XXIV.
A DETRACTOR
Is one of a more cunning and active envy, wherewith he gnaws not foolishly himself, but throws it abroad and would have it blister others. He is commonly some weak parted fellow, and worse minded, yet is strangely ambitious to match others, not by mounting their worth, but bringing them down with his tongue to his own poorness. 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. Commend a good divine, he cries postilling; a philologer, pedantry; a poet, rhiming; a school-man, dull wrangling; a sharp conceit, boyishness; an honest man, plausibility. He comes to publick things not to learn, but to catch, and if there be but one solœcism, that is all he carries away. He looks on all things with a prepared sowerness, and is still furnished with a pish beforehand, or some musty proverb that disrelishes all things whatsoever. If fear of the company make him second a commendation, it is like a law-writ, always with a clause of exception, or to smooth his way to some greater scandal. He will grant you something, and bate more; and this bating shall in conclusion take away all he granted. His speech concludes still with an Oh! but,—and I could wish one thing amended; and this one thing shall be enough to deface all his former commendations. He will be very inward with a man to fish some bad out of him, and make his slanders hereafter more authentick, when it is said a friend reported it. He will inveigle you to naughtiness to get your good name into his clutches; he will be your pandar to have you on the hip for a whore-master, and make you drunk to shew you reeling. He passes the more plausibly because all men have a smatch of his humour, and it is thought freeness which is malice. If he can say nothing of a man, he will seem to speak riddles, as if he could tell strange stories if he would; and when he has racked his invention to the utmost, he ends;—but I wish him well, and therefore must hold my peace. He is always listening and enquiring after men, and suffers not a cloak to pass by him unexamined. In brief, he is one that has lost all good himself, and is loth to find it in another.
XXV.
A YOUNG GENTLEMAN OF THE UNIVERSITY
Is one that comes there to wear a gown, and to say hereafter, he has been at the university. His father sent him thither because he heard there were the best fencing and dancing-schools; from these he has his education, from his tutor the over-sight. The first element of his knowledge is to be shewn the colleges, and initiated in a tavern by the way, which hereafter he will learn of himself. The two marks of his seniority, is the bare velvet of his gown, and his proficiency at tennis, where when he can once play a set, he is a fresh man no more. His study has commonly handsome shelves, his books neat silk strings, which he shews to his father's man, and is loth to unty[44] or take down for fear of misplacing. Upon foul days for recreation he retires thither, and looks over the pretty book his tutor reads to him, which is commonly some short history, or a piece of Euphormio; for which his tutor gives him money to spend next day. His main loytering is at the library, where he studies arms and books of honour, and turns a gentleman critick in pedigrees. Of all things he endures not to be mistaken for a scholar, and hates a black suit though it be made of sattin. His companion is ordinarily some stale fellow, that has been notorious for an ingle to gold hatbands,[45] whom he admires at first, afterward scorns. If he have spirit or wit he may light of better company, and may learn some flashes of wit, which may do him knight's service in the country hereafter. But he is now gone to the inns-of-court, where he studies to forget what he learned before, his acquaintance and the fashion.