Part 28 (1/2)

A silenced minister has more mercy on the Government in a secure conventicle than he has on the company that he is in. He shakes a man by the ear, as a dog does a pig, and never loses his hold till he has tired himself as well as his patient. He does not talk to a man, but attacks him, and whomsoever he can get into his hands he lays violent language on. If he can he will run a man up against a wall and hold him at a bay by the b.u.t.tons, which he handles as bad as he does his person or the business he treats upon. When he finds him begin to sink he holds him by the clothes, and feels him as a butcher does a calf before he kills him.

He is a walking pillory, and crucifies more ears than a dozen standing ones. He will hold any argument rather than his tongue, and maintain both sides at his own charge; for he will tell you what you will say, though perhaps he does not intend to give you leave. He lugs men by the ears, as they correct children in Scotland, and will make them tingle while he talks with them, as some say they will do when a man is talked of in his absence. When he talks to a man he comes up close to him, and, like an old soldier, lets fly in his face, or claps the bore of his pistol to his ear and whispers aloud, that he may be sure not to miss his mark. His tongue is always in motion, though very seldom to the purpose, like a barber's scissors, which are always snipping, as well when they do not cut as when they do. His tongue is like a bagpipe-drone, that has no stop, but makes a continual ugly noise, as long as he can squeeze any wind out of himself. He never leaves a man until he has run him down, and then he winds a death over him. A sow-gelder's horn is not so terrible to dogs and cats as he is to all that know him. His way of argument is to talk all and hear no contradiction. First he gives his antagonist the length of his wind, and then, let him make his approaches if he can, he is sure to be beforehand with him. Of all dissolute diseases the running of the tongue is the worst, and the hardest to be cured. If he happen at any time to be at a stand, and any man else begins to speak, he presently drowns him with his noise, as a water-dog makes a duck dive; for when you think he has done he falls on and lets fly again, like a gun that will discharge nine times with one loading. He is a rattlesnake, that with his noise gives men warning to avoid him, otherwise he will make them wish they had. He is, like a bell, good for nothing but to make a noise. He is like common fame, that speaks most and knows least, Lord Brooks, or a wild goose always cackling when he is upon the wing. His tongue is like any kind of carriage, the less weight it bears the faster and easier it goes. He is so full of words that they run over and are thrown away to no purpose, and so empty of things or sense that his dryness has made his leaks so wide whatsoever is put in him runs out immediately. He is so long in delivering himself that those that hear him desire to be delivered too or despatched out of their pain. He makes his discourse the longer with often repeating to be short, and talking much of in fine, never means to come near it.

A RANTER

Is a fanatic Hector that has found out, by a very strange way of new light, how to transform all the devils into angels of light; for he believes all religion consists in looseness, and that sin and vice is the whole duty of man. He puts off the old man, but puts it on again upon the new one, and makes his pagan vices serve to preserve his Christian virtues from wearing out, for if he should use his piety and devotion always it would hold out but a little while. He is loth that iniquity and vice should be thrown away as long as there may be good use for it; for if that which is wickedly gotten may be disposed to pious uses, why should not wickedness itself as well? He believes himself shot-free against all the attempts of the devil, the world, and the flesh, and therefore is not afraid to attack them in their own quarters and encounter them at their own weapons. For as strong bodies may freely venture to do and suffer that, without any hurt to themselves, which would destroy those that are feeble, so a saint that is strong in grace may boldly engage himself in those great sins and iniquities that would easily d.a.m.n a weak brother, and yet come off never the worse. He believes deeds of darkness to be only those sins that are committed in private, not those that are acted openly and owned. He is but a hypocrite turned the wrong side outward; for, as the one wears his vices within and the other without, so when they are counterchanged the ranter becomes a hypocrite, and the hypocrite an able ranter. His church is the devil's chapel, for it agrees exactly both in doctrine and discipline with the best reformed bawdy-houses. He is a monster produced by the madness of this latter age; but if it had been his fate to have been whelped in old Rome he had pa.s.sed for a prodigy, and been received among raining of stones and the speaking of bulls, and would have put a stop to all public affairs until he had been expiated. Nero clothed Christians in the skins of wild beasts, but he wraps wild beasts in the skins of Christians.

AN AMORIST

Is an artificer or maker of love, a sworn servant to all ladies, like an officer in a corporation. Though no one in particular will own any t.i.tle to him, yet he never fails upon all occasions to offer his services, and they as seldom to turn it back again untouched. He commits nothing with them but himself to their good graces; and they recommend him back again to his own, where he finds so kind a reception that he wonders how he does fail of it everywhere else. His pa.s.sion is as easily set on fire as a fart, and as soon out again. He is charged and primed with love-powder like a gun, and the least sparkle of an eye gives fire to him and off he goes, but seldom or never hits the mark. He has commonplaces, and precedents of repartees, and letters for all occasions, and falls as readily into his method of making love as a parson does into his form of matrimony. He converses, as angels are said to do, by intuition, and expresses himself by sighs most significantly. He follows his visits as men do their business, and is very industrious in waiting on the ladies where his affairs lie; among which those of greatest concernment are questions and commands, purposes, and other such received forms of wit and conversation, in which he is so deeply studied that in all questions and doubts that arise he is appealed to, and very learnedly declares which was the most true and primitive way of proceeding in the purest times. For these virtues he never fails of his summons to all b.a.l.l.s, where he manages the country-dances with singular judgment, and is frequently an a.s.sistant at _l'ombre_; and these are all the uses they make of his parts, beside the sport they give themselves in laughing at him, which he takes for singular favours and interprets to his own advantage, though it never goes further; for, all his employments being public, he is never admitted to any private services, and they despise him as not woman's meat; for he applies to too many to be trusted by any one, as b.a.s.t.a.r.ds by having many fathers have none at all. He goes often mounted in a coach as a convoy to guard the ladies, to take the dust in Hyde Park, where by his prudent management of the gla.s.s windows he secures them from beggars, and returns fraught with China-oranges and ballads. Thus he is but a gentleman-usher-general, and his business is to carry one lady's services to another, and bring back the other's in exchange.

AN ASTROLOGER

Is one that expounds upon the planets and teaches to construe the accidents by the due joining of stars in construction. He talks with them by dumb signs, and can tell what they mean by their twinkling and squinting upon one another as well as they themselves. He is a spy upon the stars, and can tell what they are doing by the company they keep and the houses they frequent. They have no power to do anything alone until so many meet as will make a quorum. He is clerk of the committee to them, and draws up all their orders that concern either public or private affairs. He keeps all their accounts for them, and sums them up, not by debtor, but creditor alone--a more compendious way. They do ill to make them have so much authority over the earth, which perhaps has as much as any one of them but the sun, and as much right to sit and vote in their councils as any other. But because there are but seven Electors of the German Empire, they will allow of no more to dispose of all other, and most foolishly and unnaturally dispossess their own parent of its inheritance rather than acknowledge a defect in their own rules.

These rules are all they have to show for their t.i.tle, and yet not one of them can tell whether those they had them from came honestly by them.

Virgil's description of fame, that reaches from earth to the stars, _tam ficti pravique tenax_, to carry lies and knavery, will serve astrologers without any sensible variation. He is a fortune-seller, a retailer of destiny, and petty chapman to the planets. He casts nativities as gamesters do false dice, and by slurring and palming s.e.xtile, quartile, and trine, like _six, quatre, trois_, can throw what chance he pleases.

He sets a figure as cheats do a main at hazard, and gulls throw away their money at it. He fetches the grounds of his art so far off, as well from reason as the stars, that, like a traveller, he is allowed to lie by authority; and as beggars that have no money themselves believe all others have, and beg of those that have as little as themselves, so the ignorant rabble believe in him though he has no more reason for what he professes than they.

A LAWYER

Is a retailer of justice that uses false lights, false weights, and false measures. He measures right and wrong by his retaining fee, and, like a French duellist, engages on that side that first bespeaks him, though it be against his own brother; not because it is right, but merely upon a punctilio of profit, which is better than honour to him, because riches will buy n.o.bility, and n.o.bility nothing, as having no intrinsic value. He sells his opinion, and engages to maintain the t.i.tle against all that claim under him, but no further. He puts it off upon his word, which he believes himself not bound to make good, because when he has parted with his right to it, it is no longer his. He keeps no justice for his own use, as being a commodity of his own growth, which he never buys, but only sells to others; and as no man goes worse shod than the shoemaker, so no man is more out of justice than he that gets his living by it. He draws bills as children do lots at a lottery, and is paid as much for blanks as prizes. He undoes a man with the same privilege as a doctor kills him, and is paid as well for it as if he preserved him, in which he is very impartial, but in nothing else. He believes it no fault in himself to err in judgment, because that part of the law belongs to the judge and not to him. His best opinions and his worst are all of a price, like good wine and bad in a tavern, in which he does not deal so fairly as those who, if they know what you are willing to bestow, can tell how to fit you accordingly. When his law lies upon his hands he will afford a good pennyworth, and rather pettifog and turn common barreter than be out of employment. His opinion is one thing while it is his own and another when it is paid for; for, the property being altered, the case alters also. When his counsel is not for his client's turn he will never take it back again, though it be never the worse, nor allow him anything for it, yet will sell the same over and over again to as many as come to him for it. His pride increases with his practice, and the fuller of business he is, like a sack, the bigger he looks. He crowds to the Bar like a pig through a hedge, and his gown is fortified with flankers about the shoulders to guard his ears from being galled with elbows. He draws his bills more extravagant and unconscionable than a tailor; for if you cut off two-thirds in the beginning, middle, or end, that which is left will be more reasonable and nearer to sense than the whole, and yet he is paid for all; for when he draws up a business, like a captain that makes false musters, he produces as many loose and idle words as he can possibly come by until he has received for them, and then turns them off and retains only those that are to the purpose. This he calls drawing of breviates. All that appears of his studies is, in short, time converted into waste-paper, tailor's measures, and heads for children's drums. He appears very violent against the other side, and rails to please his client as they do children, ”Give me a blow and I'll strike him, ah, naughty!” &c. This makes him seem very zealous for the good of his client, and though the cause go against him he loses no credit by it, especially if he fall foul on the counsel of the other side, which goes for no more among them than it does with those virtuous persons that quarrel and fight in the streets to pick the pockets of those that look on. He hangs men's estates and fortunes on the slightest curiosities and feeblest niceties imaginable, and undoes them like the story of breaking a horse's back with a feather or sinking a s.h.i.+p with a single drop of water, as if right and wrong were only notional and had no relation at all to practice (which always requires more solid foundations), or reason and truth did wholly consist in the right spelling of letters, whenas the subtler things are the nearer they are to nothing, so the subtler words and notions are the nearer they are to nonsense. He overruns Latin and French with greater barbarism than the Goths did Italy and France, and makes as mad a confusion of language by mixing both with English. Nor does he use English much better, for he clogs it so with words that the sense becomes as thick as puddle, and is utterly lost to those that have not the trick of skipping over where it is impertinent. He has but one termination for all Latin words, and that's a dash. He is very just to the first syllables of words, but always bobtails the last, in which the sense most of all consists, like a cheat that does a man all right at the first that he may put a trick upon him in the end. He is an apprentice to the law without a master, is his own pupil, and has no tutor but himself, that is a fool. He will screw and wrest law as unmercifully as a tumbler does his body to lick up money with his tongue. He is a Swiss that professes mercenary arms, will fight for him that gives him best pay, and, like an Italian bravo, will fall foul on any man's reputation that he receives a retaining fee against.

If he could but maintain his opinions as well as they do him, he were a very just and righteous man; but when he has made his most of it, he leaves it, like his client, to s.h.i.+ft for itself. He fetches money out of his throat like a juggler; and as the rabble in the country value gentlemen by their housekeeping and their eating, so is he supposed to have so much law as he has kept commons, and the abler to deal with clients by how much the more he has devoured of Inns-of-Court mutton; and it matters not whether he keep his study so he has but kept commons.

He never ends a suit, but prunes it that it may grow the faster and yield a greater increase of strife. The wisdom of the law is to admit of all the petty, mean, real injustices in the world, to avoid imaginary possible great ones that may perhaps fall out. His client finds the Scripture fulfilled in him, that it is better to part with a coat too than go to law for a cloak; for, as the best laws are made of the worst manners, even so are the best lawyers of the worst men. He hums about Westminster Hall, and returns home with his pockets like a bee with his thighs laden; and that which Horace says of an ant, _Ore trahit quodcunque potest, atque addit acervo_, is true of him, for he gathers all his heap with the labour of his mouth rather than his brain and hands. He values himself, as a carman does his horse, by the money he gets, and looks down upon all that gain less as scoundrels. The law is like that double-formed, ill-begotten monster that was kept in an intricate labyrinth and fed with men's flesh, for it devours all that come within the mazes of it and have not a clue to find the way out again. He has as little kindness for the Statute Law as Catholics have for the Scripture, but adores the Common Law as they do tradition, and both for the very same reason; for the Statute Law being certain, written and designed to reform and prevent corruptions and abuses in the affairs of the world (as the Scriptures are in matters of religion), he finds it many times a great obstruction to the advantage and profit of his practice; whereas the Common Law, being unwritten, or written in an unknown language which very few understand but himself, is the more pliable and easy to serve all his purposes, being utterly exposed to what interpretation and construction his interest and occasions shall at any time incline him to give it; and differs only from arbitrary power in this, that the one gives no account of itself at all, and the other such a one as is perhaps worse than none, that is implicit and not to be understood, or subject to what constructions he pleases to put upon it:--

Great critics in a _noverint universi_ Know all men by these presents how to curse ye; Pedants of said and foresaid, and both Frenches, Pedlars, and pokie, may those rev'rend benches Y' aspire to be the stocks, and may ye be No more call'd to the Bar, but pillory; Thither in triumph may ye backward ride To have your ears most justly crucified, And cut so close until there be not leather Enough to stick a pen in left of either; Then will your consciences, your ears, and wit Be like indentures tripart.i.te cut fit.

May your horns multiply and grow as great As that which does blow grace before your meat; May varlets be your barbers now, and do The same to you they have been done unto; That's law and gospel too; may it prove true, Then they shall do pump-justice upon you; And when y' are shaved and powder'd you shall fall, Thrown o'er the Bar, as they did o'er the wall, Never to rise again, unless it be To hold your hands up for your roguery; And when you do so may they be no less Sear'd by the hangman than your consciences.

May your gowns swarm until you can determine The strife no more between yourselves and vermin Than you have done between your clients' purses; Now kneel and take the last and worst of curses-- May you be honest when it is too late; That is, undone the only way you hate.

AN EPIGRAMMATIST

Is a poet of small wares, whose Muse is short-winded and quickly out of breath. She flies like a goose, that is no sooner upon the wing but down again. He was originally one of those authors that used to write upon white walls, from whence his works, being collected and put together, pa.s.s in the world like single money among those that deal in small matters. His wit is like fire in a flint, that is nothing while it is in, and nothing again as soon as it is out. He treats of all things and persons that come in his way, but like one that draws in little, much less than the life:--

His bus'ness is t' inveigh and flatter, Like parcel parasite and satyr.