crowned and triumphing out of the spiritual battles, and those scars that he hath make him beautiful. His soul is every day dilated to receive that God, in whom he is; and hath attained to love himself for God, and God for His own sake. His eyes stick so fast in heaven that no earthly object can remove them; yea, his whole self is there before his time, and sees with Stephen, and hears with Paul, and enjoys with Lazarus, the glory that he shall have, and takes possession beforehand of his room amongst the saints; and these heavenly contentments have so taken him up that now he looks down displeasedly upon the earth as the region of his sorrow and banishment, yet joying more in hope than troubled with the sense of evils. He holds it no great matter to live, and his greatest business to die; and is so well acquainted with his last guest that he fears no unkindness from him: neither makes he any other of dying than of walking home when he is abroad, or of going to bed when he is weary of the day. He is well provided for both worlds, and is sure of peace here, of glory hereafter; and therefore hath a light heart and a cheerful face. All his fellow-creatures rejoice to serve him; his betters, the angels, love to observe him; God Himself takes pleasure to converse with him, and hath sainted him before his death, and in his death crowned him.

....

I

THE SECOND BOOK.

CHARACTERISMS OF VICES.

THE PROEM.

I HAVE showed you many fair virtues: I speak not for them; if their sight cannot command affection let them lose it. They shall please yet better after you have troubled your eyes a little with the view of deformities; and by how much more they please, so much more odious and like themselves shall these deformities appear. This light contraries give to each other in the midst of their enmity, that one makes the other seem more good or ill. Perhaps in some of these (which thing I do at once fear and hate) my style shall seem to some less grave, more satirical: if you find me, not without cause, jealous, let it please you to impute it to the nature of those vices which will not be otherwise handled. The fashions of some evils are, besides the odiousness, ridiculous, which to repeat is to seem bitterly merry. I abhor to make sport with wickedness, and forbid any laughter here but of disdain. Hypocrisy shall lead this ring worthily, I think, because both she cometh nearest to virtue and is the worst of vices.

CHARACTER OF THE HYPOCRITE.

An hypocrite is the worst kind of player, by so much as he acts the better part, which hath always two faces, ofttimes two hearts; that can compose his forehead to sadness and gravity, while he bids his heart be wanton and careless within, and in the meantime laughs within himself to think how smoothly he hath

cozened the beholder. In whose silent face are written the characters of religion, which his tongue and gestures pronounce but his hands recant. That hath a clean face and garment with a foul soul, whose mouth belies his heart, and his fingers belie his mouth. Walking early up into the city, he turns into the great church, and salutes one of the pillars on one knee, worshipping that God which at home he cares not for, while his eye is fixed on some window, on some passenger, and his heart knows not whither his lips go. He rises, and looking about with admiration, complains on our frozen charity, commends the ancient. At church he will ever sit where he may be seen best, and in the midst of the sermon pulls out his tables in haste, as if he feared to lose that note; when he writes either his forgotten errand or nothing. Then he turns his Bible with a noise to seek an omitted quotation, and folds the leaf as if he had found it, and asks aloud the name of the preacher, and repeats it, whom he publicly salutes, thanks, praises, invites, entertains with tedious good counsel, with good discourse, if it had come from an honester mouth. He can command tears when he speaks of his youth, indeed because it is past, not because it was sinful; himself is now better, but the times are worse. All other sins he reckons up with detestation, while he loves and hides his darling in his bosom. All his speech returns to himself, and every occurrence draws in a story to his own praise. When he should give, he looks about him and says, "Who sees me?" No alms, no prayers, fall from him without a witness, belike lest God should deny that He hath received them; and when he hath done (lest the world should not know it) his own mouth is his trumpet to proclaim it. With the superfluity of his usury he builds an hospital, and harbours them whom his extortion hath spoiled; so while he makes many beggars he keeps some. He turneth ali gnats into camels, and cares not to undo the world for a circumstance. Flesh on a Friday is more abomination to him than his neighbour's bed: he more abhors not to uncover at the name of Jesus than to swear by the name of God. When a rhymer reads his poem to him he begs a copy, and persuades the press

there is nothing that he dislikes in presence that in absence he censures not. He comes to the sick-bed of his stepmother, and weeps when he secretly fears her recovery. He greets his friend in the street with so clear a countenance, so fast a closure, that the other thinks he reads his heart in his face, and shakes hands with an indefinite invitation of "When will you come?" and when his back is turned, joys that he is so well rid of a guest; yet if that guest visit him unfeared, he counterfeits a smiling welcome, and excuses his cheer, when closely he frowns on his wife for too much. He shows well, and says well, and himself is the worst thing he hath. In brief, he is the stranger's saint, the neighbour's disease, the blot of goodness, a rotten stick in a dark night, a poppy in a corn-field, an ill-tempered candle with a great snuff that in going out smells ill; and an angel abroad, a devil at home, and worse when an angel than when a devil.

OF THE BUSYBODY.

No

His estate is too narrow for his mind, and therefore he is fain to make himself room in others' affairs, yet ever in pretence of love. No news can stir but by his door, neither can he know that which he must not tell. What every man ventures in Guiana voyage, and what they gained, he knows to a hair. Whether Holland will have peace he knows, and on what conditions, and with what success, is familiar to him ere it be concluded. post can pass him without a question, and rather than he will lose the news, he rides back with him to apprise him of tidings; and then to the next man he meets he supplies the wants of his hasty intelligence and makes up a perfect tale, wherewith he so haunteth the patient auditor, that after many excuses he is fain to endure rather the censure of his manners in running away than the tediousness of an impertinent discourse. His speech is oft broken off with a succession of long parentheses, which he ever vows to fill up ere the conclusion, and perhaps would effect it if the other's ear were as unweariable as his tongue. If he see but two men talk and read a letter in the street, he runs to them

and asks if he may not be partner of that secret relation; and if they deny it, he offers to tell, since he may not hear, wonders, and then falls upon the report of the Scottish mine, or of the great fish taken up at Lynne, or of the freezing of the Thames, and after many thanks and admissions is hardly entreated silence. He undertakes as much as he performs little; this man will thrust himself forward to be the guide of the way he knows not, and calls at his neighbour's window and asks why his servants are not at work. The market hath no commodity which he prizeth not, and which the next table shall not hear recited. His tongue, like the tail of Samson's foxes, carries firebrands, and is enough to set the whole field of the world on a flame. Himself begins table-talk of his neighbour at another's board, to whom he bears the first news, and adjures him to conceal the reporter, whose choleric answer he returns to his first host enlarged with a second edition; so as it uses to be done in the sight of unwilling mastiffs, he claps each on the side apart, and provokes them to an eager conflict. There can no act pass without his comment, which is ever far-fetched, rash, suspicious, dilatory. His ears are long and his eyes quick, but most of all to imperfections, which as he easily sees, so he increases with intermeddling. He harbours another man's servant, and amidst his entertainment asks what fare is usual at home, what hours are kept, what talk passeth their meals, what his master's disposition is, what his government, what his guests? and when he hath by curious inquiries extracted all the juice and spirit of hoped intelligence, turns him off whence he came, and works on anew. He hates constancy as an earthen dulness, unfit for men of spirit, and loves to change his work and his place: neither yet can he be so soon weary of any place as every place is weary of him, for as he sets himself on work, so others pay him with hatred; and look how many masters he hath, so many enemies: neither is it possible that any should not hate him but who know him not. So then he labours without thanks, talks without credit, lives without love, dies without tears, without pity, save that some say it was pity he died no sooner.

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