Chapter 6

Is one whose bounty is limited by reason, not ostentation; and to make it last he deals it discreetly, as we sow the furrow, not by the sack, but by the handful. His word and his meaning never shake hands and part, but always go together. He can survey good and love it, and loves to do it himself for its own sake, not for thanks. He knows there is no such misery as to outlive good name, nor no such folly as to put it in practice. His mind is so secure that thunder rocks him asleep, which breaks other men's slumbers; nobility lightens in his eyes, and in his face and gesture is painted the god of hospitality. His great houses bear in their front more durance than state, unless this add the greater state to them, that they promise to outlast much of our new fantastical buildings. His heart never grows old, no more than his memory, whether at his book or on horseback. He passeth his time in such noble exercise, a man cannot say any time is lost by him; nor hath he only years to approve he hath lived till he be old, but virtues. His thoughts have a high aim, though their dwelling be in the vale of an humble heart, whence, as by an engine (that raises water to fall that it may rise the higher), he is heightened in his humility. The adamant serves not for all seas, but this doth; for he hath, as it were, put a gird about the whole world and found all her quicksands. He hath this hand over fortune, that her injuries, how violent or sudden soever, they do not daunt him; for whether his time call him to live or die, he can do both nobly; if to fall, his descent is breast to breast with virtue; and even then, like the sun near his set, he shows unto the world his clearest countenance.

AN INTRUDER INTO FAVOUR

Is one that builds his reputation on others' infamy, for slander is most commonly his morning prayer. His passions are guided by pride and followed by injustice. An inflexible anger against some poor tutor he falsely calls a courageous constancy, and thinks the best part of gravity to consist in a ruffled forehead. He is the most slavishly submissive, though envious to those that are in better place than himself; and knows the art of words so well that (for shrouding dishonesty under a fair pretext) he seems to preserve mud in crystal. Like a man of a kind nature, he is the first good to himself, in the next file to his French tailor, that gives him all his perfection; for indeed, like an estridge, or bird of paradise, his feathers are more worth than his body. If ever he do good deed (which is very seldom) his own mouth is the chronicle of it, lest it should die forgotten. His whole body goes all upon screws, and his face is the vice that moves them. If his patron be given to music, he opens his chops and sings, or with a wry neck falls to tuning his instrument; if that fail, he takes the height of his lord with a hawking pole. He follows the man's fortune, not the man, seeking thereby to increase his own. He pretends he is most undeservedly envied, and cries out, remembering the game, chess, that a pawn before a king is most played on. Debts he owns none but shrewd turns, and those he pays ere he be sued. He is a flattering glass to conceal age and wrinkles. He is mountain's monkey that, climbing a tree and skipping from bough to bough, gives you back his face; but come once to the top, he holds his nose up into the wind and shows you his tail. Yet all this gay glitter shows on him as if the sun shone in a puddle, for he is a small wine that will not last; and when he is falling, he goes of himself faster than misery can drive him.

A FAIR AND HAPPY MILKMAID

Is a country wench, that is so far from making herself beautiful by art, that one look of hers is able to put all face physic out of countenance. She knows a fair look is but a dumb orator to commend virtue, therefore minds it not. All her excellences stand in her so silently, as if they had stolen upon her without her knowledge. The lining of her apparel (which is herself) is far better than outsides of tissue; for though she be not arrayed in the spoil of the silk-worm, she is decked in innocency, a far better wearing. She doth not, with lying long a-bed, spoil both her complexion and conditions; Nature hath taught her too immoderate sleep is rust to the soul; she rises therefore with chanticleer, her dame's cock, and at night makes lamb her curfew. In milking a cow and straining the teats through her fingers, it seems that so sweet a milk-press makes the milk the whiter or sweeter; for never came almond glove or aromatic ointment off her palm to taint it. The golden ears of corn fall and kiss her feet when she reaps them, as if they wished to be bound and led prisoners by the same hand that felled them. Her breath is her own, which scents all the year long of June, like a new made haycock. She makes her hand hard with labour, and her heart soft with pity; and when winter's evenings fall early (sitting at her merry wheel) she sings a defiance to the giddy wheel of fortune. She doth all things with so sweet a grace, it seems ignorance will not suffer her to do ill, because her mind is to do well. She bestows her year's wages at next fair; and, in choosing her garments, counts no bravery in the world like decency. The garden and beehive are all her physic and chirurgery, and she lives the longer for it. She dares go alone and unfold sheep in the night, and fears no manner of ill because she means none; yet, to say truth, she is never alone, for she is still accompanied with old songs, honest thoughts, and prayers, but short ones; yet they have their efficacy, in that they are not palled with ensuing idle cogitations. Lastly, her dreams are so chaste that she dare tell them: only a Friday's dream is all her superstition; that she conceals for fear of anger. Thus lives she, and all her care is that she may die in the spring-time, to have store of flowers stuck upon her winding-sheet.

AN ARRANT HORSE-COURSER

Hath the trick to blow up horse-flesh, as the butcher doth veal, which shall wash out again in twice riding betwixt Waltham and London. The trade of spur-making had decayed long since, but for this ungodly tireman. He is cursed all over the four ancient highways of England; none but the blind men that sell switches in the road are beholding to him. His stable is filled with so many diseases, one would think most part about Smithfield was an hospital for horses, or a slaughter-house of the common hunt. Let him furnish you with a hackney, it is as much as if the King's warrant overtook you within ten miles to stay your journey. And though a man cannot say he cozens you directly, yet any hostler within ten miles, should he be brought upon his book-oath, will affirm he hath laid a bait for you. Resolve when you first stretch yourself in the stirrups, you are put as it were upon some usurer that will never bear with you past his day. He were good to make one that had the colic alight often, and, if example will cause him, make urine; let him only for that say, Grammercy horse. For his sale of horses, he hath false covers for all manner of diseases, only comes short of one thing (which he despairs not utterly to bring to perfection), to make a horse go on a wooden leg and two crutches. For powdering his ears with quicksilver, and giving him suppositories of live eels, he is expert. All the while you are cheapening, he fears you will not bite; but he laughs in his sleeve when he hath cozened you in earnest. Frenchmen are his best chapmen; he keeps amblers for them on purpose, and knows he can deceive them very easily. He is so constant to his trade that, while he is awake, he tries any man he talks with, and when he is asleep he dreams very fearfully of the paving of Smithfield, for he knows it would founder his occupation.

A ROARING BOY.

His life is a mere counterfeit patent, which, nevertheless, makes many a country justice tremble. Don Quixote's water-mills are still Scotch bagpipes to him. He sends challenges by word of mouth, for he protests (as he is a gentleman and a brother of the sword) he can neither write nor read. He hath run through divers parcels of land, and great houses, beside both the counters. If any private quarrel happen among our great courtiers, he proclaims the business--that's the word, the business--as if the united force of the Romish Catholics were making up for Germany. He cheats young gulls that are newly come to town; and when the keeper of the ordinary blames him for it he answers him in his own profession, that a woodcock must be plucked ere he be dressed. He is a supervisor to brothels, and in them is a more unlawful reformer of vice than prentices on Shrove-Tuesday. He loves his friend as a counsellor at law loves the velvet breeches he was first made barrister in, he will be sure to wear him threadbare ere he forsake him. He sleeps with a tobacco-pipe in his mouth; and his first prayer in the morning is he may remember whom he fell out with over night. Soldier he is none, for he cannot distinguish between onion-seed and gunpowder; if he have worn it in his hollow tooth for the toothache and so come to the knowledge of it, that is all. The tenure by which he holds his means is an estate at will, and that's borrowing. Landlords have but four quarter-days, but he three hundred and odd. He keeps very good company, yet is a man of no reckoning; and when he goes not drunk to bed he is very sick next morning. He commonly dies like Anacreon, with a grape in his throat; or Hercules, with fire in his marrow. And I have heard of some that have escaped hanging begged for anatomies, only to deter man from taking tobacco.

A DRUNKEN DUTCHMAN RESIDENT IN ENGLAND

Is but a quarter-master with his wife. He stinks of butter as if he were anointed all over for the itch. Let him come over never so lean, and plant him but one month near the brew-houses in St Catherine's, and he will be puffed up to your hand like a bloat herring. Of all places of pleasure he loves a common garden, and with the swine of the parish had need be ringed for rooting. Next to these he affects lotteries naturally, and bequeaths the best prize in his will aforehand; when his hopes fall he's blank. They swarm in great tenements like flies; six households will live in a garret. He was wont, only to make us fools, to buy the fox skin for threepence, and sell the tail for a shilling. Now his new trade of brewing strong waters makes a number of madmen. He loves a Welshman extremely for his diet and orthography; that is, for plurality of consonants, and cheese. Like a horse, he is only guided by the mouth; when he's drunk you may thrust your hand into him like an eel's-skin, and strip him, his inside outwards. He hoards up fair gold, and pretends 'tis to seethe in his wife's broth for consumption; and loves the memory of King Henry the Eighth, most especially for his old sovereigns. He says we are unwise to lament the decay of timber in England; for all manner of buildings or fortification whatsoever, he desires no other thing in the world than barrels and hop-poles. To conclude, the only two plagues he trembles at is small beer and the Spanish Inquisition.

A PHANTASTIQUE: AN IMPROVIDENT YOUNG GALLANT,

There is a confederacy between him and his clothes, to be made a puppy: view him well and you will say his gentry sits as ill upon him as if he had bought it with his penny. He hath more places to send money to than the devil hath to send his spirits; and to furnish each mistress would make him run besides his wits, if he had any to lose. He accounts bashfulness the wickedest thing in the world, and therefore studies impudence. If all men were of his mind all honesty would be out of fashion. He withers his clothes on a stage, as a saleman is forced to do his suits in Birchin Lane; and when the play is done, if you mark his rising, 'tis with a kind of walking epilogue between the two candles, to know if his suit may pass for current. He studies by the discretion of his barber, to frizzle like a baboon; three such would keep three the nimblest barbers in the town from ever having leisure to wear net-garters, for when they have to do with him, they have many irons in the fire. He is travelled, but to little purpose; only went over for a squirt and came back again, yet never the more mended in his conditions, because he carried himself along with him. A scholar he pretends himself, and says he hath sweat for it, but the truth is he knows Cornelius far better than Tacitus. His ordinary sports are cock-fights, but the most frequent, horse-races, from whence he comes home dry-foundered. Thus when his purse hath cast her calf he goes down into the country, where he is brought to milk and white cheese like the Switzers.

A BUTTON-MAKER OF AMSTERDAM

Is one that is fled over for his conscience, and left his wife and children upon the parish. For his knowledge he is merely a Horn-book without a Christ-cross before it; and his zeal consists much in hanging his Bible in a Dutch button. He cozens men in the purity of his clothes; and 'twas his only joy when he was on this side, to be in prison. He cries out, 'tis impossible for any man to be damned that lives in his religion, and his equivocation is true--as long as a man lives in it, he cannot; but if he die in it, there's the question. Of all feasts in the year he accounts St. George's feast the profanest, because of St. George's cross, yet sometimes he doth sacrifice to his own belly, provided that he put off the wake of his own nativity or wedding till Good Friday. If there be a great feast in the town, though most of the wicked (as he calls them) be there, he will be sure to be a guest, and to out-eat six of the fattest burghers. He thinks, though he may not pray with a Jew, he may eat with a Jew. He winks when he prays, and thinks he knows the way so now to heaven, that he can find it blindfold. Latin he accounts the language of the beast with seven heads; and when he speaks of his own country, cries, he is fled out of Babel. Lastly, his devotion is obstinacy; the only solace of his heart, contradiction; and his main end, hypocrisy.

A DISTASTER OF THE TIME

Is a winter grasshopper all the year long that looks back upon harvest with a lean pair of cheeks, never sets forward to meet it; his malice sucks up the greatest part of his own venom, and therewith impoisoneth himself: and this sickness rises rather of self-opinion or over-great expedition; so in the conceit of his own over-worthiness, like a coistrel he strives to fill himself with wind, and flies against it. Any man's advancement is the most capital offence that can be to his malice, yet this envy, like Phalaris' bull, makes that a torment first for himself he prepared for others. He is a day-bed for the devil to slumber on. His blood is of a yellowish colour, like those that have been bitten by vipers, and his gall flows as thick in him as oil in a poisoned stomach. He infects all society, as thunder sours wine: war or peace, dearth or plenty, makes him equally discontented. And where he finds no cause to tax the State, he descends to rail against the rate of salt-butter. His wishes are whirlwinds, which breathed forth return into himself, and make him a most giddy and tottering vessel. When he is awake, and goes abroad, he doth but walk in his sleep, for his visitation is directed to none, his business is nothing. He is often dumb-mad, and goes fettered in his own entrails. Religion is commonly his pretence of discontent, though he can be of all religions, therefore truly of none. Thus by naturalising himself some would think him a very dangerous fellow to the State; but he is not greatly to be feared, for this dejection of his is only like a rogue that goes on his knees and elbows in the mire to further his cogging.

A MERE FELLOW OF AN HOUSE

Examines all men's carriage but his own, and is so kind-natured to himself, he finds fault with all men's but his own. He wears his apparel much after the fashion; his means will not suffer him to come too nigh. They afford him mock-velvet or satinisco, but not without the college's next lease's acquaintance. His inside is of the self-same fashion, not rich; but as it reflects from the glass of self-liking, there Croesus is Irus to him. He is a pedant in show, though his title be tutor, and his pupils in a broader phrase are schoolboys. On these he spends the false gallop of his tongue, and with senseless discourse tows them alone, not out of ignorance. He shows them the rind, conceals the sap; by this means he keeps them the longer, himself the better. He hath learnt to cough and spit and blow his nose at every period, to recover his memory, and studies chiefly to set his eyes and beard to a new form of learning. His religion lies in wait for the inclination of his patron, neither ebbs nor flows, but just standing water, between Protestant and Puritan. His dreams are of plurality of benefices and non-residency, and when he rises acts a long grace to his looking-glass. Against he comes to be some great man's chaplain he hath a habit of boldness, though a very coward. He speaks swords, fights ergos. His peace on foot is a measure, on horseback a gallop, for his legs are his own, though horse and spurs are borrowed. He hath less use than possession of books. He is not so proud but he will call the meanest author by his name; nor so unskilled in the heraldry of a study but he knows each man's place. So ends that fellowship and begins another.

A MERE PETTIFOGGER

Is one of Samson's foxes; he sets men together by the ears, more shamefully than pillories, and in a long vacation his sport is to go a fishing with the penal statutes. He cannot err before judgment, and then you see it, only writs of error are the tariers that keep his client undoing somewhat the longer. He is a vestryman in his parish, and easily sets his neighbour at variance with the vicar, when his wicked counsel on both sides is like weapons put into men's hands by a fencer, whereby they get blows, he money. His honesty and learning bring him to Under-Shrieveship, which, having thrice run through, he does not fear the Lieutenant of the Shire; nay more, he fears not God. Cowardice holds him a good commonwealth's-man; his pen is the plough and parchment the soil whence he reaps both coin and curses. He is an earthquake that willingly will let no ground lie in quiet. Broken titles makes him whole; to have half in the country break their bonds were the only liberty of conscience. He would wish, though he be a Brownist, no neighbour of his should pay his tithes duly, if such suits held continual plea at Westminster. He cannot away with the reverend service in our Church, because it ends with the peace of God. He loves blows extremely, and hath his chirurgeon's bill of rates, from head to foot, incense the fury; he would not give away his yearly beatings for a good piece of money. He makes his will in form of a law-case, full of quiddits, that his friends after his death (if for nothing else, yet) for the vexation of the law, may have cause to remember him. And if he thought the ghost of men did walk again (as they report in the time of Popery), sure he would hide some single money in Westminster Hall that his spirit might haunt there. Only with this I will pitch him over the bar and leave him: that his fingers itch after a bribe ever since his first practising of court-hand.

AN INGROSSER OF CORN.

There is no vermin in the land like him: he slanders both heaven and earth with pretended dearths when there is no cause of scarcity. He hoarding in a dear year, is like Erysicthon's bowels in Ovid: _Quodque urbibus esset, quodque satis poterat populo, non sufficit uni_. He prays daily for more inclosures, and knows no reason in his religion why we should call our forefathers' days the time of ignorance, but only because they sold wheat for twelve pence a bushel. He wishes that Dantzig were at the Moluccas, and had rather be certain of some foreign invasion than of the setting up of the steelyard. When his barns and garners are full, if it be a time of dearth, he will buy half a bushel in the market to serve his household, and winnows his corn in the night, lest, as the chaff thrown upon the water showed plenty in Egypt, so his carried by the wind should proclaim his abundance. No painting pleases him so well as Pharaoh's dream of the seven lean kine that ate up the fat ones, that he has in his parlour, which he will describe to you like a motion, and his comment ends with a smothered prayer for a like scarcity. He cannot away with tobacco, for he is persuaded (and not much amiss), that 'tis a sparer of bread-corn, which he could find in his heart to transport without license; but, weighing the penalty, he grows mealy-mouthed, and dares not. Sweet smells he cannot abide; wishes that the pure air were generally corrupted; nay, that the spring had lost her fragrancy for ever, or we our superfluous sense of smelling (as he terms it), that his corn might not be found musty. The poor he accounts the Justices' intelligencers, and cannot abide them. He complains of our negligence of discovering new parts of the world, only to rid them from our climate. His son, by a certain kind of instinct, he binds prentice to a tailor, who, all the term of his indenture, hath a dear year in his belly, and ravens bread exceedingly. When he comes to be a freeman, if it be a dearth, he marries him to a baker's daughter.

A DEVILISH USURER