Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century Part 29

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 t.i.tle, 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 G.o.ds, 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 G.o.ds 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 cla.s.sic 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 h.e.l.lish shapes of fiends, and so shows him to the rabble to render him the more odious. He exposes his wit like a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, 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 a.s.sure 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 pa.s.sions and concerns, like b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, 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 lat.i.tude 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 pa.s.s 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, pa.s.sions, and repartees ready made to his hand, and if he can but turn them into rhyme the thievery is disguised, and they pa.s.s 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 wh.o.r.e 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 coa.r.s.eness 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 coa.r.s.e 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.

A MOUNTEBANK

Is an epidemic physician, a doctor-errant, that keeps himself up by being, like a top, in motion, for if he should settle he would fall to nothing immediately. He is a pedlar of medicines, a petty chapman of cures, and tinker empirical to the body of man. He strolls about to markets and fairs, where he mounts on the top of his shop, that is his bank, and publishes his medicines as universal as himself; for everything is for all diseases, as himself is of all places--that is to say, of none. His business is to show tricks and impudence. As for the cure of diseases, it concerns those that have them, not him, further than to get their money. His pudding is his setter that lodges the rabble for him, and then slips him, who opens with a deep mouth, and has an ill day if he does not run down some. He baits his patient's body with his medicines, as a rat-catcher does a room, and either poisons the disease or him. As soon as he has got all the money and spent all the credit the rabble could spare him, he then removes to fresh quarters where he is less known and better trusted. If but one in twenty of his medicines. .h.i.t by chance, when nature works the cure, it saves the credit of all the rest, that either do no good or hurt; for whosoever recovers in his hands, he does the work under G.o.d; but if he die, G.o.d does it under him: his time was come, and there's an end. A velvet jerkin is his prime qualification, by which he is distinguished from his pudding, as he is with his cap from him. This is the usher of his school, that draws the rabble together, and then he draws their teeth. He administers physic with a farce, and gives his patients a preparative of dancing on the rope, to stir the humours and prepare them for evacuation. His fool serves for his foil, and sets him off as well as his bragging and lying.

The first thing he vents is his own praise, and then his medicines wrapped up in several papers and lies. He mounts his bank as a vaulter does his wooden horse, and then shows tricks for his patients, as apes do for the King of Spain. He casts the nativity of urinals, and tries diseases, like a witch, by water. He bails the place with a jig, draws the rabble together, and then throws his hook among them. He pretends to universal medicines; that is, such as, when all men are sick together, will cure them all, but till then no one in particular.

A WITTOL

Is a person of great complaisance, and very civil to all that have occasion to make use of his wife. He married a wife as a common proxy for the service of all those that are willing to come in for their shares; he engrossed her first by wholesale, and since puts her off by retail; he professes a form of matrimony, but utterly denies the power thereof. They that tell tales are very unjust, for, having not put in their claims before marriage, they are bound for ever after to hold their tongues. The reason why citizens are commonly wittols is, because men that drive a trade and are dealers in the world seldom provide anything for their own uses which they will not very willingly put off again for considerable profit. He believes it to be but a vulgar error and no such disparagement as the world commonly imagines to be a cuckold; for man, being the epitomy and representation of all creatures, cannot be said to be perfect while he wants that badge and character which so many several species wear both for their defence and ornament.

He takes the only wise and sure course that his wife should do him no injury; for, having his own free consent, it is not in her power that way to do him any wrong at all. His wife is, like Eve in Paradise, married to all mankind, and yet is unsatisfied that there are no more worlds, as Alexander the Great was. She is a person of public capacity, and rather than not serve her country would suffer an army to march over her, as Sir Rice ap Thomas did. Her husband and she give and take equal liberty, which preserves a perfect peace and good understanding between both, while those that are concerned in one another's love and honour are never quiet, but always caterwauling. He differs from a jealous man as a valiant man does from a coward, that trembles at a danger which the other scorns and despises. He is of a true philosophical temper, and suffers what he knows not how to avoid with a more than stoical resolution. He is one of those the poet speaks of:--

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

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

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 pa.s.sionate 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 n.o.ble 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 t.i.tle 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 pa.s.sionate 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 superst.i.tious 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 a.s.sistance, 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 sh.o.r.e. 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 pa.s.ses, 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 mult.i.tudes of those kinds of vermin do always appear to stir up the people before the beginning of all troublesome times, and n.o.body 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, s.e.x, or quality. He has no regard to anything but his own humour, and that, he expects, should pa.s.s 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 p.r.i.c.kles, 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sembly 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 mult.i.tude 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 n.o.blest 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