Has found out a way to renew not only his youth, but his childhood, by being stewed, like old Aeson, in liquor; much better than the virtuoso's way of making old dogs young again, for he is a child again at second hand, never the worse for the wearing, but as purely fresh, simple, and weak as he was at first. He has stupefied his senses by living in a moist climate, according to the poet, Boeotum in crasso jurares aëre natum. He measures his time by glasses of wine, as the ancients did by water-glasses; and as Hermes Trismegistus is said to have kept the first account of hours by the pissing of a beast dedicated to Serapis, he revives that custom in his own practice, and observes it punctually in passing his time. He is like a statue placed in a moist air; all the lineaments of humanity are mouldered away, and there is nothing left of him but a rude lump of the shape of a man, and no one part entire. He has drowned himself in a butt of wine, as the Duke of Clarence was served by his brother. He has washed down his soul and pissed it out, and lives now only by the spirit of wine or brandy, or by an extract drawn off his stomach. He has swallowed his humanity and drunk himself into a beast, as if he had pledged Madam Circe and done her right. He is drowned in a glass like a fly, beyond the cure of crumbs of bread or the sunbeams. He is like a springtide; when he is drunk to his high-water-mark he swells and looks big, runs against the stream, and overflows everything that stands in his way; but when the drink within him is at an ebb, he shrinks within his banks and falls so low and shallow that cattle may pass over him. He governs all his actions by the drink within him, as a Quaker does by the light within him; has a different humour for every nick his drink rises to, like the degrees of the weather-glass; and proceeds from ribaldry and bawdry to politics, religion, and quarrelling, until it is at the top, and then it is the dog-days with him; from whence he falls down again until his liquor is at the bottom, and then he lies quiet and is frozen up.
A JUGGLER
Is an artificial magician, that with his fingers casts a mist before the eyes of the rabble and makes his balls walk invisible which way he pleases. He does his feats behind a table, like a Presbyterian in a conventicle, but with much more dexterity and cleanliness, and therefore all sorts of people are better pleased with him. Most professions and mysteries derive the practice of all their faculties from him, but use them with less ingenuity and candour; for the more he deceives those he has to do with the better he deals with them; while those that imitate him in a lawful calling are far more dishonest, for the more they impose the more they abuse. All his cheats are primitive, and therefore more innocent and of greater purity than those that are by tradition from hand to hand derived to them; for he conveys money out of one man's pocket into another's with much more sincerity and ingenuity than those that do it in a legal way, and for a less considerable, though more conscientious, reward. He will fetch money out of his own throat with a great deal more of delight and satisfaction to those that pay him for it than any haranguer whatsoever, and make it chuck in his throat better than a lawyer that has talked himself hoarse, and swallowed so many fees that he is almost choked. He will spit fire and blow smoke out of his mouth with less harm and inconvenience to the Government than a seditious holder-forth, and yet all these disown and scorn him, even as men that are grown great and rich despise the meanness of their originals. He calls upon "Presto begone," and the Babylonian's tooth, to amuse and divert the rabble from looking too narrowly into his tricks; while a zealous hypocrite, that calls heaven and earth to witness his, turns up the eye and shakes the head at his idolatry and profanation. He goes the circuit to all country fairs, where he meets with good strolling practice, and comes up to Bartholomew Fair as his Michaelmas term; after which he removes to some great thoroughfare, where he hangs out himself in effigy, like a Dutch malefactor, that all those that pass by may for their money have a trial of his skill. He endeavours to plant himself as near as he can to some puppet-play, monster, or mountebank, as the most convenient situation; and when trading grows scant they join all their forces together and make up one grand show, and admit the cutpurse and balladsinger to trade under them, as orange-women do at a playhouse.
A ROMANCE-WRITER
Pulls down old histories to build them up finer again, after a new model of his own designing. He takes away all the lights of truth in history to make it the fitter tutoress of life; for Truth herself has little or nothing to do in the affairs of the world, although all matters of the greatest weight and moment are pretended and done in her name, like a weak princess that has only the title, and falsehood all the power. He observes one very fit decorum in dating his histories in the days of old and putting all his own inventions upon ancient times; for when the world was younger, it might perhaps love and fight, and do generous things at the rate he describes them; but since it is grown old, all these heroic feats are laid by and utterly given over, nor ever like to come in fashion again; and therefore all his images of those virtues signify no more than the statues upon dead men's tombs, that will never make them live again. He is like one of Homer's gods, that sets men together by the ears and fetches them off again how he pleases; brings armies into the field like Janello's leaden soldiers; leads up both sides himself, and gives the victory to which he pleases, according as he finds it fit the design of his story; makes love and lovers too, brings them acquainted, and appoints meetings when and where he pleases, and at the same time betrays them in the height of all their felicity to miserable captivity, or some other horrid calamity; for which he makes them rail at the gods and curse their own innocent stars when he only has done them all the injury; makes men villains, compels them to act all barbarous inhumanities by his own directions, and after inflicts the cruellest punishments upon them for it. He makes all his knights fight in fortifications, and storm one another's armour before they can come to encounter body for body, and always matches them so equally one with another that it is a whole page before they can guess which is likely to have the better; and he that has it is so mangled that it had been better for them both to have parted fair at first; but when they encounter with those that are no knights, though ever so well armed and mounted, ten to one goes for nothing. As for the ladies, they are every one the most beautiful in the whole world, and that's the reason why no one of them, nor all together with all their charms, have power to tempt away any knight from another. He differs from a just historian as a joiner does from a carpenter; the one does things plainly and substantially for use, and the other carves and polishes merely for show and ornament.
A LIBELLER
Is a certain classic author that handles his subject-matter very ruggedly, and endeavours with his own evil words to corrupt another man's good manners. All his works treat but of two things, his own malice and another man's faults, both which he describes in very proper and pertinent language. He is not much concerned whether what he writes be true or false; that's nothing to his purpose, which aims only at filthy and bitter, and therefore his language is, like pictures of the devil, the fouler the better. He robs a man of his good name, not for any good it will do him (for he dares not own it), but merely, as a jackdaw steals money, for his pleasure. His malice has the same success with other men's charity, to be rewarded in private; for all he gets is but his own private satisfaction and the testimony of an evil conscience; for which, if it be discovered, he suffers the worst kind of martyrdom and is paid with condign punishment, so that at the best he has but his labour for his pains. He deals with a man as the Spanish Inquisition does with heretics, clothes him in a coat painted with hellish shapes of fiends, and so shows him to the rabble to render him the more odious. He exposes his wit like a bastard, for the next comer to take up and put out to nurse, which it seldom fails of, so ready is every man to contribute to the infamy of another. He is like the devil, that sows tares in the dark, and while a man sleeps plants weeds among his corn. When he ventures to fall foul on the Government or any great persons, if he has not a special care to keep himself, like a conjurer, safe in his circle, he raises a spirit that falls foul on himself and carries him to limbo, where his neck is clapped up in the hole, out of which it is never released until he has paid his ears down on the nail for fees. He is in a worse condition than a schoolboy, for when he is discovered he is whipped for his exercise, whether it be well or ill done; so that he takes a wrong course to show his wit, when his best way to do so is to conceal it; otherwise he shows his folly instead of his wit, and pays dear for the mistake.
A FACTIOUS MEMBER
Is sent out laden with the wisdom and politics of the place he serves for, and has his own freight and custom free. He is trusted like a factor to trade for a society, but endeavours to turn all the public to his own private advantages. He has no instructions but his pleasure, and therefore strives to have his privileges as large. He is very wise in his politic capacity as having a full share in the House and an implicit right to every man's reason, though he has none of his own, which makes him appear so simple out of it. He believes all reason of State consists in faction, as all wisdom in haranguing, of which he is so fond that he had rather the nation should perish than continue ignorant of his great abilities that way; though he that observes his gestures, words, and delivery will find them so perfectly agreeable to the rules of the House that he cannot but conclude he learnt his oratory the very same way that jackdaws and parrots practise by; for he coughs and spits and blows his nose with that discreet and prudent caution that you would think he had buried his talent in a handkerchief, and were now pulling it out to dispose of it to a better advantage. He stands and presumes so much upon the privileges of the House, as if every member were a tribune of the people and had as absolute power as they had in Rome, according to the lately established fundamental custom and practice of their quartered predecessors of unhappy memory. He endeavours to show his wisdom in nothing more than in appearing very much unsatisfied with the present manage of State affairs, although he knows nothing of the reasons. So much the better, for the thing is the more difficult, and argues his judgment and insight the greater; for any man can judge that understands the reasons of what he does, but very few know how to judge mechanically without understanding why or wherefore. It is sufficient to assure him that the public money has been diverted from the proper uses it was raised for because he has had no share of it himself, and the government ill managed because he has no hand in it, which, truly, is a very great grievance to the people, that understand, by himself and his party, that are their representatives, and ought to understand for them how able he is for it. He fathers all his own passions and concerns, like bastards, on the people, because, being entrusted by them without articles or conditions, they are bound to acknowledge whatsoever he does as their own act and deed.