Chapter 37

Is a person of great complaisance, and very civil to all that have occasion to make use of his wife. He married a wife as a common proxy for the service of all those that are willing to come in for their shares; he engrossed her first by wholesale, and since puts her off by retail; he professes a form of matrimony, but utterly denies the power thereof. They that tell tales are very unjust, for, having not put in their claims before marriage, they are bound for ever after to hold their tongues. The reason why citizens are commonly wittols is, because men that drive a trade and are dealers in the world seldom provide anything for their own uses which they will not very willingly put off again for considerable profit. He believes it to be but a vulgar error and no such disparagement as the world commonly imagines to be a cuckold; for man, being the epitomy and representation of all creatures, cannot be said to be perfect while he wants that badge and character which so many several species wear both for their defence and ornament. He takes the only wise and sure course that his wife should do him no injury; for, having his own free consent, it is not in her power that way to do him any wrong at all. His wife is, like Eve in Paradise, married to all mankind, and yet is unsatisfied that there are no more worlds, as Alexander the Great was. She is a person of public capacity, and rather than not serve her country would suffer an army to march over her, as Sir Rice ap Thomas did. Her husband and she give and take equal liberty, which preserves a perfect peace and good understanding between both, while those that are concerned in one another's love and honour are never quiet, but always caterwauling. He differs from a jealous man as a valiant man does from a coward, that trembles at a danger which the other scorns and despises. He is of a true philosophical temper, and suffers what he knows not how to avoid with a more than stoical resolution. He is one of those the poet speaks of:--

"Qui ferre incommoda vitæ, Nec jactare jugum, vita didicere magistra."

He is as much pleased to see many men approve his choice of his wife and has as great a kindness for them, as opiniasters have for all those whom they find to agree with themselves in judgment and approve the abilities of their understandings.

A LITIGIOUS MAN

Goes to law as men do to bad houses, to spend his money and satisfy his concupiscence of wrangling. He is a constant customer to the old reverend gentlewoman Law, and believes her to be very honest, though she picks his pockets and puts a thousand tricks and gulleries upon him. He has a strange kindness for an action of the case, but a most passionate loyalty for the King's writ. A well-drawn bill and answer will draw him all the world over, and a breviate as far as the Line. He enters the lists at Westminster like an old tiller, runs his course in law, and breaks an oath or two instead of a lance; and if he can but unhorse the defendant and get the sentence of the judges on his side, he marches off in triumph. He prefers a cry of lawyers at the Bar before any pack of the best-mouthed dogs in all the North. He has commonly once a term a trial of skill with some other professor of the noble science of contention at the several weapons of bill and answer, forgery, perjury, subornation, champarty, affidavit, common barretry, maintenance, &c., and though he come off with the worst, he does not greatlv care so he can but have another bout for it. He fights with bags of money as they did heretofore with sand-bags, and he that has the heaviest has the advantage and knocks down the other, right or wrong and he suffers the penalties of the law for having no more money to show in the case. He is a client by his order and votary of the long robe, and though he were sure the devil invented it to hide his cloven feet, he has the greater reverence for it; for, as evil manners produce good laws, the worse the inventor was the better the thing may be. He keeps as many Knights of the Post to swear for him, as the King does poor knights at Windsor to pray for him. When he is defendant and like to be worsted in a suit, he puts in a cross bill and becomes plaintiff; for the plainant is eldest hand, and has not only that advantage, but is understood to be the better friend to the Court, and is considered for it accordingly.

A HUMOURIST

Is a peculiar fantastic that has a wonderful natural affection to some particular kind of folly, to which he applies himself and in time becomes eminent. 'Tis commonly some outlying whimsy of Bedlam, that, being tame and unhurtful, is suffered to go at liberty. The more serious he is the more ridiculous he becomes, and at the same time pleases himself in earnest and others in jest. He knows no mean, for that is inconsistent with all humour, which is never found but in some extreme or other. Whatsoever he takes to he is very full of, and believes every man else to be so too, as if his own taste were the same in every man's palate. If he be a virtuoso, he applies himself with so much earnestness to what he undertakes that he puts his reason out of joint and strains his judgment; and there is hardly anything in the world so slight or serious that some one or other has not squandered away his brains and time and fortune upon to no other purpose but to be ridiculous. He is exempted from a dark room and a doctor, because there is no danger in his frenzy; otherwise he has as good a title to fresh straw as another. Humour is but a crookedness of the mind, a disproportioned swelling of the brain, that draws the nourishment from the other parts to stuff an ugly and deformed crup-shoulder. If it have the luck to meet with many of its own temper, instead of being ridiculous it becomes a church, and from jest grows to earnest.

A LEADER OF A FACTION

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

A DEBAUCHED MAN

Saves the devil a labour and leads himself into temptation, being loth to lose his good favour in giving him any trouble where he can do the business himself without his assistance, which he very prudently reserves for matters of greater concernment. He governs himself in an arbitrary way, and is absolute, without being confined to anything but his own will and pleasure, which he makes his law. His life is all recreation, and his diversions nothing but turning from one vice, that he is weary of, to entertain himself with another that is fresh. He lives above the state of his body as well as his fortune, and runs out of his health and money as if he had made a match and betted on the race, or bid the devil take the hindmost. He is an amphibious animal, that lives in two elements, wet and dry, and never comes out of the first but, like a sea-calf, to sleep on the shore. His language is very suitable to his conversation, and he talks as loosely as he lives. Ribaldry and profanation are his doctrine and use, and what he professes publicly he practises very carefully in his life and conversation; not like those clergymen that, to save the souls of other men, condemn themselves out of their own mouths. His whole life is nothing but a perpetual lordship of misrule and a constant ramble day and night as long as it lasts, which is not according to the course of nature, but its own course; for he cuts off the latter end of it, like a pruned vine, that it may bear the more wine although it be the shorter. As for that which is left, he is as lavish of it as he is of everything else; for he sleeps all day and sits up all night, that he may not see how it passes, until, like one that travels in a litter and sleeps, he is at his journey's end before he is aware; for he is spirited away by his vices and clapped under hatches, where he never knows whither he is going until he is at the end of his voyage.

THE SEDITIOUS MAN

Is a civil mutineer, and as all mutinies for the most part are for pay, if it were not for that he would never trouble himself with it. His business is to kindle and blow up discontents against the Government, that, when they are inflamed, he may have the fairer opportunity to rob and plunder, while those that are concerned are employed in quenching it. He endeavours to raise tumults and, if he can, civil war--a remedy which no man that means well to his country can endure to think on though the disease were never so desperate. He is a State mountebank, whose business is to persuade the people that they are not well in health, that he may get their money to make them worse. If he be a preacher, he has the advantage of all others of his tribe, for he has a way to vent sedition by wholesale; and as the foulest purposes have most need of the fairest pretences, so when sedition is masked under the veil of piety, religion, conscience, and holy duty, it propagates wonderfully among the rabble, and he vents more in an hour from the pulpit than others by news and politics can do in a week. Next him, writers and libellers are most pernicious, for though the contagion they disperse spreads slower and with less force than preaching, yet it lasts longer, and in time extends to more, and with less danger to the author, who is not easily discovered if he use any care to conceal himself. And therefore, as we see stinging-flies vex and provoke cattle most immediately before storms, so multitudes of those kinds of vermin do always appear to stir up the people before the beginning of all troublesome times, and nobody knows who they are or from whence they came, but only that they were printed the present year that they may not lose the advantage of being known to be new. Some do it only out of humour and envy, or desire to see those that are above them pulled down and others raised in their places, as if they held it a kind of freedom to change their governors, though they continue in the same condition themselves still, only they are a little better pleased with it in observing the dangers greatness is exposed to. He delights in nothing so much as civil commotions, and, like a porpoise, always plays before a storm. Paper and tinder are both made of the same material, rags, but he converts them both into the same again and makes his paper tinder.

THE RUDE MAN

Is an Ostro-Goth or Northern Hun, that, wheresoever he comes, invades and all the world does overrun, without distinction of age, sex, or quality. He has no regard to anything but his own humour, and that, he expects, should pass everywhere without asking leave or being asked wherefore, as if he had a safe-conduct for his rudeness. He rolls up himself like a hedgehog in his prickles, and is as intractable to all that come near him. He is an ill-designed piece, built after the rustic order, and all his parts look too big for their height. He is so ill-contrived that that which should be the top in all regular structures--_i.e._, confidence--is his foundation. He has neither doctrine nor discipline in him, like a fanatic Church, but is guided by the very same spirit that dipped the herd of swine in the sea. He was not bred, but reared; not brought up to hand, but suffered to run wild and take after his kind, as other people of the pasture do. He takes that freedom in all places, as if he were not at liberty, but had broken loose and expected to be tied up again. He does not eat, but feed, and when he drinks goes to water. The old Romans beat the barbarous part of the world into civility, but if he had lived in those times he had been invincible to all attempts of that nature, and harder to be subdued and governed than a province. He eats his bread, according to the curse, with the sweat of his brow, and takes as much pains at a meal as if he earned it; puffs and blows like a horse that eats provender, and crams his throat like a screwed gun with a bullet bigger than the bore. His tongue runs perpetually over everything that comes in its way, without regard of what, where, or to whom, and nothing but a greater rudeness than his own can stand before it; and he uses it to as slovenly purposes as a dog does that licks his sores and the dirt off his feet. He is the best instance of the truth of Pythagoras's doctrine, for his soul passed through all sorts of brute beasts before it came to him, and still retains something of the nature of every one.

A RABBLE

Is a congregation or assembly of the States-general sent from their several and respective shops, stalls, and garrets. They are full of controversy, and every one of a several judgment concerning the business under present consideration, whether it be mountebank, show, hanging, or ballad-singer. They meet, like Democritus's atoms, _in vacuo_, and by a fortuitous jostling together produce the greatest and most savage beast in the whole world; for though the members of it may have something of human nature while they are asunder, when they are put together they have none at all, as a multitude of several sounds make one great noise unlike all the rest, in which no one particular is distinguished. They are a great dunghill where all sorts of dirty and nasty humours meet, stink, and ferment, for all the parts are in a perpetual tumult. 'Tis no wonder they make strange Churches, for they take naturally to any imposture, and have a great antipathy to truth and order as being contrary to their original confusion. They are a herd of swine possessed with a dry devil that run after hanging instead of drowning. Once a month they go on pilgrimage to the gallows, to visit the sepulchres of their ancestors, as the Turks do once a week. When they come there they sing psalms, quarrel, and return full of satisfaction and narrative. When they break loose they are like a public ruin, in which the highest parts lie undermost, and make the noblest fabrics heaps of rubbish. They are like the sea, that's stirred into a tumult with every blast of wind that blows upon it, till it become a watery Apennine, and heap mountain billows upon one another, as once the giants did in the war with heaven. A crowd is their proper element, in which they make their way with their shoulders as pigs creep through hedges. Nothing in the world delights them so much as the ruin of great persons or any calamity in which they have no share, though they get nothing by it. They love nothing but themselves in the likeness of one another, and, like sheep, run all that way the first goes, especially if it be against their governors, whom they have a natural disaffection to.

A KNIGHT OF THE POST

Is a retailer of oaths, a deposition-monger, an evidence-maker, that lives by the labour of his conscience. He takes money to kiss the Gospel, as Judas did Christ when he betrayed Him. As a good conscience is a continual feast, so an ill one is with him his daily food. He plies at a court of justice, as porters do at a market, and his business is to bear witness, as they do burdens for any man that will pay them for it. He will swear his ears through an inch-board, and wears them merely by favour of the Court; for, being _amicus curiae_, they are willing to let him keep the pillory out of possession, though he has forfeited his right never so often; for when he is once outed of his ears he is past his labour, and can do the commonwealth of practisers no more service. He is false weight in the balance of justice, and, as a lawyer's tongue is the tongue of the balance that inclines either way according as the weight of the bribe inclines it, so does his. He lays one hand on the Book, and the other is in the plaintiff's or defendant's pocket. He feeds upon his conscience, as a monkey eats his tail. He kisses the Book to show he renounces and takes his leave of it. Many a parting kiss has he given the Gospel. He pollutes it with his lips oftener than a hypocrite. He is a sworn officer of every court and a great practiser, is admitted within the Bar, and makes good what the rest of the counsel say. The attorney and solicitor fee and instruct him in the case, and he ventures as far for his client as any man to be laid by the ears. He speaks more to the point than any other, yet gives false ground to his brethren of the jury, that they seldom come near the jack. His oaths are so brittle that not one in twenty of them will hold the taking, but fly as soon as they are out. He is worse than an ill conscience, for that bears true witness, but his is always false; and though his own conscience be said to be a thousand witnesses, he will outswear and outface them all. He believes it no sin to bear false witness for his neighbour that pays him for it, because it is not forbidden, but only to bear false witness against his neighbour.

AN UNDESERVING FAVOURITE

Is a piece of base metal with the King's stamp upon it, a fog raised by the sun to obscure his own brightness. He came to preferment by unworthy offices, like one that rises with his bum forwards, which the rabble hold to be fortunate. He got up to preferment on the wrong side, and sits as untoward in it. He is raised rather above himself than others, or as base metals are by the test of lead, while gold and silver continue still unmoved. He is raised and swells, like a pimple, to be an eyesore and deform the place he holds. He is borne like a cloud on the air of the Prince's favour, and keeps his light from the rest of his people. He rises, like the light end of a balance, for want of weight, or as dust and feathers do, for being light. He gets into the Prince's favour by wounding it. He is a true person of honour, for he does but act it at the best; a lord made only to justify all the lords of May-poles, morrice-dances, and misrule; a thing that does not live, but lie in state before he's dead, such as the heralds dight at funerals. His Prince gives him honour out of his own stock, and estate out of his revenue, and lessens himself in both:--

"He is like fern, that vile unuseful weed, That springs equivocally, without seed."

He was not made for honour, nor it for him, which makes it sit so unfavouredly upon him. The fore-part of himself and the hinder-part of his coach publish his distinction; as French lords, that have _haute justice_--that is, may hang and draw--distinguish their qualities by the pillars of their gallows. He got his honour easily, by chance, without the hard, laborious way of merit, which makes him so prodigally lavish of it. He brings down the price of honour, as the value of anything falls in mean hands. He looks upon all men in the state of knighthood and plain gentility as most deplorable, and wonders how he could endure himself when he was but of that rank. The greatest part of his honour consists in his well-sounding title, which he therefore makes choice of, though he has none to the place, but only a patent to go by the name of it. This appears at the end of his coach in the shape of a coronet, which his footmen set their bums against, to the great disparagement of the wooden representative. The people take him for a general grievance, a kind of public pressure or innovation, and would willingly give a subsidy to be redressed of him. He is a strict observer of men's addresses to him, and takes a mathematical account whether they stoop and bow in just proportion to the weight of his greatness and allow full measure to their legs and cringes accordingly. He never uses courtship but in his own defence, that others may use the same to him, and, like a true Christian, does as he would be done unto. He is intimate with no man but his pimp and his surgeon, with whom he keeps no state, but communicates all the states of his body. He is raised, like the market or a tax, to the grievance and curse of the people. He that knew the inventory of him would wonder what slight ingredients go to the making up of a great person; howsoever, he is turned up trump, and so commands better cards than himself while the game lasts. He has much of honour according to the original sense of it, which among the ancients, Gellius says, signified injury. His prosperity was greater than his brain could bear, and he is drunk with it; and if he should take a nap as long as Epimenides or the Seven Sleepers he would never be sober again. He took his degree and went forth lord by mandamus, without performing exercises of merit. His honour's but an immunity from worth, and his nobility a dispensation for doing things ignoble. He expects that men's hats should fly off before him like a storm, and not presume to stand in the way of his prospect, which is always over their heads. All the advantage he has is but to go before or sit before, in which his nether parts take place of his upper, that continue still, in comparison, but commoners. He is like an open summer-house, that has no furniture but bare seats. All he has to show for his honour is his patent, which will not be in season until the third or fourth generation, if it lasts so long. His very creation supposes him nothing before, and as tailors rose by the fall of Adam, and came in, like thorns and thistles, with the curse, so did he by the frailty of his master. His very face is his gentleman-usher, that walks before him in state, and cries "Give way!" He is as stiff as if he had been dipped in petrifying water and turned into his own statue. He is always taking the name of his honour in vain, and will rather damn it like a knighthood of the post than want occasion to pawn it for every idle trifle, perhaps for more than it is worth, or any man will give to redeem it; and in this he deals uprightly, though perhaps in nothing else.

A MALICIOUS MAN