character.
Nor arrows in a quiver stuck, nor
yet
Lights 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
Page 204
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.
BY SAMUEL BUTLER.
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
Is a cipher, that has no value himself but from the place he stands in. All his happiness consists in the opinion he believes others have of it. This is his faith, but as it is heretical and erroneous, though he suffer much tribulation for it, he continues obstinate, and not to be convinced. He flutters up and down like a butterfly in a garden, and while he is pruning of his peruke takes occasion to contemplate his legs and the symmetry of his breeches. He is part of the furniture of the rooms, and serves for a walking picture, a moving piece of arras. His business is only to be seen, and he performs it with admirable industry, placing himself always in the best light, looking wonderfully politic, and cautious whom he mixes withal. His occupation is to show his clothes, and if they could but walk themselves they would save him the labour and do his work as well as himself. His immunity from varlets is his freehold, and he were a lost man without it. His clothes are but his tailor’s livery, which he gives him, for ’tis ten to one he never pays for them. He is very careful to discover the lining of his coat, that you may not suspect any want of integrity or flaw in him from the skin outwards.
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
Is a clown of rank and degree. He is the growth of his own land, a kind of Autocthonus, like the Athenians that sprang out of their own ground, or barnacles that grow upon trees in Scotland. His homely education has rendered him a native only of his own soil and a foreigner to all other places, from which he differs in language, manner of living, and behaviour, which are as rugged as the coat of a colt that has been bred upon a common. The custom of being the best man in his own territories has made him the worst everywhere else. He assumes the upper end of the table at
Is one that has his being in this age, but his life and conversation is in the days of old. He despises the present age as an innovation and slights the future, but has a great value for that which is past and gone, like the madman that fell in love with Cleopatra. He is an old frippery-philosopher, that has so strange a natural affection to worm-eaten speculation that it is apparent he has a worm in his skull. He honours his forefathers and foremothers, but condemns his parents as too modern and no better than upstarts. He neglects himself because he was born in his own time and so far off antiquity, which he so much admires, and repines, like a younger brother, because he came so late into the world. He spends the one-half of his time in collecting old insignificant trifles, and the other in showing them, which he takes singular delight in, because the oftener he does it the farther they are from being new to him. All his curiosities take place of one another according to their seniority, and he values them not by their abilities, but their standing. He has a great veneration for words that are stricken in years, and are grown so aged that they have outlived their employments. These he uses with a respect agreeable to their antiquity and the good services they have done. He throws away his time in inquiring after that which is past and gone so many ages since, like one that shoots away an arrow to find out another that was lost before. He fetches things out of dust and ruins, like the fable of the chemical plant raised out of its own ashes. He values one old invention, that is lost and never to be recovered, before all the new ones in the world, though never so useful. The whole business of his life is the same with his that shows the tombs at Westminster, only the one does it for his pleasure, and the other for money. As every man has but one father, but two grandfathers and a world of ancestors, so he has a proportional value for things that are ancient, and the farther off the greater.
He is a great time-server, but it is of time out of mind to which he conforms exactly, but is wholly retired from the present. His days were spent and gone long before he came into the world, and since his only business is to collect what he can out of the ruins of them. He has so strong a natural affection to anything that is old, that he may truly say to dust and worms, “You are my father;” and to rottenness, “Thou art my mother.” He has no providence nor foresight, for all his contemplations look backward upon the days of old; and his brains are turned with them, as if he walked backwards. He had rather interpret one obscure word in any old senseless discourse than be author of the most ingenious new one, and, with Scaliger, would sell the Empire of Germany (if it were in his power) for an old song. He devours an old manuscript with greater relish than worms and moths do, and, though there be nothing in it, values it above anything printed, which he accounts
Is a fool in fermentation, that swells and boils over like a porridge-pot. He sets out his feathers like an owl, to swell and seem bigger than he is. He is troubled with a tumour and inflammation of self-conceit, that renders every part of him stiff and uneasy. He has given himself sympathetic love-powder, that works upon him to dotage and has transformed him into his own mistress. He is his own gallant, and makes most passionate addresses to his own dear perfections. He commits idolatry to himself, and worships his own image; though there is no soul living of his Church but himself, yet he believes as the Church believes, and maintains his faith with the obstinacy of a fanatic. He is his own favourite, and advances himself not only above his merit, but all mankind; is both Damon and Pythias to his own dear self, and values his crony above his soul. He gives place to no man but himself, and that with very great distance to all others, whom he esteems not worthy to approach him. He believes whatsoever he has receives a value in being his, as a horse in a nobleman’s stable will bear a greater price than in a common market. He is so proud that he is as hard to be acquainted with himself as with others, for he is very apt to forget who he is, and knows himself only superficially; therefore he treats himself civilly as a stranger with ceremony and compliment, but admits of no privacy. He strives to look bigger than himself as well as others, and is no better than his own parasite and flatterer. A little flood will make a shallow torrent swell above its banks, and rage and foam and yield a roaring noise, while a deep, silent stream glides quietly on. So a vain-glorious, insolent, proud man swells with a little frail prosperity, grows big and loud, and overflows his bounds, and when he sinks, leaves mud and dirt behind him. His carriage is as glorious and haughty as if he were advanced upon men’s shoulders or tumbled over their heads like knipperdolling. He fancies himself a Colosse, and so he is, for his head holds no proportion to his body, and his foundation is lesser than his upper storeys. We can naturally take no view of ourselves unless we look downwards, to teach us how humble admirers we ought to be of our own values. The slighter and less solid his materials are the more room they take up and make him swell the bigger, as feathers and cotton will stuff cushions better than things of more close and solid parts.
Is one that would fain make himself that which Nature never meant him, like a fanatic that inspires himself with his own whimsies. He sets up haberdasher of small poetry, with a very small stock and no credit. He believes it is invention enough to find out other men’s wit, and whatsoever he lights upon, either in books or company, he makes bold with as his own. This he puts together so untowardly, that you may perceive his own wit has the rickets by the swelling disproportion of the joints. Imitation is the whole sum of him, and his vein is but an itch that he has catched of others, and his flame like that of charcoals that were burnt before. But as he wants judgment to understand what is best, he naturally takes the worst, as being most agreeable to his own talent. You may know his wit not to be natural, ’tis so unquiet and troublesome in him; for as those that have money but seldom are always shaking their pockets when they have it, so does he when he thinks he has got something that will make him appear. He is a perpetual talker, and you may know by the freedom of his discourse that he came lightly by it, as thieves spend freely what they get. He measures other men’s wit by their modesty, and his own by his confidence. He makes nothing of writing plays, because he has not wit enough to understand the difficulty. This makes him venture to talk and scribble, as chouses do to play with cunning gamesters until they are cheated and laughed at. He is always talking of wit, as those that have bad voices are always singing out of tune, and those that cannot play delight to fumble on instruments. He grows the unwiser by other men’s harms, for the worse others write, he finds the more encouragement to do so too. His greediness of praise is so eager that he swallows anything that comes in the likeness of it, how notorious and palpable soever, and is as shot-free against anything that may lessen his good opinion of himself. This renders him incurable, like diseases that grow insensible.
If you dislike him, it is at your own peril; he is sure to put in a caveat beforehand against your understanding, and, like a malefactor in wit, is always furnished with exceptions against his judges. This puts him upon perpetual apologies, excuses, and defences, but still by way of defiance, in a kind of whiffling strain, without regard of any man that stands in the way of his pageant. Where he thinks he may do it safely, he will confidently own other men’s writings; and where he fears the truth may be discovered, he will, by feeble denials and feigned insinuations, give men occasion to suppose it.
If he understands Latin or Greek he ranks himself among the learned, despises the ignorant, talks criticisms out of Scaliger, and repeats Martial’s bawdy epigrams, and sets up his rest wholly upon pedantry. But if he be not so well qualified, he cries down all learning as pedantic, disclaims study, and professes to write with as great facility as if his Muse was sliding down Parnassus. Whatsoever he hears well said he seizes upon by poetical license, and one way makes it his own; that is, by ill-repeating of it. This he believes to be no more theft than it is to take that which others throw away. By this means his writings are, like a tailor’s cushion of mosaic work, made up of several scraps sewed together. He calls a slovenly, nasty description great Nature, and dull flatness strange easiness. He writes down all that comes in his head, and makes no choice, because he has nothing to do it with that is judgment. He is always repealing the old laws of comedy, and, like the Long Parliament, making ordinances in their stead, although they are perpetually thrown out of coffee-houses and come to nothing. He is like an Italian thief, that never robs but he murders, to prevent discovery; so sure is he to cry down the man from whom he purloins, that his petty larceny of wit may pass unsuspected. He is but a copier at best, and will never arrive to practise by the life; for bar him the imitation of something he has read, and he has no image in his thoughts. Observation and fancy, the matter and form of just wit, are above his philosophy. He appears so over-concerned in all men’s wits as if they were but disparagements of his own, and cries down all they do as if they were encroachments upon him. He takes jests from the owners and breaks them, as justices do false weights and pots that want measure. When he meets with anything that is very good he changes it into small money, like three groats for a shilling, to serve several occasions. He disclaims study, pretends to take things in motion, and to shoot flying, which appears to be very true by his often missing of his mark. His wit is much troubled with obstructions, and he has fits as painful as those of the spleen. He fancies himself a dainty, spruce shepherd, with a flock and a fine silken shepherdess, that follow his pipe as rats did the conjurers in Germany.
As for epithets, he always avoids those that are near akin to the sense. Such matches are unlawful, and not fit to be made by a Christian poet, and therefore all his care is to choose out such as will serve, like a wooden leg, to piece out a maimed verse that wants a foot or two; and if they will but rhyme now and then into the bargain, or run upon a letter, it is a work of supererogation.
For similitudes, he likes the hardest and most obscure best; for as ladies wear black patches to make their complexions seem fairer than they are, so when an illustration is more obscure than the sense that went before it, it must of necessity make it appear clearer than it did, for contraries are best set off with contraries.
He has found out a way to save the expense of much wit and sense; for he will make less than some have prodigally laid out upon five or six words serve forty or fifty lines. This is a thrifty invention, and very easy, and, if it were commonly known, would much increase the trade of wit and maintain a multitude of small poets in constant employment. He has found out a new sort of poetical Georgics, a trick of sowing wit like clover-grass on barren subjects which would yield nothing before. This is very useful for the times, wherein, some men say, there is no room left for new invention. He will take three grains of wit like the elixir, and projecting it upon the iron age, turn it immediately into gold. All the business of mankind has presently vanished; the whole world has kept holiday; there have been no men but heroes and poets, no women but nymphs and shepherdesses; trees have borne fritters, and rivers flowed plum-porridge.
We read that Virgil used to make fifty or sixty verses in a morning, and afterwards reduce them to ten. This was an unthrifty vanity, and argues him as well ignorant in the husbandry of his own poetry as Seneca says he was in that of a farm; for, in plain English, it was no better than bringing a noble to nine-pence. And as such courses brought the prodigal son to eat with hogs, so they did him to feed with horses, which were not much better company, and may teach us to avoid doing the like. For certainly it is more noble to take four or five grains of sense, and, like a gold-beater, hammer them into so many leaves as will fill a whole book, than to write nothing but epitomes, which many wise men believe will be the bane and calamity of learning. When he writes he commonly steers the sense of his lines by the rhyme that is at the end of them, as butchers do calves by the tail. For when he has made one line, which is easy enough, and has found out some sturdy hard word that will but rhyme, he will hammer the sense upon it, like a piece of hot iron upon an anvil, into what form he pleases.
There is no art in the world so rich in terms as poetry; a whole dictionary is scarce able to contain them, for there is hardly a pond, a sheep-walk, or a gravel-pit in all Greece but the ancient name of it is become a term of art in poetry. By this means small poets have such a stock of able hard words lying by them, as dryads, hamadryads, Aonides, fauni, nymphae, sylvani, &c., that signify nothing at all, and such a world of pedantic terms of the same kind, as may serve to furnish all the new inventions and thorough reformations that can happen between this and Plato’s great year.
When he writes he never proposes any scope or purpose to himself, but gives his genius all freedom; for as he that rides abroad for his pleasure can hardly be out of his way, so he that writes for his pleasure can seldom be beside his subject. It is an ungrateful thing to a noble wit to be confined to anything. To what purpose did the ancients feign Pegasus to have wings if he must be confined to the road and stages like a pack-horse, or be forced to be obedient to hedges and ditches? Therefore he has no respect to decorum and propriety of circumstance, for the regard of persons, times, and places is a restraint too servile to be imposed upon poetical license, like him that made Plato confess Juvenal to be a philosopher, or Persius, that calls the Athenians Quirites.
For metaphors, he uses to choose the hardest and most far-set that he can light upon. These are the jewels of eloquence, and therefore the harder they are the more precious they must be.
He’ll take a scant piece of coarse sense and stretch it on the tenterhooks of half-a-score rhymes, until it crack that you may see through it and it rattle like a drumhead. When you see his verses hanged up in tobacco-shops, you may say, in defiance of the proverb, “that the weakest does not always go to the wall;” for ’tis well known the lines are strong enough, and in that sense may justly take the wall of any that have been written in our language. He seldom makes a conscience of his rhymes, but will often take the liberty to make “preach” rhyme with “cheat,” “vote” with “rogue,” and “committee-man” with “hang.”
He’ll make one word of as many joints as the tin-pudding that a juggler pulls out of his throat and chops in again. What think you of glud-fum-flam-hasta-minantes? Some of the old Latin poets bragged that their verses were tougher than brass and harder than marble; what would they have done if they had seen these? Verily they would have had more reason to wish themselves an hundred throats than they then had to pronounce them.
There are some that drive a trade in writing in praise of other writers (like rooks, that bet on gamesters’ hands), not at all to celebrate the learned author’s merits, as they would show but their own wits, of which he is but the subject. The lechery of this vanity has spawned more writers than the civil law. For those whose modesty must not endure to hear their own praises spoken may yet publish of themselves the most notorious vapours imaginable. For if the privilege of love be allowed—Dicere quiz puduit, scribere jussit amor—why should it not be so in self-love too? For if it be wisdom to conceal our imperfections, what is it to discover our virtues? It is not likely that Nature gave men great parts upon such terms as the fairies used to give money, to pinch and leave them if they speak of it. They say—Praise is but the shadow of virtue, and sure that virtue is very foolish that is afraid of its own shadow.
When he writes anagrams he uses to lay the outsides of his verses even (like a bricklayer) by a line of rhyme and acrostic, and fill the middle with rubbish. In this he imitates Ben Jonson, but in nothing else.
There was one that lined a hatcase with a paper of Benlowes’ poetry; Prynne bought it by chance and put a new demi-castor into it. The first time he wore it he felt only a singing in his head, which within two days turned to a vertigo. He was let blood in the ear by one of the State physicians, and recovered; but before he went abroad he wrote a poem of rocks and seas, in a style so proper and natural that it was hard to determine which was ruggeder.
There is no feat of activity nor gambol of wit that ever was performed by man, from him that vaults on Pegasus to him that tumbles through the hoop of an anagram, but Benlowes has got the mastery in it, whether it be high-rope wit or low-rope wit. He has all sorts of echoes, rebuses, chronograms, &c., besides carwitchets, clenches, and quibbles. As for altars and pyramids in poetry, he has outdone all men that way; for he has made a gridiron and a frying-pan in verse, that, beside the likeness in shape, the very tone and sound of the words did perfectly represent the noise that is made by those utensils, such as the old poet called sartago loquendi. When he was a captain he made all the furniture of his horse, from the bit to the crupper, in beaten poetry, every verse being fitted to the proportion of the thing, with a moral allusion of the sense to the thing; as the bridle of moderation, the saddle of content, and the crupper of constancy; so that the same thing was both epigram and emblem, even as a mule is both horse and ass.
Some critics are of opinion that poets ought to apply themselves to the imitation of Nature, and make a conscience of digressing from her; but he is none of these. The ancient magicians could charm down the moon and force rivers back to their springs by the power of poetry only, and the moderns will undertake to turn the inside of the earth outward (like a juggler’s pocket) and shake the chaos out of it, make Nature show tricks like an ape, and the stars run on errands; but still it is by dint of poetry. And if poets can do such noble feats, they were unwise to descend to mean and vulgar. For where the rarest and most common things are of a price (as they are all one to poets), it argues disease in judgment not to choose the most curious. Hence some infer that the account they give of things deserves no regard, because they never receive anything as they find it into their compositions, unless it agree both with the measure of their own fancies and the measure of their lines, which can very seldom happen. And therefore, when they give a character of any thing or person, it does commonly bear no more proportion to the subject than the fishes and ships in a map do to the scale. But let such know that poets as well as kings ought rather to consider what is fit for them to give than others to receive; that they are fain to have regard to the exchange of language, and write high or low according as that runs. For in this age, when the smallest poet seldom goes below more the most, it were a shame for a greater and more noble poet not to outthrow that cut a bar.
There was a tobacco-man that wrapped Spanish tobacco in a paper of verses which Benlowes had written against the Pope, which, by a natural antipathy that his wit has to anything that’s Catholic, spoiled the tobacco, for it presently turned mundungus. This author will take an English word, and, like the Frenchman that swallowed water and spit it out wine, with a little heaving and straining would turn it immediately into Latin, as plunderat ilie domos, mille hocopokiana, and a thousand such.
There was a young practitioner in poetry that found there was no good to be done without a mistress; for he that writes of love before he hath tried it doth but travel by the map, and he that makes love without a dame does like a gamester that plays for nothing. He thought it convenient, therefore, first to furnish himself with a name for his mistress beforehand, that he might not be to seek when his merit or good fortune should bestow her upon him; for every poet is his mistress’s godfather, and gives her a new name, like a nun that takes orders. He was very curious to fit himself with a handsome word of a tunable sound, but could light upon none that some poet or other had not made use of before. He was therefore forced to fall to coining, and was several months before he could light on one that pleased him perfectly. But after he had overcome that difficulty he found a greater remaining, to get a lady to own him. He accosted some of all sorts, and gave them to understand, both in prose and verse, how incomparably happy it was in his power to make his mistress, but could never convert any of them. At length he was fain to make his laundress supply that place as a proxy until his good fortune or somebody of better quality would be more kind to him, which after a while he neither hoped nor cared for; for how mean soever her condition was before, when he had once pretended to her she was sure to be a nymph and a goddess. For what greater honour can a woman be capable of than to be translated into precious stones and stars? No herald in the world can go higher. Besides, he found no man can use that freedom of hyperbole in the character of a person commonly known (as great ladies are) which we can in describing one so obscure and unknown that nobody can disprove him. For he that writes but one sonnet upon any of the public persons shall be sure to have his reader at every third word cry out, “What an ass is this to call Spanish paper and ceruse lilies and roses, or claps influences; to say the Graces are her waiting-women, when they are known to be no better than her bawds; that day breaks from her eyes when she looks asquint; or that her breath perfumes the Arabian winds when she puffs tobacco!”
It is no mean art to improve a language, and find out words that are not only removed from common use, but rich in consonants, the nerves and sinews of speech; to raise a soft and feeble language like ours to the pitch of High-Dutch, as he did that writ—
“Arts rattling foreskins shrilling bagpipes quell.”
This is not only the most elegant but most politic way of writing that a poet can use, for I know no defence like it to preserve a poem from the torture of those that lisp and stammer. He that wants teeth may as well venture upon a piece of tough horny brawn as such a line, for he will look like an ass eating thistles.
He never begins a work without an invocation of his Muse; for it is not fit that she should appear in public to show her skill before she is entreated, as gentlewomen do not use to sing until they are applied to and often desired.
I shall not need to say anything of the excellence of poetry, since it has been already performed by many excellent persons, among whom some have lately undertaken to prove that the civil government cannot possibly subsist without it, which, for my part, I believe to be true in a poetical sense, and more probable to be received of it than those strange feats of building walls and making trees dance which antiquity ascribes to verse. And though philosophers are of a contrary opinion and will not allow poets fit to live in a commonwealth, their partiality is plainer than their reasons, for they have no other way to pretend to this prerogative themselves, as they do, but by removing poets whom they know to have a fairer title; and this they do so unjustly that Plato, who first banished poets his republic, forgot that that very commonwealth was poetical. I shall say nothing to them, but only desire the world to consider how happily it is like to be governed by those that are at so perpetual a civil war among themselves, that if we should submit ourselves to their own resolution of this question, and be content to allow them only fit to rule if they could but conclude it so themselves, they would never agree upon it. Meanwhile there is no less certainty and agreement in poetry than the mathematics, for they all submit to the same rules without dispute or controversy. But whosoever shall please to look into the records of antiquity shall find their title so unquestioned that the greatest princes in the whole world have been glad to derive their pedigrees, and their power too, from poets. Alexander the Great had no wiser a way to secure that Empire to himself by right which he had gotten by force than by declaring himself the son of Jupiter; and who was Jupiter but the son of a poet? So Caesar and all Rome was transported with joy when a poet made Jupiter his colleague in the Empire; and when Jupiter governed, what did the poets that governed Jupiter?
Seats himself as spectator and critic on the great theatre of the world, and gives sentence on the plots, language, and action of whatsoever he sees represented, according to his own fancy. He will pretend to know what is done behind the scene, but so seldom is in the right that he discovers nothing more than his own mistakes. When his profession was in credit in the world, and money was to be gotten by it, it divided itself into multitudes of sects, that maintained themselves and their opinions by fierce and hot contests with one another; but since the trade decayed and would not turn to account, they all fell of themselves, and now the world is so unconcerned in their controversies, that three Reformado sects joined in one, like Epicuro-Gassendo-Charltoniana, will not serve to maintain one pedant. He makes his hypotheses himself, as a tailor does a doublet without measure; no matter whether they fit Nature, he can make Nature fit them, and, whether they are too straight or wide, pinch or stuff out the body accordingly. He judges of the works of Nature just as the rabble do of State affairs; they see things done, and every man according to his capacity guesses at the reasons of them, but knowing nothing of the arcana or secret movements of either, they seldom or never are in the right. Howsoever, they please themselves and some others with their fancies, and the farther they are off truth, the more confident they are they are near it, as those that are out of their way believe the farther they have gone they are the nearer their journey’s end, when they are farthest of all from it. He is confident of immaterial substances, and his reasons are very pertinent; that is, substantial as he thinks, and immaterial as others do. Heretofore his beard was the badge of his profession, and the length of that in all his polemics was ever accounted the length of his weapon; but when the trade fell, that fell too. In Lucius’s time they were commonly called beard-wearers, for all the strength of their wits lay in their beards, as Samson’s did in his locks; but since the world began to see the vanity of that hare-brained cheat, they left it off to save their credit.
Is one that keeps the worst company in the world; that is, his own; and though he be always falling out and quarrelling with himself, yet he has not power to endure any other conversation. His head is haunted, like a house, with evil spirits and apparitions, that terrify and fright him out of himself, till he stands empty and forsaken. His sleeps and his wakings are so much the same that he knows not how to distinguish them, and many times when he dreams he believes he is broad awake and sees visions. The fumes and vapours that rise from his spleen and hypochondrias have so smutched and sullied his brain (like a room that smokes) that his understanding is blear-eyed and has no right perception of anything.
Is a native of all countries and an alien at home. He flies from the place where he was hatched, like a wild goose, and prefers all others before it. He has no quarrel to it but because he was born in it, and, like a bastard, he is ashamed of his mother, because she is of him. He is a merchant that makes voyages into foreign nations to drive a trade in wisdom and politics, and it is not for his credit to have it thought he has made an ill return, which must be if he should allow of any of the growth of
Values things not by their use or worth, but scarcity. He is very tender and scrupulous of his humour, as fanatics are of their consciences, and both for the most part in trifles. He cares not how unuseful anything be, so it be but unuseful and rare. He collects all the curiosities he can light upon in art or nature, not to inform his own judgment, but to catch the admiration of others, which he believes he has a right to because the rarities are his own.
Calls himself a king because he has power and authority to hang, draw, and quarter arms. For assuming a jurisdiction over the distributive justice of titles of honour, as far as words extend, he gives himself as great a latitude that way as other magistrates use to do where they have authority and would enlarge it as far as they can. ’Tis true he can make no lords nor knights of himself, but as many squires and gentlemen as he pleases, and adopt them into what family they have a mind. His dominions abound with all sorts of cattle, fish, and fowl, and all manner of manufactures, besides whole fields of gold and silver, which he magnificently bestows upon his followers or sells as cheap as lands in Jamaica. The language they use is barbarous, as being but a dialect of pedlar’s French or the Egyptian, though of a loftier sound, and in the propriety affecting brevity, as the other does verbosity. His business is like that of all the schools, to make plain things hard with perplexed methods and insignificant terms, and then appear learned in making them plain again. He professes arms not for use, but ornament only, and yet makes the basest things in the world, as dogs’ turds and women’s spindles, weapons of good and worshipful bearings. He is wiser than the
Is a well-willer to the mathematics; he pursues knowledge rather out of humour than ingenuity, and endeavours rather to seem than to be. He has nothing of nature but an inclination, which he strives to improve with industry; but as no art can make a fountain run higher than its own head, so nothing can raise him above the elevation of his own pole. He seldom converses but with men of his own tendency, and wheresoever he comes treats with all men as such; for as country gentlemen use to talk of their dogs to those that hate hunting because they love it themselves, so will he of his arts and sciences to those that neither know nor care to know anything of them. His industry were admirable if it did not attempt the greatest
His learning is like those letters on a coach, where, many being writ together, no one appears plain. When the King happens to be at the university and degrees run like wine in conduits at public triumphs, he is sure to have his share; and though he be as free to choose his learning as his faculty, yet, like St. Austin’s soul, Creando infunditur, infundendo creatur. Nero was the first emperor of his calling, though it be not much for his credit. He is like an elephant that, though he cannot swim, yet of all creatures most delights to walk along a river’s side; and as, in law, things that appear not and things that are not are all one, so he had rather not be than not appear. The top of his ambition is to have his picture graved in brass and published upon walls, if he has no work of his own to face with it. His want of judgment inclines him naturally to the most extravagant undertakings,
Would give a penny for any statesman’s thought at any time. He travels abroad to guess what princes are designing by seeing them at church or dinner, and will undertake to unriddle a government at first sight, and tell what plots she goes with, male or female; and discover, like a mountebank, only by seeing the public face of affairs, what private marks there are in the most secret parts of the body politic. He is so ready at reasons of State, that he has them, like a lesson, by rote; but as charlatans make diseases fit their medicines, and not their medicines diseases, so he makes all public affairs conform to his own established reason of State, and not his reason, though the case alter ever so much, comply with them. He thinks to obtain a great insight into State affairs by observing only the outside pretences and appearances of things, which are seldom or never true, and may be resolved several ways, all equally probable; and therefore his penetrations into these matters are like the penetrations of cold into natural bodies, without any sense of itself or the thing it works upon. For all his discoveries in the end amount only to entries and equipages, addresses, audiences, and visits, with other such politic speculations as the rabble in the streets is wont to entertain itself withal. Nevertheless he is very cautious not to omit his cipher, though he writes nothing but what every one does or may safely know, for otherwise it would appear to be no secret. He endeavours to reduce all his politics into maxims, as being most easily portable for a travelling head, though, as they are for the most part of slight matters, they are but like spirits drawn out of water, insipid and good for nothing. His letters are a kind of bills of exchange, in which he draws news and politics upon all his correspondents,
Is a juggler of words, that shows tricks with them, to make them appear what they were not meant for and serve two senses at once, like one that plays on two Jew’s trumps. He is a fencer of language, that falsifies his blow and hits where he did not aim. He has a foolish sleight of wit that catches at words only and lets the sense go, like the young thief in the farce that took a purse, but gave the owner his money back again. He is so well versed in all cases of quibble, that he knows when there will be a blot upon a word as soon as it is out. He packs his quibbles like a stock of cards; let him but shuffle, and cut where you will, he will be sure to have it. He dances on a rope of sand, does the somersault, strappado, and half-strappado with words, plays at all manner of games with clinches, carwickets, and quibbles, and talks under-leg. His wit is left-handed, and therefore what others mean for right he apprehends quite contrary. All his conceptions are produced by equivocal generation, which makes them justly esteemed but maggots. He rings the changes upon words, and is so expert that he can tell at first sight how many variations any number of words will bear. He talks with a trillo, and gives his words a double relish. He had rather have them bear two senses in vain and impertinently than one to the purpose, and never speaks without a leer-sense. He talks nothing but equivocation and mental reservation, and mightily affects to give a word a double stroke, like a tennis-ball against two walls at one blow, to defeat the expectation of his antagonist. He commonly slurs every fourth or fifth word, and seldom fails to throw doublets. There are two sorts of quibbling, the one with words and the other with sense, like the rhetorician’s figurae dictionis et figurae sententiae—the first is already cried down, and the other as yet prevails, and is the only elegance of our modern poets, which easy judges call easiness; but having nothing in it but easiness, and being never used by any lasting wit, will in wiser times fall to nothing of itself.
Wears his religion, reason, and understanding always in the mode, and endeavours as far as he can to be one of the first in the fashion, let it change as oft as it can. He makes it his business, like a politic epicure, to entertain his opinion, faith, and judgment with nothing but what he finds to be most in season, and is as careful to make his understanding ready according to the present humour of affairs as the gentleman was that used every morning to put on his clothes by the weather-glass. He has the same reverend esteem of the modern age as an antiquary has for venerable antiquity, and, like a glass, receives readily any present object, but takes no notice of that which is past or to come. He is always ready to become anything as the times shall please to dispose of him, but is really nothing of himself; for he that sails before every wind can be bound for no port. He accounts it blasphemy to speak against anything in present vogue, how vain or ridiculous soever, and arch-heresy to approve of anything, though ever so good and wise, that is laid by; and therefore casts his judgment and understanding upon occasion, as bucks do their horns, when the season arrives to breed new against the next, to be cast again. He is very zealous to show himself, upon all occasions, a true member of the Church for the time being, that has not the least scruple in his conscience against the doctrine or discipline of it, as it stands at present, or shall do hereafter, unsight unseen; for he is resolved to be always for the truth, which he believes is never so plainly demonstrated as in that character that says it is great and prevails, and in that sense only fit to be adhered to by a prudent man, who will never be kinder to Truth than she is to him; for suffering is a very evil effect, and not like to proceed from a good cause. He is a man of a right public spirit, for he resigns himself wholly to the will and pleasure of the times, and, like a zealous implicit patriot, believes as the State believes, though he neither knows nor cares to know what that is.
Is a common nuisance, and as great a grievance to those that come near him as a pewterer is to his neighbours. His discourse is like the braying of a mortar, the more impertinent the more voluble and loud, as a pestle makes more noise when it is rung on the sides of a mortar than when it stamps downright and hits upon the business. A dog that opens upon a wrong scent will do it oftener than one that never opens but upon a right. He is as long-winded as a ventiduct that fills as fast as it empties, or a trade-wind that blows one way for half-a-year together, and another as long, as if it drew in its breath for six months, and blew it out again for six more. He has no mercy on any man’s ears or patience that he can get within his sphere of activity, but tortures
Is a holder of arguments, and wagers too, when he cannot make them good. He takes naturally to controversy, like fishes in India that are said to have worms in their heads and swim always against the stream. The greatest mastery of his art consists in turning and winding the state of the question, by which means he can easily defeat whatsoever has been said by his adversary, though excellently to the purpose, like a bowler that knocks away the jack when he sees another man’s bowl lie nearer to it than his own. Another of his faculties is with a multitude of words to render what he says so difficult to be recollected that his adversary may not easily know what he means, and consequently not understand what to answer, to which he secretly reserves an advantage to reply by interpreting what he said before otherwise than he at first intended it, according as he finds it serve his purpose to evade whatsoever shall be objected. Next to this, to pretend not to understand, or misinterpret what his antagonist says, though plain enough, only to divert him from the purpose, and to take occasion from his exposition of what he said to start new cavils on the bye and run quite away from the question; but when he finds himself pressed home
Is by interpretation a man of forecast. He is an artist of plots, designs, and expedients to find out money, as others hide it, where nobody would look for it. He is a great rectifier of the abuses of all trades and mysteries, yet has but one remedy for all diseases; that is, by getting a patent to share with them, by virtue of which they become authorised, and consequently cease to be cheats. He is a great promoter of the public good, and makes it his care and study to contrive expedients that the nation may not be ill served with false rags, arbitrary puppet-plays, and insufficient monsters, of all which he endeavours to get the superintendency. He will undertake to render treasonable pedlars, that carry intelligence between rebels and fanatics, true subjects and well-affected to the Government for half-a-crown a quarter, which he takes for giving them license to do so securely and uncontrolled. He gets as much by those projects that miscarry as by those that hold (as lawyers are paid as well for undoing as preserving of men); for when he has drawn in adventurers to purchase shares of the profit, the sooner it is stopped the better it proves for him; for, his own business being done, he is the sooner rid of theirs. He is very expert at gauging the understandings of those he deals with, and has his engines always ready with mere air to blow all their money out of their pockets into his own, as vintners do wine out of one vessel into another. He is very amorous of his country, and prefers the public good before his own advantage, until he has joined them both together in some monopoly, and then he thinks he has done his part, and may be allowed to look after his own affairs in the second place. The chiefest and most useful part of his talent consists in quacking and lying, which he calls answering of objections and convincing the ignorant. Without this he can do nothing; for as it is the common practice of most knaveries, so it is the surest and best fitted to the vulgar capacities of the world; and though it render him more ridiculous to some few, it always prevails upon the greater part.
Is one that endeavours to make himself appear a very fine man in persuading another that he is so, and by offering those civilities which he does not intend to part with, believes he adds to his own reputation and obliges another for nothing. He is very free in making presents of his services, because he is certain he cannot possibly receive in return less than they are worth. He differs very much from all other critics in punctilios of honour; for he esteems himself very uncivilly dealt with if his vows and protestations pass for anything but mere lies and vanities. When he gives his word, he believes it is no longer his, and therefore holds it very unreasonable to give it and keep it too. He divides his services among so many that there comes but little or nothing to any one man’s share, and therefore they are very willing to let him take it back again. He makes over himself in truth to every man, but still it is to his own uses to secure his title against all other claims and cheat his creditors. He is very generous of his promises, but still it is without lawful consideration, and so they go for nothing. He extols a man to his face, like those that write in praise of an author to show his own wit, not his whom they undertake to commend. He has certain set forms and routines of speech, which he can say over while he thinks on anything else, as a Catholic does his prayers, and therefore never means what he says. His words flow easily from him, but so shallow that they will bear no weight at all. All his offers of endearment are but like terms of course, that carry their own answers along with them, and therefore pass for nothing between those that understand them, and deceive those only that believe in them. He professes most kindness commonly to those he least cares for, like an host that bids a man welcome when he is going away. He had rather be every man’s menial servant than any one man’s friend; for servants gain by their masters, and men often lose by their friends.
Is a freeman of all trades, and all trades of his. Fraud and treachery are his calling, though his profession be the strictest integrity and truth. He spins nets, like a spider, out of his own entrails, to entrap the simple and unwary that light in his way, whom he devours and feeds upon. All the greater sort of cheats, being allowed by authority, have lost their names (as judges, when they are called to the Bench, are no more styled lawyers) and left the title to the meaner only and the unallowed. The common ignorance of mankind is his province, which he orders to the best advantage. He is but a tame highwayman, that does the same things by stratagem and design which the other does by force, makes men deliver their understandings first, and after their purses. Oaths and lies are his tools that he works with, and
Talks to no end, as well as to no purpose; for he would never come at it willingly. His discourse is like the road-miles in the north, the filthier and dirtier the longer; and he delights to dwell the longer upon them to make good the old proverb that says they are good for the dweller, but ill for the traveller. He sets a tale upon the rack, and stretches until it becomes lame and out of joint. Hippocrates says art is long; but he is so for want of art. He has a vein of dulness, that runs through all he says or does; for nothing can be tedious that is not dull and insipid. Digressions and repetitions, like bag and baggage, retard his march and put him to perpetual halts. He makes his approaches to a business by oblique lines, as if he meant to besiege it, and fetches a wide compass about to keep others from discovering what his design is. He is like one that travels in a dirty deep road, that moves slowly; and, when he is at a stop, goes back again, and loses more time in picking of his way than in going it. How troublesome and uneasy soever he is to others, he pleases himself so well that he does not at all perceive it; for though home be homely, it is more delightful than finer things abroad; and he that is used to a thing and knows no better believes that other men, to whom it appears otherwise, have
Is easily acquainted with all knowledges, but never intimate with any; he remembers he has seen them somewhere before, but cannot possibly call to mind where. He will call an art by its name, and claim acquaintance with it at first sight. He knew it perfectly, as the Platonics say, in the other world, but has had the unhappiness to discontinue his acquaintance ever since his occasions called him into this. He claps on all the sail he can possibly make, though his vessel be empty and apt to overset. He is of a true philosophical temper, contented with a little, desires no more knowledge than will satisfy nature, and cares not what his wants are so he can but keep them from the eyes of the world. His parts are unlimited; for as no man knows his abilities, so he does his endeavour that as few should his defects. He wears himself in opposition to the mode, for his lining is much coarser than his outside; and as others line their serge with silk, he lines his silk with serge. All his care is employed to appear not to be; for things that are not and things that appear not are not only the same in law, but in all other affairs of the world. It should seem that the most impudent face is the best; for he that does the shamefulest thing most unconcerned is said to set a good face upon it; for the truth is, the face is but the outside of the mind, but all the craft is to know how ’tis lined. Howsoever, he fancies himself as able as any man, but not being in a capacity to try the experiment, the hint-keeper of Gresham College is the only competent judge to decide the controversy. He may, for anything he knows, have as good a title to his pretences as another man; for judgment being not past in the case (which shall never be by his means), his title still stands fair. All he can possibly attain to is but to be another thing than nature meant him, though a much worse. He makes that good that Pliny says of children, Qui celerius fari cepere, tardius ingredi incipiunt. The apter he is to smatter, the slower he is in making any advance in his pretences. He trusts words before he is thoroughly acquainted with them, and they commonly show him a trick before he is aware; and he shows at the same time his ignorance to the learned and his learning to the ignorant.
Is a retailer of rumour that takes up upon trust and sells as cheap as he buys. He deals in a perishable commodity that will not keep; for if it be not fresh it lies upon his hands and will yield nothing. True or false is all one to him; for novelty being the grace of both, a truth grows stale as soon as a lie; and as a slight suit will last as well as a better while the fashion holds, a lie serves as well as truth till new ones come up. He is little concerned whether it be good or bad, for that does not make it more or less news; and, if there be any difference, he loves the bad best, because it is said to come soonest; for he would willingly bear his share in any public calamity to have the pleasure of hearing and telling it. He is deeply read in diurnals, and can give as good an account of Rowland Pepin, if need be, as another man. He tells news, as men do money, with his fingers; for he assures them it comes from very good hands. The whole business of his life is, like that of a spaniel, to fetch and carry news, and when he does it well he is clapped on the back and fed for it; for he does not take to it altogether, like a gentleman, for his pleasure, but when he lights on a considerable parcel of news, he knows where to put it off for a dinner, and quarter himself upon it until he has eaten it out; and by this means he drives a trade, by retrieving the first news to truck it for the first meat in season, and, like the old Roman luxury, ransacks all seas and lands to please his palate; for he imports his narratives from all parts within the geography of a diurnal, and eats as well upon the Russ and Polander as the English and Dutch. By this means his belly is provided for, and nothing lies upon his hands but his back, which takes other courses to maintain itself by weft and stray silver spoons, straggling hoods and scarfs, pimping, and sets at L’Ombre.
Is a corrector of the press gratis; and as he does it for nothing, so it is to no purpose. He fancies himself clerk of Stationers’ Hall, and nothing must pass current that is not entered by him. He is very severe in his supposed office, and cries, “Woe to ye scribes!” right or wrong. He supposes all writers to be malefactors without clergy that claim the privilege of their books, and will not allow it where the law of the land and common justice does. He censures in gross, and condemns all without examining particulars. If they will not confess and accuse themselves, he will rack them until they do. He is a committee-man in the commonwealth of letters, and as great a tyrant, so is not bound to proceed but by his own rules, which he will not endure to be disputed. He has been an apocryphal scribbler himself; but his writings wanting authority, he grew discontent and turned apostate, and thence becomes so severe to those of his own profession.
Is one that seems to labour in every man’s calling but his own, and, like Robin Goodfellow, does any man’s drudgery that will let him. He is like an ape, that loves to do whatsoever he sees others do, and is always as busy as a child at play. He is a great undertaker, and commonly as great an underperformer. His face is like a lawyer’s buckram rag, that has always business in it, and as he trots about his head travels as fast as his feet. He covets his neighbour’s business, and his own is to meddle, not do. He is very lavish of his advice, and gives it freely, because it is worth nothing, and he knows not what to do with it himself. He is a common-barreter for his pleasure, that takes no money, but pettifogs gratis. He is very inquisitive after every man’s occasions, and charges himself with them like a public notary. He is a great overseer of State affairs, and can judge as well of them before he understands the reasons as afterwards. He is excellent at preventing inconveniences and finding out remedies when ’tis too late; for, like prophecies, they are never heard of till it is to no purpose. He is a great reformer, always contriving of expedients, and will press them with as much earnestness as if himself and every man he meets had power to impose them on the nation. He is always giving aim to State affairs, and believes by screwing of his body he can make them shoot which way he pleases. He inquires into every man’s history, and makes his own commentaries upon it as he pleases to fancy it. He wonderfully affects to seem full of employments, and borrows men’s business only to put on and appear in, and then returns it back again, only a little worse. He frequents all public places, and, like a pillar in the old Exchange, is hung with all men’s business, both public and private, and his own is only to expose them. He dreads nothing so much as to be thought at leisure, though he is never otherwise; for though he be always doing, he never does anything.
Is a dwarf scholar, that never outgrows the mode and fashion of the school where he should have been taught. He wears his little learning, unmade-up, puts it on before it was half finished, without pressing or smoothing. He studies and uses words with the greatest respect possible, merely for their own sakes, like an honest man, without any regard of interest, as they are useful and serviceable to things, and among those he is kindest to strangers (like a civil gentleman) that are far from their own country and most unknown. He collects old sayings and ends of verses, as antiquaries do old coins, and is as glad to produce them upon all occasions. He has sentences ready lying by him for all purposes, though to no one, and talks of authors as familiarly as his fellow-collegiates. He will challenge acquaintance with those he never saw before, and pretend to intimate knowledge of those he has only heard of. He is well stored with terms of art, but does not know how to use them, like a country-fellow that carries his gloves in his hands, not his hands in his gloves. He handles arts and sciences like those that can play a little upon an instrument, but do not know whether it be in tune or not. He converses by the book, and does not talk, but quote. If he can but screw in something that an ancient writer said, he believes it to be much better than if he had something of himself to the purpose. His brain is not able to concoct what it takes in, and therefore brings things up as they were swallowed, that is, crude and undigested, in whole sentences, not assimilated sense, which he rather affects; for his want of judgment, like want of health, renders his appetite preposterous. He pumps for affected and far-set expressions, and they always prove as far from the purpose. He admires canting above sense. He is worse than one that is utterly ignorant, as a cock that sees a little fights worse than one that is stark blind. He speaks in a different dialect from other men, and much affects forced expressions, forgetting that hard words, as well as evil ones, corrupt good manners. He can do nothing, like a conjurer, out of the circle of his arts, nor in it without canting and ... If he professes physic, he gives his patients sound, hard words for their money, as cheap as he can afford; for they cost him money, and study too, before he came by them, and he has reason to make as much of them as he can.
Is an auxiliary hound that assists one nation of beasts to subdue and overrun another. He makes mortal war with the fox for committing acts of hostility against his poultry. He is very solicitous to have his dogs well descended of worshipful families, and understands their pedigree as learnedly as if he were a herald, and is as careful to match them according to their rank and qualities as High-Germans
Carries himself like his dish (as the proverb says), very uprightly, without spilling one drop of his humour. He is an orator and rhetorician, that delights in flowers and ornaments of his own devising to please himself and others that laugh at him. He is of a leaden, dull temper, that stands stiff, as it is bent, to all crooked lines, but never to the right. When he thinks to appear most graceful, he adorns himself most ill-favouredly, like an Indian that wears jewels in his lips and nostrils. His words and gestures are all as stiff as buckram, and he talks as if his lips were turned up as well as his beard. All his motions are regular, as if he went by clockwork, and he goes very true to the nick as he is set. He has certain favourite words and expressions, which he makes very much of, as he has reason to do, for
Has a sickly mind and believes the infirmity is in his body, like one that draws the wrong tooth and fancies his pain in the wrong place. The less he understands the reason of physic the stronger faith he has in it, as it commonly fares in all other affairs of the world. His disease is only in his judgment, which makes him believe a doctor can fetch it out of his stomach or his belly, and fright those worms out of his guts that are bred in his brain. He believes a doctor is a kind of conjurer that can do strange things, and he is as willing to have him think so; for by that means he does not only get his money, but finds himself in some possibility by complying with that fancy to do him good for it, which he could never expect to do any other way; for, like those that have been cured by drinking their own water, his own imagination is a better medicine than any the doctor knows how to prescribe, even as the weapon-salve cures a wound by being applied to that which made it. He is no sooner well but any story or lie of a new famous doctor or strange cure puts him into a relapse, and he falls sick of a medicine instead of a disease, and catches physic like him that fell into a looseness at the sight of a purge. He never knows when he is well or sick, but is always tampering with his health till he has spoiled it, like a foolish musician that breaks his strings with striving to put them in tune; for Nature, which is physic, understands better how to do her own work than those that take it from her at second hand. Hippocrates says, Ars longa, vita brevis, and it is the truest of all his aphorisms—
“For he that’s given
much to the long art
Does not prolong his life, but cut
it short.”
Is like the sea, that is said to be richer than the land, but is not able to make any use of it at all, and only keeps it from those that know how to enjoy it if they had it. The devil understood his business very well when he made choice of Judas’s avarice to betray Christ, for no other vice would have undertaken it; and it is to be feared that his Vicars now on earth, by the tenderness they have to the bag, do not use Him much better than His steward did then. He gathers wealth to no purpose but to satisfy his avarice, that has no end, and afflicts himself to possess that which he is, of all men, the most incapable of ever obtaining. His treasure is in his hands in the same condition as if it were buried uncier ground and watched by an evil spirit. His desires are like the bottomless pit which he is destined to, for the one is as soon filled as the other. He shuts up his money in close custody, and that which has power to open all locks is not able to set itself at liberty. If he ever lets it out it is upon good bail and mainprize, to render itself prisoner again whensoever it shall be summoned. He loves wealth as an eunuch does women, whom he has no possibility of enjoying, or one that is bewitched with an impotency or taken with the falling sickness. His greedy appetite to riches is but a kind of dog-hunger, that never digests what it devours, but still the greedier and more eager it crams itself becomes more meagre. He finds that ink and parchment preserves money better than an iron chest and parsimony, like the memories of men that lie dead and buried when they are committed to brass and marble, but revive and flourish when they are trusted to authentic writings and increase by being used. If he had lived among the Jews in the wilderness he would have been one of their chief reformers, and have worshipped anything that is cast in gold, though a sillier creature than a calf. St. John in the Revelations describes the New Jerusalem to be built all of gold and silver and precious stones, for the saints commonly take so much delight in those creatures that nothing else could prevail with them ever to come thither; and as those times are called the Golden Age in which there was no gold at all in use, so men are reputed godly and rich that make no use at all of their religion or wealth. All that he has gotten together with perpetual pains and industry is not wealth, but a collection, which he intends to keep by him more for his own diversion than any other use, and he that made ducks and drakes with his money enjoyed it every way as much. He makes no conscience of anything but parting with his money, which is no better than a separation of soul and body to him, and he believes it to be as bad as self-murder if he should do it wilfully; for the price of the weapon with which a man is killed is always esteemed a very considerable circumstance, and next to not having the fear of God before his eyes. He loves the bowels of the earth broiled on the coals above any
Is one that sells the devil the best pennyworth that he meets with anywhere, and, like the Indians that part with gold for glass beads, he damns his soul for the slightest trifles imaginable. He betroths himself oftener to the devil in one day than Mecaenas did in a week to his wife, that he was married a thousand times to. His discourse is inlaid with oaths as the gallows is with nails, to fortify it against the assaults of those whose friends have made it their deathbed. He takes a preposterous course to be believed and persuade you to credit what he says, by saying that which at the best he does not mean; for all the excuse he has for his voluntary damning of himself is, that he means nothing by it. He is as much mistaken in what he does intend really, for that which he takes for the ornament of his language renders it the most odious and abominable. His custom of swearing takes away the sense of his saying. His oaths are but a dissolute formality of speech and the worst kind of affectation. He is a Knight-Baronet of the Post, or gentleman blasphemer, that swears for his pleasure only; a lay-affidavit man, in voto only and not in orders. He learned to swear, as magpies do to speak, by hearing others. He talks nothing but bell, book, and candle, and delivers himself over to Satan oftener than a Presbyterian classis would do. He plays with the devil for sport only, and stakes his soul to nothing. He overcharges his oaths till they break and hurt himself only. He discharges them as fast as a gun that will shoot nine times with one loading. He is the devil’s votary, and fails not to commend himself into his tuition upon all occasions. He outswears an exorcist, and outlies the legend. His oaths are of a wider bore and louder report than those of an ordinary perjurer, but yet they do not half the execution. Sometimes he resolves to leave it, but not too suddenly, lest it should prove unwholesome and injurious to his health, but by degrees as he took it up. Swearing should appear to be the greatest of sins, for though the Scripture says, “God sees no sin in His children,” it does not say He hears none.
Places all enjoyment in spending, as a covetous man does in getting, and both are treated at a witch’s feast, where nothing feeds but only the imagination, and like two madmen, that believe themselves to be the same prince, laugh at one another. He values his pleasures as they do honour, by the difficulty and dearness of the purchase, not the worth of the thing; and the more he pays the better he believes he ought to be pleased, as women are fondest of those children which they have groaned most for. His tongue is like a great practiser’s in law, for as the one will not stir, so the other will not taste without a great fee. He never reckons what a thing costs by what it is worth, but what it is worth by what it costs. All his senses are like corrupt judges, that will understand nothing until they are thoroughly informed and satisfied with a convincing bribe. He relishes no meat but by the rate, and a high price is like sauce to it, that gives it a high taste and renders it savoury to his palate. He believes there is nothing dear, nor ought to be so, that does not cost much, and that the dearest bought is always the cheapest. He tastes all wines by the smallness of the bottles and the greatness of the price, and when he is over-reckoned takes it as an extraordinary value set upon him, as Dutchmen always reckon by the dignity of the person, not the charge of the entertainment he receives, put his quality and titles into the bill of fare, and make him pay for feeding upon his own honour and right-worship, which he brought along with him. He debauches his gluttony with an unnatural appetite to things never intended for food, like preposterous venery or the unnatural mixtures of beasts of several kinds. He is as curious of his pleasures as an antiquary of his rarities, and cares for none but such as are very choice and difficult to be gotten, disdains anything that is common, unless it be his women, which he esteems a common good, and therefore the more communicative the better. All his vices are, like children that have been nicely bred, a great charge to him, and it costs him dear to maintain them like themselves, according to their birth and breeding; but he, like a tender parent, had rather suffer want himself than they should, for he considers a man’s vices are his own flesh and blood, and though they are but by-blows, he is bound to provide for them, out of natural affection, as well as if they were lawfully begotten.
Is like dust in the highway, that flies in the face of those that raise it. He that is ungrateful is all things that are amiss. He is like the devil, that seeks the destruction of those most of all that do him the best service, or an unhealthful sinner that receives pleasure and returns nothing but diseases. He receives obligations from all that he can, but they presently become void and of none effect, for good offices fare with him like death,
Deals with his mistress as the devil does with a witch, is content to be her servant for a time, that she may be his slave for ever. He is esquire to a knight-errant, donzel to the damsels, and gentleman usher daily waiter on the ladies, that rubs out his time in making legs and love to them. He is a gamester who throws at all ladies that are set him, but is always out, and never wins but when he throws at the candlestick, that is, for nothing; a general lover, that addresses unto all but never gains any, as universals produce nothing. He never appears so gallant a man as when he is in the head of a body of ladies and leads them up with admirable skill and
Is a saint that goes by clockwork, a machine made by the devil’s geometry, which he winds and nicks to go as he pleases. He is the devil’s finger-watch, that never goes true, but too fast or too slow as he sets him. His religion goes with wires, and he serves the devil for an idol to seduce the simple to worship and believe in him. He puts down the true saint with his copper-lace devotion, as ladies that use art paint fairer than the life. He is a great bustler in reformation, which is always most proper to his talent, especially if it be tumultuous; for pockets are nowhere so easily and safely picked as in jostling crowds. And as change and alterations are most agreeable to those who are tied to nothing,
Is his own confidant, that maintains more opinions than he is able to support. They are all bastards commonly and unlawfully begotten, but being his own, he had rather, out of natural affection, take any pains, or beg, than they should want a subsistence. The eagerness and violence he uses to defend them argues they are weak, for if they were true they would not need it. How false soever they are to him, he is true to them; and as all extraordinary affections of love or friendship are usually upon the meanest accounts, he is resolved never to forsake them, how ridiculous soever they render themselves and him to the world. He is a kind of a knight-errant that is bound by his order to defend the weak and distressed, and deliver enchanted paradoxes, that are bewitched and held by magicians and conjurers in invisible castles. He affects to have his opinions as unlike other men’s as he can, no matter whether better or worse, like those that wear fantastic clothes of their own devising. No force of argument can prevail upon him; for, like a madman, the strength of two men in their wits is not able to hold him down. His obstinacy grows out of his ignorance, for probability has so many ways that whosoever understands them will not be confident of any one. He holds his opinions as men do their lands, and though his tenure be litigious, he will
Is one that stands for madman, and has as many voices as another. If he miss he has very hard dealing; for if he can but come to a fair polling of his fits against his intervals, he is sure to carry it. No doubt it would be a singular advantage to him; for, as his present condition stands, he has more full moons in a week than a lunatic has in a year. His passion is like tinder, soon set on fire and as soon out again. The smallest occasion imaginable puts him in his fit, and then he has no respect of persons, strikes up the heels of stools and chairs, tears cards limbmeal without regard of age, sex, or quality, and breaks the bones of dice, and makes them a dreadful example to deter others from daring to take part against him. He is guilty but of misprision of madness, and if the worst come to the worst, can but forfeit estate and suffer perpetual liberty to say what he pleases. ’Tis true he is but a candidate of Bedlam, and is not yet admitted fellow, but has the license of the College to practise, and in time will not fail to come in according to his seniority. He has his grace for madman, and has done his exercises, and nothing but his good manners can put him by his degree. He is, like a foul chimney, easily set on fire, and then he vapours and flashes as if he would burn the house, but is presently put out with a greater huff, and the mere noise of a pistol reduces him to a quiet and peaceable temper. His temper is, like that of a meteor, an imperfect mixture, that sparkles and flashes until it has spent itself. All his parts are irascible, and his gall is too big for his liver. His spleen makes others laugh at him, and as soon as his anger is over with others he begins to be angry with himself and sorry. He is sick of a preposterous ague, and has his hot fit always before his cold. The more violent his passion is the sooner it is out, like a running knot, that strains hardest, but is easiest loosed. He is never very passionate but for trifles, and is always most temperate where he has least cause, like a nettle that stings worst when it is touched with soft and gentle fingers, but when it is bruised with rugged, hardened hands returns no harm at all.
Is more zealous in his false, mistaken piety than others are in the truth; for he that is in an error has farther to go than one that is in the right way, and therefore is concerned to bestir himself and make the more speed. The practice of his religion is, like the Schoolmen’s speculations, full of niceties and tricks, that take up his whole time and do him more hurt than good. His devotions are labours, not exercises, and he breaks the Sabbath in taking too much pains to keep it. He makes a conscience of so many trifles and niceties, that he has not leisure to consider things that are serious and of real weight. His religion is too full of fears and jealousies to be true and faithful, and too solicitous and unquiet to continue in the right, if it were so. And as those that are bunglers and unskilful in any art take more pains to do nothing, because they are in a wrong way, than those that are ready and expert to do the excellentest things, so the errors and mistakes of his religion engage him in perpetual troubles and anxieties, without any possibility of improvement until he unlearn all and begin again upon a new account. He talks much of the justice and merits of his cause, and yet gets so many advocates that it is plain he does not believe himself; but having pleaded not guilty, he is concerned to defend himself as well as he can, while those that confess and put themselves upon the mercy of the Court have no more to do. His religion is too full of curiosities to be sound and useful, and is fitter for a hypocrite than a saint; for curiosities are only for show and of no use at all. His conscience resides more in his stomach than his heart, and howsoever he keeps the commandments, he never fails to keep a very pious diet, and will rather starve than eat erroneously or taste anything that is not perfectly orthodox and apostolical; and if living and eating are inseparable, he is in the right, and lives because he eats according to the truly ancient primitive Catholic faith in the purest times.
Plays his part of wit readily at first sight, and sometimes better than with practice. He is excellent at voluntary and prelude, but has no skill in composition. He will run divisions upon any ground very dexterously, but now and then mistakes a flat for a sharp. He has a great deal of wit, but it is not at his own disposing, nor can he command it when he pleases unless it be in the humour. His fancy is counterchanged between jest and earnest, and the earnest lies always in the jest, and the jest in the earnest. He treats of all matters and persons by way of exercitation, without respect of things, time, place, or occasion, and assumes the liberty of a free-born Englishman, as if he were called to the long robe with long ears. He imposes a hard task upon himself as well as those he converses with, and more than either can bear without
Does not hold opinions, but they hold him; for when he is once possessed with an error, ’tis, like the devil, not to be cast out but with great difficulty. Whatsoever he lays hold on, like a drowning man, he never loses, though it do but help to sink him the sooner. His ignorance is abrupt and inaccessible, impregnable both by art and nature, and will hold out to the last though it has nothing but rubbish to defend. It is as dark as pitch, and sticks as fast to anything it lays hold on. His skull is so thick that it is proof against any reason, and never cracks but on the wrong side, just opposite to that against which the impression is made, which surgeons say does happen very frequently. The slighter and more inconsistent his opinions are the faster he holds them, otherwise they would fall asunder of themselves; for opinions that are false ought to be held with more strictness and assurance than those that are true, otherwise they will be apt to betray their owners before they are aware. If he takes to religion, he has faith enough to save a hundred wiser men than himself, if it were right; but it is too much to be good; and though he deny supererogation and utterly disclaim any overplus of merits, yet he allows superabundant belief, and if the violence of faith will carry the kingdom of heaven, he stands fair for it. He delights most of all to differ in things indifferent; no matter how frivolous they are, they are weighty enough in proportion to his weak judgment, and he will rather suffer self-martyrdom than part with the least scruple of his freehold, for it is impossible to dye his dark ignorance into a lighter colour. He is resolved to understand no man’s reason but his own, because he finds no man can understand his but himself. His wits are like a sack which, the French proverb says, is tied faster before it is full than when it is; and his opinions are like plants that grow upon rocks, that stick fast though they have no rooting. His understanding is hardened like Pharaoh’s heart, and is proof against all sorts of judgments whatsoever.
Is a hot-headed brother that has his understanding blocked up on both sides, like a fore-horse’s eyes, that he sees only straight-forwards and never looks about him, which makes him run on according as he is driven with his own caprice. He starts and stops (as a horse does) at a post only because he does not know what it is, and thinks to run away from the spur while he carries it with him. He is very violent, as all things that tend downward naturally are; for it is impossible to improve or raise him above his own level. He runs swiftly before any wind, like a ship that has neither freight nor ballast, and is as apt to overset. When his zeal takes fire it cracks and flies about like a squib until the idle stuff is spent, and then it goes out of itself. He is always troubled with small scruples, which his conscience catches like the itch, and the rubbing of these is both his pleasure and his pain. But for things of greater moment he is unconcerned, as cattle in the summer-time are more pestered with flies that vex their sores than creatures more considerable, and dust and motes are apter to stick in blear-eyes than things of greater weight. His charity begins and ends at home, for it never goes farther nor stirs abroad. David was eaten up with the zeal of God’s house; but his zeal, quite contrary, eats up God’s house; and as the words seem to intimate that David fed and maintained the priests, so he makes the priests feed and maintain him; and hence his zeal is never so vehement as when it concurs with his interest; for, as he styles himself a professor, it fares with him, as with men of other professions, to live by his calling and get as much as he can by it. He is very severe to other men’s sins that his own may pass unsuspected, as those that were engaged in the conspiracy against Nero were most cruel to their own confederates; or as one says—
“Compounds for sins he is inclined
to
By damning those he has no mind to.”
Always throws beyond the jack and is gone a mile. He is no more able to contain himself than a bowl is when he is commanded to rub with the greatest power and vehemence imaginable, and nothing lights in his way. He is a conjurer that cannot keep within the compass of his circle, though he were sure the devil would fetch him away for the least transgression. He always overstocks his ground and starves instead of feeding, destroys whatsoever he has an extraordinary care for, and, like an ape, hugs the whelp he loves most to death. All his designs are greater than the life, and he laughs to think how Nature has mistaken her match, and given him so much odds that he can easily outrun her. He allows of no merit but that which is superabundant. All his actions are superfoetations, that either become monsters or twins; that is, too much, or the same again; for he is but a supernumerary
Has a fever in his brain, and therefore is rightly said to be hot-headed. His reason and his actions run downhill, borne headlong by his unstaid will. He has not patience to consider, and perhaps it would not be the better for him if he had; for he is so possessed with the first apprehension of anything, that whatsoever comes after loses the race and is prejudged. All his actions, like sins, lead him perpetually to repentance, and from thence to the place from whence they came, to make more work for repentance; for though he be corrected never so often, he is never amended, nor will his haste give him time to call to mind where it made him stumble before; for he is always upon full speed, and the quickness of his motions takes away and dazzles the eyes of his understanding. All his designs are like diseases, with which he is taken suddenly before he is aware, and whatsoever he does is extempore, without premeditation; for he believes a sudden life to be the best of all, as some do a sudden death. He pursues things as men do an enemy upon a retreat, until he is drawn into an ambush for want of heed and circumspection. He falls upon things as they lie in his way, as if he stumbled at them, or his foot slipped and cast him upon them; for he is commonly foiled and comes off with bruises. He engages in business as men do in duels, the sooner the better, that, if any evil come of it, they may not be found to have slept upon it, or consulted with
Is a piece of clockwork, that moves only as it is wound up and set, and not like a voluntary agent. He is a mathematical body, nothing but punctum, linea, et superficies, and perfectly abstract from matter. He walks as stiffly and uprightly as a dog that is taught to go on his hinder legs, and carries his hands as the other does his fore-feet. He is very ceremonious and full of respect to himself, for no man uses those formalities that does not expect the same from others. All his actions and words are set down in so exact a method that an indifferent accountant may cast him up to a halfpenny-farthing. He does everything by rule, as if it were in a course of Lessius’s diet, and did not eat, but take a dose of meat and drink; and not walk, but proceed; not go, but march. He draws up himself with admirable conduct in a very regular and well-ordered body. All his business and affairs are junctures and transactions, and when he speaks with a man he gives him audience. He does not carry but marshal himself, and no one member of his body politic takes place of another without due right of precedence. He does all things by rules of proportion, and never gives himself the freedom to manage his gloves or his watch in an irregular and arbitrary way, but is always ready to render an account of his demeanour to the most strict and severe disquisition. He sets his face as if it were cast in plaster, and never admits of any commotion in his countenance, nor so much as the innovation of a smile without serious and mature deliberation, but preserves his looks in a judicial way, according as they have always been established.
Is a dog that fawns when he bites. He hangs bells in a man’s ears, as a carman does by his horse while he lays a heavy load upon his back. His insinuations are like strong wine, that pleases a man’s palate till it has got within him, and then deprives him of his reason and overthrows him. His business is to render a man a stranger to himself, and get between him and home, and then he carries him whither he pleases. He is a spirit that inveighs away a man from himself, undertakes great matters for him, and after sells him for a slave. He makes division not only between a man and his friends, but between a man and himself, raises a faction within him, and
Is a pocket with a hole in the bottom. His purse has got a dysentery and lost its retentive faculty. He delights, like a fat overgrown man, to see himself fall away and grow less. He does not spend his money, but void it, and, like those that have the stone, is in pain till he is rid of it. He is very loose and incontinent of his coin, and lets it fly, like Jupiter, in a shower. He is very hospitable, and keeps open pockets for all comers. All his silver turns to mercury, and runs through him as if he had taken it for the miserere or fluxed himself. The history of his life begins with keeping of whores, and ends with keeping of hogs; and as he fed high at first, so he does at last, for acorns are very high food. He swallows land and houses like an earthquake, eats a whole dining-room at a meal, and devours his kitchen at a breakfast. He wears the furniture of his house on his back, and a whole feather-bed in his hat, drinks down his plate, and eats his dishes up. He is not clothed, but hung. He’ll fancy dancers cattle, and present his lady with messuage and tenement. He sets his horses at inn and inn, and throws himself out of his coach at come the caster. He should be a good husband, for he has made more of his estate in one year than his ancestors did in twenty. He dusts his estate as they do a stand of ale in the north. His money in his pocket (like hunted venison) will not keep; if it be not spent presently it grows stale, and is thrown away. He possesses his estate as the devil
Has a vagabond soul without any settled place of abode, like the wandering Jew. His head is unfixed, out of order, and utterly unserviceable upon any occasion. He is very apt to be taken with anything, but nothing can hold him, for he presently breaks loose and gives it the slip. His head is troubled with a palsy, which renders it perpetually wavering and incapable of rest. His head is like an hour-glass; that part that is uppermost always runs out until it is turned, and then runs out again. His opinions are too violent to last, for, like other things of the same kind in Nature, they quickly spend themselves and fall to nothing. All his opinions are like wefts and strays that are apt to straggle from their owners and belong to the lord of the manor where they are taken up. His soul has no retentive faculty, but suffers everything to run from him as fast as he receives it. His whole life is like a preposterous ague in which he has his hot fit always before his cold one, and is never in a constant temper. His principles and resolves are but a kind of movables, which he will not endure to be fastened to any freehold, but left loose to be conveyed away at pleasure as occasion shall please to dispose of him. His soul dwells, like a Tartar, in a hoord, without any settled habitation, but is always removing and dislodging from place to place. He changes his head oftener than a deer, and when his imaginations are stiff and at their full growth, he casts them off to breed new ones, only to cast off again the next season. All his purposes are built on air, the chamelion’s diet, and have the same operation to make him change colour with every object he comes near. He pulls off his judgment as commonly as his hat to every one he meets with. His word and his deed are all one, for when he has given his word he has done, and never goes farther. His judgment, being unsound, has the same operation upon him that a disease has upon a sick man, that makes him find some ease in turning from side to side, and still the last is the most uneasy.
Eats his children, as the poets say Saturn did, and carries his felicity and all his concernments in his paunch. If he had lived when all the members of the body rebelled against the stomach there had been no possibility of accommodation. His entrails are like the sarcophagus, that devours dead bodies in a small space, or the Indian zampatan, that consumes flesh in a moment. He is a great dish made on purpose to carry meat. He eats out his own head, and his horses’ too; he knows no grace but grace before meat, nor mortification but in fasting. If the body be the tabernacle of the soul, he lives in a sutler’s hut. He celebrates mass, or rather mess, to the idol in his belly, and, like a papist, eats his adoration. A third course is the third heaven to him, and he is ravished into it. A feast is a good conscience to him, and he is troubled in mind when he misses of it. His teeth are very industrious in their calling, and his chops like a Bridewell perpetually hatcheling. He depraves his appetite with haut-gousts, as old fornicators do their lechery into fulsomeness and stinks. He licks himself into the shape of a bear, as those beasts are said to do their whelps. He new forms himself in his own belly, and becomes another thing than God and Nature meant him. His belly takes place of the rest of his members, and walks before in state. He eats out that which eats all things else—time—and is very curious to have all things in season at his meals but his hours, which are commonly at midnight, and so late that he prays too late for his daily bread, unless he mean his natural daily bread. He is admirably learned in the doctrines of meats and sauces, and deserves the chair in juris-prudentia; that is, in the skill of pottages. At length he eats his life out of house and home and becomes a treat for worms, sells his clothes to feed his gluttony, and eats himself naked, as the first of his family, Adam, did.
Is the devil’s hypocrite, that endeavours to make himself appear worse than he is. His evil words and bad manners strive which shall most corrupt one another, and it is hard to say which has the advantage. He vents his lechery at the mouth, as some fishes are said to engender. He is an unclean beast that chews the cud, for after he has satisfied his lust he brings it up again into his mouth to a second enjoyment, and plays an after-game of lechery with his tongue much worse than that which the Cunnilingi used among the old Romans. He strips Nature stark naked, and clothes her in the most fantastic and ridiculous fashion a wild imagination can invent. He is worse and more nasty than a dog, for in his broad descriptions of others’ obscene actions he does but lick up the vomit of another man’s surfeits. He tells tales out of a vaulting-school. A lewd, bawdy tale does more hurt and gives a worse example than the thing of which it was told, for the act extends
Makes new discoveries in politics, but they are, like those that Columbus made of the New World, very rich, but barbarous. He endeavours to restore mankind to the original condition it fell from, by forgetting to discern between good and evil, and reduces all prudence back again to its first author, the serpent, that taught Adam wisdom; for he was really his tutor, and not Samboscor, as the Rabbins write. He finds the world has been mistaken in all ages, and that religion and morality are but vulgar errors that pass among the ignorant, and are but mere words to the wise. He despises all learning as a pedantic little thing, and believes books to be the business of children and not of men. He wonders how the distinction of virtue and vice came into the world’s head, and believes them to be more ridiculous than any foppery of the schools. He holds it his duty to betray any man that shall take him for so much a fool as one fit to be trusted. He steadfastly believes that all men are born in the state of war, and that the civil life is but a cessation, and no peace nor accommodation; and though all open acts of hostility are forborne by consent, the enmity continues, and all advantages by treachery or breach of faith are very lawful; that there is no difference between virtue and fraud among friends as well as enemies, nor anything unjust that a man can do without damage to his own safety or interest; that oaths are but springes to catch woodcocks withal, and bind none but those that are too weak and feeble to break them when they become ever so small an impediment to their advantages; that conscience is the effect of ignorance, and the same with that foolish fear which some men apprehend when they are in the dark and alone; that honour is but the word which a prince gives a man to pass his guards
To propose any measure to wealth or power is to be ignorant of the nature of both, for as no man can ever have too much of either, so it is impossible to determine what is enough; and he that limits his desires by proposing to himself the enjoyment of any other pleasure but that of gaining more shows he has but a dull inclination that will not hold out to his journey’s end. And therefore he believes that a courtier deserves to be begged himself that is ever satisfied with begging; for fruition without desire is but a dull entertainment, and that pleasure only real and substantial that provokes and improves the appetite and increases in the enjoyment; and all the greatest masters in the several arts of thriving concur unanimously that the plain downright pleasure of gaining is greater and deserves to be preferred far before all the various delights of spending which the curiosity, wit, or luxury of mankind in all ages could ever find out.
He believes there is no way of thriving so easy and certain as to grow rich by defrauding the public; for public thieveries are more safe and less prosecuted than private, like robberies committed between sun and sun, which the county pays and no one is greatly concerned in; and as the monster of many heads has less wit in them all than any one reasonable person, so the monster of many purses is easier cheated than any one indifferent, crafty fool. For all the difficulty lies in being trusted, and when he has obtained that, the business does itself; and if he should happen to be questioned and called to an account, a pardon is as cheap as a paymaster’s fee, not above fourteenpence in the pound.
He thinks that when a man comes to wealth or preferment, and is to put on a new person, his first business is to put off all his old friendships and acquaintances, as things below him and no way consistent with his present condition, especially such as may have occasion to make use of him or have reason to expect any civil returns from him; for requiting of obligations received in a man’s necessity is the same thing with paying of debts contracted in his minority when he was under age, for which he is not accountable by the laws of the land. These he is to forget as fast as he can, and by little neglects remove them to that distance that they may at length by his example learn to forget him, for men who travel together in company when their occasions lie several ways ought to take leave and part. It is a hard matter for a man that comes to preferment not to forget himself, and therefore he may very well be allowed to take the freedom to forget others; for advancement, like the conversion of a sinner, gives a man new values of things and persons, so different from those he had before that that which was wont to be most dear to him does commonly after become the most disagreeable; and as it is accounted noble to forget and pass over little injuries, so it is to forget little friendships, that are no better than injuries when they become disparagements, and can only be importune and troublesome instead of being useful, as they were before. All Acts of Oblivion have, of late times, been found to extend rather to loyal and faithful services done than rebellion and treasons committed. For benefits are like flowers, sweet only and fresh when they are newly gathered, but stink when they grow stale and wither; and he only is ungrateful who makes returns of obligations, for he does it merely to free himself from owing so much as thanks. Fair words are all the civility and humanity that one man owes to another, for they are obliging enough of themselves, and need not the assistance of deeds to make them good; for he that does not believe them has already received too much, and he that does ought to expect no more. And therefore promises ought to oblige those only to whom they are made, not those who make them; for he that expects a man should bind himself is worse than a thief, who does that service for him after he has robbed him on the highway. Promises are but words, and words air, which no man can claim a propriety in, but is equally free to all and incapable of being confined; and if it were not, yet he who pays debts which he can possibly avoid does but part with his money for nothing, and pays more for the mere reputation of honesty and conscience than it is worth.
He prefers the way of applying to the vices and humours of great persons before all other methods of getting into favour; for he that can be admitted into these offices of privacy and trust seldom fails to arrive at greater, and with greater ease and certainty than those who take the dull way of plain fidelity and merit. For vices, like beasts, are fond of none but those that feed them, and where they once prevail all other considerations go for nothing. They are his own flesh and blood, born and bred out of him, and he has a stronger natural affection for them than all other relations whatsoever; and he that has an interest in these has a greater power over him than all other obligations in the world; for though they are but his imperfections and infirmities, he is the more tender of them, as a lame member or diseased limb is more carefully cherished than all the rest that are sound and in perfect vigour. All offices of this kind are the greatest endearments, being real flatteries enforced by deeds and actions, and therefore far more prevalent than those that are performed but by words and fawning, though very great advantages are daily obtained that way; and therefore he esteems flattery as the next most sure and successful way of improving his interests. For flattery is but a kind of civil idolatry, that makes images to itself of virtue, worth, and honour in some person that is utterly void of all, and then falls down and worships them; and the more dull and absurd these applications are, the better they are always received; for men delight more to be presented with those things they want than such as they have no need nor use of. And though they condemn the realities of those honours and renowns that are falsely imputed to them, they are wonderfully affected with their false pretences; for dreams work more upon men’s passions than any waking thoughts of the same kind, and many, out of an ignorant superstition, give more credit to them than the most rational of all their vigilant conjectures, how false soever they prove in the event. No wonder, then, if those who apply to men’s fancies and humours have a stronger influence upon them than those that seek to prevail upon their reason and understandings, especially in things so delightful to them as their own praises, no matter how false and apparently incredible; for great persons may wear counterfeit jewels of any carat with more confidence and security from being discovered than those of meaner quality, in whose hands the greatness of their value (if they were true) is more apt to render them suspected. A flatterer is like Mahomet’s pigeon, that picks his food out of his master’s ear, who is willing to have it believed that he whispers oracles into it, and accordingly sets a high esteem upon the service he does him, though the impostor only designs his own utilities; for men are for the most part better pleased with other men’s opinions, though false, of their happiness than their own experiences, and find more pleasure in the dullest flattery of others than all the vast imaginations they can have of themselves, as no man is apt to be tickled with his own fingers; because the applauses of others are more agreeable to those high conceits they have of themselves, which they are glad to find confirmed, and are the only music that sets them a-dancing, like those that are bitten with a tarantula.
He accounts it an argument of great discretion, and as great temper, to take no notice of affronts and indignities put upon him by great persons; for he that is insensible of injuries of this nature can receive none, and if he lose no confidence by them, can lose nothing else; for it is greater to be above injuries than either to do or revenge them, and he that will be deterred by those discouragements from prosecuting his designs will never obtain what he proposes to himself. When a man is once known to be able to endure insolences easier than others can impose them, they will raise the siege and leave him as impregnable; and therefore he resolves never to omit the least opportunity of pressing his affairs, for fear of being baffled and affronted; for if he can at any rate render himself master of his purposes, he would not wish an easier nor a cheaper way, as he knows how to repay himself and make others receive those insolences of him for good and current payment which he was glad to take before, and he esteems it no mean glory to show his temper of such a compass as is able to reach from the highest arrogance to the meanest and most dejected submissions. A man that has endured all sorts of affronts may be allowed, like an apprentice that has served out his time, to set up for himself and put them off upon others; and if the most common and approved way of growing rich is to gain by the ruin and loss of those who are in necessity, why should not a man be allowed as well to make himself appear great by debasing those that are below him? For insolence is no inconsiderable way of improving greatness and authority in the opinion of the world. If all men are born equally fit to govern, as some late philosophers affirm, he only has the advantage of all others who has the best opinion of his own abilities, how mean soever they really are; and, therefore, he steadfastly believes that pride is the only great, wise, and happy virtue that a man is capable of, and the most compendious and easy way to felicity; for he that is able to persuade himself impregnably that he is some great and excellent person, how far short soever he falls of it, finds more delight in that dream than if he were really so; and the less he is of what he fancies himself to be the better he is pleased, as men covet those things that are forbidden and denied them more greedily than those that are in their power to obtain; and he that can enjoy all the best rewards of worth and merit without the pains and trouble that attend it has a better bargain than he who pays as much for it as it is worth. This he performs by an obstinate, implicit believing as well as he can of himself, and as meanly of all other men, for he holds it a kind of self-preservation to maintain a good estimation of himself; and as no man is bound to love his neighbour better than himself, so he ought not to think better of him than he does of himself, and he that will not afford himself a very high esteem will never spare another man any at all. He who
Among all his virtues there is none which he sets so high an esteem upon as impudence, which he finds more useful and necessary than a vizard is to a highwayman; for he that has but a competent stock of this natural endowment has an interest in any man he pleases, and is able to manage it with greater advantages than those who have all the real pretences imaginable, but want that dexterous way of soliciting by which, if the worst fall out, he is sure to lose nothing if he does not win. He that is impudent is shot-free, and if he be ever so much overpowered can receive no hurt, for his forehead is impenetrable, and of so excellent a temper that nothing is able to touch it, but turns edge and is blunted. His face holds no correspondence with his mind, and therefore whatsoever inward sense or conviction he feels, there is no outward appearance of it in his looks to give evidence against him; and in any difficulty that can befall him, impudence is the most infallible expedient to fetch him off, that is always ready, like his angel guardian, to relieve
He believes a man’s words and his meaning should never agree together; for he that says what he thinks lays himself open to be expounded by the most ignorant, and he who does not make his words rather serve to conceal than discover the sense of his heart deserves to have it pulled out, like a traitor’s, and shown publicly to the rabble; for as a king, they say, cannot reign without dissembling, so private men, without that, cannot govern themselves with any prudence or discretion imaginable. This is the only politic magic that has power to make a man walk invisible, give him access into all men’s privacies, and keep all others out of his, which is as great an odds
As for religion, he believes a wise man ought to possess it only that he may not be observed to have freed himself from the obligations of it, and so teach others by his example to take the same freedom. For he who is at liberty has a great advantage over all those whom he has to deal with, as all hypocrites find by perpetual experience that one of the best uses that can be made of it is to take measure of men’s understandings and abilities by it, according as they are more or less serious in it. For he thinks that no man ought to be much concerned in it but hypocrites and such as make it their calling and profession, who, though they do not live by their faith, like the righteous, do that which is nearest to it, get their living by it; and that those only take the surest course who make their best advantages of it in this world and trust to Providence for the next, to which purpose he believes it is most properly to be relied upon by all men.
He admires good nature as only good to those who have it not, and laughs at friendship as a ridiculous foppery, which all wise men easily outgrow; for the more a man loves another the less he loves himself. All regards and civil applications should, like true devotion, look upwards and address to those that are above us, and from whom we may in probability expect either good or evil; but to apply to those that are our equals, or such as cannot benefit or hurt us, is a far more irrational idolatry than worshipping of images or beasts. All the good that can proceed from friendship is but this, that it puts men in a way to betray one another. The best parents, who are commonly the worst men, have naturally a tender kindness for their children only because they believe they are a part of themselves, which shows that self-love is the original of all others, and the foundation of that great law of Nature, self-preservation; for no man ever destroyed himself wilfully that had not first left off to love himself. Therefore a man’s self is the proper object of his love, which is never so well employed as when it is kept within its own confines, and not suffered to straggle. Every man is just so much a slave as he is concerned in the will, inclinations, or fortunes of another, or has anything of himself out of his own power to dispose of; and therefore he is resolved never to trust any man with that kindness which he takes up of himself, unless he has such security as
He is of opinion that no men are so fit to be employed and trusted as fools or knaves; for the first understand no right, the others regard none; and whensoever there falls out an occasion that may prove of great importance if the infamy and danger of the dishonesty be not too apparent, they are the only persons that are fit for the undertaking. They are both equally greedy of employment; the one out of an itch to be thought able, and the other honest enough, to be trusted, as by use and practice they sometimes prove. For the general business of the world lies, for the most part, in routines and forms, of which there are none so exact observers as those who understand nothing else to divert them, as carters use to blind their fore-horses on both sides that they may see only forward, and so keep the road the better, and men that aim at a mark use to shut one eye that they may see the surer with the other. If fools are not notorious, they have far more persons to deal with of their own elevation (who understand one another better) than they have of those that are above them, which renders them fitter for many businesses than wiser men, and they believe themselves to be so for all. For no man ever thought himself a fool that was one, so confident does their ignorance naturally render them, and confidence is no contemptible qualification in the management of human affairs; and as blind men have secret artifices and tricks to supply that defect and find out their ways, which those who have their eyes and are but hoodwinked are utterly unable to do, so fools have always little crafts and frauds in all their transactions which wiser men would never have thought upon, and by those they frequently arrive at very great wealth, and as great success in all their undertakings. For all fools are but feeble and impotent knaves, that have as strong and vehement inclinations to all sorts of dishonesty as the most notorious of those engineers, but want abilities to put them in practice; and as they are always found to be the most obstinate and intractable people to be prevailed upon by reason or conscience, so they are as easy to submit to their superiors—that is, knaves—by whom they are always observed to be governed, as all corporations are wont to choose their magistrates out of their own members. As for knaves, they are commonly true enough to their own interests, and while they gain by their employments, will be careful not to disserve those who can turn them out when they please, what tricks soever they put upon others; and therefore such men prove more useful to them in their designs of gain and profit than those whose consciences and reason will not permit them to take that latitude.
And since buffoonery is, and has always been, so delightful to great persons, he holds him very improvident that is to seek in a quality so inducing that he cannot at least serve for want of a better, especially since it is so easy that the greatest part of the difficulty lies in confidence; and he that can but stand fair and give aim to those that are gamesters does not always lose his labour, but many times becomes well esteemed for his generous and bold demeanour, and a lucky repartee hit upon by chance may be the making of a man. This is the only modern way of running at tilt, with which great persons are so delighted to see men encounter one another and break jests, as they did lances heretofore; and he that has the best beaver to his helmet has the greatest advantage; and as the former passed upon the account of valour, so does the latter on the score of wit, though neither, perhaps, have any great reason for their pretences, especially the latter, that depends much upon confidence, which is commonly a great support to wit, and therefore believed to be its betters, that ought to take place of it, as all men are greater than their dependents; so pleasant it is to see men lessen one another and strive who shall show himself the most ill-natured and ill-mannered. As in cuffing all blows are aimed at the face, so it fares in these rencounters, where he that wears the toughest leather on his visage comes off with victory though he has ever so much the disadvantage upon all other accounts. For a buffoon is like a mad dog that has a worm in his tongue, which makes him bite at all that light in his way; and as he can do nothing alone, but must have somebody to set him that he may throw at, he that performs that office with the greatest freedom and is contented to be laughed at to give his patron pleasure cannot but be understood to have done very good service, and consequently deserves to be well rewarded, as a mountebank’s pudding, that is content to be cut and slashed and burnt and poisoned, without which his master can show no tricks, deserves to have a considerable share in his gains.
As for the meanness of these ways, which some may think too base to be employed to so excellent an end, that imports nothing; for what dislike soever the world conceives against any man’s undertakings, if they do but succeed and prosper, it will easily recant its error and applaud what it condemned before; and therefore all wise men have ever justly esteemed it a great virtue to disdain the false values it commonly sets upon all things and which itself is so apt to retract. For as those who go uphill use to stoop and bow their bodies forward, and sometimes creep upon their hands, and those that descend to go upright, so the lower a man stoops and submits in these endearing offices, the more sure and certain he is to rise; and the more upright he carries himself in other matters, the more like, in probability, to be ruined. And this he believes to be a wiser course for any man to take than to trouble himself with the knowledge of arts or arms; for the one does but bring a man an unnecessary trouble, and the other as unnecessary danger; and the shortest and more easy way to attain to both is to despise all other men and believe as steadfastly in himself as he can—a better and more certain course than that of merit.
What he gains wickedly he spends as vainly, for he holds it the greatest happiness that a man is capable of to deny himself nothing that his desires can propose to him, but rather to improve his enjoyments by glorying in his vices; for, glory being one end of almost all the business of this world, he who omits that in the enjoyment of himself and his pleasures loses the greatest part of his delight; and therefore the felicity which he supposes other men apprehend that he receives in the relish of his luxuries is more delightful to him than the fruition itself.
Owns his election from free grace in opposition to merits or any foresight of good works; for he is chosen not for his abilities or fitness for his employment, but, like a tales in a jury, for happening to be near in court. If there were any other consideration in it (which is a hard question to the wise), it was only because he was held able enough to be a counsellor-extraordinary for the indifference and negligence of his understanding, and consequent probability of doing no hurt, if no good; for why should not such prove the safest physicians to the body politic as well as they do to the natural? Or else some near friend or friend’s friend helped him to the place, that engaged for his honesty and good behaviour in it. Howsoever, he is able to sit still and look wise according to his best skill and cunning, and, though he understand no reason, serve for one that does, and be most steadfastly of that opinion that is most like to prevail. If he be a great person, he is chosen, as aldermen are in the city, for being rich enough, and fines to be taken in as those do to be left out; and money being the measure of all things, it is sufficient to justify all his other talents and render them, like itself, good and current. As for wisdom and judgment, with those other out-of-fashioned qualifications which have been so highly esteemed heretofore, they have not been found to be so useful in this age, since it has invented scantlings for politics that will move with the strength of a child and yet carry matters of very great weight; and that raillery and fooling is proved by frequent experiments to be the more easy and certain way; for, as the Germans heretofore were observed to be wisest when they were drunk and knew not how to dissemble, so are our modern statesmen when they are mad and use no reserved cunning in their consultations; and as the Church of Rome and that of the Turks esteem ignorant persons the most devout, there seems no reason why this age, that seems to incline to the opinions of them both, should not as well believe them to be the most prudent and judicious; for heavenly wisdom does, by the confession of men, far exceed all the subtlety and prudence of this world. The heathen priests of old never delivered oracles but when they were drunk and mad or distracted, and who knows why our modern oracles may not as well use
Is one that has studied the whole body of vice. His parts are disproportionate to the whole, and, like a monster, he has more of some and less of others than he should have. He has pulled down all that fabric that Nature raised in him, and built himself up again after a model of his own. He has dammed up all those lights that Nature made into the noblest prospects of the world, and opened other little blind loopholes backward by turning day into night and night into day. His appetite to his pleasures is diseased and crazy, like the pica in a woman that longs to eat that which was never made for food, or a girl in the green sickness that eats chalk and mortar. Perpetual surfeits of pleasure have filled his mind with bad and vicious humours (as well as his body with a nursery of diseases), which makes him affect new and extravagant ways as being sick and tired with the old. Continual wine, women, and music put false values upon things which by custom become habitual, and debauch his understanding so that he retains no right notion nor sense of things; and as the same dose of the same physic has no operation on those that are much used to it, so his pleasures require a larger proportion of excess and variety to render him sensible of them. He rises, eats, and goes to bed by the Julian account, long after all others that go by the new style, and keeps the same hours with owls and the antipodes. He is a great observer of the Tartars’ customs, and never eats till the great Cham, having dined, makes proclamation that all the world may go to dinner. He does not dwell in his house, but haunts it like an evil spirit that walks all night to disturb the family, and never appears by day. He lives perpetually benighted, runs out of his life, and loses his time, as men do their ways, in the dark; and as blind men are led by their dogs, so is he governed by some mean servant or other that relates to his pleasures. He is as inconstant as the moon which he lives under; and although he does nothing but advise with his pillow all day, he is as great a stranger to himself as he is to the rest of the world. His mind entertains all things very freely that come and go, but, like guests and strangers, they are not welcome if they stay long. This lays him open to all cheats, quacks, and impostors, who apply to every particular humour while it lasts, and afterwards vanish. Thus, with St. Paul, though in a different sense, he dies daily, and only lives in the night. He deforms Nature while he intends to adorn her, like Indians that hang jewels in their lips and noses. His ears are perpetually drilled with a fiddlestick. He endures pleasures with less patience than other men do their pains.
Is one that wears his feather on the inside of his head. His brain is like quicksilver, apt to receive any impression but retain none. His mind is made of changeable stuff, that alters colour with every motion towards the light. He is a cormorant that has but one gut, devours everything greedily, but it runs through him immediately. He does not know so much as what he would be, and yet would be everything he knows. He is like a paper-lantern, that turns with the smoke of a candle. He wears his clothes as the ancient laws of the land have provided, according to his quality, that he may be known what he is by them; and it is as easy to decipher him by his habit as a pudding. He is rigged with ribbon, and his garniture is his tackle; all the rest of him is hull. He is sure to be the earliest in the fashion, and lays out for it like the first peas and cherries. He is as proud of leading a fashion as others are of a faction, and glories as much to be in the head of a mode as a soldier does to be in the head of an army. He is admirably skilful in the mathematics of clothes, and can tell, at the first view, whether they have the right symmetry. He alters his gait with the times, and has not a motion of his body that (like a dottrel) he does not borrow from somebody else. He exercises his limbs like a pike and musket, and all his postures are practised. Take him altogether, and he is nothing but a translation, word for word, out of French, an image cast in plaster-of-Paris, and a puppet sent over for others to dress themselves by. He speaks French as pedants do Latin, to show his breeding, and most naturally where he is least understood. All his non-naturals, on which his health and diseases depend, are stile nuovo, French is his holiday language, that he wears for his pleasure and ornament, and uses English only for his business and necessary occasions. He is like a Scotchman; though he is born a subject of his own nation, he carries a French faction within him.
He is never quiet, but sits as the wind is said to do when it is most in motion. His head is as full of maggots as a pastoral poet’s flock. He was begotten, like one of Pliny’s Portuguese horses, by the wind. The truth is, he ought not to have been reared; for, being calved in the increase of the moon, his head is troubled with a ——
N.B.—The last word not legible.
Is one that is so delighted with the sweet sound of his own tongue, that William Prynne will sooner lend an ear than he to anything else. His measure of talk is till his wind is spent, and then he is not silenced, but becalmed. His ears have catched the itch of his tongue, and though he scratch them, like a beast with his hoof, he finds a pleasure in it. A silenced minister has more mercy on the Government in a secure conventicle than he has on
Is a fanatic Hector that has found out, by a very strange way of new light, how to transform all the devils into angels of light; for he believes all religion consists in looseness, and that sin and vice is the whole duty of man. He puts off the old man, but puts it on again upon the new one, and makes his pagan vices serve to preserve his Christian virtues from wearing out, for if he should use his piety and devotion always it would hold out but a little while. He is loth that iniquity and vice should be thrown away as long as there may be good use for it; for if that which is wickedly gotten may be disposed to pious uses, why should not wickedness itself as well? He believes himself shot-free against all the attempts of the devil, the world, and the flesh, and therefore is not afraid to attack them in their own quarters and encounter them at their own weapons. For as strong bodies may freely venture to do and suffer that, without any hurt to themselves, which would destroy those that are feeble, so a saint that is strong in grace may boldly engage himself in those great sins and iniquities that would easily damn a weak brother, and yet come off never the worse. He believes deeds of darkness to be only those sins that are committed in private, not those that are acted openly and owned. He is but a hypocrite turned the wrong side outward; for, as the one wears his vices within and the other without, so when they are counterchanged the ranter becomes a hypocrite, and the hypocrite an able ranter. His church is the devil’s chapel, for it agrees exactly both in doctrine and discipline with the best reformed bawdy-houses. He is a monster produced by the madness of this latter age; but if it had been his fate to have been whelped in old Rome he had passed for a prodigy, and been received among raining of stones and the speaking of bulls, and would have put a stop to all public affairs until he had been expiated. Nero clothed Christians in the skins of wild beasts, but he wraps wild beasts in the skins of Christians.
Is an artificer or maker of love, a sworn servant to all ladies, like an officer in a corporation. Though no one in particular will own any title to him, yet he never fails upon all occasions to offer his services, and they as seldom to turn it back again untouched. He commits nothing with them but himself to their good graces; and they recommend him back again to his own, where he finds so kind a reception that he wonders how he does fail of it everywhere else. His passion is as easily set on fire as a fart, and as soon out again. He is charged and primed with love-powder like a gun, and the least sparkle of an eye gives fire to him and off he goes, but seldom or never hits the mark. He has commonplaces, and precedents of repartees, and letters for all occasions, and falls as readily into his method of making love
Is one that expounds upon the planets and teaches to construe the accidents by the due joining of stars in construction. He talks with them by dumb signs, and can tell what they mean by their twinkling and squinting upon one another as well as they themselves. He is a spy upon the stars, and can tell what they are doing by the company they keep and the houses they frequent. They have no power to do anything alone until so many meet as will make a quorum. He is clerk of the committee to them, and draws up all their orders that concern either public or private affairs. He keeps all their accounts for them, and sums them up, not by debtor, but creditor alone—a more compendious way. They do ill to make them have so much authority over the earth, which perhaps has as much as any one of them but the sun, and as much right to sit and vote in their councils as any other. But because there are but seven Electors of the German Empire, they will allow of no more to dispose of all other, and most foolishly and unnaturally dispossess their own parent of its inheritance rather than acknowledge a defect in their own rules. These rules are all they have to show for their title, and yet not one of them can tell whether those they had them from came honestly by them. Virgil’s description of fame, that reaches from earth to the
Is a retailer of justice that uses false lights, false weights, and false measures. He measures right and wrong by his retaining fee, and, like a French duellist, engages on that side that first bespeaks him, though it be against his own brother; not because it is right, but merely upon a punctilio of profit, which is better than honour to him, because riches will buy nobility, and nobility nothing, as having no intrinsic value. He sells his opinion, and engages to maintain the title against all that claim under him, but no further. He puts it off upon his word, which he believes himself not bound to make good, because when he has parted with his right to it, it is no longer his. He keeps no justice for his own use, as being a commodity of his own growth, which he never buys, but only sells to others; and as no man goes worse shod than the shoemaker, so no man is more out of justice than he that gets his living by it. He draws bills as children do lots at a lottery, and is paid as much for blanks as prizes. He undoes a man with the same privilege as a doctor kills him, and is paid as well for it as if he preserved him, in which he is very impartial, but in nothing else. He believes it no fault in himself to err in judgment, because that part of the law belongs to the judge and not to him. His best opinions and his worst are all of a price, like good wine and bad in a tavern, in which he does not deal so fairly as those who, if they know what you are willing to bestow, can tell how to fit you accordingly. When his law lies upon his hands he will afford a good pennyworth, and rather pettifog and turn common barreter than be out of employment. His opinion is one thing while it is his own and another when it is paid for; for, the property being altered, the case alters also. When his counsel is not for his client’s turn he will never take it back again, though it be never the worse, nor allow him anything for it, yet will sell the same over and over again to as many as come to him for it. His pride increases with his practice, and the fuller of business he is, like
Great critics in a noverint universi
Know all men by these presents how
to curse ye;
Pedants of said and foresaid, and
both Frenches,
Pedlars, and pokie, may those rev’rend
benches
Y’ aspire to be the stocks,
and may ye be
No more call’d to the Bar,
but pillory;
Thither in triumph may ye backward
Is a poet of small wares, whose Muse is short-winded and quickly out of breath. She flies like a goose, that is no sooner upon the wing but down again. He was originally one of those authors that used to write upon white walls, from whence his works, being collected and put together, pass in the world like single money among those that deal in small matters. His wit is like fire in a flint, that is nothing while it is in, and nothing again as soon as it is out. He treats of all things and persons that come in his way, but like one that draws in little, much less than the life:—
His bus’ness is t’ inveigh
and flatter,
Like parcel parasite and satyr.
He is a kind of vagabond writer, that is never out of his way, for nothing is beside the purpose with him that proposes none at all. His works are like a running banquet, that have much variety but little of a sort, for he deals in nothing but scraps and parcels, like a tailor’s broker. He does not write, but set his mark upon things, and gives no account in words at length, but only in figures. All his wit reaches but to four lines or six at the most; and if he ever venture farther it tires immediately, like a post-horse, that will go no farther than his wonted stages. Nothing agrees so naturally with his fancy as bawdry, which he dispenses in small pittances to continue his reader still in an appetite for more.
St. Paul was thought by Festus to be mad with too much learning, but the fanatics of our times are mad with too little. He chooses himself one of the elect, and packs a committee of his own party to judge the twelve tribes of Israel. The apostles in the primitive Church worked miracles to confirm and propagate their doctrine, but he thinks to confirm his by working at his trade. He assumes a privilege to impress what text of Scripture he pleases for his own use, and leaves those that make against him for the use of the wicked. His religion, that tends only to faction and sedition, is neither fit for peace nor war, but times of a condition between both, like the sails of a ship that will not endure a storm and are of no use at all in a calm. He believes it has enough of the primitive Christian if it be but persecuted as that was, no matter for the piety or doctrine of it, as if there were nothing required to prove the truth of a religion but the punishment of the professors of it, like the old mathematicians that were never believed to be profoundly knowing in their profession until they had run through all punishments and just escaped the fork. He is all for suffering for religion, but nothing for acting; for he accounts good works no better than encroachments upon the merits of free believing, and a good life the most troublesome and unthrifty way to heaven. He canonises himself a saint in his own lifetime, as the more sure and certain way, and less troublesome to others. He outgrows ordinances, as an apprentice that has served out his time does his indentures, and being a freeman, supposes himself at liberty to set up what religion he pleases. He calls his own supposed abilities gifts, and disposes of himself like a foundation designed to pious uses, although, like others of the same kind, they are always diverted to other purposes. He owes all his gifts to his ignorance, as beggars do the alms they receive to their poverty. They are such as the fairies are said to drop in men’s shoes, and when they are discovered to give them over and confer no more; for when his gifts are discovered they vanish and come to nothing. He is but a puppet saint that moves he knows not how, and his ignorance is the dull, leaden weight that puts all his parts in motion. His outward man is a saint and his inward man a reprobate, for he carries his vices in his heart and his religion in his face.
A priest stole him out of the cradle, like the fairies, and left a fool and changeling in his place. He new dyes his religion, and commonly into a sadder and darker colour than it was before. He gives his opinion the somersault and turns the wrong side of it outwards. He does not mend his manners, but botch them with patches of another stuff and colour. Change of religion, being for the most part used by those who understand not why one religion is better than another, is like changing of money two sixpences
Is a centaur, a mixture of man and beast, like a monster engendered by unnatural copulation, a crab engrafted on an apple. He was neither made by art nor nature, but in spite of both, by evil custom.. His perpetual conversation with beasts has rendered him one of them, and he is among men but a naturalised brute. He appears by his language, genius, and behaviour to be an alien to mankind, a foreigner to humanity, and of so opposite a genius that ’tis easier to make a Spaniard a Frenchman than to reduce him to civility. He disdains every man that he does
Stands candidate for cuckold, and if he miss of it, it is none of his fault, for his merit is sufficiently known. He is commonly no lover, but able to pass for a most desperate one where he finds it is like to prove of considerable advantage to him, and therefore has passions lying by him of all sizes proportionable to all women’s fortunes, and can be indifferent, melancholy, or stark-mad according as their estates give him occasion; and when he finds it is to no purpose, can presently come to himself again and try another. He prosecutes his suit against his mistress as clients do a suit in law, and does nothing without the advice of his learned counsel, omits no advantage for want of soliciting, and, when he gets her consent, overthrows her. He endeavours to match his estate, rather than himself, to the best advantage, and if his mistress’s fortune and his do but come to an agreement, their persons are easily satisfied, the match is soon made up, and a cross marriage between all four is presently concluded. He is not much concerned in his lady’s virtues, for if the opinion of the Stoics be true, that the virtuous are always rich, there is no doubt but she that is rich must be virtuous. He never goes without a list in his pocket of all the widows and virgins about the town, with particulars of their jointures, portions, and inheritances, that if one
Is one whose want of money and want of wit have engaged him beyond his abilities. The little knowledge he has of himself, being suitable to the little he has in his profession, has made him believe himself fit for it. This double ignorance has made him set a value upon himself, as he that wants a great deal appears in a better condition than he that wants a little. This renders him confident and fit for any undertaking, and sometimes (such is the concurrent ignorance of the world) he prospers in it, but oftener miscarries and becomes ridiculous; yet this advantage he has, that as nothing can make him see his error, so nothing can discourage him that way, for he is fortified with his ignorance, as barren and rocky places are by their situation, and he will rather believe that all men want judgment than himself. For, as no man is pleased that has an ill opinion of himself, Nature, that finds out remedies herself, and his own ease, render him insensible of his defects. From hence he grows impudent; for, as men judge by comparison, he knows as little what it is to be defective as what it is to be excellent. Nothing renders men modest but a just knowledge how to compare themselves with others; and where that is wanting impudence supplies the place of it, for there is no vacuum in the minds of men, and commonly, like other things in Nature, they swell more with rarefaction than condensation. The more men know of the world, the worse opinion they have of it; and the more they understand of truth, they are better acquainted with the difficulties of it, and consequently are the less confident in their assertions, especially in matters of probability, which commonly is squint-eyed and looks nine ways at once. It is the office of a just judge to hear
Is a counterfeit stone, and the larger and fairer he appears the more apt he is to be discovered; whilst small ones, that pretend to no great value, pass unsuspected. He is made like a man in arras-hangings, after some great master’s design, though far short of the original. He is like a spectrum or walking spirit, that assumes the shape of some particular person and appears in the likeness of something that he is not because he has no shape of his own to put on. He has a kind of monkey and baboon wit, that takes after some man’s way whom he endeavours to imitate, but does it worse than those things that are naturally his own; for he does not learn, but take his pattern out, as a girl does her sampler. His whole life is nothing but a kind of education, and he is always learning to be something that he is not nor ever will be. For Nature is free, and will not be forced out of her way, nor compelled to do anything against her own will and inclination. He is but a retainer to wit and a follower of his master, whose badge he wears everywhere, and therefore his way is called servile imitation. His fancy is like the innocent
Has found out a way to renew not only his youth, but his childhood, by being stewed, like old Aeson, in liquor; much better than the virtuoso’s way of making old dogs young again, for he is a child again at second hand, never the worse for the wearing, but as purely fresh, simple, and weak as he was at first. He has stupefied his senses by living in a moist climate, according to the poet, Boeotum in crasso jurares aere natum. He measures his time by glasses of wine, as the ancients did by water-glasses; and as Hermes Trismegistus is said to have kept the first account of hours by the pissing of a beast dedicated to Serapis, he revives that custom in his own practice, and observes it punctually in passing his time. He is like a statue placed in a moist air; all the lineaments of humanity are mouldered away, and there is nothing left of him but a rude lump of the shape of a man, and no one part entire. He has drowned himself in a butt of wine, as the Duke of Clarence was served by his brother. He has washed down his soul and pissed it out, and lives now only by the spirit of wine or brandy, or by an extract drawn off his stomach. He has swallowed his humanity and drunk himself into a beast, as if he had pledged Madam Circe and done her right. He is drowned in a glass like a fly, beyond the cure of crumbs of bread or the sunbeams. He is like a springtide; when he is drunk to his high-water-mark he swells and looks big, runs against the stream, and overflows everything that stands in his way; but when the drink within him is at an ebb, he shrinks within his banks and falls so low and shallow that cattle may pass over him. He governs all his actions by the drink within him, as a Quaker does by the light within him; has a different humour for every nick his drink rises to, like the degrees of the weather-glass; and proceeds from ribaldry and bawdry to politics, religion, and quarrelling, until it is at the top, and then it is the dog-days with him; from whence he falls down again until his liquor is at the bottom, and then he lies quiet and is frozen up.
Is an artificial magician, that with his fingers casts a mist before the eyes of the rabble and makes his balls walk invisible which way he pleases. He does his feats behind a table, like a Presbyterian in a conventicle, but with much more dexterity and cleanliness, and therefore all sorts of people are better pleased with him. Most professions and mysteries derive the practice of all their faculties from him, but use them with less ingenuity and candour; for the more he deceives those he has to do with the better he deals with them; while those that imitate him in a lawful calling are far more dishonest, for the more they impose the more they abuse. All his cheats are primitive, and therefore more innocent and of greater purity than those that are by tradition from hand to hand derived to them; for he conveys money out of one man’s pocket into another’s with much more sincerity and ingenuity than those that do it in a legal way, and for a less considerable, though more conscientious, reward. He will fetch money out of his own throat with a great deal more of delight and satisfaction to those that pay him for it than any haranguer whatsoever, and make it chuck in his throat better than a lawyer that has talked himself hoarse, and swallowed so many fees that he is almost choked. He will spit fire and blow smoke out of his mouth with less harm and inconvenience to the Government than a seditious holder-forth, and yet all these disown and scorn him, even as men that are grown great and rich despise the meanness of their originals. He calls upon “Presto begone,” and the Babylonian’s tooth, to amuse and divert the rabble from looking too narrowly into his tricks; while a zealous hypocrite, that calls heaven and earth to witness his, turns up the eye and shakes the head at his idolatry and profanation. He goes the circuit to all country fairs, where he meets with good strolling practice, and comes up to Bartholomew Fair as his Michaelmas term; after which he removes to some great thoroughfare, where he hangs out himself in effigy, like a Dutch malefactor, that all those that pass by may for their money have a trial of his skill. He endeavours to plant himself as near as he can to some puppet-play, monster, or mountebank, as the most convenient situation; and when trading grows scant they join all their forces together and make up one grand show, and admit the cutpurse and balladsinger to trade under them, as orange-women do at a playhouse.
Pulls down old histories to build them up finer again, after a new model of his own designing. He takes away all the lights of truth in history to make it the fitter tutoress of life; for Truth herself has little or nothing to do in the affairs of the world, although all matters of the greatest weight and moment are pretended and done in her name, like a weak princess that has only the title, and falsehood all the power. He observes one very fit decorum in dating his histories in the days of old and putting all his own inventions upon ancient times; for when the world was younger, it might perhaps love and fight, and do generous things at the rate he describes them; but since it is grown old, all these heroic feats are laid by and utterly given over, nor ever like to come in fashion again; and therefore all his images of those virtues signify no more than the statues upon dead men’s tombs, that will never make them live again. He is like one of Homer’s gods, that sets men together by the ears and fetches them off again how he pleases; brings armies into the field like Janello’s leaden soldiers; leads up both sides himself, and gives the victory to which he pleases, according as he finds it fit the design of his story; makes love and lovers too, brings them acquainted, and appoints meetings when and where he pleases, and at the same time betrays them in the height of all their felicity to miserable captivity, or some other horrid calamity; for which he makes them rail at the gods and curse their own innocent stars when he only has done them all the injury; makes men villains, compels them to act all barbarous inhumanities by his own directions, and after inflicts the cruellest punishments upon them for it. He makes all his knights fight in fortifications, and storm one another’s armour before they can come to encounter body for body, and always matches them so equally one with another that it is a whole page before they can guess which is likely to have the better; and he that has it is so mangled that it had been better for them both to have parted fair at first; but when they encounter with those that are no knights, though ever so well armed and mounted, ten to one goes for nothing. As for the ladies, they are every one the most beautiful in the whole world, and that’s the reason why no one of them, nor all together with all their charms, have power to tempt away any knight from another. He differs from a just historian as a joiner does from a carpenter; the one does things plainly and substantially for use, and the other carves and polishes merely for show and ornament.
Is a certain classic author that handles his subject-matter very ruggedly, and endeavours with his own evil words to corrupt another man’s good manners. All his works treat but of two things, his own malice and another man’s faults, both which he describes in very proper and pertinent language. He is not much concerned whether what he writes be true or false; that’s nothing to his purpose, which aims only at filthy and bitter, and therefore his language is, like pictures of the devil, the fouler the better. He robs a man of his good name, not for any good it will do him (for he dares not own it), but merely, as a jackdaw steals money, for his pleasure. His malice has the same success with other men’s charity, to be rewarded in private; for all he gets is but his own private satisfaction and the testimony of an evil conscience; for which, if it be discovered, he suffers the worst kind of martyrdom and is paid with condign punishment, so that at the best he has but his labour for his pains. He deals with a man as the Spanish Inquisition does with heretics, clothes him in a coat painted with hellish shapes of fiends, and so shows him to the rabble to render him the more odious. He exposes his wit like a bastard, for the next comer to take up and put out to nurse, which it seldom fails of, so ready is every man to contribute to the infamy of another. He is like the devil, that sows tares in the dark, and while a man sleeps plants weeds among his corn. When he ventures to fall foul on the Government or any great persons, if he has not a special care to keep himself, like a conjurer, safe in his circle, he raises a spirit that falls foul on himself and carries him to limbo, where his neck is clapped up in the hole, out of which it is never released until he has paid his ears down on the nail for fees. He is in a worse condition than a schoolboy, for when he is discovered he is whipped for his exercise, whether it be well or ill done; so that he takes a wrong course to show his wit, when his best way to do so is to conceal it; otherwise he shows his folly instead of his wit, and pays dear for the mistake.
Is sent out laden with the wisdom and politics of the place he serves for, and has his own freight and custom free. He is trusted like a factor to trade for a society, but endeavours to turn all the public to his own private advantages. He has no instructions but his pleasure, and therefore strives to have his privileges as large. He is very wise in his politic capacity as having a full share in the House and an implicit right to every man’s reason, though he has none of his own, which makes him appear so simple out of it. He believes all reason of State consists in faction, as all wisdom in haranguing, of which he is so fond that he had rather the nation should perish than continue ignorant of his great abilities that way; though he that observes his gestures,
Of our times is like a fanatic, that has no wit in ordinary easy things, and yet attempts the hardest task of brains in the whole world, only because, whether his play or work please or displease, he is certain to come off better than he deserves, and find some of his own latitude to applaud him, which he could never expect any other way, and is as sure to lose no reputation, because he has none to venture:—
Like gaming rooks, that never stick
To play for hundreds upon tick,
’Cause, if they chance to
lose at play,
They’ve not one halfpenny
to pay;
And, if they win a hundred pound,
Gain, if for sixpence they compound.
Nothing encourages him more in his undertaking than his ignorance, for he has not wit enough to understand so much as the difficulty of what he attempts; therefore he runs on boldly like a foolhardy wit, and Fortune, that favours fools and the bold, sometimes takes notice of him for his double capacity, and receives him into her good graces. He has one motive more, and that is the concurrent ignorant judgment of the present age, in which his sottish fopperies pass with applause, like Oliver Cromwell’s oratory among fanatics
Is an epidemic physician, a doctor-errant, that keeps himself up by being, like a top, in motion, for if he should settle he would fall to nothing immediately. He is a pedlar of medicines, a petty chapman of cures, and tinker empirical to the body of man. He strolls about to markets and fairs, where he mounts on the top of his shop, that is his bank, and publishes his medicines as universal as himself; for everything is for all diseases, as himself is of all places—that is to say, of none. His business is to show tricks and impudence. As for the cure of diseases, it concerns those that have them, not him, further than to get their money. His pudding is his setter that lodges the rabble for him, and then slips him, who opens with a deep mouth, and has an ill day if he does not run down some. He baits his patient’s body with his medicines, as a rat-catcher does a room, and either poisons the disease or him. As soon as he has got all the money and spent all the credit the rabble could spare him, he then removes to fresh quarters where he is less known and better trusted. If but one in twenty of his medicines hit by chance, when nature works the cure, it saves the credit of all the rest, that either do no good or hurt; for whosoever recovers in his hands, he does the work under God; but if he die, God does it under him: his time was come, and there’s an end. A velvet jerkin
Is a person of great complaisance, and very civil to all that have occasion to make use of his wife. He married a wife as a common proxy for the service of all those that are willing to come in for their shares; he engrossed her first by wholesale, and since puts her off by retail; he professes a form of matrimony, but utterly denies the power thereof. They that tell tales are very unjust, for, having not put in their claims before marriage, they are bound for ever after to hold their tongues. The reason why citizens are commonly wittols is, because men that drive a trade and are dealers in the world seldom provide anything for their own uses which they will not very willingly put off again for considerable profit. He believes it to be but a vulgar error and no such disparagement as the world commonly imagines to be a cuckold; for man, being the epitomy and representation of all creatures, cannot be said to be perfect while he wants that badge and character which so many several species wear both for their defence and ornament. He takes the only wise and sure course that his wife should do him no injury; for, having his own free consent, it is not in her power that way to do him any wrong at all. His wife is, like Eve in Paradise, married to all mankind, and yet is unsatisfied that there are no more worlds, as Alexander the Great was. She is a person of public capacity, and rather than not serve her country would suffer an army to march over her, as Sir Rice ap Thomas did. Her husband and she give and take equal liberty, which preserves a perfect peace and good understanding between both, while those that are concerned in one another’s love and honour are never quiet, but always caterwauling. He differs from a jealous man as a valiant man does from a coward, that trembles at a danger which the other scorns and despises. He is of a true philosophical temper, and suffers what he knows not how to avoid with a more than stoical resolution. He is one of those the poet speaks of:—
“Qui ferre incommoda vitae,
Nec jactare jugum, vita didicere
magistra.”
He is as much pleased to see many men approve his choice of his wife and has as great a kindness for them, as opiniasters have for all those whom they find to agree with themselves in judgment and approve the abilities of their understandings.
Goes to law as men do to bad houses, to spend his money and satisfy his concupiscence of wrangling. He is a constant customer to the old reverend gentlewoman Law, and believes her to be very honest, though she picks his pockets and puts a thousand tricks and gulleries upon him. He has a strange kindness for an action of the case, but a most passionate loyalty for the King’s writ. A well-drawn bill and answer will draw him all the world over, and a breviate as far as the Line. He enters the lists at Westminster like an old tiller, runs his course in law, and breaks an oath or two instead of a lance; and if he can but unhorse the defendant and get the sentence of the judges on his side, he marches off in triumph. He prefers a cry of lawyers at the Bar before any pack of the best-mouthed dogs in all the North. He has commonly once a term a trial of skill with some other professor of the noble science of contention at the several weapons of bill and answer, forgery, perjury, subornation, champarty, affidavit, common barretry, maintenance, &c., and though he come off with the worst, he does not greatlv care so he can but have another bout for it. He fights with bags of money as they did heretofore with sand-bags, and he that has the heaviest has the advantage and knocks down the other, right or wrong and he suffers the penalties of the law for having no more money to show in the case. He is a client by his order and votary of the long robe, and though he were sure the devil invented it to hide his cloven feet, he has the greater reverence for it; for, as evil manners produce good laws, the worse the inventor was the better the thing may be. He keeps as many Knights of the Post to swear for him, as the King does poor knights at Windsor to pray for him. When he is defendant and like to be worsted in a suit, he puts in a cross bill and becomes plaintiff; for the plainant is eldest hand, and has not only that advantage, but is understood to be the better friend to the Court, and is considered for it accordingly.
Is a peculiar fantastic that has a wonderful natural affection to some particular kind of folly, to which he applies himself and in time becomes eminent. ’Tis commonly some outlying whimsy of Bedlam, that, being tame and unhurtful, is suffered to go at liberty. The more serious he is the more ridiculous he becomes, and at the same time pleases himself in earnest and others in jest. He knows no mean, for that is inconsistent with all humour, which is
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.
Saves the devil a labour and leads himself into temptation, being loth to lose his good favour in giving him any trouble where he can do the business himself without his assistance, which he very prudently reserves for matters of greater concernment. He governs himself in an arbitrary way, and is absolute, without being confined to anything but his own will and pleasure, which he makes his law. His life is all recreation, and his diversions nothing but turning from one vice, that he is weary of, to entertain himself with another that is fresh. He lives above the state of his body as well as his fortune, and runs out of his health and money as if he had made a match and betted on the race, or bid the devil take the hindmost. He is an amphibious animal, that lives in two elements, wet and dry, and never comes out of the first but, like a sea-calf, to sleep on the shore. His language is very suitable to his conversation, and he talks as loosely as he lives. Ribaldry and profanation are his doctrine and use, and what he professes publicly he practises very carefully in his life and conversation; not like those clergymen that, to save the souls of other men, condemn themselves out of their own mouths. His whole life is nothing but a perpetual lordship of misrule and a constant ramble day and night as long as it lasts, which is not according to the course of nature, but its own course; for he cuts off the latter end of it, like a pruned vine, that it may bear the more wine although it be the shorter. As for that which is left, he is as lavish of it as he is of everything else; for he sleeps all day and sits up all night, that he may not see how it passes, until, like one that travels in a litter and sleeps, he is at his journey’s end before he is aware; for he is spirited away by his vices and clapped under hatches, where he never knows whither he is going until he is at the end of his voyage.
Is a civil mutineer, and as all mutinies for the most part are for pay, if it were not for that he would never trouble himself with it. His business is to kindle and blow up discontents against the Government, that, when they are inflamed, he may have the fairer opportunity to rob and plunder, while those that are concerned are employed in quenching it. He endeavours to raise tumults and, if he can, civil war—a remedy which no man that means well to his country can endure to think on though the disease were never so desperate. He is a State mountebank, whose business is to persuade the people that they are not well in health, that he may get their money to make them worse. If he be a preacher, he has the advantage of all others of his tribe, for he has a way to vent sedition by wholesale; and as the foulest purposes have most need of the fairest pretences, so when sedition is masked under the veil of piety, religion, conscience,
Is an Ostro-Goth or Northern Hun, that, wheresoever he comes, invades and all the world does overrun, without distinction of age, sex, or quality. He has no regard to anything but his own humour, and that, he expects, should pass everywhere without asking leave or being asked wherefore, as if he had a safe-conduct for his rudeness. He rolls up himself like a hedgehog in his prickles, and is as intractable to all that come near him. He is an ill-designed piece, built after the rustic order, and all his parts look too big for their height. He is so ill-contrived that that which should be the top in all regular structures—i.e., confidence—is his foundation. He has neither doctrine nor discipline in him, like a fanatic Church, but is guided by the very same spirit that dipped the herd of swine in the sea. He was not bred, but reared; not brought up to hand, but suffered to run wild and take after his kind, as other people of the pasture do. He takes that freedom in all places, as if he were not at liberty, but had broken loose and expected to be tied up again. He does not eat, but feed, and when he drinks goes to water. The old Romans beat the barbarous part of the world into civility, but if he had lived in those times he had been invincible to all attempts of that nature, and harder to be subdued and governed than a province. He eats his bread, according to the curse, with the sweat of his brow, and takes as much pains at a meal as if he earned it; puffs and blows like a horse that
Is a congregation or assembly of the States-general sent from their several and respective shops, stalls, and garrets. They are full of controversy, and every one of a several judgment concerning the business under present consideration, whether it be mountebank, show, hanging, or ballad-singer. They meet, like Democritus’s atoms, in vacuo, and by a fortuitous jostling together produce the greatest and most savage beast in the whole world; for though the members of it may have something of human nature while they are asunder, when they are put together they have none at all, as a multitude of several sounds make one great noise unlike all the rest, in which no one particular is distinguished. They are a great dunghill where all sorts of dirty and nasty humours meet, stink, and ferment, for all the parts are in a perpetual tumult. ’Tis no wonder they make strange Churches, for they take naturally to any imposture, and have a great antipathy to truth and order as being contrary to their original confusion. They are a herd of swine possessed with a dry devil that run after hanging instead of drowning. Once a month they go on pilgrimage to the gallows, to visit the sepulchres of their ancestors, as the Turks do once a week. When they come there they sing psalms, quarrel, and return full of satisfaction and narrative. When they break loose they are like a public ruin, in which the highest parts lie undermost, and make the noblest fabrics heaps of rubbish. They are like the sea, that’s stirred into a tumult with every blast of wind that blows upon it, till it become a watery Apennine, and heap mountain billows upon one another, as once the giants did in the war with heaven. A crowd is their proper element, in which they make their way with their shoulders as pigs creep through hedges. Nothing in the world delights them so much as the ruin of great persons or any calamity in which they have no share, though they get nothing by it. They love nothing but themselves in the likeness of one another, and, like sheep, run all that way the first goes, especially if it be against their governors, whom they have a natural disaffection to.
Is a retailer of oaths, a deposition-monger, an evidence-maker, that lives by the labour of his conscience. He takes money to kiss the Gospel, as Judas did Christ when he betrayed Him. As a good conscience is a continual feast, so an ill one is with him his daily food. He plies at a court of justice, as porters do at a market, and his business is to bear witness, as they do burdens for any man that will pay them for it. He will swear his ears through an inch-board, and wears them merely by favour of the Court; for, being amicus curiae, they are willing to let him keep the pillory out of possession, though he has forfeited his right never so often; for when he is once outed of his ears he is past his labour, and can do the commonwealth of practisers no more service. He is false weight in the balance of justice, and, as a lawyer’s tongue is the tongue of the balance that inclines either way according as the weight of the bribe inclines it, so does his. He lays one hand on the Book, and the other is in the plaintiff’s or defendant’s pocket. He feeds upon his conscience, as a monkey eats his tail. He kisses the Book to show he renounces and takes his leave of it. Many a parting kiss has he given the Gospel. He pollutes it with his lips oftener than a hypocrite. He is a sworn officer of every court and a great practiser, is admitted within the Bar, and makes good what the rest of the counsel say. The attorney and solicitor fee and instruct him in the case, and he ventures as far for his client as any man to be laid by the ears. He speaks more to the point than any other, yet gives false ground to his brethren of the jury, that they seldom come near the jack. His oaths are so brittle that not one in twenty of them will hold the taking, but fly as soon as they are out. He is worse than an ill conscience, for that bears true witness, but his is always false; and though his own conscience be said to be a thousand witnesses, he will outswear and outface them all. He believes it no sin to bear false witness for his neighbour that pays him for it, because it is not forbidden, but only to bear false witness against his neighbour.
Is a piece of base metal with the King’s stamp upon it, a fog raised by the sun to obscure his own brightness. He came to preferment by unworthy offices, like one that rises with his bum forwards, which the rabble hold to be fortunate. He got up to preferment on the wrong side, and sits as untoward in it. He is raised rather above himself than others, or as base metals are by the test of lead, while gold and silver continue still unmoved. He is raised and swells, like a pimple, to be an eyesore and deform the place he holds. He is borne like a cloud on the air of the Prince’s favour, and keeps his light from the rest of his people. He rises, like the light end of a balance, for want of weight, or as dust and feathers do, for being light.
“He is like fern, that vile
unuseful weed,
That springs equivocally, without
seed.”
He was not made for honour, nor it for him, which makes it sit so unfavouredly upon him. The fore-part of himself and the hinder-part of his coach publish his distinction; as French lords, that have haute justice—that is, may hang and draw—distinguish their qualities by the pillars of their gallows. He got his honour easily, by chance, without the hard, laborious way of merit, which makes him so prodigally lavish of it. He brings down the price of honour, as the value of anything falls in mean hands. He looks upon all men in the state of knighthood and plain gentility as most deplorable, and wonders how he could endure himself when he was but of that rank. The greatest part of his honour consists in his well-sounding title, which he therefore makes choice of, though he has none to the place, but only a patent to go by the name of it. This appears at the end of his coach in the shape of a coronet, which his footmen set their bums against, to the great disparagement of the wooden representative. The people take him for a general grievance, a kind of public pressure or innovation, and would willingly give a subsidy to be redressed of him. He is a strict observer of men’s addresses to him, and takes a mathematical account whether they stoop and bow in just proportion to the weight of his greatness and allow full measure to their legs and cringes accordingly. He never uses courtship but in his own defence, that others may use the same to him, and, like a true Christian, does as he would be done unto. He is intimate with no man but his pimp and his surgeon, with whom he keeps no state, but communicates all the states of his body. He is raised, like the market or a tax, to the grievance and curse of the people. He that knew the inventory of him would wonder what slight ingredients go to the making up of a great person; howsoever, he is turned up trump, and so commands better cards than himself while the game lasts. He has much of honour according to the original sense of it, which among the ancients, Gellius says, signified injury. His prosperity was greater than his brain could bear, and he is drunk with it; and if he should take a nap as long as Epimenides or the Seven Sleepers he would never be sober again. He took his degree and went forth lord by mandamus, without performing exercises of merit. His honour’s but an immunity from worth, and his nobility a dispensation for doing things ignoble. He expects that men’s
Has a strange natural inclination to all ill intents and purposes. He bears nothing so resolutely as ill-will, which he takes naturally to, as some do to gaming, and will rather hate for nothing than sit out. He believes the devil is not so bad as he should be, and therefore endeavours to make him worse by drawing him into his own party offensive and defensive; and if he would but be ruled by him, does not doubt but to make him understand his business much better than he does. He lays nothing to heart but malice, which is so far from doing him hurt that it is the only cordial that preserves him. Let him use a man never so civilly to his face, he is sure to hate him behind his back. He has no memory for any good that is done him; but evil, whether it be done him or not, never leaves him, as things of the same kind always keep together. Love and hatred, though contrary passions, meet in him as a third and unite, for he loves nothing but to hate, and hates nothing but to love. All the truths in the world are not able to produce so much hatred as he is able to supply. He is a common enemy to the world, for being born to the hatred of it, Nature, that provides for everything she brings forth, has furnished him with a competence suitable to his occasions, for all men together cannot hate him so much as he does them one by one. He loses no occasion of offence, but very thriftily lays it up and endeavours to improve it to the best advantage. He makes issues in his skin to vent his ill-humours, and is sensible of no pleasure so much as the itching of his sores. He hates death for nothing so much as because he fears it will take him away before he has paid all the ill-will he owes, and deprive him of all those precious feuds he has been scraping together
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
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Wrote “The Character of the Happy Warrior” in 1806. It was suggested by the death of Nelson at Trafalgar on the 21st of October 1805. Wordsworth did not connect the poem with the name of Nelson because there was a stain upon his public life, in his relations with Lady Hamilton, that clouded the ideal. The poet said that in writing he thought much of his true-hearted sailor-brother who, as Captain of an Indiaman, had been drowned in the wreck of his ship off the Bill of Portland on the 5th of February 1805, his body not being found until the 20th of March.
Who is the happy Warrior? Who
is he
That every man in arms should wish
to he?
—It is the generous spirit,
who, when brought
Among the tasks of real life, hath
wrought
Upon the plan that pleased his boyish
thought:
Whose high endeavours are an inward
light
That makes the path before him always
bright:
Who, with a natural instinct to
discern
What knowledge can perform, is diligent
to learn;
Abides by this resolve, and stops
not there,
But makes his moral being his prime
care;
Who, doomed to go in company with
Pain,
And Fear, and Bloodshed—miserable
train!—
Turns his necessity to glorious
gain;
In face of these doth exercise a
power
Which is our human nature’s
[Footnote 1: Henry Wootton.]
[Footnote 2: “Microcosmography; or, a Piece of the World discovered; in Essays and Characters. By John Earle, D.D. of Christchurch and Merton College, Oxford and Bishop of Salisbury. A new edition, to which are add Notes and Appendix by Philip Bliss, Fellow of St. John’s College, Oxford.”]
[Footnote 3: So Washbourne, in his Divine Poems, 12mo, 1654:—
“—ere ’tis
accustom’d unto sin,
The mind white paper is,
and will admit
of any lesson you will write in
it.”—P. 26.
Shakspeare, of a child, says—
“—the hand of time
Shall draw this brief into as huge
a volume.”—K. John, II
I.]
[Footnote 4: This, and every other passage throughout the volume, [included between brackets,] does not appear in the first edition of 1628.]
[Footnote 5: Adam did not, to use the words of the old Geneva Bible, “make himself breeches,” till he knew sin: the meaning of the passage in the text is merely that, as a child advances in age, he commonly proceeds in the knowledge and commission of vice and immorality.]
[Footnote 6: St. Mary’s church was originally built by king Alfred, and annexed to the University of Oxford, for the use of the scholars, when St. Giles’s and St. Peter’s (which were till then appropriated to them,) had been ruined by the violence of the Danes. It was totally rebuilt during the reign of Henry VII., who gave forty oaks towards the materials; and is, in this day, the place of worship in which the public sermons are preached before the members of the university.]
[Footnote 7: Brachigraphy, or short-hand-writing, appears to have been much studied in our author’s time, and was probably esteemed a fashionable accomplishment. It was first introduced into this country by Peter Bales, who, in 1590, published The Writing Schoolmaster, a treatise consisting of three parts, the first “of Brachygraphie, that is, to write as fast as a man speaketh treatably, writing but one letter for a word;” the second, of Orthography; and the third of Calligraphy. Imprinted at London, by T. Orwin, &c., 1590, 4to. A second edition, “with sundry new additions,” appeared in 1597, 12mo, Imprinted at London, by George Shawe, &c. Holinshed gives the following description of one of Bales’ performances:—“The tenth of August (1575.) a rare peece of worke, and almost incredible, was brought to passe by an Englishman borne in the citie of London, named Peter Bales, who by his industrie and practise of his pen, contriued
[Footnote 8: It is customary in all sermons delivered before the University, to use an introductory prayer for the founder of, and principal benefactors to, the preacher’s individual college, as well as for the officers and members of the university in general. This, however, would appear very ridiculous when “he comes down to his friends” or, in other words, preaches before a country congregation.]
[Footnote 9: of, first edit. 1628.]
[Footnote 10: I cannot forbear to close this admirable character with the beautiful description of a "poure Persons,” riche of holy thought and werk, given by the father of English poetry:—
Benigne he was, and wonder diligent,
And in adversite ful patient:
And swiche he was ypreved often
sithes.
Ful loth were him to cursen for
his tithes,
But rather wolde he yeven out of
doute,
Unto his poure parishens aboute,
Of his offring, and eke of his substance.
He coude in litel thing have suffisance.
Wide was his parish, and houses
fer asonder,
But he ne left nought for no rain
ne thonder,
In sikenesse and in mischief to
visite
The ferrest in his parish, moche
and lite,
Upon his fete, and in his hand a
staf.
* * * *
And though he holy were, and vertuous,
He was to sinful men not dispitous,
Ne of his speche dangerous ne digne,
But in his teching discrete and
benigne.
To drawen folk to heven, with fairenesse,
By good ensample, was his besinesse.
* * * *
He waited after no pompe ne reverence,
Ne maked him no spiced conscience,
But Cristes lore, and his apostles
twelve,
He taught, but first he folwed it
himselve.
Chaucer, Prol. to
Cant. Tales, v. 485.
We may surely conclude with a line from the same poem,
“A better preest
I trowe that nowher non is.”]
[Footnote 11: The secretes of the reverende maister Alexis of Piemovnt, containyng excellente remedies against diuers diseases, &c., appear to have been a very favourite study either with the physicians, or their patients, about this period.
They were originally written in Italian, and were translated into English by William Warde, of which editions were printed at London, in 1558, 1562, 1595, and 1615. In 1603, a fourth edition of a Latin version appeared at Basil; and from Ward’s dedication to “the lorde Russell, erle of Bedford,” it seems that the French and Dutch were not without so great a treasure in their own languages. A specimen of the importance of this publication may be given in the title of the first secret. “The maner and secrete to conserue a man’s youth, and to holde back olde age, to maintaine a man always in helth and strength, as in the fayrest floure of his yeres.”]
[Footnote 12: The Regiment of Helthe, by Thomas Paynell, is another volume of the same description, and was printed by Thomas Berthelette, in 1541. 410.]
[Footnote 13: Vespasian, tenth emperor of Rome, imposed a tax upon urine, and when his son Titus remonstrated with him on the meanness of the act, “Pecuniam,” says Suetonius, “ex prima pensione admovit ad nares, suscitans num odore offenderetur? et illo negante, atqui, inquit, e lotio est.”]
[Footnote 14: “Vpon the market-day he is much haunted with vrinals, where, if he finde any thing, (though he knowe nothing,) yet hee will say some-what, which if it hit to some purpose, with a fewe fustian words, hee will seeme a piece of strange stuffe.” Character of an unworthy physician. “The Good and the Badde” by Nicholas Breton. 4to. 1618.]
[Footnote 15: That the murdered body bleeds at the approach of the murderer, was, in our author’s time, a commonly received opinion. Holinshed affirms that the corpse of Henry the Sixth bled as it was carrying for interment; and Sir Kenelm Digby so firmly believed in the truth of the report, that he has endeavoured to explain the reason. It is remarked by Mr. Steevens, in a note to Shakspeare, that the opinion seems to be derived from the ancient Swedes, or Northern nations, from whom we descend; as they practised this method of trial in all dubious cases.]
[Footnote 16:
“Faith, doctor, it is well,
thy study is to please
The female sex, and how their corp’ral
griefes to ease.”
Goddard’s “Mastif Whelp.” Satires. 4to. Without date. Sat. 17.]
[Footnote 17: In the first edition it stands thus:—“and his hat is as antient as the tower of Babel.”]
[Footnote 18: The Low-countries appear to have afforded ample room for ridicule at all times. In “A brief Character of the Low-countries under the States, being Three Weeks Observation of the Vices and Virtues of the Inhabitants,” written by Owen Feltham, and printed Lond. 1659, 12mo, we find them epitomized as a general sea-land—the great bog of Europe—an universal quagmire—in short, a green cheese in pickle. The sailors (in which denomination the author appears to include all the natives) he describes as being able to “drink, rail, swear, niggle, steal, and be lowsie alike.” P. 40.]
[Footnote 19: Gavelkind, or the practice of dividing lands equally among all the male children of the deceased, was (according to Spelman) adopted by the Saxons, from Germany, and is noticed by Tacitus in his description of that nation. Gloss. Archaiol., folio, Lond. 1664. Harrison, in The Description of England, prefixed to Holinshed’s Chronicle (vol. i. page 180), says, “Gauell kind is all the male children equallie to inherit, and is continued to this daie in Kent, where it is onelie to my knowledge reteined, and no where else in England.” And Lambarde, in his Customes of Kent (Perambulation, 410, 1596, page 538), thus notices it:—“The custom of Grauelkynde is generall, and spreadeth itselfe throughout the whole shyre, into all landes subiect by auncient tenure vnto the same, such places onely excepted, where it is altered by acte of parleament.”]
[Footnote 20: Minster-walk, 1st edit.]
[Footnote 21: Ambrose Spinola was one of the most celebrated and excellent commanders that Spain ever possessed: he was born, in 1569, of a noble family, and distinguished himself through life in being opposed to Prince Maurice of Nassau, the greatest general of his age, by whom he was ever regarded with admiration and respect. He died in 1630, owing to a disadvantage sustained by his troops at the siege of Cassel, which was to be entirely attributed to the imprudent orders he received from Spain, and which that government compelled him to obey. This disaster broke his heart; and he died with the exclamation of “they have robbed me of my honour;” an idea he was unable to survive. It is probable that, at the time this character was composed, many of the disaffected in England were in expectation of an attack to be made on this country by the Spaniards, under the command of Spinola.]
[Footnote 22: and Lipsius his hopping stile before either Tully or Quintilian. First edit.]
[Footnote 23: Primivist and primero were, in all probability, the same game, although Minshew, in his Dictionary, calls them “two games at cardes.” The latter he explains, “primum et primum visum, that is, first and first seene, because hee that can shew such an order of cardes, first winnes the game.” The coincidence between Mr. Strutt’s description of the former and the passage in the text, shows that there could be little or no difference between the value of the cards in these games, or in the manner of playing them. “Each player had four cards dealt to him, one by one, the seven was the highest card, in point of number, that he could avail himself of, which counted for twenty-one, the six counted for sixteen, the five for fifteen, and the ace for the same,” &c. (Sports and Pastimes, 247.) The honourable Daines Harrington conceived that Primero was introduced by Philip the Second, or some of his suite, whilst in England. Shakspeare proves that it was played in the royal circle.
-----“I left him (Henry VIII.) at Primero With the duke of Suffolk.”—Henry VIII.
So Decker: “Talke of none but lords and such ladies with whom you have plaid at Primero.”—Gul’s Horne-booke, 1609. 37.
Among the Marquis of Worcester’s celebrated “Century of Inventions,” 12mo, 1663, is one “so contrived without suspicion, that playing at Primero at cards, one may, without clogging his memory, keep reckoning of all sixes, sevens, and aces, which he hath discarded.”—No. 87.]
[Footnote 24: “Enquire out those tauernes which are best customd, whose maisters are oftenest drunk, for that confirmes their taste, and that they choose wholesome wines.”—Decker’s Gul’s Horne-booke, 1609.]
[Footnote 25: his, 1st edit.]
[Footnote 26: The editor of the edition in 1732, has altered canary to “sherry,” for what reason I am at a loss to discover, and have consequently restored the reading of the first edition. Venner gives the following description of this favourite liquor. “Canarie-wine, which beareth the name of the islands from whence it is brought, is of some termed a sacke, with this adjunct, sweete; but yet very improperly, for it differeth not only from sacke in sweetness and pleasantness of taste, but also in colour and consistence, for it is not so white in colour as sack, nor so thin in substance; wherefore it is more nutritive than sack, and less penetrative.”—Via recta ad Vitam longam, 4to, 1622. In Howell’s time, Canary wine was much adulterated. “I think,” says he, in one of his Letters, “there is more Canary brought into England than to all the world besides; I think also, there is a hundred times more drunk under the name of Canary wine, than there is brought in; for Sherries and Malagas, well mingled, pass for Canaries in most taverns. When Sacks and Canaries,” he continues, “were brought in first amongst us, they were used to be drunk in aqua vitae measures, and ’twas held fit only for those to drink who were used to carry their legs in their hands, their eyes upon their noses, and an almanack in their bones; but now they go down every one’s throat, both young and old, like milk.”—Howell, Letter to the lord Cliff, dated Oct. 7, 1634.]
[Footnote 27: We learn from Harrison’s Description of England, prefixed to Holinshed, that eleven o’clock was the usual time for dinner during the reign of Elizabeth. “With vs the nobilitie, gentrie, and students, doo ordinarilie go to dinner at eleuen before noone, and to supper at fiue, or between fiue and six at afternoone” (vol. i. page 171, edit. 1587). The alteration in manners at this time is rather singularly evinced, from a passage immediately following the above quotation, where we find that merchants and husbandmen dined and supped at a later hour than the nobility.]
[Footnote 28: Alluding to the public dinners given by the sheriff at particular seasons of the year. So in The Widow, a comedy, 4to, 1652.
“And as at a sheriff’s
table, O blest custome!
A poor indebted gentleman may dine,
Feed well, and without fear, and
depart so.”]
[Footnote 29: The chapel of the Virgin Mary, in the cathedral church of Gloucester, was founded by Richard Stanley, abbot, in 1457, and finished by William Farley, a monk of the monastery, in 1472. Sir Robert Atkyns gives the following description of the vault here alluded to. “The whispering place is very remarkable; it is a long alley, from one side of the choir to the other, built circular, that it might not darken the great east window of the choir. When a person whispers at one end of the alley, his voice is heard distinctly at the other end, though the passage be open in the middle, having large spaces for doors and windows on the east side. It may be imputed to the close cement of the wall, which makes it as one entire stone, and so conveys the voice, as a long piece of timber does convey the least stroak to the other end. Others assign it to the repercussion of the voice from accidental angles.”—Atkyns’ Ancient and Present State of Glostershire, Lond. 1712, folio, page 128. See also Fuller’s Worthies, in Gloucestershire, page 351.]
[Footnote 30: Then in apiece of gold, &c., 1st edit._]
[Footnote 31: Whilst he has not yet got them, enjoys them, 1st edit.]
[Footnote 32: Gallo-Belgicus was erroneously supposed, by the ingenious Mr. Reed, to be the “first newspaper, published in England;” we are, however, assured by the author of the Life of Ruddiman, that it has no title to so honourable a distinction. Gallo-Belgicus appears to have been rather an Annual Register, or History of its own Times, than a newspaper. It was written in Latin, and entituled, “MERCURSS GALLO-BELGICI: sive, rerum in Gallia, et Belgio potissimum: Hispania quoque, Italia, Anglia, Germania, Polonia, Vicinisque locis ab anno 1588, ad Martium anni 1594, gestarum, NUNCIJ.” The first volume was printed in 8vo, at Cologne, 1598; from which year, to about 1605, it was published annually; and from thence to the time of its conclusion, which is uncertain, it appeared in half-yearly volumes. Chalmers’ Life of Ruddiman, 1794. The great request in which newspapers were held at the publication of the present work may be gathered from Burton, who, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, complains that “if any read now-a-days, it is a play-book, or a pamphlet of newes.”]
[Footnote 33: Bartholomew Keckerman was born at Dantzick, in Prussia, 1571, and educated under Fabricius. Being eminently distinguished for his abilities and application, he was, in 1597, requested, by the senate of Dantzick, to take upon him the management of their academy; an honour he then declined, but accepted, on a second application, in 1601. Here he proposed to instruct his pupils in the complete science of philosophy in the short space of three years, and, for that purpose, drew up a great number of books upon logic, rhetoric, ethics, politics, physics, metaphysics, geography, astronomy, &c. &c., till, as it is said, literally worn out with scholastic drudgery, he died at the early age of 38.]
[Footnote 34: “Of bread made of wheat we have sundrie sorts dailie brought to the table, whereof the first and most excellent is the mainchet, which we commonlie call white bread.”—Harrison, Description of England prefixed to Holinshed, chap. 6.]
[Footnote 35: His honour was somewhat preposterous, for he bare, &c., first edit.]
[Footnote 36: Clown, first edit.]
[Footnote 37: The art of hawking has been so frequently and so fully explained, that it would be superfluous, if not arrogant, to trace its progress, or delineate its history, in this place. In the earliest periods it appears to have been exclusively practised by the nobility; and, indeed, the great expense at which the amusement was supported, seems to have been a sufficient reason for deterring persons of more moderate income, and of inferior rank, from indulging in the pursuit. In the Sports and Pastimes of Mr. Strutt, a variety of instances are given of the importance attached to the office of falconer, and of the immense value of, and high estimation the birds themselves were held in from the commencement of the Norman government, down to the reign of James I., in which Sir Thomas Monson gave L1000 for a cast of hawks, which consisted of only two.
The great increase of wealth, and the consequent equalization of property in this country, about the reign of Elizabeth, induced many of inferior birth to practise the amusements of their superiors, which they did without regard to expense, or indeed propriety. Sir Thomas Elyot, in his Governour (1580), complains that the falcons of his day consumed so much poultry, that, in a few years, he feared there would be a great scarcity of it. “I speake not this,” says he, “in disprayse of the faukons, but of them which keepeth them lyke cockneyes.” A reproof, there can be no doubt, applicable to the character in the text.]
[Footnote 38: A term in hawking, signifying the short straps of leather which are fastened to the hawk’s legs, by which she is held on the fist, or joined to the leash. They were sometimes made of silk, as appears from The Boke of hawkynge, huntynge, and fysshynge, with all the propertyes and medecynes that are necessarye to be kepte: “Hawkes haue aboute theyr legges gesses made of lether most comonly, some of sylke, which shuld be no lenger but that the knottes of them shulde appere in the myddes of the lefte hande,” &c. Juliana Barnes, edit. 410, “Imprynted at London in Pouls chyrchyarde by me Hery Tab.” Sig. C. ii.]
[Footnote 39: This authority of his is that club which keeps them under as his dogs hereafter, first edit.]
[Footnote 40: Now become a man’s total, first edit.]
[Footnote 41: Of the game called one and thirty, I am unable to find any mention in Mr. Strutt’s Sports and Pastimes, nor is it alluded to in any of the old plays or tracts I have yet met with. A very satisfactory account of tables may be read in the interesting and valuable publication just noticed.]
[Footnote 42: The room where the performers dress, previous to coming on the stage.]
[Footnote 43: This passage affords a proof of what has been doubted, namely, that the theatres were not permitted to be open during Lent, in the reign of James I. The restriction was waived in the next reign, as we find from the puritanical Prynne:—“There are none so much addicted to stage-playes, but when they goe unto places where they cannot have them, or when, as they are suppressed by publike authority, (as in times of pestilence, and in Lent, till now of late) can well subsist without them,” &c. Histrio Mastix, 4to, Lond. 1633, page 384,]
[Footnote 44: It may not be known to those who are not accustomed to meet with old books in their original bindings, or of seeing public libraries of antiquity, that the volumes were formerly placed on the shelves with the leaves, not the back, in front; and that the two sides of the binding were joined together with neat silk or other strings, and, in some instances, where the books were of greater value and curiosity than common, even fastened with gold or silver chains.]
[Footnote 45: A hanger-on to noblemen, who are distinguished at the university by gold tassels to their caps; or in the language of the present day, a tuft-hunter.]
[Footnote 46: If he could order his intentions, first edit.]
[Footnote 47: Minshew calls a tobacconist fumi-vendulus, a smoak-seller.]
[Footnote 48: Cento, a composition formed by joining scraps from other authors.—Johnson. Camden, in his Remains, uses it in the same sense. “It is quilted, as it were, out of shreds of divers poets, such as scholars call a cento.”]
[Footnote 49: Firing, first edit.]
[Footnote 50: In the hope of discovering some account of the strange monster alluded to, I have looked through one of the largest and most curious collections of tracts, relating to the marvellous, perhaps in existence. That bequeathed to the Bodleian, by Robert Burton, the author of the Anatomy of Melancholy. Hitherto my researches have been unattended with success, as I have found only two tracts of this description relating to Germany, both of which are in prose, and neither giving any account of a monster.
1. A most true Relation of a very dreadfull Earthquake, with the lamentable Effectes thereof, which began upon the 8 of December 1612, and yet continueth most fearefull in Munster in Germanie. Reade and Tremble. Translated out of Dutch, by Charles Demetrius, Publike Notarie in London, and printed at Rotterdame, in Holland, at the Signe of the White Gray-hound. (Date cut off. Twenty-six pages, 4to, with a woodcut.)
2: Miraculous Newes from the Cittie of Holt, in the Lordship of Munster, in Germany, the twentieth of September last past, 1616, where there were plainly beheld three dead bodyes rise out of their Graves admonishing the people of Judgements to come. Faithfully translated (&c. &c.) London, Printed for John Barnes, dwelling in Hosie Lane neere Smithfield, 1616. (4to, twenty pages, woodcut.)]
[Footnote 51: It was customary to work or paint proverbs, moral sentences, or scraps of verse, on old tapestry hangings, which were called painted cloths. Several allusions to this practice may be found in the works of our early English dramatists. See Reed’s Shakspeare, viii. 103.]
[Footnote 52: Beller, first edit.]
[Footnote 53: Hale, first edit.]
[Footnote 54: Calais sands were chosen by English duellists to decide their quarrels on, as being out of the jurisdiction of the law. This custom is noticed in an Epigram written about the period in which this book first appeared.
“When boasting Bembus challeng’d
is to fight,
He seemes at first a very Diuell
in sight:
Till more aduizde, will not defile
[his] hands,
Vnlesse you meete him vpon Callice
sands.”
The Mastive or Young Whelpe of the olde Dog. Epigrams and Satyrs._ 4to, Lond. (Printed, as Warton supposes, about 1600.)
A passage in The Beau’s Duel: or a Soldier for the Ladies, a comedy, by Mrs. Centlivre, 4to, 1707, proves that it existed so late as at that day. “Your only way is to send him word you’ll meet him on Calais sands; duelling is unsafe in England for men of estates,” &c. See also other instances in Dodsley’s Old Plays, edit. 1780, vii. 218; xii. 412.]
[Footnote 55: Strict devotees were, I believe, noted for the smallness and precision of their ruffs, which were termed in print from the exactness of the folds. So in Mynshul’s Essays, 4to, 1618. “I vndertooke a warre when I aduentured to speake in print, (not in print as Puritan’s ruffes are set.)” The term of Geneva print probably arose from the minuteness of the type used at Geneva. In the Merry Devil of Edmonton, a comedy, 4to, 1608, is an expression which goes some way to prove the correctness of this supposition:—“I see by thy eyes thou hast bin reading little Geneva print;"—and, that small ruffs were worn by the puritanical set, an instance appears in Mayne’s City Match, a comedy, 4to, 1658.
“O miracle!
Out of your little ruffe,
Dorcas, and in the fashion!
Dost thou hope to be saved?”
From these three extracts it is, I think, clear that a ruff of Geneva print means a small, closely-folded ruff, which was the distinction of a nonconformist.]
[Footnote 56: A virginal, says Mr. Malone, was strung like a spinnet, and shaped like a pianoforte: the mode of playing on this instrument was therefore similar to that of the organ.]
[Footnote 57: Weapons are spells no less potent than different, as being the sage sentences of some of her own sectaries. First edit.]
[Footnote 58: Robert Bellarmine, an Italian jesuit, was born at Monte Pulciano, a town in Tuscany, in the year 1542, and in 1560 entered himself among the jesuits. In 1599 he was honoured with a cardinal’s hat, and in 1602 was presented with the arch-bishopric of Capua: this, however, he resigned in 1605, when Pope Paul V. desired to have him near himself. He was employed in the affairs of the court of Rome till 1621, when, leaving the Vatican, he retired to a house belonging to his order, and died September 17, in the same year.
Bellarmine was one of the best controversial writers of his time; few authors have done greater honour to their profession or opinions, and certain it is that none have ever more ably defended the cause of the Romish Church, or contended in favour of the pope with greater advantage. As a proof of Bellarmine’s abilities, there was scarcely a divine of any eminence among the Protestants who did not attack him: Bayle aptly says, “they made his name resound every where, ut littus Styla, Styla, omne sonaret.”]
[Footnote 59: Faustus Socinus is so well known as the founder of the sect which goes under his name, that a few words will be sufficient. He was born in 1539, at Sienna, and imbibed his opinions from the instruction of his uncle, who always had a high opinion of, and confidence in, the abilities of his nephew, to whom he bequeathed all his papers. After living several years in the world, principally at the court of Francis de Medicis, Socinus, in 1577, went into Germany, and began to propagate the principles of his uncle, to which, it is said, he made great additions and alterations of his own. In the support of his opinions, he suffered considerable hardships, and received the greatest insults and persecutions; to avoid which, he retired to a place near Cracow, in Poland, where he died in 1504, at the age of sixty-five.]
[Footnote 60: Conrade Vorstius, a learned divine, who was peculiarly detested by the Calvinists, and who had even the honour to be attacked by King James the First, of England, was born in 1569. Being compelled, through the interposition of James’s ambassador, to quit Leyden, where he had attained the divinity-chair, and several other preferments, he retired to Toningen, where he died in 1622, with the strongest tokens of piety and resignation.]
[Footnote 61: His style is very constant, for it keeps still the former aforesaid; and yet it seems he is much troubled in it, for he is always humbly complaining—your poor orator. First edit.]
[Footnote 62: “To moote, a term vsed in the innes of the court; it is the handling of a case, as in the Vniuersitie their disputations,” &c. So Minshew, who supposes it to be derived from the French, mot, verbum, quasi verba facere, aut sermonem de aliqua re habere. Mootmen are those who, having studied seven or eight years, are qualified to practise, and appear to answer to our term of barristers.]
[Footnote 63: The prologue to our ancient dramas was ushered in by trumpets. “Present not yourselfe on the stage (especially at a new play) untill the quaking prologue hath (by rubbing) got cullor into his cheekes, and is ready to giue the trumpets their cue that hee’s vpon point to enter.”—Decker’s Gul’s Hornbook, 1609, p. 30. “Doe you not know that I am the Prologue? Do you not see this long blacke veluet cloke vpon my backe? Haue you not sounded thrice?”—Heywood’s Foure Prentises of London, 4to, 1615.]
[Footnote 64: St. Paul’s Cathedral was, during the reigns of Elizabeth and James, a sort of exchange and public parade, where business was transacted between merchants, and where the fashionables of the day exhibited themselves. The reader will find several allusions to this custom in the variorum edition of Shakspeare, K. Henry IV., part 2. Osborne, in his Traditional Memoires on the Reigns of Elisabeth and James, 12mo, 1658, says, “It was the fashion of those times (James I.) and did so continue till these, (the interregnum,) for the principal gentry, lords, courtiers, and men of all professions, not merely mechanicks, to meet in St. Paul’s church by eleven, and walk in the middle isle till twelve, and after dinner from three to six; during which time some discoursed of business, others of news.” Weever complains of the practice, and says, “it could be wished that walking in the middle isle of Paul’s might be forborne in the time of diuine service.” Ancient Funeral Monuments, 1631, page 373.]
[Footnote 65: In the Dramatis Personal to Ben Jonson’s Every Man in his Humour, Bobadil is styled a Paul’s man; and Falstaff tells us that he bought Bardolph in Pauls. King Henry IV., part 2.]
[Footnote 66:
——“You’d
not doe
Like your penurious father, who
was wont
To walk his dinner out in Paules.”
—Mayne’s City Match, 1658.]
[Footnote 67: The time of supper was about five o’clock.]
[Footnote 68: Paul’s cross stood in the churchyard of that cathedral, on the north side, towards the east end. It was used for the preaching of sermons to the populace; and Holinshed mentions two instances of public penance being performed here; in 1534 by some of the adherents of Elizabeth Barton, well known as the holy maid of Kent, and in 1536 by Sir Thomas Newman, a priest, who “bare a faggot at Paules crosse for singing masse with good ale.”]
[Footnote 69: Dole originally signified the portion of alms that was given away at the door of a nobleman. Steevens, note to Shakspeare. Sir John Hawkins affirms that the benefaction distributed at Lambeth Palace gate, is to this day called the dole.]
[Footnote 70: That is, the contents of his basket, if discovered to be of light weight, are distributed to the needy prisoners.]
[Footnote 71: Study, first edit.]
[Footnote 72: The first edition reads post, and, I think, preferably.]
[Footnote 73: Keep for attend.]
[Footnote 74: Squeazy, niggardly.]
[Footnote 75: And the clubs out of charity knock him down, first edit.]
[Footnote 76: That is, runs you up a long score.]
[Footnote 77: This, as well as many other passages in this work, has been appropriated by John Dunton, the celebrated bookseller, as his own. See his character of Mr. Samuel Hool, in Dunton’s Life and Errors, 8vo, 1705, p. 337.]
[Footnote 78: “A prison is a grave to bury men alive, and a place wherein a man for halfe a yeares experience may learne more law than he can at Westminster for an hundred pound.”—Mynshul’s Essays and Characters of a Prison, 4to, 1618.]
[Footnote 79: In querpo is a corruption from the Spanish word cuerpo. “En cuerpo, a man without a cloak.”—Pineda’s Dictionary, 1740. The present signification evidently is, that a gentleman without his serving-man, or attendant, is but half dressed:—he possesses only in part the appearance of a man of fashion. “To walk in cuerpo, is to go without a cloak.”—Glossographia Anglicana Nova, 8vo, 1719.]
[Footnote 80: Proper was frequently used by old writers for comely, or handsome. Shakspeare has several instances of it:
“I do mistake my person all
this while:
Upon my life, she finds, although
I cannot,
Myself to be a marvellous proper
man.”
—K. Richard III. Act I. Sc. 2, &c.]
[Footnote 81: “Why you know an’a man have not skill in the hawking and hunting languages now-a-days, I’ll not give a rush for him.”—Master Stephen. Every Man in his Humour.]
[Footnote 82:
“Ter conatus ibi collo dare
brachia circum:
Ter frustra conprensa manus effugit
imago,
Par levibus ventis, volucrique simillima
somno.”
—Virgil,
AEn. vi. v. 700.]
[Footnote 83: Probably the name of some difficult tune.]
[Footnote 84: Jump here signifies to coincide. The old play of Soliman and Perseda uses it in the same sense:
“Wert thou my friend, thy mind would jump with mine.”
So in Pierce Penilesse his Supplication to the Divele:—“Not two of them jump in one tale,” p. 29.]
[Footnote 85: Imputation here must be used for consequence; of which I am, however, unable to produce any other instance.]
[Footnote 86: Sturtridge fair was the great mart for business, and resort for pleasure, in Bishop Earle’s day. It is alluded to in Randolph’s Conceited Pedlar, 410, 1630:—
“I am a pedlar, and I sell
my ware
This braue Saint Bartholmew or Sturtridge
faire.”
Edward Ward, the author of The London Spy, gives a whimsical account of a journey to Sturbridge, in the second volume of his works.]
[Footnote 87: This silly term of endearment appears to be derived from chick or my chicken, Shakspeare uses it in Macbeth, Act iii. Scene 2:—
“Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck.”]
[Footnote 88: The great cross in West Cheap was originally erected in 1290, by Edward I., in commemoration of the death of Queen Ellinor, whose body rested at that place, on its journey from Herdeby, in Lincolnshire, to Westminster, for interment. It was rebuilt in 1441, and again in 1484. In 1584 the images and ornaments were destroyed by the populace; and in 1599 the top of the cross was taken down, the timber being rotted within the lead, and fears being entertained as to its safety. By order of Queen Elizabeth, and her privy council, it was repaired in 1600, when, says Stow, “a cross of timber was framed, set up, covered with lead, and gilded,” &c. Stow’s Survey of London, by Strype, book iii. p. 35. Edit, folio. Lond. 1720.]
[Footnote 89: This must allude to the play written by Heywood with the following title: The Foure Prentises of London. With the Conquest of Jerusalem. As it hath bene diuerse times acted at the Red Bull, by the Queenes Maiesties Servants. 410, Lond. 1615. In this drama, the four prentises are Godfrey, Grey, Charles, and Eustace, sons to the old Earle of Bullen, who, having lost his territories, by assisting William the Conqueror in his descent upon England, is compelled to live like a private citizen in London, and binds his sons to a mercer, a goldsmith, a haberdasher, and a grocer. The four prentises, however, prefer the life of a soldier to that of a tradesman, and, quitting the service of their masters, follow Robert of Normandy to the holy land, where they perform the most astonishing feats of valour, and finally accomplish the conquest of Jerusalem. The whole play abounds in bombast and impossibilities, and, as a composition, is unworthy of notice or remembrance.]
[Footnote 90: The History of the Nine Worthies of the World; three whereof were Gentiles; I. Hector, son of Priamus, king of Troy. 2. Alexander the Great, king of Macedon, and conqueror of the world. 3. Julius Caesar, first emperor of Rome. There Jews. 4. Joshua, captain general and leader of Israel into Canaan. 5. David, king of Israel. 6. Judas Maccabeus, a ’valiant Jewish commander against the tyranny of Antiochus. Three Christians. 7. Arthur, king of Britain, who courageously defended his country against the Saxons. 8. Charles the Great, king of France and emperor of Germany. 9. Godfrey of Bullen, king of Jerusalem. Being an account of their glorious lives, worthy actions, renowned victories, and deaths. 12mo. No date.]
[Footnote 91: Those of the same habits with himself; his associates.]
[Footnote 92: The dear year here, I believe, alluded to, was in 1574, and is thus described by that faithful and valuable historian Holinshed:—“This yeare, about Lammas, wheat was sold at London for three shillings the bushell: but shortlie after, it was raised to foure shillings, fiue shillings, six shillings, and, before Christmas, to a noble, and seuen shillings; which so continued long after. Beefe was sold for twentie pence, and two and twentie pence the stone; and all other flesh and white meats at an excessiue price; all kind of salt fish verie deare, as fine herrings two pence, &c.; yet great plentie of fresh fish, and oft times the same verie cheape. Pease at foure shillings the bushell; ote-meale at foure shillings eight pence; baie salt at three shillings the bushell, &c. All this dearth notwithstanding (thanks be given to God), there was no want of anie thing to them that wanted not monie.” —Holinshed, Chronicle, vol. in., p. 1259, a. edit, folio, 1587.]
[Footnote 93: On the 21st of December 1564 began a frost, referred to by Fleming in his Index to Holinshed, as the “frost called the great frost,” which lasted till the 3rd of January 1565. It was so severe that the Thames was frozen over, and the passage on it, from London Bridge to Westminster, as easy as and more frequented than that on dry land.]
[Footnote 94: The person who exhibits Westminster Abbey.]