they never heard of in their lifetime. His coat is, like the King of Spain's dominions, all skirts, and hangs as loose about him; and his neck is the waist, like the picture of Nobody with his breeches fastened to his collar. He will sell the head or a single joint of a beast or fowl as dear as the whole body, like a pig's head in Bartholomew Fair, and after put off the rest to his customers at the same rate. His arms, being utterly out of use in war since guns came up, have been translated to dishes and cups, as the ancients used their precious stones, according to the poet, Gemmas ad pocula transfert a gladiis, &c.; and since are like to decay every day more and more, for since he gave citizens coats-of-arms, gentlemen have made bold to take their letters of mark by way of reprisal. The hangman has a receipt to mar all his work in a moment, for by nailing the wrong end of a scutcheon upwards upon a gibbet all the honour and gentility extinguishes of itself, like a candle that's held with the flame downwards. Other arms are made for the spilling of blood, but his only purify and cleanse it like scurvy-grass; for a small dose taken by his prescription will refine that which is as base and gross as bull's blood (which the Athenians used to poison withal) to any degree of purity.

A VIRTUOSO

Is a well-willer to the mathematics; he pursues knowledge rather out of humour than ingenuity, and endeavours rather to seem than to be. He has nothing of nature but an inclination, which he strives to improve with industry; but as no art can make a fountain run higher than its own head, so nothing can raise him above the elevation of his own pole. He seldom converses but with men of his own tendency, and wheresoever he comes treats with all men as such; for as country gentlemen use to talk of their dogs to those that hate hunting because they love it themselves, so will he of his arts and sciences to those that neither know nor care to know anything of them. His industry were admirable if it did not attempt the greatest difficulties with the feeblest means; for he commonly slights anything that is plain

and easy, how useful and ingenious soever, and bends all his forces against the hardest and most improbable, though to no purpose if attained to; for neither knowing how to measure his own abilities nor the weight of what he attempts, he spends his little strength in vain and grows only weaker by it; and as men use to blind horses that draw in a mill, his ignorance of himself and his undertakings makes him believe he has advanced when he is no nearer to his end than when he set out first. The bravery of difficulties does so dazzle his eyes that he prosecutes them with as little success as the tailor did his amours to Queen Elizabeth. He differs from a pedant as things do from words, for he uses the same affectation in his operations and experiments as the other does in language. He is a haberdasher of small arts and sciences, and deals in as many several operations as a baby artificer does in engines. He will serve well enough for an index to tell what is handled in the world, but no further. He is wonderfully delighted with rarities, and they continue still so to him though he has shown them a thousand times, for every new admirer that gapes upon them sets him a-gaping too. Next these he loves strange natural histories; and as those that read romances, though they know them to be fictions, are as much affected as if they were true, so is he, and will make hard shift to tempt himself to believe them first to be possible, and then he's sure to believe them to be true, forgetting that belief upon belief is false heraldry. He keeps a catalogue of the names of all famous men in any profession, whom he often takes occasion to mention as his very good friends and old acquaintances. Nothing is more pedantic than to seem too much concerned about wit or knowledge, to talk much of it, and appear too critical in it. All he can possibly arrive to is but like the monkeys dancing on the rope, to make men wonder how 'tis possible for art to put nature so much out of her play.

His learning is like those letters on a coach, where, many being writ together, no one appears plain. When the King happens to be at the university and degrees run like wine in conduits at public triumphs, he is sure to have his share; and though he be

as free to choose his learning as his faculty, yet, like St. Austin's soul, Creando infunditur, infundendo creatur. Nero was the first emperor of his calling, though it be not much for his credit. He is like an elephant that, though he cannot swim, yet of all creatures most delights to walk along a river's side; and as, in law, things that appear not and things that are not are all one, so he had rather not be than not appear. The top of his ambition is to have his picture graved in brass and published upon walls, if he has no work of his own to face with it. His want of judgment inclines him naturally to the most extravagant undertakings, like that of making old dogs young, telling how many persons there are in a room by knocking at a door, stopping up of words in bottles, &c. He is like his books, that contain much knowledge, but know nothing themselves. He is but an index of things and words, that can direct where they are to be spoken with, but no farther. He appears a great man among the ignorant, and, like a figure in arithmetic, is so much the more as it stands before ciphers that are nothing of themselves. He calls himself an antisocordist, a name unknown to former ages, but spawned by the pedantry of the present. He delights most in attempting things beyond his reach, and the greater distance he shoots at, the farther he is sure to be off his mark. He shows his parts as drawers do a room at a tavern, to entertain them at the expense of their time and patience. He inverts the moral of that fable of him that caressed his dog for fawning and leaping up upon him and beat his ass for doing the same thing, for it is all one to him whether he be applauded by an ass or a wiser creature, so he be but applauded.

AN INTELLIGENCER

Would give a penny for any statesman's thought at any time. He travels abroad to guess what princes are designing by seeing them at church or dinner, and will undertake to unriddle a government at first sight, and tell what plots she goes with, male or female; and discover, like a mountebank, only by seeing the public face of affairs, what private marks there are in the most

secret parts of the body politic. He is so ready at reasons of State, that he has them, like a lesson, by rote; but as charlatans make diseases fit their medicines, and not their medicines diseases, so he makes all public affairs conform to his own established reason of State, and not his reason, though the case alter ever so much, comply with them. He thinks to obtain a great insight into State affairs by observing only the outside pretences and appearances of things, which are seldom or never true, and may be resolved several ways, all equally probable; and therefore his penetrations into these matters are like the penetrations of cold into natural bodies, without any sense of itself or the thing it works upon. For all his discoveries in the end amount only to entries and equipages, addresses, audiences, and visits, with other such politic speculations as the rabble in the streets is wont to entertain itself withal. Nevertheless he is very cautious not to omit his cipher, though he writes nothing but what every one does or may safely know, for otherwise it would appear to be no secret. He endeavours to reduce all his politics into maxims, as being most easily portable for a travelling head, though, as they are for the most part of slight matters, they are but like spirits drawn out of water, insipid and good for nothing. His letters are a kind of bills of exchange, in which he draws news and politics upon all his correspondents, who place it to account, and draw it back again upon him; and though it be false, neither cheats the other, for it passes between both for good and sufficient pay. If he drives an inland trade, he is factor to certain remote country virtuosos, who, finding themselves unsatisfied with the brevity of the Gazette, desire to have exceedings of news besides their ordinary commons. To furnish those, he frequents clubs and coffee-houses, the markets of news, where he engrosses all he can light upon; and if that do not prove sufficient, he is forced to add a lie or two of his own making, which does him double service; for it does not only supply his occasions for the present, but furnishes him with matter to fill up gaps in the next letter with retracting what he wrote before, and in the meantime has served for as good news as the best; and when the novelty is over it is

no matter what becomes of it, for he is better paid for it than if it were true.

A QUIBBLER

Is a juggler of words, that shows tricks with them, to make them appear what they were not meant for and serve two senses at once, like one that plays on two Jew's trumps. He is a fencer of language, that falsifies his blow and hits where he did not aim. He has a foolish sleight of wit that catches at words only and lets the sense go, like the young thief in the farce that took a purse, but gave the owner his money back again. He is so well versed in all cases of quibble, that he knows when there will be a blot upon a word as soon as it is out. He packs his quibbles like a stock of cards; let him but shuffle, and cut where you will, he will be sure to have it. He dances on a rope of sand, does the somersault, strappado, and half-strappado with words, plays at all manner of games with clinches, carwickets, and quibbles, and talks under-leg. His wit is left-handed, and therefore what others mean for right he apprehends quite contrary. All his conceptions are produced by equivocal generation, which makes them justly esteemed but maggots. He rings the changes upon words, and is so expert that he can tell at first sight how many variations any number of words will bear. He talks with a trillo, and gives his words a double relish. He had rather have them bear two senses in vain and impertinently than one to the purpose, and never speaks without a leer-sense. He talks nothing but equivocation and mental reservation, and mightily affects to give a word a double stroke, like a tennis-ball against two walls at one blow, to defeat the expectation of his antagonist. He commonly slurs every fourth or fifth word, and seldom fails to throw doublets. There are two sorts of quibbling, the one with words and the other with sense, like the rhetorician's figuræ dictionis et figuræ sententiæ the first is already cried down, and the other as yet prevails, and is the only elegance of our modern poets, which easy judges call easiness; but having nothing in it but easiness, and being never used by any lasting wit, will in wiser times fall to nothing of itself.