John Earle

“ It is the great exchange of all discourse, and no business whatsoever but is here stirring and a-foot. It is the synod of all pates politick, jointed and laid together in most serious posture, and they are not half so busy at the parliament. It is the antick of tails to tails, and backs to backs, and for vizards you need go no farther than faces. It is the market of young lecturers, whom you may cheapen here at all rates and sizes. It is the general mint of all famous lies, which are here like the legends of popery, first coined and stamped in the church. ”

“ Much taken with my lord's jest, and repeats you it all to a syllable. One that justifies nothing out of fashion, nor any opinion out of the applauded way. That thinks certainly all Spaniards and Jesuits very villains, and is still cursing the pope and Spinola. One that thinks the gravest cassock the best scholar; and the best cloaths the finest man. That is taken only with broad and obscene wit, and hisses any thing too deep for him. That cries, Chaucer for his money above all our English poets, because the voice has gone so, and he has read none. ”

“ His friendship is seldom so stedfast, but that lust, drink, or anger may overturn it. He offers you his blood to-day in kindness, and is ready to take yours to-morrow. He does seldom any thing which he wishes not to do again, and is only wise after a misfortune. He suffers much for his knowledge, and a great deal of folly it is makes him a wise man. He is free from many vices, by being not grown to the performance, and is only more virtuous out of weakness. Every action is his danger, and every man his ambush. ”

“ He thinks nothing to be vices, but pride and ill husbandry, from which he will gravely dissuade the youth, and has some thrifty hob-nail proverbs to clout his discourse. He is a niggard all the week, except only market-day, where, if his corn sell well, he thinks he may be drunk with a good conscience. His feet never stink so unbecomingly as when he trots after a lawyer in Westminster-hall, and even cleaves the ground with hard scraping in beseeching his worship to take his money. ”

“ His breast is like a gentlewoman's closet, which locks up every toy or trifle, or some bragging mountebank that makes every stinking thing a secret. [32] He delivers you common matters with great conjuration of silence, and whispers you in the ear acts of parliament. You may as soon wrest a tooth from him as a paper, and whatsoever he reads is letters. He dares not talk of great men for fear of bad comments, and he knows not how his words may be misapplied. Ask his opinion, and he tells you his doubt; and he never hears any thing more astonishedly than what he knows before. ”

“ He puts his foot into heresies tenderly, as a cat in the water, and pulls it out again, and still something unanswered delays him; yet he bears away some parcel of each, and you may sooner pick all religions out of him than one. He cannot think so many wise men should be in error, nor so many honest men out of the way, and his wonder is double when he sees these oppose one another. He hates authority as the tyrant of reason, and you cannot anger him worse than with a father's dixit, and yet that many are not persuaded with reason, shall authorise his doubt. ”

“ His trade is honour, and he sells it and gives arms himself, though he be no gentleman. His bribes are like those of a corrupt judge, for they are the prices of blood. He seems very rich in discourse, for he tells you of whole fields of gold and silver, or, and argent, worth much in French but in English nothing. He is a great diver in the streams or issues of gentry, and not a by-channel or bastard escapes him; yea he does with them like some shameless queen, fathers more children on them than ever they begot. ”

“ When one thinks how often this weakness is spoken of as if it were peculiar to the moneyed class or to the uneducated, and how many people whom one knows act and think as if poverty were a vice if not a crime, though they shrink from avowing it, so unqualified an exposure indicates a conscience of no common sensitiveness.
Earle's wit and humour are deadly weapons, and it must be said that the trades and professions are treated with scant indulgence. ”

“ He cannot kiss his hand and cry, madam, nor talk idle enough to bear her company. His smacking of a gentlewoman is somewhat too savory, and he mistakes her nose for her lips. A very woodcock would puzzle him in carving, and he wants the logick of a capon. He has not the glib faculty of sliding over a tale, but his words come squeamishly out of his mouth, and the laughter commonly before the jest. He names this word college too often, and his discourse beats too much on the university. ”

“ 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 meerly 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 nought but flattery; and what is fit to be spoken, truth with so much preface that it loses itself. ”

“ He uses the land's religion, because it is next him, yet he sees not why he may not take the other, but he chuses this, not as better, but because there is not a pin to choose. He finds doubts and scruples better than resolves them, and is always too hard for himself. His learning is too much for his brain, and his judgment too little for his learning, and his over-opinion of both, spoils all. Pity it was his mischance of being a scholar ”

“ He is not apt to put the boy on a younger man, nor the fool on a boy, but can distinguish gravity from a sour look; and the less testy he is, the more regarded. You must pardon him if he like his own times better than these, because those things are follies to him now that were wisdom then; yet he makes us of that opinion too when we see him, and conjecture those times by so good a relick. He is a man capable of a dearness with the youngest men, yet he not youthfuller for them, but they older for him; and no man credits more his acquaintance. ”

“ A Gallant is a heavy loader of himself, for he lays more upon his back than it is able to bear, and so at last breaks it. His first care is his clothes, and the next his body, and in the uniting of these two lyes his judgment. He is no singular man, for he is altogether in the fashion, and his very look and beard are squared to a figure conformable. His face and his boot are ruffled much alike, and he takes great delight in his walk to hear his spurs gingle. ”

“ Is the servant he says of many mistresses, but all are but his lust, to which only he is faithful, and none besides, and spends his best blood and spirits in the service. His soul is the bawd to his body, and those that assist him in this nature the nearest to it. No man abuses more the name of love, or those whom he applies this name to; for his love is like his stomach to feed on what he loves, and the end of it to surfeit and loath, till a fresh appetite rekindle him ”

“ Every action of his cries,—"Do ye mark me?" and men do mark him how absurd he is: for affectation is the most betraying humour, and nothing that puzzles a man less to find out than this. All the actions of his life are like so many things bodged in without any natural cadence or connection at all. You shall track him all through like a schoolboy's theme, one piece from one author and this from another, and join all in this general, that they are none of his own. You shall observe his mouth not made for that tone, nor his face for that simper ”

“ Is one that looks like a proud man, but is not: you may forgive him his looks for his worth's sake, for they are only too proud to be base. One whom no rate can buy off from the least piece of his freedom, and make him digest an unworthy thought an hour. He cannot crouch to a great man to possess him, nor fall low to the earth to rebound never so high again. He stands taller on his own bottom, than others on the advantage ground of fortune, as having solidly that honour, of which title is but the pomp. ”

“ No man puts them more to their brain than he; and by shifting him off they learn to shift in the world. Some chuse their rooms on purpose to avoid his surprisals, and think the best commodity in them his prospect. He is like a rejected acquaintance, hunts those that care not for his company, and he knows it well enough, and yet will not keep away. The sole place to supple him is the buttery, where he takes grievous use upon your name, [77] and he is one much wrought with good beer and rhetorick. He is a man of most unfortunate voyages, and no gallant walks the streets to less purpose. ”

“ Their humanity is a leg to the residencer, their learning a chapter, for they learn it commonly before they read it; yet the old Hebrew names are little beholden to them, for they mis-call them worse than one another. Though they never expound the scripture, they handle it much, and pollute the gospel with two things, their conversation and their thumbs. Upon worky-days, they behave themselves at prayers as at their pots, for they swallow them down in an instant. Their gowns are laced commonly with streamings of ale, the superfluities of a cup or throat above measure. ”

“ He is indeed like the red dragon that pursued the woman, for when he cannot over-reach another, he opens his mouth and throws a flood after to drown him. You cannot anger him worse than to do well, and he hates you more bitterly for this, than if you had cheated him of his patrimony with your own discredit. He is always slighting the general opinion, and wondering why such and such men should be applauded. ”

“ One that is above the world and its drudgery, and cannot pull down his thoughts to the pelting businesses of life. He would sooner accept the gallows than a mean trade, or any thing that might disparage the height of man in him, and yet thinks no death comparably base to hanging neither. One that will do nothing upon command, though he would do it otherwise; and if ever he do evil, it is when he is dared to it. He is one that if fortune equal his worth puts a luster in all preferment ”

“ A good dull wit best suits with him to comprehend common sense and a trencher; for any greater store of brain it makes him but tumultuous, and seldom thrives with him. He follows his master's steps, as well in conditions as the street; if he wench or drink, he comes him in an under kind, and thinks it a part of his duty to be like him. He is indeed wholly his master's; of his faction,—of his cut,—of his pleasures:—he is handsome for his credit, and drunk for his credit, and if he have power in the cellar, commands the parish. ”

“ He can do some things, but dare do much more, and is like a desperate soldier, who will assault any thing where he is sure not to enter. He is not so well opinioned of himself, as industrious to make others, and thinks no vice so prejudicial as blushing. He is still citing for himself, that a candle should not be hid under a bushel; and for his part he will be sure not to hide his, though his candle be but a snuff or rush-candle. Those few good parts he has, he is no niggard in displaying, and is like some needy flaunting goldsmith, nothing in the inner room, but all on the cupboard. ”

“ Is a scholar in this great university the world; and the same his book and study. He cloysters not his meditations in the narrow darkness of a room, but sends them abroad with his eyes, and his brain travels with his feet. He looks upon man from a high tower, and sees him trulier at this distance in his infirmities and poorness. He scorns to mix himself in men's actions, as he would to act upon a stage ”