A GLUTTON

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.



A RIBALD

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 but to few, and if it be concealed goes no farther; but the report of it is unlimited, and may be conveyed to all people and all times to come. He exposes that with his tongue which Nature gave women modesty, and brute beasts tails, to cover. He mistakes ribaldry for wit, though nothing is more unlike; and believes himself to be the finer man the filthier he talks, as if he were above civility as fanatics are above ordinances, and held nothing more shameful than to be ashamed of anything. He talks nothing but Aretine's pictures, as plain as the Scotch dialect, which is esteemed to be the most copious and elegant of the kind. He improves and husbands his sins to the best advantage, and makes one vice find employment for another; for what he acts loosely in private he talks as loosely of in public, and finds as much pleasure in the one as the other. He endeavours to purchase himself a reputation by pretending to that which the best men abominate and the worst value not, like one that clips and washes false coin and ventures his neck for that which will yield him nothing.



A MODERN POLITICIAN

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 withal and save him from being stopped by law and justice, the sentinels of governments, when he has not wit nor credit enough to pass of himself; that to show respect to worth in any person is to appear a stranger to it, and not so familiarly acquainted with it as those are who use no ceremony, because it is no new thing to them, as it would appear if they should take notice of it; that the easiest way to purchase a reputation of wisdom and knowledge is to slight and undervalue it, as the readiest way to buy cheap is to bring down the price; for the world will be apt to believe a man well provided with any necessary or useful commodity which he sets a small value upon; that to oblige a friend is but a kind of casting him in prison, after the old Roman way or modern Chinese, that chains the keeper and prisoner together; for he that binds another man to himself binds himself as much to him and lays a restraint upon both. For as men commonly never forgive those that forgive them, and always hate those that purchase their estates (though they pay dear and more than any man else would give), so they never willingly endure those that have laid any engagement upon them, or at what rate soever purchased the least part of their freedom; and as partners for the most part cheat or suspect one another, so no man deals fairly with another that goes the least share in his freedom.

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 has made so absolute a conquest over himself (which philosophers say is the greatest of all victories) as to be received for a prince within himself, is greater and more arbitrary within his own dominions than he that depends upon the uncertain loves or fears of other men without him; and since the opinion of the world is vain and for the most part false, he believes it is not to be attempted but by ways as false and vain as itself, and therefore to appear and seem is much better and wiser than really to be whatsoever is well esteemed in the general value of the world Next pride, he believes ambition to be the only generous and heroical virtue in the world that mankind is capable of; for, as Nature gave man an erect figure to raise him above the grovelling condition of his fellow-creatures the beasts, so he that endeavours to improve that and raise himself higher seems best to comply with the design and intention of Nature. Though the stature of man is confined to a certain height, yet his mind is unlimited, and capable of growing up to heaven; and as those who endeavour to arrive at that perfection are adored and reverenced by all, so he that endeavours to advance himself as high as possibly he can in this world comes nearest to the condition of those holy and divine aspirers. All the purest parts of Nature always tend upwards, and the more dull and heavy downwards; so in the little world the noblest faculties of man, his reason and understanding, that give him a prerogative above all other earthly creatures, mount upwards; and therefore he who takes that course, and still aspires in all his undertakings and designs, does but conform to that which Nature dictates. Are not the reason and the will, the two commanding faculties of the soul, still striving which shall be uppermost? Men honour none but those that are above them, contest with equals, and disdain inferiors. The first thing that God gave man was dominion over the rest of his inferior creatures; but he that can extend that over man improves his talent to the best advantage. How are angels distinguished but by dominions, powers, thrones, and principalities? Then he who still aspires to purchase those comes nearest to the nature of those heavenly ministers, and in all probability is most like to go to heaven, no matter what destruction he makes in his way, if he does but attain his end; for nothing is a crime that is too great to be punished; and when it is once arrived at that perfection, the most horrid actions in the world become the most admired and renowned. Birds that build highest are most safe; and he that can advance himself above the envy or reach of his inferiors is secure against the malice and assaults of fortune. All religions have ever been persecuted in their primitive ages, when they were weak and impotent, but when they propagated and grew great, have been received with reverence and adoration by those who otherwise had proved their cruellest enemies; and those that afterwards opposed them have suffered as severely as those that first professed them. So thieves that rob in small parties and break houses, when they are taken, are hanged; but when they multiply and grow up into armies and are able to take towns, the same things are called heroic actions, and acknowledged for such by all the world. Courts of justice, for the most part, commit greater crimes than they punish, and do those that sue in them more injuries than they can possibly receive from one another; and yet they are venerable, and must not be told so, because they have authority and power to justify what they do, and the law (that is, whatsoever they please to call so) ready to give judgment for them. Who knows when a physician cures or kills? And yet he is equally rewarded for both, and the profession esteemed never the less worshipful; and therefore he accounts it a ridiculous vanity in any man to consider whether he does right or wrong in anything he attempts, since the success is only able to determine and satisfy the opinion of the world which is the one and which the other. As for those characters and marks of distinction which religion, law, and morality fix upon both, they are only significant and valid when their authority is able to command obedience and submission; but when the greatness, numbers, or interest of those who are concerned outgrows that, they change their natures, and that which was injury before becomes justice, and justice injury. It is with crimes as with inventions in the mechanics, that will frequently hold true to all purposes of the design while they are tried in little, but when the experiment is made in great prove false in all particulars to what is promised in the model: so iniquities and vices may be punished and corrected, like children, while they are little and impotent, but when they are great and sturdy they become incorrigible and proof against all the power of justice and authority.

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 and rescue him in his greatest extremities; and no outward impression, nor inward neither, though his own conscience take part against him, is able to beat him from his guards. Though innocence and a good conscience be said to be a brazen wall, a brazen confidence is more impregnable and longer able to hold out; for it is a greater affliction to an innocent man to be suspected than it is to one that is guilty and impudent to be openly convicted of an apparent crime. And in all the affairs of mankind, a brisk confidence, though utterly void of sense, is able to go through matters of difficulty with greater ease than all the strength of reason less boldly enforced, as the Turks are said by a small, slight handling of their bows to make an arrow without a head pierce deeper into hard bodies than guns of greater force are able to do a bullet of steel; and though it be but a cheat and imposture, that has neither truth nor reason to support it, yet it thrives better in the world than things of greater solidity, as thorns and thistles flourish on barren grounds where nobler plants would starve. And he that can improve his barren parts by this excellent and most compendious method deserves much better, in his judgment, than those who endeavour to do the same thing by the more studious and difficult way of downright industry and drudging. For impudence does not only supply all defects, but gives them a greater grace than if they had needed no art, as all other ornaments are commonly nothing else but the remedies or disguises of imperfections; and therefore he thinks him very weak that is unprovided of this excellent and most useful quality, without which the best natural or acquired parts are of no more use than the Guanches' darts, which, the virtuosos say, are headed with butter hardened in the sun. It serves him to innumerable purposes to press on and understand no repulse, how smart or harsh soever, for he that can fail nearest the wind has much the advantage of all others; and such is the weakness or vanity of some men, that they will grant that to obstinate importunity which they would never have done upon all the most just reasons and considerations imaginable, as those that watch witches will make them confess that which they would never have done upon any other account.

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 it is to discover what cards those he plays with have in their hands, and permit them to know nothing of his; and, therefore, he never speaks his own sense, but that which he finds comes nearest to the meaning of those he converses with, as birds are drawn into nets by pipes that counterfeit their own voices. By this means he possesses men, like the devil, by getting within them before they are aware, turns them out of themselves, and either betrays or renders them ridiculous, as he finds it most agreeable either to his humour or his occasions.

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 is most certain to yield him double interest; for he that does otherwise is but a Jew and a Turk to himself, which is much worse than to be so to all the world beside. Friends are only friends to those who have no need of them, and when they have, become no longer friends; like the leaves of trees, that clothe the woods in the heat of summer, when they have no need of warmth, but leave them naked when cold weather comes; and since there are so few that prove otherwise, it is not wisdom to rely on any.

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.



A MODERN STATESMAN

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 the same method in all their proceedings? Howsoever, he is as ably qualified to govern as that sort of opinion that is said to govern all the world, and is perpetually false and foolish; and if his opinions are always so, they have the fairer title to their pretensions. He is sworn to advise no further than his skill and cunning will enable him, and the less he has of either the sooner he despatches his business, and despatch is no mean virtue in a statesman.



A DUKE OF BUCKS

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.



A FANTASTIC

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.



AN HARANGUER

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 the company that he is in. He shakes a man by the ear, as a dog does a pig, and never loses his hold till he has tired himself as well as his patient. He does not talk to a man, but attacks him, and whomsoever he can get into his hands he lays violent language on. If he can he will run a man up against a wall and hold him at a bay by the buttons, which he handles as bad as he does his person or the business he treats upon. When he finds him begin to sink he holds him by the clothes, and feels him as a butcher does a calf before he kills him. He is a walking pillory, and crucifies more ears than a dozen standing ones. He will hold any argument rather than his tongue, and maintain both sides at his own charge; for he will tell you what you will say, though perhaps he does not intend to give you leave. He lugs men by the ears, as they correct children in Scotland, and will make them tingle while he talks with them, as some say they will do when a man is talked of in his absence. When he talks to a man he comes up close to him, and, like an old soldier, lets fly in his face, or claps the bore of his pistol to his ear and whispers aloud, that he may be sure not to miss his mark. His tongue is always in motion, though very seldom to the purpose, like a barber's scissors, which are always snipping, as well when they do not cut as when they do. His tongue is like a bagpipe-drone, that has no stop, but makes a continual ugly noise, as long as he can squeeze any wind out of himself. He never leaves a man until he has run him down, and then he winds a death over him. A sow-gelder's horn is not so terrible to dogs and cats as he is to all that know him. His way of argument is to talk all and hear no contradiction. First he gives his antagonist the length of his wind, and then, let him make his approaches if he can, he is sure to be beforehand with him. Of all dissolute diseases the running of the tongue is the worst, and the hardest to be cured. If he happen at any time to be at a stand, and any man else begins to speak, he presently drowns him with his noise, as a water-dog makes a duck dive; for when you think he has done he falls on and lets fly again, like a gun that will discharge nine times with one loading. He is a rattlesnake, that with his noise gives men warning to avoid him, otherwise he will make them wish they had. He is, like a bell, good for nothing but to make a noise. He is like common fame, that speaks most and knows least, Lord Brooks, or a wild goose always cackling when he is upon the wing. His tongue is like any kind of carriage, the less weight it bears the faster and easier it goes. He is so full of words that they run over and are thrown away to no purpose, and so empty of things or sense that his dryness has made his leaks so wide whatsoever is put in him runs out immediately. He is so long in delivering himself that those that hear him desire to be delivered too or despatched out of their pain. He makes his discourse the longer with often repeating to be short, and talking much of in fine, never means to come near it.



A RANTER

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.



AN AMORIST

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 as a parson does into his form of matrimony. He converses, as angels are said to do, by intuition, and expresses himself by sighs most significantly. He follows his visits as men do their business, and is very industrious in waiting on the ladies where his affairs lie; among which those of greatest concernment are questions and commands, purposes, and other such received forms of wit and conversation, in which he is so deeply studied that in all questions and doubts that arise he is appealed to, and very learnedly declares which was the most true and primitive way of proceeding in the purest times. For these virtues he never fails of his summons to all balls, where he manages the country-dances with singular judgment, and is frequently an assistant at l'ombre; and these are all the uses they make of his parts, beside the sport they give themselves in laughing at him, which he takes for singular favours and interprets to his own advantage, though it never goes further; for, all his employments being public, he is never admitted to any private services, and they despise him as not woman's meat; for he applies to too many to be trusted by any one, as bastards by having many fathers have none at all. He goes often mounted in a coach as a convoy to guard the ladies, to take the dust in Hyde Park, where by his prudent management of the glass windows he secures them from beggars, and returns fraught with China-oranges and ballads. Thus he is but a gentleman-usher-general, and his business is to carry one lady's services to another, and bring back the other's in exchange.



AN ASTROLOGER

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 stars, tam ficti pravique tenax, to carry lies and knavery, will serve astrologers without any sensible variation. He is a fortune-seller, a retailer of destiny, and petty chapman to the planets. He casts nativities as gamesters do false dice, and by slurring and palming sextile, quartile, and trine, like six, quatre, trois, can throw what chance he pleases. He sets a figure as cheats do a main at hazard, and gulls throw away their money at it. He fetches the grounds of his art so far off, as well from reason as the stars, that, like a traveller, he is allowed to lie by authority; and as beggars that have no money themselves believe all others have, and beg of those that have as little as themselves, so the ignorant rabble believe in him though he has no more reason for what he professes than they.



A LAWYER

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 a sack, the bigger he looks. He crowds to the Bar like a pig through a hedge, and his gown is fortified with flankers about the shoulders to guard his ears from being galled with elbows. He draws his bills more extravagant and unconscionable than a tailor; for if you cut off two-thirds in the beginning, middle, or end, that which is left will be more reasonable and nearer to sense than the whole, and yet he is paid for all; for when he draws up a business, like a captain that makes false musters, he produces as many loose and idle words as he can possibly come by until he has received for them, and then turns them off and retains only those that are to the purpose. This he calls drawing of breviates. All that appears of his studies is, in short, time converted into waste-paper, tailor's measures, and heads for children's drums. He appears very violent against the other side, and rails to please his client as they do children, "Give me a blow and I'll strike him, ah, naughty!" &c. This makes him seem very zealous for the good of his client, and though the cause go against him he loses no credit by it, especially if he fall foul on the counsel of the other side, which goes for no more among them than it does with those virtuous persons that quarrel and fight in the streets to pick the pockets of those that look on. He hangs men's estates and fortunes on the slightest curiosities and feeblest niceties imaginable, and undoes them like the story of breaking a horse's back with a feather or sinking a ship with a single drop of water, as if right and wrong were only notional and had no relation at all to practice (which always requires more solid foundations), or reason and truth did wholly consist in the right spelling of letters, whenas the subtler things are the nearer they are to nothing, so the subtler words and notions are the nearer they are to nonsense. He overruns Latin and French with greater barbarism than the Goths did Italy and France, and makes as mad a confusion of language by mixing both with English. Nor does he use English much better, for he clogs it so with words that the sense becomes as thick as puddle, and is utterly lost to those that have not the trick of skipping over where it is impertinent. He has but one termination for all Latin words, and that's a dash. He is very just to the first syllables of words, but always bobtails the last, in which the sense most of all consists, like a cheat that does a man all right at the first that he may put a trick upon him in the end. He is an apprentice to the law without a master, is his own pupil, and has no tutor but himself, that is a fool. He will screw and wrest law as unmercifully as a tumbler does his body to lick up money with his tongue. He is a Swiss that professes mercenary arms, will fight for him that gives him best pay, and, like an Italian bravo, will fall foul on any man's reputation that he receives a retaining fee against. If he could but maintain his opinions as well as they do him, he were a very just and righteous man; but when he has made his most of it, he leaves it, like his client, to shift for itself. He fetches money out of his throat like a juggler; and as the rabble in the country value gentlemen by their housekeeping and their eating, so is he supposed to have so much law as he has kept commons, and the abler to deal with clients by how much the more he has devoured of Inns-of-Court mutton; and it matters not whether he keep his study so he has but kept commons. He never ends a suit, but prunes it that it may grow the faster and yield a greater increase of strife. The wisdom of the law is to admit of all the petty, mean, real injustices in the world, to avoid imaginary possible great ones that may perhaps fall out. His client finds the Scripture fulfilled in him, that it is better to part with a coat too than go to law for a cloak; for, as the best laws are made of the worst manners, even so are the best lawyers of the worst men. He hums about Westminster Hall, and returns home with his pockets like a bee with his thighs laden; and that which Horace says of an ant, Ore trahit quodcunque potest, atque addit acervo, is true of him, for he gathers all his heap with the labour of his mouth rather than his brain and hands. He values himself, as a carman does his horse, by the money he gets, and looks down upon all that gain less as scoundrels. The law is like that double-formed, ill-begotten monster that was kept in an intricate labyrinth and fed with men's flesh, for it devours all that come within the mazes of it and have not a clue to find the way out again. He has as little kindness for the Statute Law as Catholics have for the Scripture, but adores the Common Law as they do tradition, and both for the very same reason; for the Statute Law being certain, written and designed to reform and prevent corruptions and abuses in the affairs of the world (as the Scriptures are in matters of religion), he finds it many times a great obstruction to the advantage and profit of his practice; whereas the Common Law, being unwritten, or written in an unknown language which very few understand but himself, is the more pliable and easy to serve all his purposes, being utterly exposed to what interpretation and construction his interest and occasions shall at any time incline him to give it; and differs only from arbitrary power in this, that the one gives no account of itself at all, and the other such a one as is perhaps worse than none, that is implicit and not to be understood, or subject to what constructions he pleases to put upon it:—

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 ride To have your ears most justly crucified, And cut so close until there be not leather Enough to stick a pen in left of either; Then will your consciences, your ears, and wit Be like indentures tripartite cut fit. May your horns multiply and grow as great As that which does blow grace before your meat; May varlets be your barbers now, and do The same to you they have been done unto; That's law and gospel too; may it prove true, Then they shall do pump-justice upon you; And when y' are shaved and powder'd you shall fall, Thrown o'er the Bar, as they did o'er the wall, Never to rise again, unless it be To hold your hands up for your roguery; And when you do so may they be no less Sear'd by the hangman than your consciences. May your gowns swarm until you can determine The strife no more between yourselves and vermin Than you have done between your clients' purses; Now kneel and take the last and worst of curses— May you be honest when it is too late; That is, undone the only way you hate.



AN EPIGRAMMATIST

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.



A FANATIC.

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 PROSELYTE.

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 for a shilling; both are of equal value, but the change is for convenience or humour. There is nothing more difficult than a change of religion for the better, for as all alterations in judgment are derived from a precedent confessed error, that error is more probably like to produce another than anything of so different a nature as truth. He imposes upon himself in believing the infirmity of his nature to be the strength of his judgment, and thinks he changes his religion when he changes himself, and turns as naturally from one thing to another as a maggot does to a fly. He is a kind of freebooty and plunder, or one head of cattle driven by the priests of one religion out of the quarters of another, and they value him above two of their own; for, beside the glory of the exploit, they have a better title to him (as he that is conquered is more in the power of him that subdued him than he that was born his subject), and they expect a freer submission from one that takes quarter than from those that were under command before. His weakness or ignorance, or both, are commonly the chief causes of his conversion; for if he be a man of a profession that has no hopes to thrive upon the account of mere merit, he has no way so easy and certain as to betake himself to some forbidden church, where, for the common cause's sake, he finds so much brotherly love and kindness, that they will rather employ him than one of another persuasion though more skilful, and he gains by turning and winding his religion as tradesmen do by their stocks. The priest has commonly the very same design upon him, for he that is not able to go to the charges of his conversion may live free enough from being attacked by any side. He was troubled with a vertigo in his conscience, and nothing but change of religion, like change of air, could cure him. He is like a sick man that can neither lie still in his bed nor turn himself but as he is helped by others. He is like a revolter in an army; and as men of honour and commanders seldom prove such, but common soldiers, men of mean condition, frequently to mend their fortunes, so in religion clergymen who are commanders seldom prevail upon one another, and when they do, the proselyte is usually one who had no reputation among his own party before, and after a little trial finds as little among those to whom he revolts.



A CLOWN

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 not fear, and only respects him that has done him hurt or can do it. He is like Nebuchadnezzar after he had been a month at grass, but will never return to be a man again as he did, if he might, for he despises all manner of lives but his own, unless it be his horse's, to whom he is but valet de chambre. He never shows himself humane or kind in anything but when he pimps to his cow or makes a match for his mare; in all things else he is surly and rugged, and does not love to be pleased himself, which makes him hate those that do him any good. He is a stoic to all passions but fear, envy, and malice, and hates to do any good though it cost him nothing. He abhors a gentleman because he is most unlike himself, and repines as much at his manner of living as if he maintained him. He murmurs at him as the saints do at the wicked, as if he kept his right from him, for he makes his clownery a sect and damns all that are not of his Church. He manures the earth like a dunghill, but lets himself lie fallow, for no improvement will do good upon him. Cain was the first of his family, and he does his endeavour not to degenerate from the original churlishness of his ancestor. He that was fetched from the plough to be made dictator had not half his pride and insolence, nor Caligula's horse that was made consul. All the worst names that are given to men are borrowed from him, as villain, deboise, peasant, &c. He wears his clothes like a hide, and shifts them no oftener than a beast does his hair. He is a beast that Gesner never thought of.



A WOOER

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 miss he may not be without a reserve; for he esteems Cupid very improvident if he has not more than two strings to his bow. When he wants a better introduction he begins his addresses to the chambermaid, like one that sues the tenant to eject the landlord, and according as he thrives there makes his approaches to the mistress. He can tell readily what the difference is between jointure with tuition of infant, land, and money of any value, and what the odds is to a penny between them all, either to take or leave. He does not so much go a-wooing as put in his claim, as if all men of fortune had a fair title to all women of the same quality, and therefore are said to demand them in marriage. But if he be a wooer of fortune, that designs to raise himself by it, he makes wooing his vocation, deals with all matchmakers, that are his setters, is very painful in his calling, and if his business succeed, steals her away and commits matrimony with a felonious intent. He has a great desire to beget money on the body of a woman, and as for other issue is very indifferent, and cares not how old she be so she be not past money-bearing.



AN IMPUDENT MAN

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 both parties, and he that considers but the one side of things can never make a just judgment, though he may by chance a true one. Impudence is the bastard of ignorance, not only unlawfully but incestuously begotten by a man upon his own understanding, and laid by himself at his own door, a monster of unnatural production; for shame is as much the propriety of human nature, though overseen by the philosophers, and perhaps more than reason, laughing, or looking asquint, by which they distinguish man from beasts; and the less men have of it the nearer they approach to the nature of brutes. Modesty is but a noble jealousy of honour, and impudence the prostitution of it; for he whose face is proof against infamy must be as little sensible of glory. His forehead, like a voluntary cuckold's, is by his horns made proof against a blush. Nature made man barefaced, and civil custom has preserved him so; but he that's impudent does wear a vizard more ugly and deformed than highway thieves disguise themselves with. Shame is the tender moral conscience of good men. When there is a crack in the skull, Nature herself, with a tough horny callous repairs the breach; so a flawed intellect is with a brawny callous face supplied. The face is the dial of the mind; and where they do not go together, 'tis a sign that one or both are out of order. He that is impudent is like a merchant that trades upon his credit without a stock, and if his debts were known would break immediately. The inside of his head is like the outside, and his peruke as naturally of his own growth as his wit. He passes in the world like a piece of counterfeit coin, looks well enough until he is rubbed and worn with use, and then his copper complexion begins to appear, and nobody will take him but by owl-light.



AN IMITATOR

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 lady's, who, by looking on the picture of a Moor that hung in her chamber, conceived a child of the same complexion; for all his conceptions are produced by the pictures of other men's imaginations, and by their features betray whose bastards they are. His Muse is not inspired, but infected with another man's fancy; and he catches his wit, like the itch, of somebody else that had it before, and when he writes he does but scratch himself. His head is, like his hat, fashioned upon a block and wrought in a shape of another man's invention. He melts down his wit and casts it in a mould; and as metals melted and cast are not so firm and solid as those that are wrought with the hammer, so those compositions that are founded and run in other men's moulds are always more brittle and loose than those that are forged in a man's own brain. He binds himself apprentice to a trade which he has no stock to set up with, if he should serve out his time and live to be made free. He runs a-whoring after another man's inventions, for he has none of his own to tempt him to an incontinent thought, and begets a kind of mongrel breed that never comes to good.



A SOT

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.



A JUGGLER

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.



A ROMANCE-WRITER

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.



A LIBELLER

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.



A FACTIOUS MEMBER

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, words, and delivery will find them so perfectly agreeable to the rules of the House that he cannot but conclude he learnt his oratory the very same way that jackdaws and parrots practise by; for he coughs and spits and blows his nose with that discreet and prudent caution that you would think he had buried his talent in a handkerchief, and were now pulling it out to dispose of it to a better advantage. He stands and presumes so much upon the privileges of the House, as if every member were a tribune of the people and had as absolute power as they had in Rome, according to the lately established fundamental custom and practice of their quartered predecessors of unhappy memory. He endeavours to show his wisdom in nothing more than in appearing very much unsatisfied with the present manage of State affairs, although he knows nothing of the reasons. So much the better, for the thing is the more difficult, and argues his judgment and insight the greater; for any man can judge that understands the reasons of what he does, but very few know how to judge mechanically without understanding why or wherefore. It is sufficient to assure him that the public money has been diverted from the proper uses it was raised for because he has had no share of it himself, and the government ill managed because he has no hand in it, which, truly, is a very great grievance to the people, that understand, by himself and his party, that are their representatives, and ought to understand for them how able he is for it. He fathers all his own passions and concerns, like bastards, on the people, because, being entrusted by them without articles or conditions, they are bound to acknowledge whatsoever he does as their own act and deed.



A PLAY-WRITER

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 of his own canting inclination. He finds it easier to write in rhyme than prose, for the world being over-charged with romances, he finds his plots, passions, and repartees ready made to his hand, and if he can but turn them into rhyme the thievery is disguised, and they pass for his own wit and invention without question, like a stolen cloak made into a coat or dyed into another colour. Besides this, he makes no conscience of stealing anything that lights in his way, and borrows the advice of so many to correct, enlarge, and amend what he has ill-favouredly patched together, that it becomes like a thing drawn by counsel, and none of his own performance, or the son of a whore that has no one certain father. He has very great reason to prefer verse before prose in his compositions; for rhyme is like lace, that serves excellently well to hide the piecing and coarseness of a bad stuff, contributes mightily to the bulk, and makes the less serve by the many impertinences it commonly requires to make way for it, for very few are endowed with abilities to bring it in on its own account. This he finds to be good husbandry and a kind of necessary thrift, for they that have but a little ought to make as much of it as they can. His prologue, which is commonly none of his own, is always better than his play, like a piece of cloth that's fine in the beginning and coarse afterwards; though it has but one topic, and that's the same that is used by malefactors, when they are to be tried, to except against as many of the jury as they can.