Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century

by Unknown

A PHILOSOPHER

Seats himself as spectator and critic on the great theatre of the world, and gives sentence on the plots, language, and action of whatsoever he sees represented, according to his own fancy. He will pretend to know what is done behind the scene, but so seldom is in the right that he discovers nothing more than his own mistakes. When his profession was in credit in the world, and money was to be gotten by it, it divided itself into multitudes of sects, that maintained themselves and their opinions by fierce and hot contests with one another; but since the trade decayed and would not turn to account, they all fell of themselves, and now the world is so unconcerned in their controversies, that three Reformado sects joined in one, like Epicuro-Gassendo-Charltoniana, will not serve to maintain one pedant. He makes his hypotheses himself, as a tailor does a doublet without measure; no matter whether they fit Nature, he can make Nature fit them, and, whether they are too straight or wide, pinch or stuff out the body accordingly. He judges of the works of Nature just as the rabble do of State affairs; they see things done, and every man according to his capacity guesses at the reasons of them, but knowing nothing of the arcana or secret movements of either, they seldom or never are in the right. Howsoever, they please themselves and some others with their fancies, and the farther they are off truth, the more confident they are they are near it, as those that are out of their way believe the farther they have gone they are the nearer their journey's end, when they are farthest of all from it. He is confident of immaterial substances, and his reasons are very pertinent; that is, substantial as he thinks, and immaterial as others do. Heretofore his beard was the badge of his profession, and the length of that in all his polemics was ever accounted the length of his weapon; but when the trade fell, that fell too. In Lucius's time they were commonly called beard-wearers, for all the strength of their wits lay in their beards, as Samson's did in his locks; but since the world began to see the vanity of that hare-brained cheat, they left it off to save their credit.

A MELANCHOLY MAN

Is one that keeps the worst company in the world; that is, his own; and though he be always falling out and quarrelling with himself, yet he has not power to endure any other conversation. His head is haunted, like a house, with evil spirits and apparitions, that terrify and fright him out of himself, till he stands empty and forsaken. His sleeps and his wakings are so much the same that he knows not how to distinguish them, and many times when he dreams he believes he is broad awake and sees visions. The fumes and vapours that rise from his spleen and hypochondrias have so smutched and sullied his brain (like a room that smokes) that his understanding is blear-eyed and has no right perception of anything. His soul lives in his body, like a mole in the earth that labours in the dark, and casts up doubts and scruples of his own imaginations, to make that rugged and uneasy that was plain and open before. His brain is so cracked that he fancies himself to be glass, and is afraid that everything he comes near should break him in pieces. Whatsoever makes an impression in his imagination works itself in like a screw, and the more he turns and winds it the deeper it sticks, till it is never to be got out again. The temper of his brain, being earthy, cold, and dry, is apt to breed worms, that sink so deep into it no medicine in art or nature is able to reach them. He leads his life as one leads a dog in a slip that will not follow, but is dragged along until he is almost hanged, as he has it often under consideration to treat himself in convenient time and place, if he can but catch himself alone. After a long and mortal feud between his inward and his outward man, they at length agree to meet without seconds and decide the quarrel, in which the one drops and the other slinks out of the way and makes his escape into some foreign world, from whence it is never after heard of. He converses with nothing so much as his own imagination, which, being apt to misrepresent things to him, makes him believe that it is something else than it is, and that he holds intelligence with spirits that reveal whatsoever he fancies to him, as the ancient rude people that first heard their own voices repeated by echoes in the woods concluded it must proceed from some invisible inhabitants of those solitary places, which they after believed to be gods, and called them sylvans, fauns, and dryads. He makes the infirmity of his temper pass for revelations, as Mahomet did by his falling sickness, and inspires himself with the wind of his own hypochondrias. He laments, like Heraclitus, the maudlin philosopher, at other men's mirth, and takes pleasure in nothing but his own unsober sadness. His mind is full of thoughts, but they are all empty, like a nest of boxes. He sleeps little, but dreams much, and soundest when he is waking. He sees visions farther off than a second-sighted man in Scotland, and dreams upon a hard point with admirable judgment. He is just so much worse than a madman as he is below him in degree of frenzy, for among madmen the most mad govern all the rest, and receive a natural obedience from their inferiors.

A TRAVELLER

Is a native of all countries and an alien at home. He flies from the place where he was hatched, like a wild goose, and prefers all others before it. He has no quarrel to it but because he was born in it, and, like a bastard, he is ashamed of his mother, because she is of him. He is a merchant that makes voyages into foreign nations to drive a trade in wisdom and politics, and it is not for his credit to have it thought he has made an ill return, which must be if he should allow of any of the growth of his own country. This makes him quack and blow up himself with admiration of foreign parts and a generous contempt of home, that all men may admire at least the means he has had of improvement and deplore their own defects. His observations are like a sieve, that lets the finer flour pass and retains only the bran of things, for his whole return of wisdom proves to be but affectation, a perishable commodity, which he will never be able to put off. He believes all men's wits are at a stand that stay at home, and only those advanced that travel, as if change of pasture did make great politicians as well as fat calves. He pities the little knowledge of truth which those have that have not seen the world abroad, forgetting that at the same time he tells us how little credit is to be given to his own relations and those of others that speak and write of their travels. He has worn his own language to rags, and patched it up with scraps and ends of foreign. This serves him for wit; for when he meets with any of his foreign acquaintances, all they smatter passes for wit, and they applaud one another accordingly. He believes this raggedness of his discourse a great demonstration of the improvement of his knowledge, as Inns-of-Court men intimate their proficiency in the law by the tatters of their gowns. All the wit he brought home with him is like foreign coin, of a baser alloy than our own, and so will not pass here without great loss. All noble creatures that are famous in any one country degenerate by being transplanted, and those of mean value only improve. If it hold with men, he falls among the number of the latter, and his improvements are little to his credit. All he can say for himself is, his mind was sick of a consumption, and change of air has cured him; for all his other improvements have only been to eat in ... and talk with those he did not understand, to hold intelligence with all Gazettes, and from the sight of statesmen in the street unriddle the intrigues of all their Councils, to make a wondrous progress into knowledge by riding with a messenger, and advance in politics by mounting of a mule, run through all sorts of learning in a waggon, and sound all depths of arts in a felucca, ride post into the secrets of all states, and grow acquainted with their close designs in inns and hostelries; for certainly there is great virtue in highways and hedges to make an able man, and a good prospect cannot but let him see far into things.

A CURIOUS MAN

Values things not by their use or worth, but scarcity. He is very tender and scrupulous of his humour, as fanatics are of their consciences, and both for the most part in trifles. He cares not how unuseful anything be, so it be but unuseful and rare. He collects all the curiosities he can light upon in art or nature, not to inform his own judgment, but to catch the admiration of others, which he believes he has a right to because the rarities are his own. That which other men neglect he believes they oversee, and stores up trifles as rare discoveries, at least of his own wit and sagacity. He admires subtleties above all things, because the more subtle they are the nearer they are to nothing, and values no art but that which is spun so thin that it is of no use at all. He had rather have an iron chain hung about the neck of a flea than an alderman's of gold, and Homer's Iliads in a nutshell than Alexander's cabinet. He had rather have the twelve apostles on a cherry-stone than those on St. Peter's portico, and would willingly sell Christ again for that numerical piece of coin that Judas took for Him. His perpetual dotage upon curiosities at length renders him one of them, and he shows himself as none of the meanest of his rarities. He so much affects singularity that, rather than follow the fashion that is used by the rest of the world, he will wear dissenting clothes with odd fantastic devices to distinguish himself from others, like marks set upon cattle. He cares not what pains he throws away upon the meanest trifle so it be but strange, while some pity and others laugh at his ill-employed industry. He is one of those that valued Epictetus's lamp above the excellent book he wrote by it. If he be a book-man, he spends all his time and study upon things that are never to be known. The philosopher's stone and universal medicine cannot possibly miss him, though he is sure to do them. He is wonderfully taken with abstruse knowledge, and had rather handle truth with a pair of tongs wrapped up in mysteries and hieroglyphics than touch it with his hands or see it plainly demonstrated to his senses.

A HERALD

Calls himself a king because he has power and authority to hang, draw, and quarter arms. For assuming a jurisdiction over the distributive justice of titles of honour, as far as words extend, he gives himself as great a latitude that way as other magistrates use to do where they have authority and would enlarge it as far as they can. 'Tis true he can make no lords nor knights of himself, but as many squires and gentlemen as he pleases, and adopt them into what family they have a mind. His dominions abound with all sorts of cattle, fish, and fowl, and all manner of manufactures, besides whole fields of gold and silver, which he magnificently bestows upon his followers or sells as cheap as lands in Jamaica. The language they use is barbarous, as being but a dialect of pedlar's French or the Egyptian, though of a loftier sound, and in the propriety affecting brevity, as the other does verbosity. His business is like that of all the schools, to make plain things hard with perplexed methods and insignificant terms, and then appear learned in making them plain again. He professes arms not for use, but ornament only, and yet makes the basest things in the world, as dogs' turds and women's spindles, weapons of good and worshipful bearings. He is wiser than the fellow that sold his ass, but kept the shadow for his own use; for he sells only the shadow (that is, the picture) and keeps the ass himself. He makes pedigrees as apothecaries do medicines when they put in one ingredient for another that they have not by them; by this means he often makes incestuous matches, and causes the son to many the mother. His chief province is at funerals, where he commands in chief, marshals the tristitiae irritamenta, and, like a gentleman-sower to the worms, serves up the feast with all punctual formality. He will join as many shields together as would make a Roman testudo or Macedonian phalanx, to fortify the nobility of a new-made lord that will pay for the impressing of them and allow him coat and conduct money. He is a kind of a necromancer, and can raise the dead out of their graves to make them marry and beget those they never heard of in their lifetime. His coat is, like the King of Spain's dominions, all skirts, and hangs as loose about him; and his neck is the waist, like the picture of Nobody with his breeches fastened to his collar. He will sell the head or a single joint of a beast or fowl as dear as the whole body, like a pig's head in Bartholomew Fair, and after put off the rest to his customers at the same rate. His arms, being utterly out of use in war since guns came up, have been translated to dishes and cups, as the ancients used their precious stones, according to the poet, Gemmas ad pocula transfert a gladiis, &c.; and since are like to decay every day more and more, for since he gave citizens coats-of-arms, gentlemen have made bold to take their letters of mark by way of reprisal. The hangman has a receipt to mar all his work in a moment, for by nailing the wrong end of a scutcheon upwards upon a gibbet all the honour and gentility extinguishes of itself, like a candle that's held with the flame downwards. Other arms are made for the spilling of blood, but his only purify and cleanse it like scurvy-grass; for a small dose taken by his prescription will refine that which is as base and gross as bull's blood (which the Athenians used to poison withal) to any degree of purity.