A LAWYER
Is a retailer of justice that uses false lights, false weights, and false measures. He measures right and wrong by his retaining fee, and, like a French duellist, engages on that side that first bespeaks him, though it be against his own brother; not because it is right, but merely upon a punctilio of profit, which is better than honour to him, because riches will buy nobility, and nobility nothing, as having no intrinsic value. He sells his opinion, and engages to maintain the title against all that claim under him, but no further. He puts it off upon his word, which he believes himself not bound to make good, because when he has parted with his right to it, it is no longer his. He keeps no justice for his own use, as being a commodity of his own growth, which he never buys, but only sells to others; and as no man goes worse shod than the shoemaker, so no man is more out of justice than he that gets his living by it. He draws bills as children do lots at a lottery, and is paid as much for blanks as prizes. He undoes a man with the same privilege as a doctor kills him, and is paid as well for it as if he preserved him, in which he is very impartial, but in nothing else. He believes it no fault in himself to err in judgment, because that part of the law belongs to the judge and not to him. His best opinions and his worst are all of a price, like good wine and bad in a tavern, in which he does not deal so fairly as those who, if they know what you are willing to bestow, can tell how to fit you accordingly. When his law lies upon his hands he will afford a good pennyworth, and rather pettifog and turn common barreter than be out of employment. His opinion is one thing while it is his own and another when it is paid for; for, the property being altered, the case alters also. When his counsel is not for his client's turn he will never take it back again, though it be never the worse, nor allow him anything for it, yet will sell the same over and over again to as many as come to him for it. His pride increases with his practice, and the fuller of business he is, like a sack, the bigger he looks. He crowds to the Bar like a pig through a hedge, and his gown is fortified with flankers about the shoulders to guard his ears from being galled with elbows. He draws his bills more extravagant and unconscionable than a tailor; for if you cut off two-thirds in the beginning, middle, or end, that which is left will be more reasonable and nearer to sense than the whole, and yet he is paid for all; for when he draws up a business, like a captain that makes false musters, he produces as many loose and idle words as he can possibly come by until he has received for them, and then turns them off and retains only those that are to the purpose. This he calls drawing of breviates. All that appears of his studies is, in short, time converted into waste-paper, tailor's measures, and heads for children's drums. He appears very violent against the other side, and rails to please his client as they do children, "Give me a blow and I'll strike him, ah, naughty!" &c. This makes him seem very zealous for the good of his client, and though the cause go against him he loses no credit by it, especially if he fall foul on the counsel of the other side, which goes for no more among them than it does with those virtuous persons that quarrel and fight in the streets to pick the pockets of those that look on. He hangs men's estates and fortunes on the slightest curiosities and feeblest niceties imaginable, and undoes them like the story of breaking a horse's back with a feather or sinking a ship with a single drop of water, as if right and wrong were only notional and had no relation at all to practice (which always requires more solid foundations), or reason and truth did wholly consist in the right spelling of letters, whenas the subtler things are the nearer they are to nothing, so the subtler words and notions are the nearer they are to nonsense. He overruns Latin and French with greater barbarism than the Goths did Italy and France, and makes as mad a confusion of language by mixing both with English. Nor does he use English much better, for he clogs it so with words that the sense becomes as thick as puddle, and is utterly lost to those that have not the trick of skipping over where it is impertinent. He has but one termination for all Latin words, and that's a dash. He is very just to the first syllables of words, but always bobtails the last, in which the sense most of all consists, like a cheat that does a man all right at the first that he may put a trick upon him in the end. He is an apprentice to the law without a master, is his own pupil, and has no tutor but himself, that is a fool. He will screw and wrest law as unmercifully as a tumbler does his body to lick up money with his tongue. He is a Swiss that professes mercenary arms, will fight for him that gives him best pay, and, like an Italian bravo, will fall foul on any man's reputation that he receives a retaining fee against. If he could but maintain his opinions as well as they do him, he were a very just and righteous man; but when he has made his most of it, he leaves it, like his client, to shift for itself. He fetches money out of his throat like a juggler; and as the rabble in the country value gentlemen by their housekeeping and their eating, so is he supposed to have so much law as he has kept commons, and the abler to deal with clients by how much the more he has devoured of Inns-of-Court mutton; and it matters not whether he keep his study so he has but kept commons. He never ends a suit, but prunes it that it may grow the faster and yield a greater increase of strife. The wisdom of the law is to admit of all the petty, mean, real injustices in the world, to avoid imaginary possible great ones that may perhaps fall out. His client finds the Scripture fulfilled in him, that it is better to part with a coat too than go to law for a cloak; for, as the best laws are made of the worst manners, even so are the best lawyers of the worst men. He hums about Westminster Hall, and returns home with his pockets like a bee with his thighs laden; and that which Horace says of an ant, Ore trahit quodcunque potest, atque addit acervo, is true of him, for he gathers all his heap with the labour of his mouth rather than his brain and hands. He values himself, as a carman does his horse, by the money he gets, and looks down upon all that gain less as scoundrels. The law is like that double-formed, ill-begotten monster that was kept in an intricate labyrinth and fed with men's flesh, for it devours all that come within the mazes of it and have not a clue to find the way out again. He has as little kindness for the Statute Law as Catholics have for the Scripture, but adores the Common Law as they do tradition, and both for the very same reason; for the Statute Law being certain, written and designed to reform and prevent corruptions and abuses in the affairs of the world (as the Scriptures are in matters of religion), he finds it many times a great obstruction to the advantage and profit of his practice; whereas the Common Law, being unwritten, or written in an unknown language which very few understand but himself, is the more pliable and easy to serve all his purposes, being utterly exposed to what interpretation and construction his interest and occasions shall at any time incline him to give it; and differs only from arbitrary power in this, that the one gives no account of itself at all, and the other such a one as is perhaps worse than none, that is implicit and not to be understood, or subject to what constructions he pleases to put upon it:--
Great critics in a noverint universi
Know all men by these presents how to curse ye;
Pedants of said and foresaid, and both Frenches,
Pedlars, and pokie, may those rev'rend benches
Y' aspire to be the stocks, and may ye be
No more call'd to the Bar, but pillory;
Thither in triumph may ye backward ride
To have your ears most justly crucified,
And cut so close until there be not leather
Enough to stick a pen in left of either;
Then will your consciences, your ears, and wit
Be like indentures tripartite cut fit.
May your horns multiply and grow as great
As that which does blow grace before your meat;
May varlets be your barbers now, and do
The same to you they have been done unto;
That's law and gospel too; may it prove true,
Then they shall do pump-justice upon you;
And when y' are shaved and powder'd you shall fall,
Thrown o'er the Bar, as they did o'er the wall,
Never to rise again, unless it be
To hold your hands up for your roguery;
And when you do so may they be no less
Sear'd by the hangman than your consciences.
May your gowns swarm until you can determine
The strife no more between yourselves and vermin
Than you have done between your clients' purses;
Now kneel and take the last and worst of curses--
May you be honest when it is too late;
That is, undone the only way you hate.
AN EPIGRAMMATIST
Is a poet of small wares, whose Muse is short-winded and quickly out of breath. She flies like a goose, that is no sooner upon the wing but down again. He was originally one of those authors that used to write upon white walls, from whence his works, being collected and put together, pass in the world like single money among those that deal in small matters. His wit is like fire in a flint, that is nothing while it is in, and nothing again as soon as it is out. He treats of all things and persons that come in his way, but like one that draws in little, much less than the life:--
His bus'ness is t' inveigh and flatter,
Like parcel parasite and satyr.
He is a kind of vagabond writer, that is never out of his way, for nothing is beside the purpose with him that proposes none at all. His works are like a running banquet, that have much variety but little of a sort, for he deals in nothing but scraps and parcels, like a tailor's broker. He does not write, but set his mark upon things, and gives no account in words at length, but only in figures. All his wit reaches but to four lines or six at the most; and if he ever venture farther it tires immediately, like a post-horse, that will go no farther than his wonted stages. Nothing agrees so naturally with his fancy as bawdry, which he dispenses in small pittances to continue his reader still in an appetite for more.
A FANATIC.
St. Paul was thought by Festus to be mad with too much learning, but the fanatics of our times are mad with too little. He chooses himself one of the elect, and packs a committee of his own party to judge the twelve tribes of Israel. The apostles in the primitive Church worked miracles to confirm and propagate their doctrine, but he thinks to confirm his by working at his trade. He assumes a privilege to impress what text of Scripture he pleases for his own use, and leaves those that make against him for the use of the wicked. His religion, that tends only to faction and sedition, is neither fit for peace nor war, but times of a condition between both, like the sails of a ship that will not endure a storm and are of no use at all in a calm. He believes it has enough of the primitive Christian if it be but persecuted as that was, no matter for the piety or doctrine of it, as if there were nothing required to prove the truth of a religion but the punishment of the professors of it, like the old mathematicians that were never believed to be profoundly knowing in their profession until they had run through all punishments and just escaped the fork. He is all for suffering for religion, but nothing for acting; for he accounts good works no better than encroachments upon the merits of free believing, and a good life the most troublesome and unthrifty way to heaven. He canonises himself a saint in his own lifetime, as the more sure and certain way, and less troublesome to others. He outgrows ordinances, as an apprentice that has served out his time does his indentures, and being a freeman, supposes himself at liberty to set up what religion he pleases. He calls his own supposed abilities gifts, and disposes of himself like a foundation designed to pious uses, although, like others of the same kind, they are always diverted to other purposes. He owes all his gifts to his ignorance, as beggars do the alms they receive to their poverty. They are such as the fairies are said to drop in men's shoes, and when they are discovered to give them over and confer no more; for when his gifts are discovered they vanish and come to nothing. He is but a puppet saint that moves he knows not how, and his ignorance is the dull, leaden weight that puts all his parts in motion. His outward man is a saint and his inward man a reprobate, for he carries his vices in his heart and his religion in his face.