A RASH MAN
Is a man too quick for himself; one whose actions put a leg still before his judgement, and out-run it. Every hot fancy or passion is the signal that sets him forward, and his reason comes still in the rear. One that has brain enough, but not patience to digest a business, and stay the leisure of a second thought. All deliberation is to him a kind of sloth and freezing of action, and it shall burn him rather than take cold. He is always resolved at first thinking, and the ground he goes upon is, hap what may. Thus he enters not, but throws himself violently upon all things, and for the most part is as violently upon all off again; and as an obstinate "I will" was the preface to his undertaking, so his conclusion is commonly "I would I had not;" for such men seldom do anything that they are not forced to take in pieces again, and are so much farther off from doing it, as they have done already. His friends are with him as his physician, sought to only in his sickness and extremity, and to help him out of that mire he has plunged himself into; for in the suddenness of his passions he would hear nothing, and now his ill success has allayed him he hears too late. He is a man still swayed with the first reports, and no man more in the power of a pick-thank than he. He is one will fight first, and then expostulate, condemn first, and then examine. He loses his friend in a fit of quarrelling, and in a fit of kindness undoes himself; and then curses the occasion drew this mischief upon him, and cries God mercy for it, and curses again. His repentance is merely a rage against himself, and he does something in itself to be repented again. He is a man whom fortune must go against much to make him happy, for had he been suffered his own way, he had been undone.
AN AFFECTED MAN
Is an extraordinary man in ordinary things. One that would go a strain beyond himself, and is taken in it. A man that overdoes all things with great solemnity of circumstance; and whereas with more negligence he might pass better, makes himself with a great deal of endeavour ridiculous. The fancy of some odd quaintnesses have put him clean beside his nature; he cannot be that he would, and hath lost what he was. He is one must be point-blank in every trifle, as if his credit and opinion hung upon it; the very space of his arms in an embrace studied before and premeditated, and the figure of his countenance of a fortnight's contriving; he will not curse you without-book and extempore, but in some choice way, and perhaps as some great man curses. Every action of his cries,--"Do ye mark me?" and men do mark him how absurd he is: for affectation is the most betraying humour, and nothing that puzzles a man less to find out than this. All the actions of his life are like so many things bodged in without any natural cadence or connection at all. You shall track him all through like a school-boy's theme, one piece from one author and this from another, and join all in this general, that they are none of his own. You shall observe his mouth not made for that tone, nor his face for that simper; and it is his luck that his finest things most misbecome him. If he affect the gentleman as the humour most commonly lies that way, not the least punctilio of a fine man, but he is strict in to a hair, even to their very negligences, which he cons as rules. He will not carry a knife with him to wound reputation, and pay double a reckoning, rather than ignobly question it: and he is full of this--ignobly--and nobly--and genteely; and this mere fear to trespass against the genteel way puts him out most of all. It is a humour runs through many things besides, but is an ill-favoured ostentation in all, and thrives not:--and the best use of such men is, they are good parts in a play.
A PROFANE MAN
Is one that denies God as far as the law gives him leave; that is, only does not say so in downright terms, for so far he may go. A man that does the greatest sins calmly, and as the ordinary actions of life, and as calmly discourses of it again. He will tell you his business is to break such a commandment, and the breaking of the commandment shall tempt him to it. His words are but so many vomitings cast up to the loathsomeness of the hearers, only those of his company[[91]] loath it not. He will take upon him with oaths to pelt some tenderer man out of his company, and makes good sport at his conquest over the puritan fool. The Scripture supplies him for jests, and he reads it on purpose to be thus merry: he will prove you his sin out of the Bible, and then ask if you will not take that authority. He never sees the church but of purpose to sleep in it, or when some silly man preaches, with whom he means to make sport, and is most jocund in the church. One that nick-names clergymen with all the terms of reproach, as "rat, black-coat" and the like; which he will be sure to keep up, and never calls them by other: that sings psalms when he is drunk, and cries "God mercy" in mockery, for he must do it. He is one seems to dare God in all his actions, but indeed would out-dare the opinion of Him, which would else turn him desperate; for atheism is the refuge of such sinners, whose repentance would be only to hang themselves.
A COWARD
Is the man that is commonly most fierce against the coward, and labouring to take off this suspicion from himself; for the opinion of valour is a good protection to those that dare not use it. No man is valianter than he is in civil company, and where he thinks no danger may come on it, and is the readiest man to fall upon a drawer and those that must not strike again: wonderful exceptious and cholerick where he sees men are loth to give him occasion, and you cannot pacify him better than by quarrelling with him. The hotter you grow, the more temperate man is he; he protests he always honoured you, and the more you rail upon him, the more he honours you, and you threaten him at last into a very honest quiet man. The sight of a sword wounds him more sensibly than the stroke, for before that come he is dead already. Every man is his master that dare beat him, and every man dares that knows him. And he that dare do this is the only man can do much with him; for his friend he cares not for, as a man that carries no such terror as his enemy, which for this cause only is more potent with him of the two: and men fall out with him of purpose to get courtesies from him, and be bribed again to a reconcilement. A man in whom no secret can be bound up, for the apprehension of each danger loosens him, and makes him bewray both the room and it. He is a Christian merely for fear of hell-fire; and if any religion could fright him more, would be of that.
A SORDID RICH MAN
Is a beggar of a fair estate, of whose wealth we may say as of other men's unthriftiness, that it has brought him to this: when he had nothing he lived in another kind of fashion. He is a man whom men hate in his own behalf for using himself thus, and yet, being upon himself, it is but justice, for he deserves it. Every accession of a fresh heap bates him so much of his allowance, and brings him a degree nearer starving. His body had been long since desperate, but for the reparation of other men's tables, where he hoards meats in his belly for a month, to maintain him in hunger so long. His clothes were never young in our memory; you might make long epochas from them, and put them into the almanack with the dear year[[92]] and the great frost,[[93]] and he is known by them longer than his face. He is one never gave alms in his life, and yet is as charitable to his neighbour as himself. He will redeem a penny with his reputation, and lose all his friends to boot; and his reason is, he will not be undone. He never pays anything but with strictness of law, for fear of which only he steals not. He loves to pay short a shilling or two in a great sum, and is glad to gain that when he can no more. He never sees friend but in a journey to save the charges of an inn, and then only is not sick; and his friends never see him but to abuse him. He is a fellow indeed of a kind of frantic thrift, and one of the strangest things that wealth can work.