Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century Part 30

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 b.u.m 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 t.i.tle, 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 b.u.ms 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 n.o.bility a dispensation for doing things ign.o.ble. 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 d.a.m.n it like a knighthood of the post than want occasion to p.a.w.n 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

Has a strange natural inclination to all ill intents and purposes. He bears nothing so resolutely as ill-will, which he takes naturally to, as some do to gaming, and will rather hate for nothing than sit out. He believes the devil is not so bad as he should be, and therefore endeavours to make him worse by drawing him into his own party offensive and defensive; and if he would but be ruled by him, does not doubt but to make him understand his business much better than he does. He lays nothing to heart but malice, which is so far from doing him hurt that it is the only cordial that preserves him. Let him use a man never so civilly to his face, he is sure to hate him behind his back. He has no memory for any good that is done him; but evil, whether it be done him or not, never leaves him, as things of the same kind always keep together. Love and hatred, though contrary pa.s.sions, meet in him as a third and unite, for he loves nothing but to hate, and hates nothing but to love. All the truths in the world are not able to produce so much hatred as he is able to supply. He is a common enemy to the world, for being born to the hatred of it, Nature, that provides for everything she brings forth, has furnished him with a competence suitable to his occasions, for all men together cannot hate him so much as he does them one by one. He loses no occasion of offence, but very thriftily lays it up and endeavours to improve it to the best advantage. He makes issues in his skin to vent his ill-humours, and is sensible of no pleasure so much as the itching of his sores. He hates death for nothing so much as because he fears it will take him away before he has paid all the ill-will he owes, and deprive him of all those precious feuds he has been sc.r.a.ping together all his lifetime. He is troubled to think what a disparagement it will be to him to die before those that will be glad to hear he is gone, and desires very charitably they might come to an agreement like good friends and go hand-in-hand out of the world together. He loves his neighbour as well as he does himself, and is willing to endure any misery so they may but take part with him, and undergo any mischief rather than they should want it. He is ready to spend his blood and lay down his life for theirs that would not do half so much for him, and rather than fail would give the devil suck, and his soul into the bargain, if he would but make him his plenipotentiary to determine all differences between himself and others. He contracts enmities, as others do friendships, out of likenesses, sympathies, and instincts; and when he lights upon one of his own temper, as contraries produce the same effects, they perform all the offices of friendship, have the same thoughts, affections, and desires of one another's destruction, and please themselves as heartily, and perhaps as securely, in hating one another as others do in loving. He seeks out enemies to avoid falling out with himself, for his temper is like that of a flourishing kingdom; if it have not a foreign enemy it will fall into a civil war and turn its arms upon itself, and so does but hate in his own defence. His malice is all sorts of gain to him, for as men take pleasure in pursuing, entrapping, and destroying all sorts of beasts and fowl, and call it sport, so would he do men, and if he had equal power would never be at a loss, nor give over his game without his prey; and in this he does nothing but justice, for as men take delight to destroy beasts, he, being a beast, does but do as he is done by in endeavouring to destroy men. The philosopher said, "Man to man is a G.o.d and a wolf;"

but he, being incapable of the first, does his endeavour to make as much of the last as he can, and shows himself as excellent in his kind as it is in his power to do.

A KNAVE

Is like a tooth-drawer, that maintains his own teeth in constant eating by pulling out those of other men. He is an ill moral philosopher, of villainous principles, and as bad practice. His tenets are to hold what he can get, right or wrong. His tongue and his heart are always at variance, and fall out like rogues in the street, to pick somebody's pocket. They never agree but, like Herod and Pilate, to do mischief. His conscience never stands in his light when the devil holds a candle to him, for he has stretched it so thin that it is transparent. He is an engineer of treachery, fraud, and perfidiousness, and knows how to manage matters of great weight with very little force by the advantage of his trepanning screws. He is very skilful in all the mechanics of cheat, the mathematical magic of imposture, and will outdo the expectation of the most credulous to their own admiration and undoing.

He is an excellent founder, and will melt down a leaden fool and cast him into what form he pleases. He is like a pike in a pond, that lives by rapine, and will sometimes venture on one of his own kind, and devour a knave as big as himself. He will swallow a fool a great deal bigger than himself, and, if he can but get his head within his jaws, will carry the rest of him hanging out at his mouth, until by degrees he has digested him all. He has a hundred tricks to slip his neck out of the pillory without leaving his ears behind. As for the gallows, he never ventures to show his tricks upon the high-rope for fear of breaking his neck. He seldom commits any villainy but in a legal way, and makes the law bear him out in that for which it hangs others. He always robs under the wizard of law, and picks pockets with tricks in equity. By his means the law makes more knaves than it hangs, and, like the Inns-of-Court, protects offenders against itself. He gets within the law and disarms it. His hardest labour is to wriggle himself into trust, which if he can but compa.s.s his business is done, for fraud and treachery follow as easily as a thread does a needle. He grows rich by the ruin of his neighbours, like gra.s.s in the streets in a great sickness. He shelters himself under the covert of the law, like a thief in a hemp-plot, and makes that secure him which was intended for his destruction.

APPENDIX.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

_Wrote "The Character of the Happy Warrior" in 1806. It was suggested by the death of Nelson at Trafalgar on the 21st of October 1805. Wordsworth did not connect the poem with the name of Nelson because there was a stain upon his public life, in his relations with Lady Hamilton, that clouded the ideal. The poet said that in writing he thought much of his true-hearted sailor-brother who, as Captain of an Indiaman, had been drowned in the wreck of his ship off the Bill of Portland on the 5th of February 1805, his body not being found until the 20th of March_.

CHARACTER OF THE HAPPY WARRIOR.

Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he That every man in arms should wish to he?

--It is the generous spirit, who, when brought Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought: Whose high endeavours are an inward light That makes the path before him always bright: Who, with a natural instinct to discern What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn; Abides by this resolve, and stops not there, But makes his moral being his prime care; Who, doomed to go in company with Pain, And Fear, and Bloodshed--miserable train!-- Turns his necessity to glorious gain; In face of these doth exercise a power Which is our human nature's highest dower; Controls them and subdues, trans.m.u.tes, bereaves Of their bad influence, and their good receives: By objects, which might force the soul to abate Her feeling, rendered more compa.s.sionate; Is placable--because occasions rise So often that demand such sacrifice; More skilful in self-knowledge, even more pure, As tempted more; more able to endure As more exposed to suffering and distress; Thence, also, more alive to tenderness.

--'Tis he whose law is reason; who depends Upon that law as on the best of friends; Whence, in a state where men are tempted still To evil for a guard against worse ill, And what in quality or act is best Doth seldom on a right foundation rest, He labours good on good to fix, and owes To virtue every triumph that he knows: --Who, if he rise to station of command, Rises by open means; and there will stand On honourable terms, or else retire, And in himself possess his own desire; Who comprehends his trust, and to the same Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim; And therefore does not stoop, nor lie in wait For wealth, or honours, or for worldly state; Whom they must follow; on whose head must fall, Like showers of manna, if they come at all: Whose flowers shed round him in the common strife, Or mild concerns of ordinary life, A constant influence, a peculiar grace; But who, if he be called upon to face Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined Great issues, good or bad for human kind, Is happy as a Lover; and attired With sudden brightness, like a Man inspired; And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw; Or if an unexpected call succeed, Come when it will, is equal to the need: --He who, though thus endued as with a sense And faculty for storm and turbulence, Is yet a Soul whose master-bias leans To home-felt pleasures and to gentle scenes; Sweet images! which, wheresoe'er he be, Are at his heart; and such fidelity It is his darling pa.s.sion to approve; More brave for this, that he hath much to love:-- 'Tis finally, the man who, lifted high, Conspicuous object in a Nation's eye, Or left unthought of in obscurity,-- Who, with a toward or untoward lot, Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not-- Plays, in the many games of life, that one Where what he most doth value must be won: Whom neither shape of danger can dismay, Nor thought of tender happiness betray; Who, not content that former worth stand fast, Looks forward, persevering to the last, From well to better, daily self-surpa.s.sed: Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth For ever, and to n.o.ble deeds give birth, Or he must fall, to sleep without his fame, And leave a dead unprofitable name-- Finds comfort in himself and in his cause; And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause: This is the happy Warrior; this is He That every Man in arms should wish to be.

[Footnote 1: Henry Wootton.]

[Footnote 2: "Microcosmography; or, a Piece of the World discovered; in Essays and Characters. By John Earle, D.D. of Christchurch and Merton College, Oxford and Bishop of Salisbury. A new edition, to which are add Notes and Appendix by Philip Bliss, Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford."]

[Footnote 3: So Washbourne, in his _Divine Poems_, 12mo, 1654:--

"--ere 'tis accustom'd unto sin, _The mind white paper_ is, and will admit of any lesson you will write in it."--P. 26.

Shakspeare, of a child, says--

"--the hand of time Shall draw this brief into as huge a volume."--_K. John, II_ I.]

[Footnote 4: This, and every other pa.s.sage throughout the volume, [included between brackets,] does not appear in the first edition of 1628.]

[Footnote 5: Adam did not, to use the words of the old Geneva Bible, "make himself breeches," till he knew sin: the meaning of the pa.s.sage in the text is merely that, as a child advances in age, he commonly proceeds in the knowledge and commission of vice and immorality.]

[Footnote 6: St. Mary's church was originally built by king Alfred, and annexed to the University of Oxford, for the use of the scholars, when St. Giles's and St. Peter's (which were till then appropriated to them,) had been ruined by the violence of the Danes. It was totally rebuilt during the reign of Henry VII., who gave forty oaks towards the materials; and is, in this day, the place of worship in which the public sermons are preached before the members of the university.]

[Footnote 7: _Brachigraphy_, or short-hand-writing, appears to have been much studied in our author's time, and was probably esteemed a fashionable accomplishment. It was first introduced into this country by Peter Bales, who, in 1590, published The _Writing Schoolmaster_, a treatise consisting of three parts, the first "of Brachygraphie, that is, to write as fast as a man speaketh treatably, writing but one letter for a word;" the second, of Orthography; and the third of Calligraphy.

Imprinted at London, by T. Orwin, &c., 1590, 4to. A second edition, "with sundry new additions," appeared in 1597, 12mo, Imprinted at London, by George Shawe, &c. Holinshed gives the following description of one of Bales' performances:--"The tenth of August (1575.) a rare peece of worke, and almost incredible, was brought to pa.s.se by an Englishman borne in the citie of London, named Peter Bales, who by his industrie and practise of his pen, contriued and writ within the compa.s.se of a penie, in Latine, the Lord's praier, the creed, the ten commandements, a praier to G.o.d, a praier for the queene, his posie, his name, the daie of the moneth, the yeare of our Lord, and the reigne of the queene. And on the seuenteenthe of August next following, at Hampton court, he presented the same to the queen's maiestie, in the head of a ring of gold, couered with a christall; and presented therewith an excellent spectacle by him deuised, for the easier reading thereof: wherewith hir maiestie read all that was written therein with great admiration, and commended the same to the lords of the councell, and the amba.s.sadors, and did weare the same manie times vpon hir finger."--_Holinshed's Chronicle_, page 1262, b. edit, folio, Lond. 1587.]

[Footnote 8: It is customary in all sermons delivered before the University, to use an introductory prayer for the founder of, and princ.i.p.al benefactors to, the preacher's individual college, as well as for the officers and members of the university in general. This, however, would appear very ridiculous when "_he comes down to his friends_" or, in other words, preaches before a country congregation.]

[Footnote 9: _of_, first edit. 1628.]

[Footnote 10: I cannot forbear to close this admirable character with the beautiful description of a _"poure Persons," riche of holy thought and werk_, given by the father of English poetry:--

Benigne he was, and wonder diligent, And in adversite ful patient: And swiche he was ypreved often sithes.

Ful loth were him to cursen for his t.i.thes, But rather wolde he yeven out of doute, Unto his poure parishens aboute, Of his offring, and eke of his substance.

He coude in litel thing have suffisance.

Wide was his parish, and houses fer asonder, But he ne left nought for no rain ne thonder, In sikenesse and in mischief to visite The ferrest in his parish, moche and lite, Upon his fete, and in his hand a staf.

And though he holy were, and vertuous, He was to sinful men not dispitous, Ne of his speche dangerous ne digne, But in his teching discrete and benigne.

To drawen folk to heven, with fairenesse, By good ensample, was his besinesse.

He waited after no pompe ne reverence, Ne maked him no spiced conscience, But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve, He taught, but first he folwed it himselve.

_Chaucer, Prol. to Cant. Tales_, v. 485.

We may surely conclude with a line from the same poem, "A better preest I trowe that nowher non is."]

[Footnote 11: _The secretes of the reverende maister Alexis of Piemovnt, containyng excellente remedies against diuers diseases, &c._, appear to have been a very favourite study either with the physicians, or their patients, about this period.

They were originally written in Italian, and were translated into English by William Warde, of which editions were printed at London, in 1558, 1562, 1595, and 1615. In 1603, a _fourth_ edition of a Latin version appeared at Basil; and from Ward's dedication to "the lorde Russell, erle of Bedford," it seems that the French and Dutch were not without so great a treasure in their own languages. A specimen of the importance of this publication may be given in the t.i.tle of the first secret. "The maner and secrete to conserue a man's youth, and to holde back olde age, to maintaine a man always in helth and strength, as in the fayrest floure of his yeres."]

[Footnote 12: _The Regiment of Helthe_, by Thomas Paynell, is another volume of the same description, and was printed by Thomas Berthelette, in 1541. 410.]

[Footnote 13: _Vespasian_, tenth emperor of Rome, imposed a tax upon urine, and when his son t.i.tus remonstrated with him on the meanness of the act, "Pecuniam," says Suetonius, "ex prima pensione admovit ad nares, suscitans _num odore offenderetur?_ et illo negante, atqui, inquit, e lotio est."]

[Footnote 14: "Vpon the market-day he is much haunted with vrinals, where, if he finde any thing, (though he knowe nothing,) yet hee will say some-what, which if it hit to some purpose, with a fewe fustian words, hee will seeme a piece of strange stuffe." Character of an unworthy physician. "_The Good and the Badde_" by Nicholas Breton. 4to. 1618.]

[Footnote 15: That the murdered body bleeds at the approach of the murderer, was, in our author's time, a commonly received opinion. Holinshed affirms that the corpse of Henry the Sixth bled as it was carrying for interment; and Sir Kenelm Digby so firmly believed in the truth of the report, that he has endeavoured to explain the reason. It is remarked by Mr. Steevens, in a note to _Shakspeare_, that the opinion seems to be derived from the ancient Swedes, or Northern nations, from whom we descend; as they practised this method of trial in all dubious cases.]

[Footnote 16: