and ill-mannered. As in cuffing all blows are aimed at the face, so it fares in these rencounters, where he that wears the toughest leather on his visage comes off with victory though he has ever so much the disadvantage upon all other accounts. For a buffoon

is like a mad dog that has a worm in his tongue, which makes him bite at all that light in his way; and as he can do nothing alone, but must have somebody to set him that he may throw at, he that performs that office with the greatest freedom and is contented to be laughed at to give his patron pleasure cannot but be understood to have done very good service, and consequently deserves to be well rewarded, as a mountebank's pudding, that is content to be cut and slashed and burnt and poisoned, without which his master can show no tricks, deserves to have a considerable share in his gains.

As for the meanness of these ways, which some may think too base to be employed to so excellent an end, that imports nothing; for what dislike soever the world conceives against any man's undertakings, if they do but succeed and prosper, it will easily recant its error and applaud what it condemned before; and therefore all wise men have ever justly esteemed it a great virtue to disdain the false values it commonly sets upon all things and which itself is so apt to retract. For as those who go uphill use to stoop and bow their bodies forward, and sometimes creep upon their hands, and those that descend to go upright, so the lower a man stoops and submits in these endearing offices, the more sure and certain he is to rise; and the more upright he carries himself in other matters, the more like, in probability, to be ruined. And this he believes to be a wiser course for any man to take than to trouble himself with the knowledge of arts or arms; for the one does but bring a man an unnecessary trouble, and the other as unnecessary danger; and the shortest and more easy way to attain to both is to despise all other men and believe as steadfastly in himself as he can—a better and more certain course than that of merit.

What he gains wickedly he spends as vainly, for he holds it the greatest happiness that a man is capable of to deny himself

nothing that his desires can propose to him, but rather to improve his enjoyments by glorying in his vices; for, glory being one end of almost all the business of this world, he who omits that in the enjoyment of himself and his pleasures loses the greatest part of his delight; and therefore the felicity which he supposes other men apprehend that he receives in the relish of his luxuries is more delightful to him than the fruition itself.

A MODERN STATESMAN

Owns his election from free grace in opposition to merits or any foresight of good works; for he is chosen not for his abilities or fitness for his employment, but, like a tales in a jury, for happening to be near in court. If there were any other consideration in it (which is a hard question to the wise), it was only because he was held able enough to be a counsellor-extraordinary for the indifference and negligence of his understanding, and consequent probability of doing no hurt, if no good; for why should not such prove the safest physicians to the body politic as well as they do to the natural? Or else some near friend or friend's friend helped him to the place, that engaged for his honesty and good behaviour in it. Howsoever, he is able to sit still and look wise according to his best skill and cunning, and, though he understand no reason, serve for one that does, and be most steadfastly of that opinion that is most like to prevail. If he be a great person, he is chosen, as aldermen are in the city, for being rich enough, and fines to be taken in as those do to be left out; and money being the measure of all things, it is sufficient to justify all his other talents and render them, like itself, good and current. As for wisdom and judgment, with those other outof-fashioned qualifications which have been so highly esteemed heretofore, they have not been found to be so useful in this age, since it has invented scantlings for politics that will move with the strength of a child and yet carry matters of very great weight; and that raillery and fooling is proved by frequent experiments to be the more easy and certain way; for, as the Germans hereto

fore were observed to be wisest when they were drunk and knew not how to dissemble, so are our modern statesmen when they are mad and use no reserved cunning in their consultations; and as the Church of Rome and that of the Turks esteem ignorant persons the most devout, there seems no reason why this age, that seems to incline to the opinions of them both, should not as well believe them to be the most prudent and judicious; for heavenly wisdom does, by the confession of men, far exceed all the subtlety and prudence of this world. The heathen priests of old never delivered oracles but when they were drunk and mad or distracted, and who knows why our modern oracles may not as well use the same method in all their proceedings? Howsoever, he is as ably qualified to govern as that sort of opinion that is said to govern all the world, and is perpetually false and foolish; and if his opinions are always so, they have the fairer title to their pretensions. He is sworn to advise no further than his skill and cunning will enable him, and the less he has of either the sooner he despatches his business, and despatch is no mean virtue in a statesman.

A DUKE OF BUCKS

His parts are

Is one that has studied the whole body of vice. disproportionate to the whole, and, like a monster, he has more of some and less of others than he should have. He has pulled down all that fabric that Nature raised in him, and built himself up again after a model of his own. He has dammed up all those lights that Nature made into the noblest prospects of the world, and opened other little blind loopholes backward by turning day into night and night into day. His appetite to his pleasures is diseased and crazy, like the pica in a woman that longs to eat that which was never made for food, or a girl in the green sickness that eats chalk and mortar. Perpetual surfeits of pleasure have filled his mind with bad and vicious humours (as well as his body with a nursery of diseases), which makes him affect new and extravagant ways as being sick and tired with the old. Con

tinual wine, women, and music put false values upon things which by custom become habitual, and debauch his understanding so that he retains no right notion nor sense of things; and as the same dose of the same physic has no operation on those that are much used to it, so his pleasures require a larger proportion of excess and variety to render him sensible of them. He rises, eats, and goes to bed by the Julian account, long after all others that go by the new style, and keeps the same hours with owls and the antipodes. He is a great observer of the Tartars' customs, and never eats till the great Cham, having dined, makes proclamation that all the world may go to dinner. He does not dwell in his house, but haunts it like an evil spirit that walks all night to disturb the family, and never appears by day. He lives perpetually benighted, runs out of his life, and loses his time, as men do their ways, in the dark; and as blind men are led by their dogs, so is he governed by some mean servant or other that relates to his pleasures. He is as inconstant as the moon which he lives under; and although he does nothing but advise with his pillow all day, he is as great a stranger to himself as he is to the rest of the world. His mind entertains all things very freely that come and go, but, like guests and strangers, they are not welcome if they stay long. This lays him open to all cheats, quacks, and impostors, who apply to every particular humour while it lasts, and afterwards vanish. Thus, with St. Paul, though in a different sense, he dies daily, and only lives in the night. He deforms Nature while he intends to adorn her, like Indians that hang jewels in their lips and noses. His ears are perpetually drilled with a fiddlestick. He endures pleasures with less patience than other men do their pains.

A FANTASTIC

Is one that wears his feather on the inside of his head. His brain is like quicksilver, apt to receive any impression but retain His mind is made of changeable stuff, that alters colour with every motion towards the light. He is a cormorant that has

none.

but one gut, devours everything greedily, but it runs through him immediately. He does not know so much as what he would be, and yet would be everything he knows. He is like a paperlantern, that turns with the smoke of a candle. He wears his clothes as the ancient laws of the land have provided, according to his quality, that he may be known what he is by them; and it is as easy to decipher him by his habit as a pudding. He is rigged with ribbon, and his garniture is his tackle; all the rest of him is hull. He is sure to be the earliest in the fashion, and lays out for it like the first peas and cherries. He is as proud of leading a fashion as others are of a faction, and glories as much to be in the head of a mode as a soldier does to be in the head of an army. He is admirably skilful in the mathematics of clothes, and can tell, at the first view, whether they have the right symmetry. He alters his gait with the times, and has not a motion of his body that (like a dottrel) he does not borrow from somebody else. He exercises his limbs like a pike and musket, and all his postures are practised. Take him altogether, and he is nothing but a translation, word for word, out of French, an image cast in plaster-of-Paris, and a puppet sent over for others to dress themselves by. He speaks French as pedants do Latin, to show his breeding, and most naturally where he is least understood. All his non-naturals, on which his health and diseases depend, are stile nuovo. French is his holiday language, that he wears for his pleasure and ornament, and uses English only for his business and necessary occasions. He is like a Scotchman; though he is born a subject of his own nation, he carries a French faction within him.

He is never quiet, but sits as the wind is said to do when it is most in motion. His head is as full of maggots as a pastoral poet's flock. He was begotten, like one of Pliny's Portuguese horses, by the wind. The truth is, he ought not to have been reared; for, being calved in the increase of the moon, his head is troubled with a

N.B. The last word not legible.