Is a dog that fawns when he bites. He hangs bells in a man's ears, as a carman does by his horse while he lays a heavy load upon his back. His insinuations are like strong wine, that pleases a man's palate till it has got within him, and then deprives him of his reason and overthrows him. His business is to render a man a stranger to himself, and get between him and home, and then he carries him whither he pleases. He is a spirit that inveighs away a man from himself, undertakes great matters for him, and after sells him for a slave. He makes division not only between a man and his friends, but between a man and himself, raises a faction within him, and after takes part with the strongest side and ruins both. He steals him away from himself (as the fairies are said to do children in the cradle), and after changes him for a fool. He whistles to him, as a carter does to his horse while he whips out his eyes and makes him draw what he pleases. He finds out his humour and feeds it, till it will come to hand, and then he leads him whither he pleases. He tickles him, as they do trouts, until he lays hold on him, and then devours and feeds upon him. He tickles his ears with a straw, and while he is pleased with scratching it, picks his pocket, as the cutpurse served Bartl. Cokes. He embraces him and hugs him in his arms, and lifts him above ground, as wrestlers do, to throw him down again and fall upon him. He possesses him with his own praises like an evil spirit, that makes him swell and appear stronger than he was, talk what he does not understand, and do things that he knows nothing of when he comes to himself. He gives good words as doctors are said to give physic when they are paid for it, and lawyers advice when they are fee'd beforehand. He is a poisoned perfume that infects the brain and murders those it pleases. He undermines a man, and blows him up with his own praises to throw him down. He commends a man out of design, that he may be presented with him and have him for his pains, according to the mode.
A PRODIGAL
Is a pocket with a hole in the bottom. His purse has got a dysentery and lost its retentive faculty. He delights, like a fat overgrown man, to see himself fall away and grow less. He does not spend his money, but void it, and, like those that have the stone, is in pain till he is rid of it. He is very loose and incontinent of his coin, and lets it fly, like Jupiter, in a shower. He is very hospitable, and keeps open pockets for all comers. All his silver turns to mercury, and runs through him as if he had taken it for the miserere or fluxed himself. The history of his life begins with keeping of whores, and ends with keeping of hogs; and as he fed high at first, so he does at last, for acorns are very high food. He swallows land and houses like an earthquake, eats a whole dining-room at a meal, and devours his kitchen at a breakfast. He wears the furniture of his house on his back, and a whole feather-bed in his hat, drinks down his plate, and eats his dishes up. He is not clothed, but hung. He'll fancy dancers cattle, and present his lady with messuage and tenement. He sets his horses at inn and inn, and throws himself out of his coach at come the caster. He should be a good husband, for he has made more of his estate in one year than his ancestors did in twenty. He dusts his estate as they do a stand of ale in the north. His money in his pocket (like hunted venison) will not keep; if it be not spent presently it grows stale, and is thrown away. He possesses his estate as the devil did the herd of swine, and is running it into the sea as fast as he can. He has shot it with a zampatan, and it will presently fall all to dust. He has brought his acres into a consumption, and they are strangely fallen away; nothing but skin and bones left of a whole manor. He will shortly have all his estate in his hands; for, like bias, he may carry it about him. He lays up nothing but debts and diseases, and at length himself in a prison. When he has spent all upon his pleasures, and has nothing left for sustenance, he espouses a hostess dowager, and resolves to lick himself whole again out of ale, and make it pay him back all the charges it has put him to.
THE INCONSTANT
Has a vagabond soul without any settled place of abode, like the wandering Jew. His head is unfixed, out of order, and utterly unserviceable upon any occasion. He is very apt to be taken with anything, but nothing can hold him, for he presently breaks loose and gives it the slip. His head is troubled with a palsy, which renders it perpetually wavering and incapable of rest. His head is like an hour-glass; that part that is uppermost always runs out until it is turned, and then runs out again. His opinions are too violent to last, for, like other things of the same kind in Nature, they quickly spend themselves and fall to nothing. All his opinions are like wefts and strays that are apt to straggle from their owners and belong to the lord of the manor where they are taken up. His soul has no retentive faculty, but suffers everything to run from him as fast as he receives it. His whole life is like a preposterous ague in which he has his hot fit always before his cold one, and is never in a constant temper. His principles and resolves are but a kind of movables, which he will not endure to be fastened to any freehold, but left loose to be conveyed away at pleasure as occasion shall please to dispose of him. His soul dwells, like a Tartar, in a hoord, without any settled habitation, but is always removing and dislodging from place to place. He changes his head oftener than a deer, and when his imaginations are stiff and at their full growth, he casts them off to breed new ones, only to cast off again the next season. All his purposes are built on air, the chamelion's diet, and have the same operation to make him change colour with every object he comes near. He pulls off his judgment as commonly as his hat to every one he meets with. His word and his deed are all one, for when he has given his word he has done, and never goes farther. His judgment, being unsound, has the same operation upon him that a disease has upon a sick man, that makes him find some ease in turning from side to side, and still the last is the most uneasy.
A GLUTTON
Eats his children, as the poets say Saturn did, and carries his felicity and all his concernments in his paunch. If he had lived when all the members of the body rebelled against the stomach there had been no possibility of accommodation. His entrails are like the sarcophagus, that devours dead bodies in a small space, or the Indian zampatan, that consumes flesh in a moment. He is a great dish made on purpose to carry meat. He eats out his own head, and his horses' too; he knows no grace but grace before meat, nor mortification but in fasting. If the body be the tabernacle of the soul, he lives in a sutler's hut. He celebrates mass, or rather mess, to the idol in his belly, and, like a papist, eats his adoration. A third course is the third heaven to him, and he is ravished into it. A feast is a good conscience to him, and he is troubled in mind when he misses of it. His teeth are very industrious in their calling, and his chops like a Bridewell perpetually hatcheling. He depraves his appetite with haut-gousts, as old fornicators do their lechery into fulsomeness and stinks. He licks himself into the shape of a bear, as those beasts are said to do their whelps. He new forms himself in his own belly, and becomes another thing than God and Nature meant him. His belly takes place of the rest of his members, and walks before in state. He eats out that which eats all things else--time--and is very curious to have all things in season at his meals but his hours, which are commonly at midnight, and so late that he prays too late for his daily bread, unless he mean his natural daily bread. He is admirably learned in the doctrines of meats and sauces, and deserves the chair in juris-prudentia; that is, in the skill of pottages. At length he eats his life out of house and home and becomes a treat for worms, sells his clothes to feed his gluttony, and eats himself naked, as the first of his family, Adam, did.
A RIBALD
Is the devil's hypocrite, that endeavours to make himself appear worse than he is. His evil words and bad manners strive which shall most corrupt one another, and it is hard to say which has the advantage. He vents his lechery at the mouth, as some fishes are said to engender. He is an unclean beast that chews the cud, for after he has satisfied his lust he brings it up again into his mouth to a second enjoyment, and plays an after-game of lechery with his tongue much worse than that which the Cunnilingi used among the old Romans. He strips Nature stark naked, and clothes her in the most fantastic and ridiculous fashion a wild imagination can invent. He is worse and more nasty than a dog, for in his broad descriptions of others' obscene actions he does but lick up the vomit of another man's surfeits. He tells tales out of a vaulting-school. A lewd, bawdy tale does more hurt and gives a worse example than the thing of which it was told, for the act extends but to few, and if it be concealed goes no farther; but the report of it is unlimited, and may be conveyed to all people and all times to come. He exposes that with his tongue which Nature gave women modesty, and brute beasts tails, to cover. He mistakes ribaldry for wit, though nothing is more unlike; and believes himself to be the finer man the filthier he talks, as if he were above civility as fanatics are above ordinances, and held nothing more shameful than to be ashamed of anything. He talks nothing but Aretine's pictures, as plain as the Scotch dialect, which is esteemed to be the most copious and elegant of the kind. He improves and husbands his sins to the best advantage, and makes one vice find employment for another; for what he acts loosely in private he talks as loosely of in public, and finds as much pleasure in the one as the other. He endeavours to purchase himself a reputation by pretending to that which the best men abominate and the worst value not, like one that clips and washes false coin and ventures his neck for that which will yield him nothing.