Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century

by Unknown

A PURITAN

Is a diseased piece of apocalypse: bind him to the Bible, and he corrupts the whole text. 'Ignorance and fat feed are his founders; his nurses, railing, rabies, and round breeches. His life is but a borrowed blast of wind: for between two religions, as between two doors, he is ever whistling. Truly, whose child he is is yet unknown; for, willingly, his faith allows no father: only thus far his pedigree is found, Bragger and he flourished about a time first. His fiery zeal keeps him continually costive, which withers him into his own translation; and till he eat a schoolman he is hide-bound. He ever prays against non-residents, but is himself the greatest discontinuer, for he never keeps near his text. Anything that the law allows, but marriage and March beer, he murmurs at; what it disallows and holds dangerous, makes him a discipline. Where the gate stands open, he is ever seeking a stile; and where his learning ought to climb, he creeps through. Give him advice, you run into traditions; and urge a modest course, he cries out counsel. His greatest care is to contemn obedience; his last care to serve God handsomely and cleanly. He is now become so cross a kind of teaching, that should the Church enjoin clean shirts, he were lousy. More sense than single prayers is not his; nor more in those than still the same petitions: from which he either fears a learned faith, or doubts God understands not at first hearing. Show him a ring, he runs back like a bear; and hates square dealing as allied to caps. A pair of organs blow him out of the parish, and are the only glyster-pipes to cool him. Where the meat is best, there he confutes most, for his arguing is but the efficacy of his eating: good bits he holds breed good positions, and the Pope he best concludes against in plum-broth. He is often drunk, but not as we are, temporally; nor can his sleep then cure him, for the fumes of his ambition make his very soul reel, and that small beer that should allay him (silence) keeps him more surfeited, and makes his heat break out in private houses. Women and lawyers are his best disciples; the one, next fruit, longs for forbidden doctrine, the other to maintain forbidden titles, both which he sows amongst them. Honest he dare not be, for that loves order; yet, if he can be brought to ceremony and made but master of it, he is converted.

A MERE COMMON LAWYER

Is the best shadow to make a discreet one show the fairer. He is a materia prima informed by reports, actuated by statutes, and hath his motion by the favourable intelligence of the Court. His law is always furnished with a commission to arraign his conscience; but, upon judgment given, he usually sets it at large. He thinks no language worth knowing but his Barragouin: only for that point he hath been a long time at wars with Priscian for a northern province. He imagines that by sure excellency his profession only is learning, and that it is a profanation of the Temple to his Themis dedicated, if any of the liberal arts be there admitted to offer strange incense to her. For, indeed, he is all for money. Seven or eight years squires him out, some of his nation less standing; and ever since the night of his call, he forgot much what he was at dinner. The next morning his man (in actu or potentia) enjoys his pickadels. His laundress is then shrewdly troubled in fitting him a ruff, his perpetual badge. His love-letters of the last year of his gentlemanship are stuffed with discontinuances, remitters, and uncore priests; but, now being enabled to speak in proper person, he talks of a French hood instead of a jointure, wags his law, and joins issue. Then he begins to stick his letters in his ground chamber-window, that so the superscription may make his squireship transparent. His heraldry gives him place before the minister, because the Law was before the Gospel. Next term he walks his hoopsleeve gown to the hall; there it proclaims him. He feeds fat in the reading, and till it chance to his turn, dislikes no house order so much as that the month is so contracted to a fortnight. Amongst his country neighbours he arrogates as much honour for being reader of an Inn of Chancery, as if it had been of his own house; for they, poor souls, take law and conscience, Court and Chancery, for all one. He learned to frame his case from putting riddles and imitating Merlin's prophecies, and to set all the Cross Row together by the ears; yet his whole law is not able to decide Lucan's one old controversy betwixt Tau and Sigma. He accounts no man of his cap and coat idle, but who trots not the circuit. He affects no life or quality for itself, but for gain; and that, at least, to the stating him in a Justice of Peace-ship, which is the first quickening soul superadded to the elementary and inanimate form of his new tide. His terms are his wife's vacations; yet she then may usurp divers Court-days, and has her returns in mensem for writs of entry--often shorter. His vacations are her termers; but in assize time (the circuit being long) he may have a trial at home against him by nisi prius. No way to heaven, he thinks, so wise as through Westminster Hall; and his clerks commonly through it visit both heaven and hell. Yet then he oft forgets his journey's end, although he look on the Star-Chamber. Neither is he wholly destitute of the arts. Grammar he has enough to make termination of those words which his authority hath endenizoned rhetoric-some; but so little that it is thought a concealment. Logic, enough to wrangle. Arithmetic, enough for the ordinals of his year-books and number-rolls; but he goes not to multiplication, there is a statute against it. So much geometry, that he can advise in a perambulatione fadenda, or a rationalibus divisis. In astronomy and astrology he is so far seen, that by the Dominical letter he knows the holy-days, and finds by calculation that Michaelmas term will be long and dirty. Marry, he knows so much in music that he affects only the most and cunningest discords; rarely a perfect concord, especially song, except in fine. His skill in perspective endeavours much to deceive the eye of the law, and gives many false colours. He is specially practised in necromancy (such a kind as is out of the Statute of Primo), by raising many dead questions. What sufficiency he hath in criticism, the foul copies of his special pleas will tell you. Many of the same coat, which are much to be honoured, partake of divers of his indifferent qualities; but so that discretion, virtue, and sometimes other good learning, concurring and distinguishing ornaments to them, make them as foils to set their work on.

A MERE SCHOLAR.

A mere scholar is an intelligible ass, or a silly fellow in black that speaks sentences more familiarly than sense. The antiquity of his University is his creed, and the excellency of his college (though but for a match at football) an article of his faith. He speaks Latin better than his mother-tongue, and is a stranger in no part of the world but his own country. He does usually tell great stories of himself to small purpose, for they are commonly ridiculous, be they true or false. His ambition is that he either is or shall be a graduate; but if ever he get a fellowship, he has then no fellow. In spite of all logic he dares swear and maintain it, that a cuckold and a town's-man are termini convertibles, though his mother's husband be an alderman. He was never begotten (as it seems) without much wrangling, for his whole life is spent in pro et contra. His tongue goes always before his wit, like gentleman-usher, but somewhat faster. That he be a complete gallant in all points, cap-à-pie, witness his horsemanship and the wearing of his weapons. He is commonly long-winded, able to speak more with ease than any man can endure to hear with patience. University jests are his universal discourse, and his news the demeanour of the proctors. His phrase, the apparel of his mind, is made of divers shreds, like a cushion, and when it goes plainest it hath a rash outside and fustian linings. The current of his speech is closed with an ergo; and, whatever be the question, the truth is on his side. It is a wrong to his reputation to be ignorant of anything; and yet he knows not that he knows nothing. He gives directions for husbandry, from Virgil's "Georgics;" for cattle, from his "Bucolics;" for warlike stratagems, from his "Æneids" or Caesar's "Commentaries." He orders all things and thrives in none; skilful in all trades and thrives in none. He is led more by his ears than his understanding, taking the sound of words for their true sense, and does therefore confidently believe that Erra Pater was the father of heretics, Radulphus Agricola a substantial farmer, and will not stick to aver that Systemo's Logic doth excel Keckerman's. His ill-luck is not so much in being a fool, as in being put to such pains to express it to the world, for what in others is natural, in him (with much ado) is artificial. His poverty is his happiness, for it makes some men believe that he is none of fortune's favourites. That learning which he hath was in non age put in backward like a glyster, and it's now like ware mislaid in a pedlar's pack; a has it, but knows not where it is. In a word, his is the index of a man and the title-page of a scholar, or a puritan in morality--much in profession, nothing in practice.

A TINKER

Is a movable, for he hath no abiding-place; by his motion he gathers heat, thence his choleric nature. He seems to be very devout, for his life is a continual pilgrimage, and sometimes in humility goes barefoot, thereon making necessity a virtue. His house is as ancient as Tubal Cain's, and so is a renegade by antiquity: yet he proves himself a gallant, for he carries all his wealth upon his back; or a philosopher, for he bears all his substance about him. From his art was music first invented, and therefore he is always furnished with a song, to which his hammer keeping tune, proves that he was the first founder for the kettledrum. Note, that where the best ale is, there stands his music most upon crochets. The companion of his travels is some foul sun-burnt quean, that, since the terrible statute, recanted gipseyism and is turned pedlaress. So marches he all over England with his bag and baggage. His conversation is unreprovable, for he is ever mending. He observes truly the statutes, and therefore he can rather steal than beg, in which he is unremovably constant in spite of whip or imprisonment; and so a strong enemy to idleness, that in mending one hole he had rather make three than want work, and when he hath done, he throws the wallet of his faults behind him. He embraceth naturally ancient custom, conversing in open fields and lowly cottages. If he visit cities or towns, 'tis but to deal upon the imperfections of our weaker vessels. His tongue is very voluble, which with canting proves him a linguist. He is entertained in every place, but enters no further than the door, to avoid suspicion. Some will take him to be a coward, but believe it, he is a lad of metal; his valour is commonly three or four yards long, fastened to a pike in the end for flying off. He is provident, for he will fight but with one at once, and then also he had rather submit than be counted obstinate. To conclude, if he escape Tyburn and Banbury, he dies a beggar.

AN APPARITOR

Is a chick of the egg abuse, hatched by the warmth of authority; he is a bird of rapine, and begins to prey and feather together. He croaks like a raven against the death of rich men, and so gets a legacy unbequeathed. His happiness is in the multitude of children, for their increase is his wealth, and to that end he himself yearly adds one. He is a cunning hunter, uncoupling his intelligencing hounds under hedges, in thickets and cornfields, who follow the chase to city suburbs, where often his game is at covert; his quiver hangs by his side stuffed with silver arrows, which he shoots against church-gates and private men's doors, to the hazard of their purses and credit. There went but a pair of shears between him and the pursuivant of hell, for they both delight in sin, grow richer by it, and are by justice appointed to punish it; only the devil is more cunning, for he picks a living out of others' gains. His living lieth in his eye, which (like spirits) he sends through chinks and keyholes to survey the places of darkness; for which purpose he studieth the optics, but can discover no colour but black, for the pure white of chastity dazzleth his eyes. He is a Catholic, for he is everywhere; and with a politic, for he transforms himself into all shapes. He travels on foot to avoid idleness, and loves the Church entirely, because it is the place of his edification. He accounts not all sins mortal, for fornication with him is a venial sin, and to take bribes a matter of charity; he is collector for burnings and losses at sea, and in casting account readily subtracts the lesser from the greater sum. Thus lives he in a golden age, till death by a process summons him to appear.