He is never quiet, but sits as the wind is said to do when it is most in motion. His head is as full of maggots as a pastoral poet's flock. He was begotten, like one of Pliny's Portuguese horses, by the wind. The truth is, he ought not to have been reared; for, being calved in the increase of the moon, his head is troubled with a ----
N.B.--The last word not legible.
AN HARANGUER
Is one that is so delighted with the sweet sound of his own tongue, that William Prynne will sooner lend an ear than he to anything else. His measure of talk is till his wind is spent, and then he is not silenced, but becalmed. His ears have catched the itch of his tongue, and though he scratch them, like a beast with his hoof, he finds a pleasure in it. A silenced minister has more mercy on the Government in a secure conventicle than he has on the company that he is in. He shakes a man by the ear, as a dog does a pig, and never loses his hold till he has tired himself as well as his patient. He does not talk to a man, but attacks him, and whomsoever he can get into his hands he lays violent language on. If he can he will run a man up against a wall and hold him at a bay by the buttons, which he handles as bad as he does his person or the business he treats upon. When he finds him begin to sink he holds him by the clothes, and feels him as a butcher does a calf before he kills him. He is a walking pillory, and crucifies more ears than a dozen standing ones. He will hold any argument rather than his tongue, and maintain both sides at his own charge; for he will tell you what you will say, though perhaps he does not intend to give you leave. He lugs men by the ears, as they correct children in Scotland, and will make them tingle while he talks with them, as some say they will do when a man is talked of in his absence. When he talks to a man he comes up close to him, and, like an old soldier, lets fly in his face, or claps the bore of his pistol to his ear and whispers aloud, that he may be sure not to miss his mark. His tongue is always in motion, though very seldom to the purpose, like a barber's scissors, which are always snipping, as well when they do not cut as when they do. His tongue is like a bagpipe-drone, that has no stop, but makes a continual ugly noise, as long as he can squeeze any wind out of himself. He never leaves a man until he has run him down, and then he winds a death over him. A sow-gelder's horn is not so terrible to dogs and cats as he is to all that know him. His way of argument is to talk all and hear no contradiction. First he gives his antagonist the length of his wind, and then, let him make his approaches if he can, he is sure to be beforehand with him. Of all dissolute diseases the running of the tongue is the worst, and the hardest to be cured. If he happen at any time to be at a stand, and any man else begins to speak, he presently drowns him with his noise, as a water-dog makes a duck dive; for when you think he has done he falls on and lets fly again, like a gun that will discharge nine times with one loading. He is a rattlesnake, that with his noise gives men warning to avoid him, otherwise he will make them wish they had. He is, like a bell, good for nothing but to make a noise. He is like common fame, that speaks most and knows least, Lord Brooks, or a wild goose always cackling when he is upon the wing. His tongue is like any kind of carriage, the less weight it bears the faster and easier it goes. He is so full of words that they run over and are thrown away to no purpose, and so empty of things or sense that his dryness has made his leaks so wide whatsoever is put in him runs out immediately. He is so long in delivering himself that those that hear him desire to be delivered too or despatched out of their pain. He makes his discourse the longer with often repeating to be short, and talking much of in fine, never means to come near it.
A RANTER
Is a fanatic Hector that has found out, by a very strange way of new light, how to transform all the devils into angels of light; for he believes all religion consists in looseness, and that sin and vice is the whole duty of man. He puts off the old man, but puts it on again upon the new one, and makes his pagan vices serve to preserve his Christian virtues from wearing out, for if he should use his piety and devotion always it would hold out but a little while. He is loth that iniquity and vice should be thrown away as long as there may be good use for it; for if that which is wickedly gotten may be disposed to pious uses, why should not wickedness itself as well? He believes himself shot-free against all the attempts of the devil, the world, and the flesh, and therefore is not afraid to attack them in their own quarters and encounter them at their own weapons. For as strong bodies may freely venture to do and suffer that, without any hurt to themselves, which would destroy those that are feeble, so a saint that is strong in grace may boldly engage himself in those great sins and iniquities that would easily damn a weak brother, and yet come off never the worse. He believes deeds of darkness to be only those sins that are committed in private, not those that are acted openly and owned. He is but a hypocrite turned the wrong side outward; for, as the one wears his vices within and the other without, so when they are counterchanged the ranter becomes a hypocrite, and the hypocrite an able ranter. His church is the devil's chapel, for it agrees exactly both in doctrine and discipline with the best reformed bawdy-houses. He is a monster produced by the madness of this latter age; but if it had been his fate to have been whelped in old Rome he had passed for a prodigy, and been received among raining of stones and the speaking of bulls, and would have put a stop to all public affairs until he had been expiated. Nero clothed Christians in the skins of wild beasts, but he wraps wild beasts in the skins of Christians.
AN AMORIST
Is an artificer or maker of love, a sworn servant to all ladies, like an officer in a corporation. Though no one in particular will own any title to him, yet he never fails upon all occasions to offer his services, and they as seldom to turn it back again untouched. He commits nothing with them but himself to their good graces; and they recommend him back again to his own, where he finds so kind a reception that he wonders how he does fail of it everywhere else. His passion is as easily set on fire as a fart, and as soon out again. He is charged and primed with love-powder like a gun, and the least sparkle of an eye gives fire to him and off he goes, but seldom or never hits the mark. He has commonplaces, and precedents of repartees, and letters for all occasions, and falls as readily into his method of making love as a parson does into his form of matrimony. He converses, as angels are said to do, by intuition, and expresses himself by sighs most significantly. He follows his visits as men do their business, and is very industrious in waiting on the ladies where his affairs lie; among which those of greatest concernment are questions and commands, purposes, and other such received forms of wit and conversation, in which he is so deeply studied that in all questions and doubts that arise he is appealed to, and very learnedly declares which was the most true and primitive way of proceeding in the purest times. For these virtues he never fails of his summons to all balls, where he manages the country-dances with singular judgment, and is frequently an assistant at l'ombre; and these are all the uses they make of his parts, beside the sport they give themselves in laughing at him, which he takes for singular favours and interprets to his own advantage, though it never goes further; for, all his employments being public, he is never admitted to any private services, and they despise him as not woman's meat; for he applies to too many to be trusted by any one, as bastards by having many fathers have none at all. He goes often mounted in a coach as a convoy to guard the ladies, to take the dust in Hyde Park, where by his prudent management of the glass windows he secures them from beggars, and returns fraught with China-oranges and ballads. Thus he is but a gentleman-usher-general, and his business is to carry one lady's services to another, and bring back the other's in exchange.
AN ASTROLOGER
Is one that expounds upon the planets and teaches to construe the accidents by the due joining of stars in construction. He talks with them by dumb signs, and can tell what they mean by their twinkling and squinting upon one another as well as they themselves. He is a spy upon the stars, and can tell what they are doing by the company they keep and the houses they frequent. They have no power to do anything alone until so many meet as will make a quorum. He is clerk of the committee to them, and draws up all their orders that concern either public or private affairs. He keeps all their accounts for them, and sums them up, not by debtor, but creditor alone--a more compendious way. They do ill to make them have so much authority over the earth, which perhaps has as much as any one of them but the sun, and as much right to sit and vote in their councils as any other. But because there are but seven Electors of the German Empire, they will allow of no more to dispose of all other, and most foolishly and unnaturally dispossess their own parent of its inheritance rather than acknowledge a defect in their own rules. These rules are all they have to show for their title, and yet not one of them can tell whether those they had them from came honestly by them. Virgil's description of fame, that reaches from earth to the stars, tam ficti pravique tenax, to carry lies and knavery, will serve astrologers without any sensible variation. He is a fortune-seller, a retailer of destiny, and petty chapman to the planets. He casts nativities as gamesters do false dice, and by slurring and palming sextile, quartile, and trine, like six, quatre, trois, can throw what chance he pleases. He sets a figure as cheats do a main at hazard, and gulls throw away their money at it. He fetches the grounds of his art so far off, as well from reason as the stars, that, like a traveller, he is allowed to lie by authority; and as beggars that have no money themselves believe all others have, and beg of those that have as little as themselves, so the ignorant rabble believe in him though he has no more reason for what he professes than they.