Part 15 (1/2)
Is the man that is commonly most fierce against the coward, and labouring to take off this suspicion from himself; for the opinion of valour is a good protection to those that dare not use it. No man is valianter than he is in civil company, and where he thinks no danger may come on it, and is the readiest man to fall upon a drawer and those that must not strike again: wonderful exceptious and cholerick where he sees men are loth to give him occasion, and you cannot pacify him better than by quarrelling with him. The hotter you grow, the more temperate man is he; he protests he always honoured you, and the more you rail upon him, the more he honours you, and you threaten him at last into a very honest quiet man. The sight of a sword wounds him more sensibly than the stroke, for before that come he is dead already. Every man is his master that dare beat him, and every man dares that knows him. And he that dare do this is the only man can do much with him; for his friend he cares not for, as a man that carries no such terror as his enemy, which for this cause only is more potent with him of the two: and men fall out with him of purpose to get courtesies from him, and be bribed again to a reconcilement. A man in whom no secret can be bound up, for the apprehension of each danger loosens him, and makes him bewray both the room and it. He is a Christian merely for fear of h.e.l.l-fire; and if any religion could fright him more, would be of that.
A SORDID RICH MAN
Is a beggar of a fair estate, of whose wealth we may say as of other men's unthriftiness, that it has brought him to this: when he had nothing he lived in another kind of fas.h.i.+on. He is a man whom men hate in his own behalf for using himself thus, and yet, being upon himself, it is but justice, for he deserves it. Every accession of a fresh heap bates him so much of his allowance, and brings him a degree nearer starving. His body had been long since desperate, but for the reparation of other men's tables, where he h.o.a.rds meats in his belly for a month, to maintain him in hunger so long. His clothes were never young in our memory; you might make long epochas from them, and put them into the almanack with the dear year[92] and the great frost,[93] and he is known by them longer than his face. He is one never gave alms in his life, and yet is as charitable to his neighbour as himself. He will redeem a penny with his reputation, and lose all his friends to boot; and his reason is, he will not be undone. He never pays anything but with strictness of law, for fear of which only he steals not. He loves to pay short a s.h.i.+lling or two in a great sum, and is glad to gain that when he can no more. He never sees friend but in a journey to save the charges of an inn, and then only is not sick; and his friends never see him but to abuse him. He is a fellow indeed of a kind of frantic thrift, and one of the strangest things that wealth can work.
A MERE GREAT MAN
Is so much heraldry without honour, himself less real than his t.i.tle.
His virtue is, that he was his father's son, and all the expectation of him to beget another. A man that lives merely to preserve another's memory, and let us know who died so many years ago. One of just as much use as his images, only he differs in this, that he can speak himself, and save the fellow of Westminster[94] a labour: and he remembers nothing better than what was out of his life. His grandfathers and their acts are his discourse, and he tells them with more glory than they did them; and it is well they did enough, or else he had wanted matter. His other studies are his sports and those vices that are fit for great men.
Every vanity of his has his officer, and is a serious employment for his servants. He talks loud, and uncleanly, and scurvily as a part of state, and they hear him with reverence. All good qualities are below him, and especially learning, except some parcels of the chronicle and the writing of his name, which he learns to write not to be read. He is merely of his servants' faction, and their instrument for their friends and enemies, and is always least thanked for his own courtesies. They that fool him most do most with him, and he little thinks how many laugh at him bare-head. No man is kept in ignorance more of himself and men, for he hears naught but flattery; and what is fit to be spoken, truth, with so much preface that it loses itself. Thus he lives till his tomb be made ready, and is then a grave statue to posterity.
A POOR MAN
Is the most impotent man, though neither blind nor lame, as wanting the more necessary limbs of life, without which limbs are a burden. A man unfenced and unsheltered from the gusts of the world, which blow all in upon him, like an unroofed house; and the bitterest thing he suffers is his neighbours. All men put on to him a kind of churlisher fas.h.i.+on, and even more plausible natures are churlish to him, as who are nothing advantaged by his opinion. Men fall out with him before-hand to prevent friends.h.i.+p, and his friends too to prevent engagements, or if they own him 'tis in private and a by-room, and on condition not to know them before company. All vice put together is not half so scandalous, nor sets off our acquaintance farther; and even those that are not friends for ends do not love any dearness with such men. The least courtesies are upbraided to him, and himself thanked for none, but his best services suspected as handsome sharking and tricks to get money. And we shall observe it in knaves themselves, that your beggarliest knaves are the greatest, or thought so at least, for those that have wit to thrive by it have art not to seem so. Now a poor man has not vizard enough to mask his vices, nor ornament enough to set forth his virtues, but both are naked and unhandsome; and though no man is necessitated to more ill, yet no man's ill is less excused, but it is thought a kind of impudence in him to be vicious, and a presumption above his fortune. His good parts lie dead upon his hands, for want of matter to employ them, and at the best are not commended but pitied, as virtues ill placed, and we may say of him, ”Tis an honest man, but tis pity;” and yet those that call him so will trust a knave before him. He is a man that has the truest speculation of the world, because all men shew to him in their plainest and worst, as a man they have no plot on, by appearing good to; whereas rich men are entertained with a more holiday behaviour, and see only the best we can dissemble. He is the only he that tries the true strength of wisdom, what it can do of itself without the help of fortune; that with a great deal of virtue conquers extremities; and with a great deal more; his own impatience, and obtains of himself not to hate men.
AN ORDINARY HONEST MAN
Is one whom it concerns to be called honest, for if he were not this, he were nothing: and yet he is not this neither, but a good dull vicious fellow, that complies well with the debauchments of the time, and is fit for it. One that has no good part in him to offend his company, or make him to be suspected a proud fellow; but is sociably a dunce, and sociably a drinker. That does it fair and above-board without legermain, and neither sharks for a cup or a reckoning: that is kind over his beer, and protests he loves you, and begins to you again, and loves you again.
One that quarrels with no man, but for not pledging him, but takes all absurdities and commits as many, and is no tell-tale next morning, though he remember it. One that will fight for his friend if he hear him abused, and his friend commonly is he that is most likely, and he lifts up many a jug in his defence. He rails against none but censurers, against whom he thinks he rails lawfully, and censurers are all those that are better than himself. These good properties qualify him for honesty enough, and raise him high in the ale-house commendation, who, if he had any other good quality, would be named by that. But now for refuge he is an honest man, and hereafter a sot: only those that commend him think him not so, and those that commend him are honest fellows.
A SUSPICIOUS OR JEALOUS MAN
Is one that watches himself a mischief, and keeps a lear eye still, for fear it should escape him. A man that sees a great deal more in every thing than is to be seen, and yet he thinks he sees nothing: his own eye stands in his light. He is a fellow commonly guilty of some weaknesses, which he might conceal if he were careless:--now his over-diligence to hide them makes men pry the more. Howsoever he imagines you have found him, and it shall go hard but you must abuse him whether you will or no.
Not a word can be spoke but nips him somewhere; not a jest thrown out but he will make it hit him. You shall have him go fretting out of company, with some twenty quarrels to every man, stung and galled, and no man knows less the occasion than they that have given it. To laugh before him is a dangerous matter, for it cannot be at any thing but at him, and to whisper in his company plain conspiracy. He bids you speak out, and he will answer you, when you thought not of him. He expostulates with you in pa.s.sion, why you should abuse him, and explains to your ignorance wherein, and gives you very good reason at last to laugh at him hereafter. He is one still accusing others when they are not guilty, and defending himself when he is not accused: and no man is undone more with apologies, wherein he is so elaborately excessive, that none will believe him; and he is never thought worse of, than when he has given satisfaction. Such men can never have friends, because they cannot trust so far; and this humour hath this infection with it, it makes all men to them suspicious. In conclusion, they are men always in offence and vexation with themselves and their neighbours, wronging others in thinking they would wrong them, and themselves most of all in thinking they deserve it.
NICHOLAS BRETON
_Published in 1615 ”Characters upon Essays, Moral and Divine” and in 1616 a set of Characters called ”The Good and the Bad.” He was of a good Ess.e.x family, second son of William Breton of Redcross Street, in the parish of St. Giles without Cripplegate. His father was well-to-do, and died in January 1559 (new style) when Nicholas was a boy. His mother took for second husband George Gascoigne the poet. Only a chance note in a diary informs us that Nicholas Breton was once of Oriel College, Oxford. In 1577, when his stepfather Gascoigne died, Breton was living in London, and he then published the first of his many books. He married Ann Sutton in the church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, on the 14th of January 1593 (new style), had a son Henry, born in 1603, a son Edward in 1606, and a daughter Matilda in 1607, who died in her nineteenth year.
He was from 1577 onward an active writer both of prose and verse, and a poet of real mark in the days of Elizabeth and James the First, though it was left to Dr. A. B. Grosart to be, in 1875-79, the first editor of his collected works in an edition limited to a hundred copies. The date of Breton's last publication, ”Fantastics,” is 1626, but of the time of his death there is no record, Nicholas Breton's ”Characters upon Essaies” published in 1615, were ent.i.tled in full ”Characters upon Essaies Morall and Divine, written for those good spirits that will take them 'in good part, and make use of them to good purpose.” In recognition of the kins.h.i.+p between Bacon's Essays and Character writings, they were dedicated_
To the Honourable, and my much worthy honoured, truly learned, and Judicious Knight, SIR FRANCIS BACON, his Maties. Attorney General, _Increase of honour, health, and eternal happiness_.
Worthy knight, I have read of many essays and a kind of charactering of them, by such, as when I looked unto the form or nature of their writing I have been of the conceit that they were but imitators of your breaking the ice to their inventions, which, how short they fall of your worth, I had rather think than speak, though truth need not blush at her blame.
Now, for myself, unworthy to touch near the rock of those diamonds, or to speak in their praise, who so far exceed the power of my capacity, vouchsafe me leave yet, I beseech you, among those apes that would counterfeit the actions of men, to play the like part with learning, and as a monkey that would make a face like a man and cannot, so to write like a scholar and am not; and thus not daring to adventure the print under your patronage, without your favourable allowance in the devoted service of my bounden duty, I leave these poor travails of my spirit to the perusing of your pleasing leisure, with the further fruits of my humble affection, to the happy employment of your honourable pleasure.--At your service in all humbleness,
NICH. BRETON.
_Breton prefixed also this address_--