A PEDANT.
He treads in a rule, and one hand scans verses, and the other holds his sceptre. He dares not think a thought that the nominative case governs not the verb; and he never had meaning in his life, for he travelled only for words. His ambition is criticism, and his example Tully. He values phrases, and elects them by the sound, and the eight parts of speech are his servants. To be brief, he is a Heteroclite, for he wants the plural number, having only the single quality of words.
A SERVING-MAN
Is a creature, which, though he be not drunk, yet is not his own man. He tells without asking who owns him, by the superscription of his livery. His life is for ease and leisure, much about gentleman-like. His wealth enough to suffice nature, and sufficient to make him happy, if he were sure of it, for he hath little, and wants nothing; he values himself higher or lower as his master is. He hates or loves the men as his master doth the master. He is commonly proud of his master's horses or his Christmas; he sleeps when he is sleepy, is of his religion, only the clock of his stomach is set to go an hour after his. He seldom breaks his own clothes. He never drinks but double, for he must be pledged; nor commonly without some short sentence nothing to the purpose, and seldom abstains till he comes to a thirst. His discretion is to be careful for his master's credit, and his sufficiency to marshal dishes at a table, and to carve well; his neatness consists much in his hair and outward linen; his courting language, visible coarse jests; and against his matter fail, he is always ready furnished with a song. His inheritance is the chambermaid, but often purchaseth his master's daughter, by reason of opportunity, or for want of a better, he always cuckolds himself, and never marries but his own widow. His master being appeased, he becomes a retainer, and entails himself and his posterity upon his heir-males for ever.
AN HOST
Is the kernel of a sign; or the sign is the shell, and mine host is the snail. He consists of double beer and fellowship, and his vices are the bawds of his thirst. He entertains humbly, and gives his guests power, as well of himself as house. He answers all men's expectations to his power, save in the reckoning; and hath gotten the trick of greatness, to lay all mislikes upon his servants. His wife is the common seed of his dove-house; and to be a good guest is a warrant for her liberty. He traffics for guests by men-friends' friends' friends, and is sensible only of his purse. In a word, he is none of his own; for he neither eats, drinks, or thinks, but at other men's charges and appointments.
AN OSTLER
Is a thing that scrubbeth unreasonably his horse, reasonably himself. He consists of travellers, though he be none himself. His highest ambition is to be host, and the invention of his sign is his greatest wit, for the expressing whereof he sends away the painters for want of understanding. He hath certain charms for a horse mouth, that he should not eat his hay; and behind your back he will cozen your horse to his face. His curry-comb is one of his best parts, for he expresseth much by the jingling; and his mane-comb is a spinner's card turned out of service. He puffs and blows over your horse, to the hazard of a double jug, and leaves much of the dressing to the proverb of muli mutuo scabient, one horse rubs another. He comes to him that calls loudest, not first; he takes a broken head patiently, but the knave he feels it not; utmost honesty is good fellowship, and he speaks northern, what countryman soever. He hath a pension of ale from the next smith and saddler for intelligence; he loves to see you ride, and hold your stirrup in expectation.
THE TRUE CHARACTER OF A DUNCE.
He hath a soul drowned in a lump of flesh, or is a piece of earth that Prometheus put not half his proportion of fire into. A thing that hath neither edge of desire nor feeling of affection in it; the most dangerous creature for confirming an atheist, who would swear his soul were nothing but the bare temperature of his body. He sleeps as he goes, and his thoughts seldom reach an inch further than his eyes. The most part of the faculties of his soul lie fallow, or are like the restive jades that no spur can drive forward towards the pursuit of any worthy designs. One of the most unprofitable of God's creatures, being as he is a thing put clean beside the right use; made fit for the cart and the flail, and by mischance entangled amongst books and papers. A man cannot tell possibly what he is now good for, save to move up and down and fill room, or to serve as animatum instrumentum, for others to work withal in base employments, or to be foil for better wits, or to serve (as they say monsters do) to set out the variety of nature, and ornament of the universe. He is mere nothing of himself, neither eats, nor drinks, nor goes, nor spits, but by imitation, for all which he hath set forms and fashions, which he never varies, but sticks to with the like plodding constancy that a mill-horse follows his trace. But the Muses and the Graces are his hard mistresses; though he daily invocate them, though he sacrifice hecatombs, they still look asquint. You shall note him (besides his dull eye, and lowering head, and a certain clammy benumbed pace) by a fair displayed beard, a night-cap, and a gown, whose very wrinkles proclaim him the true genius of familiarity. But of all others, his discourse and compositions best speak him, both of them are much of one stuff and fashion. He speaks just what his books or last company said unto him, without varying one whit, and very seldom understands himself. You may know by his discourse where he was last; for what he heard or read yesterday, he now dischargeth his memory or note-book of--not his understanding, for it never came there. What he hath he flings abroad at all adventures, without accommodating it to time, place, or persons, or occasions. He commonly loseth himself in his tale, and flutters up and down windless without recovery, and whatsoever next presents itself, his heavy conceit seizeth upon, and goeth along with, however heterogeneal to his matter in hand. His jests are either old fled proverbs, or lean-starved hackney apophthegms, or poor verbal quips, outworn by serving-men, tapsters, and milkmaids, even laid aside by balladers. He assents to all men that bring any shadow of reason, and you may make him when he speaks most dogmatically even with one breath, to aver poor contradictions. His compositions differ only terminorum positione from dreams; nothing but rude heaps of immaterial, incoherent, drossy, rubbishy stuff, promiscuously thrust up together; enough to infuse dulness and barrenness in conceit into him that is so prodigal of his ears as to give the hearing; enough to make a man's memory ache with suffering such dirty stuff cast into it. As unwelcome to any true conceit, as sluttish morsels or wallowish potions to a nice stomach, which whiles he empties himself, it sticks in his teeth, nor can he be delivered without sweat, and sighs, and hems, and coughs enough to shake his grandam's teeth out of her head. He spits, and scratches, and spawls, and turns like sick men from one elbow to another, and deserves as much pity during his torture as men in fits of tertian fevers, or self-lashing penitentiaries. In a word, rip him quite asunder, and examine every shred of him, you shall find of him to be just nothing but the subject of nothing; the object of contempt; yet such as he is you must take him, for there is no hope he should ever become better.