Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century

by Unknown

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 passions, 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 scraping 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 god 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.