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CoufuseU Ci)aiacters 
 
 CONCEITED COXCOMBS, 
 
 OB, 
 
 A DISH OF TEAITOROUS TYRANTS ; 
 
 EEPRINTED FE03I 
 
 THE ORIGINAL EDITION OF A.D. 1661. 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 JAMES 0. HALLIWELL, ESQ., F.R.S. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PRINTED BY THOMAS RICHARDS, 
 
 37, GREAT QUEEN STREET. 
 1860. 
 

 GENERAL 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 All the books of cliaracters of the seventeenth century 
 are curious, and include important illustrations of our 
 early manners and customs ; and few, of a date after 
 the restoration of Charles the Second, are more intrin- 
 sically valuable and interesting than the little volume 
 now reprinted. It is, indeed, one of the few, belonging 
 to a comparatively late period, which partakes of the 
 character of the earlier works of the same class. The 
 name of the author is unknown, but his initials are 
 ascertained from the title of the copy of verses ad- 
 dressed by a friend " to his much esteemed friend 
 K. W. cono-ratulatinff his Characters." There can be 
 but little doubt that he belonged to one of the univer- 
 sities ; and, most probably, to that of Cambridge. At 
 least, this may be conjectured from the verses entitled, 
 
 106045 
 
VI PREFACE, 
 
 " A Petition of Questioncsts to Mr. Frost for their 
 degrees, Woodcock and Heron Procters." There was 
 a John Frost of Cambridge, whose sermons were pub- 
 lished in the year 1658, and who is perhaps the indi- 
 vidual here referred to. The following list of characters 
 in the reprint now made will be useful for reference, 
 and indeed it is difficult to add more preface of any 
 value to a republication of this kind, in a case where 
 no particulars are known respecting either the author 
 or his work, — 
 
 1. A Courtier. P. 19. 
 
 2. A Conceited Statesman. P. 23. 
 
 3. A lileere Polititian. P. 2.5. 
 
 4. An Upstart Pragmaticall. P. 29. 
 
 5. A Justice of Peace. P. 32. 
 
 6. A High Constable. P. 34. 
 
 7. A Juryman Eustick. P. 36. 
 
 8. A Church- Warden. P. 38. 
 
 9. A Baily or Serjeant. P. 39. 
 
 10. A La^\yer in Common. P. 42. 
 
 11. An Informer. P. 44. 
 
 12. A Flatterer. P. 48. 
 
 13. A Temporizer. P. 5n. 
 
PREFACE. VII 
 
 14. A Finnicall London Citizen. P. 5o. 
 
 15. A Hide-Park Lady. P. 56. 
 
 16. The Good Old Cause. P. 59. 
 
 17. The Detracting Emperick. P. 64. 
 
 18. A Colledge Butler. P. 67. 
 
 19. A University Beadle. P. 70. 
 
 20. A Covetuous Usurer. P. 72. 
 
 21. A Cambridge Minion. P. 77. 
 
 22. A Pune Pragmatick Pulpit-filler. P. 82. 
 
 23. An Old Hording Hagg. P. 86. 
 
 Amongst the more curious allusions may be men- 
 tioned those to the mouth of Aldersgate ; Noll's, or 
 Oliver Cromwell's countenance ; Joan Cromwell asking 
 the Dutchess of Albemarle how her children's portions 
 should be raised ; patches on lady's faces ; a coin 
 called St. George ; Hyde Park, Spring Gardens, and 
 Mulberry Gardens ; the drolleries of Sir Thomas Mar- 
 tin ; Alderman Atkins ; the eels of Cheapside ; Isling- 
 ton cake-house ; Bartholomew Fair ; etc. 
 
 Since noting the above, I observe an allusion proving 
 to which university the author belonged, — " Never, till 
 I was at Cambridge, did I see the logician's chimsera," 
 etc. 
 
CONFUSED 
 
 CHARACTERS 
 
 of Conceited 
 
 Coxcombs : 
 
 OR, 
 
 A Dish of Trayterous 
 
 Tyrants, dressed with Verjuice and 
 
 pickeled too posterity. 
 
 Together with their Camp-retinue and 
 
 Ferns Covert. 
 
 By Verax Philohasileus. 
 
 Integer vitce scelerisque purus, 
 Non eget Mauri jaculis, nee arcu 
 Nee venenatis gravida sagittis, 
 
 Phusce, pharetra. 
 
 London, Printed by T. M. for Typograplius 
 at the Sioiie of the World, 1661. 
 
Facecious Reader, 
 
 /CHARACTERS are descriptions, and where the 
 ^^ persons described prove vitious and vain, ex- 
 cuse me, gentle reader, if this treatise prove so like- 
 wise. The laborious bee by nice chymistry extracts 
 the elixar of her thime, and loads her feeble thighes 
 with yellow sweetnesse, though perhaps the nettle, or 
 other ranck flower, be her subject : and I should wrong 
 your judgments with censorious severity, should I 
 think so bad of you, as but to suppose otherwise, then 
 that your penetrating and perforating intellectuals will 
 extract some honey from this aloes. Should I, like an 
 unthrifty cobler, have underlayed the rotten soles of 
 these now worn out bushings, with the new and 
 costly leather of applause, and sticht them up with the 
 ends of commendation, the subject would not have 
 bom it : and I my self had played the parasite, and 
 it had been Sutor ultro crepidam. Should I with 
 Neroes courtiers have wringed the neck of my dis- 
 course awry, and distorted it to a clawing dialect : I 
 
iv To the Reader. 
 
 might have well deserved the fute of Dyonisius his 
 sycophants, and have been bound to a continuall 
 ingurgitation of their spittle for drink and nourish- 
 ment. Semel insanivimus omnes, saith that poet : and 
 sure, then, their mad actions may be part of an excuse 
 for my hairbraind undertakings. And since many of 
 them received pardon of their outrages, committed on 
 regiment and order, let me sue out my pardon of those 
 more enormous affronts, I have put upon sense and 
 ingenuity. Indeed, the witty saying of a gentleman 
 was then most true : that in England we had not 
 clergie men enough, gentlemen enough, nor Jews 
 enough. Clergie men we had scarce any ; there were 
 many extended jaws, gaping as the mouth at Alders- 
 gate, and belching forth schisme, but no well or- 
 dained divines, scarce toUerated : our gentlemen were 
 Trepi^vfia rrj^ 7^9, of the same generation with frogs, toads, 
 and field mice, formed of the slime and dii't of the 
 nation ; and animated by the heat of that sun which 
 was placed in the center of Nols meridian countenance. 
 Never was boorish inhumanity so much in fashion, 
 never upstart pride more common ; and these beggars 
 
To the Reader. v 
 
 getting on horseback, shew'd the world a new way, 
 how with more speed to ride to the devill. We had 
 not Jews enough neither, for they should by all means 
 have had a tolleration ; because ten in the hundred 
 was out of fashion, and the art of cheating was not 
 sufficiently practised. These things thus considered, I 
 care not if I play the foole too ; and since they are 
 wanting, supply the place, and stile myself Engiands 
 jack pudding. I have good store of impudence (which 
 I procured of the magazine which Jone had, when she 
 was so rehgiously bashfull, as to ask the dutches of 
 Albemarle, how her childrens portions which old Noll 
 left them should be raised?) And I care not, for 
 neither shall you put me out of countenance with all 
 your dislikes, and comments, and paraphrases, &c. ; 
 for if you do not approve, cast your eyes off to what 
 your humour fancies more accurately. And for pride, 
 let me alone to scorn all your sayings ; Pride, by name 
 and nature too, was my sedulous tutor. And as for 
 the foolery I spoke off, I have a sufficient example in 
 Harry the nineth, S. Eichard the fourth ; for where as 
 we use alwayes to say Tom-fool, and Tom-as ; they 
 
•vi To the Reader. 
 
 have lately petitioned his majestic, that reverent title 
 may be shown by their coats, and that they for ever 
 may be accounted the patrons and magnificent cham- 
 pions of that ridiculous and thrice merry sect and asso- 
 ciation. Thus, gentle reader, being accoutred, I fear 
 not your batteries. But I doubt, should this pamphlet 
 meet with the ghost of St. Harrison, it would grow 
 pale with amazement, and be quite out of countenance. 
 And truely now I speak of him, they say Peters up- 
 braids him extreamly, because being alive, he con- 
 demned all civil judicatures, now being dead, he coun- 
 tenances the whole bench, and out faces the whole 
 tribe of lawyers ; and alwayes stayes last in the Hall. 
 Harrison affirms the contrary, and sayes its out of 
 zeale to the good old cause his quondam strumpet 
 (with whom he so often committed fornication) for 
 since he cannot speake to them in contempt, nor bite 
 them in revenge, he's zealously resolved to shew his 
 teeth and grin at them, if by any means he may 
 affrio-ht them. And truly as they did not well accord 
 livino-, so now, the living and the dead fall out and law 
 it accordingly. Titchburn, that namesake of Tibouru, 
 
To the Reader. vii 
 
 which as there's but two letters difference ; so there's 
 scarce two steps between him and the fate of being a 
 knight of the three comer'd cap : this cathern jaw'd 
 elfe, pines at the great disparity between Hugh Peters 
 beard and his ; and hath sued him in hels chancery for 
 his legacy ; he should have sent him fi'om Charing 
 Crosse, \\z., his beard. Ehadamanthus (that is, Brad- 
 shaw), is the umpire in the nicety, and Hugh pleades 
 he hath drunk Lethe and forgot it. Whereupon the 
 president dismist them with counceU first for the 
 plaintifi", sent to him by Gaffar Lenthall and Oliver St. 
 Johns, the two letter-carriers between the quandam 
 halter-man and him, viz. I ^vill and require thee, 
 thou faint-hearted dildo, to rest satisfied till thy turn 
 comes, and thy exaltation is at hand ; and then by 
 vertue of the mists of Thamesis and its uncteous va- 
 pours thou shalt fructify in the jaw to so great a pleni- 
 tude, that by Lammas it may be mowen, and sold to 
 the plasterers to binde their mortar. To Hugh thus he 
 thundred, Oh thou impe of ignorance and weesell of 
 wit, boast not thy self of thy bristled tm^npikes, lay 
 but thy hand upon thy crown, and thou shalt feele the 
 
viii To the Reader. 
 
 effects of the butchers wife : boast not therefore least 
 thy jaws be singed. 
 
 There was lately (courteous reader) a great and 
 solemn meeting of the three grand rebbels of this na- 
 tion ; how their bodies were animated and enhvened 
 judge you : but they all met, and afterwards in a 
 solemn manner laid their heads together, from whence 
 some dangerous, very dangerous plot and disaster may 
 be expected. I shall treat of them in their order : the 
 first that appeared was one who in his traiterous 
 prosperity would have scared the devil, and have \'yed 
 fires with hell it self with his complexion ; but now 
 appearing offended not the eye so much as the nose, 
 and by stench and noisome vapours proclaimed a state, 
 and the supremacy of a Noli me tangere, I pray you 
 stand off. Thus doe troublesome and obnoxious per- 
 sons equally disturbe in all dispensations alive. None 
 but those bastard eagles, whose hardy and unrelenting 
 opticks could gaze on, and rejoycc over the hideously 
 murdered corps of a gracious and thiice blessed prince : 
 none of such birds of prey were able to withstand the 
 confounding rayes and sulphurus beams of liis ominall 
 
To the Reader. ix 
 
 countenance, which affrighted all loyall and natural 
 eyes, as if they had been plannet-struck : dead. None 
 but collegiates in the same infernall residence, were 
 able to breath in that fatall aii'e which he had cor- 
 rupted : those excepted, whose extasied souls ravished 
 with joy of his condigne punishment, by excesse of 
 exalted spirits did themselves injuries, rather then omit 
 the sight of so perfidious a monster. So that alive, he 
 offended the eyes with his nose ; dead, he afflicted the 
 nose for the eyes curiosity. The second was a limbe 
 of the same feind, his son in law, a man as bad as him- 
 self in desires, though the great devil kept his equall 
 under, one that lost his life, because he never found 
 the true ^use of it ; a man of approved mettle and 
 mischief, and for his perpetual infamy, one of Nols 
 nymphs. The third a piece of lack latine, a lawyer 
 who experimentally knew a tenure in capite by grand 
 serjeanty near Paddington. A man of learning, and a 
 second Dr. Faustus, though he rendred all but himself 
 infehces most miserable : a president to follow whose 
 example did necessarily include perdition : a president 
 whose brazen front feared not impiously to condemn 
 
X To the Reader. 
 
 liis sovereign and martyr his king. And to summe up 
 all, one that made rehgion a cloake to shrow'd all vil- 
 lanies and conceale them. The first, had his gifts been 
 graces, might have attained the honor of an Albemarle, 
 and eternized his name with honourable titles, more 
 glorious than infamous : and the rest of his helhounds, 
 had not they hunted counter and confusedly, might 
 have catcht the haii-e of order, and obtained the game 
 of discipline, and then would the world have shouted, 
 and ecchoed forth their praises and commendations. 
 These had theii- grand meeting at a convenient place, 
 convenient for its figure, each man his corner ; conve- 
 nient for its scituation in a by and mischievous place ; 
 convenient for its use, a place befitting their deserts, 
 and suiting their treason. But being scared somewhat, 
 they resolved to lay their joult-heads together, and the 
 place of meeting w^as under a dust basket, where being 
 sometliing stounded at the treatment, sued an exalta- 
 tion. These three me thinks are the morrall of Cer- 
 berus ; and were indeed the hellish porters too let in ' 
 confusion into the land ; and I beheve have the sop of 
 reward liy this time abundantly bestoxAcd ujion them. 
 
To the Reader. xi 
 
 Something may be said of them as of Maximus ; they 
 were valiant and victorious, but tyrannicall usurpa- 
 tion and murderous regicidation spoiled the markets 
 of their swelling honour, and poisoned their names 
 with the guilt of perjury. Then ApoUonius Thianaeus 
 his experiment, that he in his travels observed, was 
 abundantly verified, for the proud then did command 
 the humble, the quarrellous the quiet, the tyrant the 
 just : and the greatest thieves and most detestable 
 murderous hang the innocent. It was asked one what 
 exploits he had done in the Low Countries ? 0, quoth 
 he, I cut of a Spanyards legs. Eeply being made, it had 
 been something if he had cut off his head : Oh, saith 
 he, you must consider the head was off before. But 
 these impious scoundrels first made a decollation, and 
 deprived us of the blessed head of our body poHtick, 
 and afterwards cut off the legs too, and altogether left 
 it a mishapen trunk, exanimate and deformed. But 
 thus much for my apology, for some of my first es- 
 sayes ; if a Hide Park lady chance to be offended with 
 any thing, she may think concerns her honour ; all I 
 can say to such monsters, who when nature hath given 
 
xii To the Reader. 
 
 them but one spot, affects an hundred, and set the 
 fashion of their secrets in their faces without blushing : 
 all that I shall say to them, is what one said of scan- 
 dals. If I do not deserve, saith he, what is thrown 
 upon me, my life will give them the lye : if I do, its 
 my duety to be patient and amend : if, ladyes, your 
 vertuous modesty vyes splendour with your faces, and 
 ingenuity be as prevalent as beauty, then I rejoyce to 
 finde an exception from the general rule, and to be 
 proved a lyar ; but if rampish lust and damnable 
 pride, in marring what God made, and making your 
 selves party per pale blackmores in part, in part Eng- 
 lish : if the insatiable appetite must have the conveni- 
 ency of gallants, and new sorts of impieties are found 
 out for titillation and sodomy, pardon me then if I 
 g-uesse at your hves, and tell your faults. As for those 
 covetous misers, and scraping hags, whose fate it is to 
 grovell in minerals, till the damp of death saves the 
 hangman a labor : all I shall accost them with, is what 
 naturalists observe of these countries where gold-mines 
 are plentifull ; the ground is alwaies barren and un- 
 fruitfull. So say I to you, Quid non mortalia pectora 
 
To the Reader. xiii 
 
 cogit f Auri sacra fmnos. This greedy worm of much 
 desire will seduce thee to most impieous enormities, 
 and render thy soule unfruitfull of the least goodness. 
 But I shall make the porch bigger then the house if I 
 proceed any further ; I shall therefore desire you to 
 look upon these fooleries, as the diversions of a solitary 
 life, and as the refreshments of a young brain in these 
 sad dayes, when government lay a bleeding, and loyalty 
 was accounted frency. And let the carping reader 
 mend what he sees amiss in these puerriU exercises, 
 and he that cannot better it, let him learn to hold his 
 peace : if any like it, I am content ; if no body are 
 pleased, I am still content, and will be in spight of the 
 most critical! judgements ; and so adieu. 
 
^*K- Tr»v -T^r ^tr -fA^ ^*»- T*r ^*»- r*»- -^^.r■ ^^r ^*i>- -Ttfr if j»- -^^yr ^^ir ^,ir ^j^r ^*r ^*r t»t- t*»- ^*r ^*»- ^*i<- T*»- T*r 
 ^*kL jrii. ^yit ji^k. i*l«- -i'*'l<- ^vit 4*i<- oi*k. jffk. jffk- i'ffc. i~f It ji^it -i^K- i^it ji*i<- oi*i(. ji^k- i^lt -fk- Jl*!"- -^flt ji^lt i*k; Ji'*!'- Ji^lfc 
 
 To his much esteemed friend K. W. 
 Congratulating his Characters. 
 
 /^ EASE, cease, you scrihling 'puny pamphleteeres ; 
 
 See here a more elustrious pen appeares ; 
 Poore pedling poetasters, you may scoule. 
 And weeping Polyhymne may go hoivle : 
 Your markets spoil' d, hut if you needs must use 
 Your ivonted trade, send out some hackey muse, 
 On Pegasus in post to tell about, 
 That late, a neiv home star hath heen found out : 
 Wits comits therefore, now snuff out the blaze. 
 On which the vulgar so with ivonder gaze ; 
 Send home your borroived vapours, and restore 
 That light, by which you shind so bright before. 
 This new i^ise pilanet, ivith his infant light. 
 Out shines you all, being mounted at your height. 
 then, if by the dawning ive may guesse, 
 Of the insuing day, ivhat happynesse 
 
XVI 
 
 Will thy high noon produce, thou needs must bring 
 Afruitfull summer, but so good a spring. 
 And if in p)ventiship thou thus erect, 
 Thou sure at last must be ivits architect. 
 
 L. G. A. C. C. 
 
 
iii*iiiiiilii|||iiiiiiliiili 
 
 To the Ladies. 
 
 Q HORT hand and characters in sense agree, 
 ^ Then ivhat care I (sweet ladies) if you see 
 Your selves epitomizd f You'd hlush Fme sure 
 Shoidd I tell all, and not the light endure. 
 Ci])hers are characters, and you, I know. 
 Do love to have your I turn'd to an 0. 
 And think it no unhappy cipher ivhen. 
 Circles and figures are made out hy men ; 
 And say it makes a summe, because your I 
 Was set before the Os supremacy. 
 Say not that 'cause of shortness I do err. 
 Since your decypherd in a character. 
 You ladies, long and large I knoiv do fancy. 
 But not reproofs ; but such things as did Nanse 
 Praise in Hide-Parke and wish for, when she see 
 The fifth leg of a stone-horse Tamp>ant f be; 
 Thei^efore to you IVe scarce direct my stuff, 
 You brevity despise and hate reproof. 
 
 K. W. 
 

 ^.lt4,lA.?..u?.-?,?,l?.'?i.'?.'?.,?,A,?,.'?,?,,t,t..t..?..lt,.'?.,t,.t..t,,'r'.,v v.t f;?. f. .?,.'?..?.. tt-f 
 
 CHARACTERS. 
 
 COURTIER is one of Apuleius's golden 
 ^L asses, whose fine cloths hang about his body 
 ^ as the painted cloth before the men that 
 act a puppet play ; only to abscond, and 
 vail his simplicity from the eyes of the vulgar, and to 
 put a seeming shew of generosity in his garments and 
 habiliment : though in truth and verity he's but a 
 meer gew-gaw. He is one of ^sops fable verified ; 
 proud, prick-eard, fillies, masqued in the gorgeous and 
 majestick attire of an heroical lyon ; for though he 
 bridles it, and looks aloft on those he calls the inferior 
 {i. e., those that have not as fantasticall an attire as 
 himself), yet he himself, infra, beneath or rather within 
 his gay antimasq : (I mean in his intellectuals and 
 internal accomplishments), is as pittifull a piece of mor- 
 tality, if he once comes to the exercise of the minde, as 
 that lazie tinker who (is reported to have) layed down 
 
 his wallet to ! But lets trace him a little, and 
 
 follow him from his forme or nest. The first step he 
 takes is, it may be, to the university, whether his good 
 old syre sends him, to store himself with solid and 
 substantial! erudition, though he only prankes up his 
 fancy with the swelling title (of fellow-commoner) 
 
20 Characters. 
 
 because the first aspect of his velvet is a cogent argu- 
 ment to obtain freeness of accesse to his iandresse or 
 butlers daughter, or other town doxies. And its uj)on 
 them, and to redeem their favor, and purchase a smile 
 from them, that he sends so many St. Georges to an 
 eternal errantry never to returne to his burnt bot- 
 tometh pocked. These he reverenceth with the title of 
 faire lady, as he doth the court minions (those para- 
 mours of lust, and inveaghlers to debauchery) with his 
 now more affected and modish congratulations. His 
 tutor perhaps takes paines with him in his logick, but 
 he neither can nor will understand any term but that 
 of a non entity, because he is conscious to himself he's 
 no schollar. A thought of smagletius terrifies and 
 affrights him as much as compossihilitas and incom- 
 possibilitas did noble Eandolphs simplicius; perhaps if 
 he be somewhat of Balams temper, that would be ac- 
 counted a good conjurer, but wo'nt take pains, then he 
 steeps and souseth his memory with a few hard words 
 and broken sentences, and thereby gets and obtains his 
 end, viz., the reputation of a good schollar amongst his 
 fellows : that do as much fear the rattlinij discord of 
 such harsh sounding, noddle puzling sequepedalian 
 words, as ever that white-liver'd monarch did thunder, 
 or as the skittering of a cadent brickbat. Here also he 
 learns to buss his hand, make a leg, pluck off the hat, 
 and to go aloof off, of the fashion ; to be impudent, 
 court a strumpet metliodically, and that without the 
 
Characters. 21 
 
 former ruine of his buttons and bandstrings, to be 
 drunk, sing and roare out bawdy catches, and then by 
 this time, he's fit for Grayes Inn, or some other inns of 
 court. 
 
 Now his father sends for him home, thinking his son 
 to be a good proficient, when he's in the same form 
 with that storied lack latting that invented the upstart 
 Latine of Stonwn honiim croivpeckaweedimi. Well, 
 after he hath made his fathers man drunk, and the rest 
 of the company merry, he obeys his fathers injunc- 
 tions, and up rides he to London the next term to be 
 initiated at the inns of court and throw away five 
 pounds. And now he begins to get a step higher. 
 
 Here he meets with some of his quondam acquaint- 
 ance, and then march they, and enter him in a bawdy- 
 house, where after he hath been weU squeezed in his 
 pockets by the Hectors, he begins to learn some policy 
 in wickednesse : he mindes nothing lesse than Lit- 
 tleton, and can show no tenure of his wit, but that he 
 hath it a fee-simple. He thinks it a mode to come 
 home late drunk, and so to quarrel and gets his pate 
 broken ; and by that means he knows what it is to 
 hold in capite. He gets the French cranckums, and 
 so knows what it is to have a tenure in taile. He 
 games himself into debt, and rants himself into pawn- 
 ings, and by an arrest and forfeiture, knows the nature 
 of petty Serjeants and a mortgage. Thus he runs divi- 
 sions upon Sr. Edward Cook, by experimental annota- 
 
22 Characters. 
 
 tions. This long since he did begins, Patrios inqui- 
 rere in annos, thinking in his heart it is a sin for any 
 father to hve after his eldest son is twenty one, and 
 now it may be by this time, the old man takes an 
 occasion to march off and depart. And then my gen- 
 tleman gets him a wife ijrocreandi causa, and comes 
 up to London, and turns courtier, or as it commonly 
 happens, turns no better then stallion for other mens 
 ladies, as other men do for his. Now his lust is at the 
 height, and his pride hath its ne plus ultra. His onely 
 work is to set the tailor on work ; for his allwayes a 
 translating his suits, and loves to show himself sin- 
 gular in his fancies. He adores his minnions trophies 
 or rum J) knots more than God, and fears the want of 
 erection and "SAarm blood more then the devill, and that 
 makes him so duellize and quarrell for the one, and 
 take such provocative in censitive medicines for the 
 other. In the winter cards, dice, balls and venery, are 
 his religion and recreation ; but in all gaming, he 
 thinks he's bound to loose if his pursse plays against 
 him. In the spring, my lady and her leaper hurry to 
 Hide-park, and then my ruffling gallant turns coach- 
 man, and hurries her to the lodge. Spring-gardens and 
 JMulbury-gardens, and there they frolick it a little, and 
 so to prick-penny. And now he is at the height of 
 his atchievements, and if he can but gain the art of 
 flattering, or colloguing, he thinks himself the best man 
 in Clii-istendome. After all his wilde oats are well 
 
Characters. 23 
 
 sown, and his wife hath well loaded him with beams, 
 he begins to grow a little more serious, and then his 
 aimes may be towards state affairs, and his designes 
 are to insinuate into such a place of dignity as he may 
 be called a statesman, but you'ld guesse him a con- 
 ceited one. 
 
 A conceited Statesman. 
 
 A CONCEITED statesman is one that thinks more 
 of himself than others dare ; and the higher he 
 thinks to soare in the opinion of the multitude, the 
 more he unvailes his own imbecility, and renders him- 
 self pellucid ; his state maximes are as few as his 
 designes, and they come just to nothing ; for all his 
 aym is to make a show in the world, and so he doth, 
 though it is but a foolish one. When he sits in con- 
 sultation, he knows not how to drive away the time, 
 but by nodding, and by his sleep makes it manifest, he 
 is silently consulting with his pillow, if he chances to 
 put in a word by the by ; for he speaks in a paren- 
 thesis, he doth it with a great deale of deliberation, so 
 to make men imagine the matter to be weighty and of 
 importance ; when, alasse ! it is onely to pick out a 
 little sense out of his nonsensicall imaginations. So 
 that it may be said of all his productions, 
 
 Partuiiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus inus. 
 
24 Characters. 
 
 For like that cardinals stately sumpture-liorses lad- 
 ing, though he may promise some policy in his feigned 
 aspect, yet when by chance he overthrows the burden 
 of his thoughts by an oration (which is an offence to 
 him), he discovers the old shoes and empty marribones 
 of liis barren pericranium. Other mens speeches and 
 motions he never minds ; for his watch, his gold fringed 
 gloves and sowre faces, take up all the time. 
 
 If he hath any traffic^ue or dealing with his su- 
 pcriours, his conceited coxcomb vents its own sim- 
 plicity without interrogation, for by his affected studi- 
 ousness to seem grave and prudent, he renders his 
 unpollislit and incult intellect more conspicuous. If 
 his discourse be with an equal, then, by thinking him- 
 self the best man in the company, he shows he hath 
 quite forgot, or never read, the first great consideration 
 of a statesman (viz., cognoscere seipsum), for he whose 
 aspiring mind will not condiscend to the thoughts of 
 its own state, will never have brains enough to con- 
 sider of any thing that is or may be apparently good 
 for a state or kingdome. If his inferiours arc with 
 him, he vents other mens motions for his own, and 
 some of his own too if he can remember them ; and 
 never concludes with out a self applause, \\z., was it 
 not a good motion ? Now he bewrays his ignorance in 
 policy, by declaring state-councels to the ^^ilgar, whose 
 conceits of politique notions are as crude and raw 
 as his own. And though he may think himself fit 
 
Characters. 25 
 
 to be a privy counseller, yet for my part I think liim 
 a fitter man to be councellor in a privy. If lie rides 
 down into the country, he makes the silly swain es 
 there adore him as a god, whom indeed they may 
 esteem beneath a man ; and when death comes, all 
 that he leaves behinde him signifies but thus much ; 
 viz., a cypher. 
 
 A meere Polititian 
 
 IS one whom, if one should trace from the beginning, 
 we might finde him a man of good parts, though 
 of low condition ; one of a sharp wit, contriving head 
 piece, resolute minde, strong body and constitution, 
 though the first is blunted for lack of exercise, the 
 second scanted for lack of matter, the third and fourth 
 augmented by want and experience : some of these 
 have been so ingenious as to hammer alls into rapiers, 
 lasts into lists, neats leather into buff'-coats, and them- 
 selves out of a narrow stall into a spacious field in the 
 head of an army. Others, by continual use of brasse, 
 have so brazed their faces and steeled their consciences, 
 that they shame not to use pole axes in lieu of ham- 
 mers ; and to make the tinkers character true indeed, 
 viz., under a pretence of mending the holes and cre- 
 vices of a decayed state, have rended and cloven in 
 sunder a whole republique. Others, by the vertue of 
 
 E 
 
26 Characters. 
 
 malt, have acquired such an excellent faculty, that 
 they can sling a state into a new de conim ; and after 
 a purging and cleansing of (as they pretend) the musty 
 cask of a kingdome, bung it up mth the salt and clay 
 of a commonwealth and lord protector. And all or 
 any of them (by this time) have learnt the trade of 
 policies, and therefore we show their acrjuired experi- 
 mental principals. Their first principall apparent (and 
 truly that is all) (after they have winded themselves 
 up to this pitch of credit, and have got the hosanna of 
 the vulgar) is the good, the spiritual good of the repub- 
 lique ; and here they follow the example of repairers, 
 who pull down for edification. And the former good, 
 old, wholesome, rites and customes, not oncly of a 
 nation in generall, but also of all reformed churches, 
 according to the Apostolical Faith, must be brought 
 under the notion of superstition and idolatry. Now 
 these politique moles begin to cast up the solid mold 
 of religion into loose and discontinued heaps of consci- 
 entius Hberty ; that so this, like one of the devils 
 moustraps, may allure the pillidging mice of a state to 
 complyance in mckednesse. 
 
 Now the mask of all their proceeding is reformation; 
 i. e., to reduce a nation into their power, unto their 
 bow. The Bible is the staudard of their actions, till 
 politique necessity forces their feigned reality to a 
 disobedience. 
 
 A second principall is flattery and colloguing with 
 
Characters. 27 
 
 all parties ; promising mountains, but performing 
 nought but such mole-hill actions as breed and produce 
 nothing but a multitude of pissants and vermins of his 
 own constitution. Now, by his over much seeming 
 affability, he shews his servill and ignoble nature : 
 which will do any thing to procure it self a sound of 
 fame, which will availe him little ; but to be an indi- 
 cium of his own vacuity and emptiness of all sollidity ; 
 and his repliatnesse of insippid aierial and light whim- 
 sies. Promised preferment is all his reward to them 
 perhaps, who deserve better than himself. 
 
 But his thiixl principal!, is to lay by (either by pick- 
 ing a quarrell with, or devising plots against) such as 
 have been his coadjutors to this commetique serenity. 
 And now he begins to play the devill on earth, who if 
 he mends not his manners, may work with the devill 
 in hell. By fasting, he ripens his wits to contrive 
 plots ; and when this is done, he draws in the rich and 
 wealthy of the nation, by his promoters, and thinks 
 now to make his sequestration and forfeiture lawfuU in 
 the eyes of the vulgar. He gives thanks for his good 
 success in these tyrannical conceipts, under jDretence of 
 gratitude, for a deliverance : and so it is ; for by this 
 means, viz. by cheating and trappanning others of their 
 estates, he delivers his children and kinsmen from 
 their naturall slavery and wonted beggery. Unum jyro 
 multis dabitur caput, is another rule and his best to, if 
 he knew how to use it as he should, but that is in- 
 
28 Characters. 
 
 ilictcd upon the innocent : and those whose crimes arc 
 as red as his nose (for that cannot but reflect the 
 colour of that bloud he hath spilt) go not only scot- 
 free, but rewarded also and advanced. 
 
 He now is a pure free-man, only he is a little over- 
 swayed with the voluminous bulkc of that army, 
 wdiose idle lives hate the mention of a revertion to 
 their wonted diaiggery. These he maintains, not with 
 his purse, but by his wits ; and by his taxes lays him- 
 self liable to be taxed of tyramiy, and at the end levies 
 his own ruine. 
 
 He never makes conscience of any former protesta- 
 tions, but seing his body decayed, thinks to establish 
 other mens labours on his own progeny, and just 
 before he hath done councelling his wilde son, he is 
 blown away with a blast, and the snufi" of his life will 
 stink this twelve months. 
 
 This is the head generall polititian ; private ones 
 differ only in degrees. To undermind competitors for 
 the same place is one designe, and thus they do by 
 dawbing over their stinking conditions to their supe- 
 riours with the specious shew of humility and devo- 
 tion : and by tlu'eatning or alluring their inferiors into 
 a compliance (by their acclamations) to thcii- designs 
 having once got his head into the rising clymatc never 
 leaves winding his muddy head-piece, to an asjDiring 
 higher, till he it may be grows shorter by the head, 
 and takes the recompence of his knavery on a block. 
 
Characters. 29 
 
 And there wel leave him, least further anatomizing his 
 political! body, we discharge such a stench of iniquity 
 as may new seal an honest and well meaning stomack. 
 
 A n Upstart Pragmaticall. 
 
 A Parliament man is one who hath turn'd his leather 
 breeks into the new fashion ; and because he 
 hath squeesed an estate out of the mines of superiors, 
 and nourished his lean carcase by the blood of his 
 betters, thinks he is a man sufficient to sit at the 
 starne of a commonwealth, but scarce knows which 
 way to steare, only by his hands those naturall in- 
 formers ; and its well to, if he knows his right hand 
 from his left. His ambition to be great makes his 
 simple noddle shew its sottishnesse in pubHque, whereas 
 if the squire and no gentleman, would have contented 
 himself with a justice of peaceship and good house- 
 keeping, he might have been made (by the help of a 
 good clarke) passable in the eye of the country. 
 
 He is so farr from that good Athenians temper, who 
 rejoyced there were many that deserved preferment 
 better then himself, that he thinks himself the only 
 man for the place, and all others in comparison of him 
 are but like a pismire to an elephant. You shall finde 
 him speaking the neighbouring to\^Tis from their voices 
 in aliected course complements, just raked from the 
 
30 Characters. 
 
 plow tailc and bedaubed with new terms and eloquent 
 (as he accounts them) phrases, and on the election day 
 in coms Tobit and his dogs following him ; for I know 
 none but animals will vote for one whose wit cannot 
 be compared to some iiifeetilcs. He much assimulates 
 the Sarazens head witliout Newgate, when his brawny 
 bum is set upon his mens shoulders ; his face being 
 swelled with the immagination of a chaire of state ; he 
 carries an aspect like a town bull, or a full necked 
 presbyter. Now if these fools should chance to let the 
 asse paramount salute his mother earth with his vener- 
 able buttocks, it may well be said, like will to like, as 
 the devill to the coUiar. 
 
 The greatest opposition to this his designe, is the 
 fast he must keep at Westminster ; for there he fears an 
 insurrection in his belly, and dare not stuffe his greasy 
 pokets with flotten cheese, for fear of the hogoe, and 
 his wonted enemy the rats. The first day, the man is 
 so amazed at the new convention, and so unskilfull in 
 the art of policy, that he takes a resolution to do no 
 good, because he cannot speak sence ; and you may 
 trust him, he hath not wit enouoh to do harme. 
 
 But after the newnesse of the thing grows common, 
 and his ignorant impudence begins to take place, then 
 who so forward as master Upstart ; for he cannot tell 
 what though he aimes at nothing but contradiction, 
 and will hammer out a negative, though he knows not 
 the meaniuix of an atlirmative. He's so far from beino- 
 
Characters. 31 
 
 sensible of a scofe, tliat he thinks them commenda- 
 tions, and if any thing be done, straight he did it. He 
 may be compared to false ware, which your almost 
 bankrupt tradesmen use in their shops (rags hansomly 
 tied up as their other) to make a shew, but are never 
 used ; so he takes up the roome of those whose good 
 parts and education give them a lawfuU claime to the 
 place. If he makes a speech it is a 12. moneths study, 
 and if his mother went three quarters with him, he 
 may justly give his barren scull a fourth to conceive 
 and produce in : and its almost as long in speaking as 
 in preparing ; first ushered in with hems and wry 
 faces ; and farr more dangerous, for in making it, he 
 only threatned the mine of one blockhead in speaking 
 of his buttons, beard, bandstrings, and handkercheifs, 
 a pittiful disjoyn'd peice of tautologie, when all is done, 
 whose incongruous matter can only unveile the mis- 
 carriages of a common nature by his own condition, 
 but knows no more how to prescribe a likely remedy, 
 then a childe or schoole boy : it may be and sure it is, 
 he doth think himself a rare prater, and so he might 
 have been accounted amongst the popet-players for his 
 widned throat, streacht with his former angry expostu- 
 lation with byard, and dobbing have extended the 
 noise of his organes even to the roaring gammut of a 
 martiall ; under pretence of religion, he sees his prag- 
 matical pate a working and reforming in the country. 
 Now all that will not worship the beast must downe 
 
32 Characters. 
 
 even to the ground. Those that comply with his hu- 
 mours, and none else shal thrive under his sphere ; and 
 they are so many, that not only he of them but the 
 house of him, and such others, lacks purging. He 
 fears this more then hell, and would pine to death if 
 he thought he should be outvoted the next election ; if 
 he dies or is cast out, there is an end of him. 
 
 A Justice of Peace 
 
 IS one for the most part whose life runs antipodes to 
 his name, and the name I believe was first founded 
 upon an anteparistasis, for he hath not wit enough to 
 do justice, and the clamours of his querulous neigh- 
 bours will not let him live in peace and quietnesse. 
 Lets take a view of him in his domestique affairs. 
 You shall have his puney clarke (who because he 
 swears others, thinks he may curse and He by authority) 
 ready to call him up to deside a two peny controversy, 
 before he hath done his wife justice, wliich will make 
 her break his peace if not his coxcombe. When he 
 hath done with her, down he comes and hears two 
 fools prate, and sends them with a few justices law 
 notions, but no lawfull realities of justice. Hee's never 
 so taken, and in his kingdom, as when the swearer or 
 drunkard comes before him, then the informer must 
 sweare, through an inch board at least, nnd then the 
 
Characters. 33 
 
 sots must either pay their money which he gapes at 
 (for he 'le be sure to threaten an unhiwfull space of 
 time to pound them in) and then one groat goes to the 
 informer, one to the poor ; he keeps the other eight 
 pence for his pains, and so robs the poor, who fears his 
 worships frowns, and reverence him outwardly, but 
 curse him after. He is never so hard matcht as when 
 he meets with an understanding yeoman and an im- 
 pudent whore : the one |)nts him down by his reason 
 and experience in the law, the other by her impudence 
 and eloquent bawdry. To her his wife listens ; and 
 may be will entreat for her fellow wanton, knowing 
 how hard a thing it is to live honestly. At the quarter 
 sessions out rides his worship and his maker (for it is 
 the clarke makes the justice), where meeting with his 
 fellow simplicians, they License the most lycentious out 
 of policy of a future line, and when alls done, like poor 
 schollers, whose moneys falls short, go a begging to 
 their clarks, whose onely wit is in their fingers ends 
 for a dinner, and ride home just asses as they came. 
 No wonder the judges are so carefull in their charges 
 on the bench to inform e the justices of their duty ; 
 when few of them understand the law any better then 
 parrats, I, or ever knew the meaning of a prsemuniry, 
 or other law term. In a mittimus lyes their chiefest 
 skill ; and in a warrant they skill in the first two ways. 
 First, by being subtill to finde out and entrap rogues, 
 and this they do by their former practices ; for what so 
 
 F 
 
34 Characters. 
 
 fit to unkcnncll a fox as the tarier which is or liath 
 been a part of him ? Secondly, by being strict in the 
 thing made, they will be sure to put in mthout baile 
 or mainprise. The warrants they make and mittimus 
 are repleat wdth many absurdities, all of kin to Sir 
 Thomas Martin, and all big with the same drollerj^s. 
 But I will leave him and his clarke (for they always go 
 together, the justice being a cypher without him) to 
 the croude and rabble, least speaking to much, we 
 undo and defame that credit he never had. 
 
 A High Constable 
 
 IS a gentleman by his place, though not l)y his edu- 
 cation and birth, for tliis his preferment hatli 
 metamorphosed the antient titles of his progeneters, 
 viz. gaffer, and goodman, into master, and now he is 
 vampt a gentleman, and got a butten hole higher then 
 his forefathers ; his first step of honour was to be the 
 head jury man of the great inquests, but in all his pro- 
 ceedings it's a qiKjery whether he understands the 
 title. But wliats the reason of this his first step, why "? 
 Because he hath squeezed a modicum out of the bowels 
 of his mother earth, which hath been a su2:)plicate to 
 his education, to teach his callous, and clumsy paw, 
 the ill favoured demeanure of his penne to so great a 
 proficiency, that he doth not now, as formerly, set his 
 
Characters. 3j 
 
 marke, viz. a paire of galloes, or some such scawle, but 
 hath arrived to the mode of setting down his bald 
 name in his most mishapen illegable characters. 
 
 Now he begins to give up his verdict confidently 
 and ignorantly, and because his dirty face is not ca- 
 pable of a blush, except by the reflection of the judges 
 robes, he presumes to set himself in the place of the 
 company, and to be their mouth to the bench, who if 
 he were rightly examined, would be found to be a 
 meere mouth, ^. e. a simplition. AVhen the freeholder 
 comes to be chosen high constable, his excellency lies 
 in his account he can give of all the towns and parishes 
 in his wapentacke, and the under officers thereof (as 
 he calls them) the corporation towns of the shire and 
 their jurisdiction ; and this he doth to, after the 
 manner of that pitifuU fresh water captaine, who was 
 to instruct his followers (for I cannot call them nor 
 him souldiers that were so raw in millitary discipline) 
 in warlike postures, and could not by reason of his in- 
 experience remember them : but at each command 
 looks on the paper pin'd on his skirt, and if his eye 
 chance to see double, he commands them to face about 
 to the wine miU. 
 
 So this shread of an officers members, I shoidd had 
 said memory, being somewhat short, he will be sure to 
 keep up his old grandsires custome : viz, long and 
 large skirts, that so his skeld dole may make recom- 
 pence to his memory for his short dimensions. 
 
36 Characters. 
 
 His place makes him come to cliurcli and lieare, but 
 a hundred to one his matted noddle is so stuft with 
 the windy conceit of his mastership, that there's no 
 room for any thing but adoration. Now his cuffs hang 
 about his clumsy fists like dishclouts, made they are 
 out of the ruines of his wifes smock ; whose brawny 
 bumm and course hide will soon freet out a piece of 
 course lockrum. His cloak hangs on his shoulders 
 much like a fidlers, only its somewhat fresher, and he 
 fears to touch the sides on't, or give it a wispe under 
 his arme, for fear his dirty clutch should grease it, and 
 his mfe scold at him for wrinkling his pontificalibus ; 
 but I fear a presentation next quarter sessions, there- 
 fore, good Mr. Gaffer, adieu. 
 
 A Juryman Rusiick 
 
 THINKS his unhewen noddle able to give a rationall 
 account of his charge, and place at the sizes of 
 hisen prizes, as he call them, but alas ! poor fellow, the 
 latitude of his prickears show the whole world that 
 they have suckt up his l)rains ; and that his empty 
 noddle is full of nought but conceit and self applause. 
 Did you but see him gape at the judge with his 
 lockerum jaws, \\\\(i\\ he examines in the tryal, and 
 gives his opinion, you would almost sweare either the 
 sot hears with his mouth, or else the elve being a faint 
 
Characters, 37 
 
 hearted piipy sounds at the conceit he hath the judges 
 red robes are only the blood of some condemned 
 wretch. When he's retired to his considering plat, how 
 many frivolous nonsensical queris doth he make, and 
 when he brings in his verdict, he will be sure, either 
 becaus he would be thought a noble person, and so fit 
 for the place ; or else a prudent man, and so fit to be 
 regarded, he gives a sum of the costs and charges his 
 and their pitifuU pates and indigent pericranium's 
 think equitable by nobles, or marks ; not by pounds, 
 because the threadbare scrub never saw at one time (of 
 liis own) twenty shill. If he hath obtained to so high 
 a measure of book learnednes (as he calls it) as to 
 WTite, then he's the best of the shire, and his leaden 
 pate serves to be the byasse of all his wooden headed 
 roundnodled associates, if his zeale pretended to reli- 
 gion, then after his verdict (as he calls it) he takes 
 upon him to informe the just-asses of the shire, of ill 
 licensed alehouses and other misdemenours, and thinks 
 thereby to have the credit to be accounted a man 
 respecting the republick good. But sizes being over, 
 hee's sure to have a parting blow ; I mean, a hogshead 
 of beer in his own asses noddle ; and then he gallops a 
 titering pace home, and the next day falls to repenting 
 for this (as he calls it) sin of infirmity. 
 
 Now he's turned a diurnal in folio, and as that doth, 
 he informs his neighbours of an abundance of lyes ; 
 which they are bound to believe, because he's one of 
 
38 Characters. 
 
 tlie twelve, and the twelfth w^ise man spoke it. Well, 
 after he's prety well empty of all his stories, then to 
 the plow again and his daily labour ; and now he 
 neither minds God nor the devill, only his mother 
 earth ; and he viper-like makes no conscience of 
 piersing and penitrating his mothers bowels ; but I 
 fear my country men will be angry with me ; but my 
 best hope is that they cannot read, and then I hope I 
 shall be free from their homespun execrations. How- 
 ever for a parting blow, master jury man, have a care 
 of bribes and partiallity, interest and affection ; for if 
 you do the devills work heel be sure to pay your 
 wages at your owis. sizes. 
 
 A Church- War den. 
 
 ACHUECH-WARDEN may be compared to a 
 choaky peare, which though grafted on never so 
 good a stock, yet remains as bad and ill savoured as 
 ever : so he by nature of a clownish and Nabal like 
 temper ; yet though he comes to the honour of the 
 forementioned place, to be a warden or overseer of the 
 church, yet he still retains his own naturall ignorance 
 and stupidity. Yet neighbours, I hope, you'l respect 
 Mr. church warden, for else hee'l be so farr from re- 
 pairing and mending your meeting-place, as hee'l con- 
 spire your ruine in endeavouring its downfall. Well, 
 
Characters. 39 
 
 when all comes to all, he understands his place as 
 much as his wife, and she, as much as her daughter ; 
 and fools all, much alike ; if he chance to be of such a 
 publique spirit, as to new transmography his charge ; 
 then to be sure, he sets his name up in large charac- 
 ters ; as if he thought men were so much like him, as 
 to worship and adore such a pitifull piece of mortallity. 
 But woe be to his breeks when he gives up his ac- 
 counts, which like that subtill Roman he seeks not to 
 do, rather then to do, but He leave him and his parish 
 to reckon with this cipher.. 
 
 A Baily or Serjeant. 
 
 A SERJEANT is one of the devils tinderboxes, pre- 
 pared to take and receive the fire of malice into 
 his clutches, and use it accordingly, tutch and go, touch 
 and take. Hee's made up of the mines of poor men, 
 and rioting of rich ; and all's fish that comes to his 
 net ; he's the tumbler ; the lercher of a city, corpora- 
 tion, county or shire ; the very puss-cat that watches 
 the proceedings and creepings abroad of his timerous 
 mice. Take him simply out of his authority, and he's 
 a prety piece of impudence ; a kinde of pretender to 
 some knowledge of the law, as to the practique part ; 
 and then I cannot wonder at that epitaph upon that 
 honest lawyer, viz. 
 
40 Characters. 
 
 God works wonders now and than. 
 Here lyes a lawyer an honest man. 
 
 Since their practice is much like that of the devills, 
 to go about like roaring lions seeking whom they may 
 devoure. But alasse, all his knowledge amounts no 
 farther then petty ignorance ; for he's only skild in the 
 negative part of the law, viz. you shall never go out of 
 prison except you pay me my fee 1. His principals, if 
 he deal w^ith a poor man, are to ly and sweare to lye, 
 makinjy him believe some strancfe disasters will befall, 
 unlesse he compound so and so, or purchase him to be 
 his friend ; when as he plays Jack of both sides, and 
 is feed l)y one side to speak in his behalf to the cre- 
 ditor, and on the other to terrify and affrighten the 
 debter ; thus he plays the hocus pocus on both sides, 
 and lauohes in his sieve too when he's at home. If he 
 deals with a rich and crafty knave, then he's at a losse ; 
 and because he cannot play the knave, he'l be sure to 
 play the fool, and humour all sides. But he excells 
 only in his politick art of cunny catching : hee's a not- 
 able man to bring about his catchpole designes, for 
 just like the devil, he deals w4th every man according 
 to his temper and inclination. 
 
 If he hath the wit to clap up a covetous man, he 
 enveagles him with the shocinghorne of a fine bargaine 
 (and this he doth l)y a proxie, for fear of distrust) : 
 and takes him in the way, and carries him to make 
 the bargaine in the Counter, or prison in stead of the 
 
Characters. 41 
 
 taverne or alehouses, and then tells him he hath done 
 him a courtesie in saving his money. 
 
 If with a friend that he thinks will not mistrust him, 
 he invites him to dinner, and feeds him with a messe 
 of forfeiture, and makes the counter his drawing roome ; 
 but for all his art he's sometimes met with, and though 
 he and most of his complices are good lusty pupies, yet 
 they somtimes come short home, and that by weeping 
 crosse. As for your city kestorel, he's never so much 
 puzled as when he's hired to arrest an ins of court gen- 
 tleman. Then he ventures the infernall pit of a bogg 
 house, and the pilgrim salve of a perfumed dogs turd. 
 Its worth ones sight to see how pittifully he sneaks up 
 and down, for fear the wals should discover his lerching 
 knavery. 
 
 But if he chance to light of his pray, oh how he 
 domineers and lords it, and by how much the more he 
 stood in fear, by so much the more he takes upon him. 
 But if once he's catcht as Mosse took his mare, i. e. 
 napping. Then the mercifull gentlemen make him an 
 anabaptist, and fitting it is he should be washt and 
 made clean, who before acted Alderman Atkins. And 
 because they'd have him handsome, he shall be sure 
 have a trimming, though he look, after it, like a calfe 
 halfe lick't. But my subject begins to smell before he 
 comes to his last seasoning ; I shall only say, that the 
 whole rout on them may justly be ranked in the num- 
 ber of hell hounds, for their counter is hell, the master 
 
 G 
 
42 Characters. 
 
 of it Bolzeljub, and the petty foggers liis ministring 
 friends, to fetch him in his lively hood. 
 
 \J 
 
 A Lawyer in Common. 
 
 A COMMON lawyer hath been a piece of a scholler 
 in his time : thoiioh throuoh his continual use 
 and accustomcdnesse to break Priscians head and coin 
 new Avords, he makes no conscience of breaking oaths 
 and men, and of finding new tricks to make a good 
 cause bad, and a bad good. This his trade he learns 
 by degrees ; and from j)etty poverty proceeds to petty 
 villeny and grand knavery. Come to this money- 
 monger without a fee, and he 'le look on you (as the 
 old saying is) as the devill look't over Lincoln, with a 
 squint eye and a bent brow, just as if he was some don 
 of the nation ; but pluck but out your chink, oh ! then, 
 this melts his heart, and dissolves his tongue into com- 
 plements ; now he's your humble servant at least, and 
 he 'le be sure to make you two protestations, but per- 
 form neither, viz. to be faithfull and carefull. And 
 this appears, by his taking of fees on both sides, and so 
 playing the neuter. Thus money is the very soule, 
 the life, the nerves, sinews, muscles and arteries of a 
 lawyer ; this is ^\^ forma informans, it transforms too, 
 for he 'le do or be any thing to every body by vii'tue 
 of this enchantment : money is the lawyers loadstone, 
 
Characters. 43 
 
 and let him but come within ken of it, and hee 'le do 
 any thing rather than miss his modicum. This is one 
 of the poHtique moles of a commonwealth : and take 
 him out of this his silver element, and he presently 
 with his brother gives up the ghost and dyes, being 
 deprived of his proper nutriment. This is one of 
 Midas his consanguinity; for though he hath not his 
 fortune, yet he desires it ; and under a pretence of re- 
 ligion, accounts pewter and brasse unsanctified mettle. 
 All these mans wits lies in his fingers ends ; for writing 
 and receiving take up his whole time, except when at 
 the barr, his tongue being before hand oyled with juice 
 of Georges. 
 
 But alasse, all trades must live, and ther's an art in 
 every trade, they say : but this is a devilish one I'me 
 sure : to scrue out a fortune out of the ruines of poor 
 men, and pluck them down for self edification. I 
 wonder the good houswives don't purchase these fel- 
 lows, to spare their candles, for he's an excellent pro- 
 longer ; he'l spin a cause out to the very last end, and 
 strives how to continue a suit from generation to 
 generation. 
 
 Thus if he finds his circular motives (money, I mean) 
 fluvent. But this beginning to faile, then he begins to 
 lag and laze like a tired jade, and then it must be put 
 to arbitration, I that it must. So that money is the 
 lawyers whip and spur, and they, like rusty ill condi- 
 tioned jades, woun't go one step without it : thus in 
 
44 Ckaracttrs. 
 
 the whole course of ;i hiwyer practice money doth the 
 feat, and hath a mighty restorative faculty to loose 
 theii- tongues, supple their joynts, and to enable them 
 to say at least your businesse shall be done. These 
 mens chief employment is in term time ; and then, 
 like so many bees, they are very busie in sucking their 
 clients. They have no time to think of God nor the 
 devill then ; and observe it when you wdll, a lawyer 
 never dyes but in the long vocation ; and if death 
 comes then with a habeas corpus, he is so much at 
 leisure he cannot put in baile to the action : and to 
 speak truth, I believe the very grief they sustaine by 
 thinking of so long vacancy and detaineur, from their 
 spiritus vitalis, money, pines and macerates their 
 bodys to skelettons and make them degenerat-e, so as 
 to be but fit to be Plutos or Minos his under clerkes. 
 
 An Informer 
 
 IS one of the devils by blows, or rather one of his 
 lawfully begotten bastards, and he takes right 
 after his sire ; he play his two parts exactly, which are 
 to tempt and accuse ; if you did but see him sneak 
 and intrude into gentlemens company, you would con- 
 clude him to be some tooth-drawing quacksalver, and 
 he looks much like those brazen-faced fellows, who go 
 about to show slight of hand and feats of activity. 
 
Characters. 45 
 
 His dam was for certaiu some loose clackt bitch or 
 other ; and he is so far from being tongue tyed, that he 
 walks quite cantipodes to the precept here, see and say 
 nothing. The colloguing gull makes it a piece of his 
 trade, nay his whole occupation, to provoke and exas- 
 perate me into some hasty expressions ; and then he 
 himself, because he would be thought the states bene- 
 factour, adds to the story, and makes it at least treason 
 or sequestration ; thus he trapans men into plots, and 
 then discovers never intended designes ; and though 
 he himself be the chief and principal agent, yet he 
 must be the grand witnesse, Signior Swarer. 
 
 Thus the blinking polititions of our times, make use 
 of these stalking asses, these incroaching, dissembling 
 varlets, that thereby they may hit their marke, the 
 wigeons and wilde geece of the kingdome. But that 
 you may beware of this piece of formality, this upstart 
 shoomaker, or rather tinker, let me give you the markes 
 of the rogue, and brand his body all over, his hand 
 hath had it already. 
 
 And here I must do as men that climbe up a ladder, 
 begin at the lower end, and so at last come to the roof 
 of this thatcht noddle reprobate. 
 
 His feet are altogether unclean, he doth not devide 
 the hoofe, and therefore excommunicate his paths. 
 Yet he'le dance after every bodies pipe, and turne any 
 thing, that at last he may catch somthing. 
 
 Did you but see him dance (for you must know he 
 
46 Characters. 
 
 keeps all companies) you'ld sweare lie were some 
 weaver ; for his legs and his hands go much after the 
 same rate ; but he stincks already, his quick motion 
 and speedy vamping from place to place, to gull no- 
 vices, makes him smell hke a traveller ; the hogo of 
 the oyle of splayfoot. 
 
 But to take a long step, and stride over his ungodly 
 gut, that powdering tub of a gormandizing glutton, 
 that pantry of minc'd meat. 
 
 Let us proceed to his breast, neck, hands, and shoul- 
 ders (for I doubt hel inform if I stay too long on 
 him). His breast that is much like a haglers panyer, 
 full of rotten eggs, all to be fill'd with the empty shets 
 of foolery, and the rotten yoalks of some stinking un- 
 derminding enterprices : his neck resembles rather a 
 Jew then a Christian : and his extending his noddle, 
 and straining his crag under some eves, or in some 
 whispering company, to over-hear their discourse, hath 
 brought it to so prodigious a length. His shoulders 
 are of such a latitude, yould take him to be a porter ; 
 and if you knew him you'd swear he caried his weighty 
 news on his back, but I dare scarce handle his golls, 
 least this pitch defile me, but follow him home, and 
 their you shall see him a writing down all in dismall 
 characters. 
 
 But as for his nodle, that sanctijfied piece of timber 
 (I wonder some great man don't beg it to set it over a 
 paire of great gates), this same matted cox combe of 
 
Characters. 47 
 
 his is alwaies working, but alas, how many abortive 
 births doth it bring fourth, scarce any take, but candor 
 and clemency are in fault, not his projects : me thinks 
 this sowsing nodle would make a prety good foot- 
 ball, it is light and full of winde, shave off but the 
 coblers ends it sow'd with, and it would fly excellent 
 well. I, but what shall we do with his ears if he hath 
 any 1 for a hundred to one, if they are not at York and 
 London. Why his reverend ears would serve very well 
 for two leathern patches, to sow to each side his flapt 
 jaws, for this brother hath got too much of the gift of 
 utterance ; and we will stop the mishapen hols wid- 
 dowed of their flipflops, with pitch and rozen, least 
 there still he retaine also too much of the faculty of 
 enterance. His eys are prety full gogies, dainty rol- 
 lers ; and he can see plots ; with them see as well as 
 with his ears heare plots. Well, take this monster all 
 together, and hees a clubfooted, hamble shanck't, burst- 
 engutted, long-neck't, rattlenodled, large lugg'd eagle 
 ey'd hircocerous, a meere chimera, one of the devils 
 best boys ; but having served him an apprentiship he's 
 now set up for himself, and came out with his wares 
 the last summer cave tertio. 
 
 
48 Characters. 
 
 A Flatterer. 
 
 A FLATTERER is much of the same molde, with 
 the lefi^s and feet of Nebiicadnezere immamned 
 image ; part of iron and part of clay, just such another 
 linse-wolsee piece of states policy ; a kogan mogan 
 time-server ; he's the meere bolderdash of a common- 
 wealth. Much of the same nature with our late C'rom- 
 welist, ^dz. Carriugton, that parsons part of a historian ; 
 that stiles that a compleat history, — which is only the 
 lees of a few conceited actions, setled in the musty 
 caske of his one hogshead nodle, and squeezed into the 
 form of a pamphlet, by the favour of a printing presse. 
 
 But to knock out the head of this musty vessell, I'le 
 only say thus much, and so turne him over to the 
 females for a washing tub, viz. that he and his fellows 
 deserve the same fortune that befell that flattering- 
 judge, who so farr complying with his incestuous lord, 
 is to tell him, the king might do what he pleased, was 
 at last by the same monarch excorriated and served 
 just as the women in Cheapside do their eeles, and his 
 winding hide hanged over the place of judicature for 
 an example of partiality and flattering. 
 
 But to come to my cringing twining willow ; this 
 piece of a panyier makers osiar, how observant is he 
 in all his joynts to imitate any of the deformed pos- 
 tures of his conceited master, but when he's in any of 
 
Characters. 49 
 
 his inferiors comjDany, then the stately foole vaunts 
 and rants his authority in the court ; and you had as 
 good seek gold in the aire, or a needle, as the proverb 
 is, in a bottle of hay, as extract any courtesy out of 
 the minerall of his iron breast : but this is one of the 
 generals that is in the ranch : and he makes it his 
 whole businesse to informe his majesty of things never 
 done, and to be sure in any councill, right or wrong, 
 he'le squeze out arguments, from his spungy nodle, to 
 second his lords minde, though never so o^Dposite to 
 right reason. But there are some of a lower ranch ; 
 trencher flatterers, and these hungry villains have so 
 starved their brains, that they lack wit to do it slyly 
 and cunningly, lie leave them therefore in the great 
 mans hitching, they may serve there to scrape trenchers, 
 or by their good noses to scent out dinners, and may 
 perhaps make the man good tarriors and help him to 
 unkennel the fox. But these dons, of flattery, they 
 have by the addition of years learned their trade per- 
 fectly, got just into the nick ; and all that they say is 
 true, now in the flatterers account : they will not stick 
 to performe the most unworthy action and unbeseem- 
 ing a man, that they may gain their princes favour : I 
 could heartily wish that that flatterer of Dionysius, 
 who licking his spittle from the ground, cryed it was 
 nectar, might have been forced all his life time to eat 
 his dung and other excrements, for ambrosia and ne- 
 penthe. And I can scarce believe but our forenien- 
 
 H 
 
50 Characters. 
 
 tioned historian, had we but observed him, painted his 
 one nose, and tainted it with a sanguine and copper 
 tincture and complexion, in resemblance of his Mr. 
 firey nostrills. I wonder he did not fall off a coachbox 
 too for company, that so he might the better have 
 described his ]\Ir. patience, in enduring that accident. 
 I can resemble him and the rest of his clawing col- 
 logueing brethren to no other then a spanniel, whose 
 fawning eloquence may for a time get them some 
 favour, but their exile commonly is the epilogue, the 
 last act of a tragedy ; seldome or never any of them 
 make a commick end. I cannot but averr their motive 
 to this temper and deportment is a cowardly fear of 
 the discovery of their own unfitnesse for state affaii's, 
 joyned with a great ambition of being favorites, and 
 these two put together, makes them turne land- water 
 spaniels ; all's good that their master doth ; their either 
 for duck or partridge. But to conclude, these men are 
 the very vermine of a commonwealth ; and all of them 
 so much the more detestable, by how much the more 
 they are known to speak against their own consciences, 
 and aofainst the lio-ht of naturall reason. 
 
 Of a Teini:>orizer. 
 
 IT is storied by St. Jerome in the life of Hikarius, 
 that there was a woman that to every body ap- 
 peared a beast, to Hilarius only a woman. The same 
 
Chay^acters. 51 
 
 may be safely averred of this Sr. John Weather- 
 cock, he seems to all men a fool, a beast that changes 
 his coat upon every new spring of alteration in go- 
 vernment ; to himself only he seems a politique don : 
 the only wise man. This puppet of policy differs 
 from the foregoing spanniel of fawnery only in time 
 and degrees ; for you shall seldome read of a flatterer 
 out live his lord : it is well if he hold out so long". But 
 this politique tumbler skips and hops into diversity of 
 changing states, and makes that his rule, never to be 
 so publick for the present state, as to lye liable to be 
 called in question for it when it changes ; nor never to 
 be so private and close as to stand neuter in an altera- 
 tion ; so that he thinks himself the only Jack pudding 
 of wit, the only juggler in the art of pohcy. This 
 polypus changes his colour, and makes it identicall 
 with the present state under which he lives. If he be 
 a minister, he'le have a surplice, for the bishop a gowne, 
 with the modern presbyter a cloak, with an independ- 
 ing Peters. And if times change into popery, he'le 
 have a cule with the monk. And as the fatt monk 
 said (when abbeys were a going down, and he obtained 
 a pension), claping his hand on his belly, Modo hoc sit 
 bene, whats matter for religion, now he had provided 
 for his gut and rather then stick out, turne shrivers 
 in nuneries. 
 
 If statesmen, then, monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, 
 are all best all most for the good of a nation. But 
 
52 Characters. 
 
 whether he be this or the other, it matters not much ; 
 they agree in their principles, its good to keep in 
 a whole skin. These are the true and reall knights of 
 the post, who swear and forsAvear, and all in a breath. 
 If they live under a kingly government, then they can 
 swallow a covenant with a great deal of formality, 
 Adth the right squint and goggle of the eye. But if 
 the tyde turns, then they think themselves engaged to 
 forswear themselves, and turn their former hosanna 
 into beheading accents. Now they must dye their 
 faces w^th the vermillion blush of an engagement : 
 and sing with the poet — 
 
 Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis : 
 
 we must follow the mode of the times : as o-ood lie out 
 
 o 
 
 of the world as out of the fashion. But your seeking 
 self-denying, strict walking, hypocritical zealot, he's a 
 little tainted too with temporizing. He in the place 
 fals from the Church into the commonwealth. And 
 now he must needs have a division ; but not of 
 tongues, but of goods. Then honest Dick sounds as 
 well as the name of an ell. But when the wheele of 
 fortune hath level'd this opinion, they'le rant it in a 
 worse, if possible : and under a pretence of religion^ 
 turn their Church into a stew : and here also the 
 rabble follow. And because they cannot have a com- 
 munity of goods, they are resolved to have a com- 
 munity of women. There Jones as good as my lady ; 
 
Characters. 53 
 
 and since they can't feast on other mens goods, they 
 are resolved to enjoy their wives. I, but this is just 
 at the last cast ; their spoke is just at the ground. And 
 in comes the devill in a quaker ; and now we must be 
 all prophets, and prophetesses, and the whole rout 
 follow, but soft, swift. These extasies are onely illu- 
 sions, chaff of the devils spreading to catch foolish 
 wigeons. These sensorious irrational pieces of mortality 
 inveigh much against the pride of the times, and make 
 humility consist in home-spun attire. Their yea and 
 nay I account as bad as affected swearing, and thee 
 and thou high incivility. But to leave these non in- 
 telligent entities. Fie sume up all into the rank of 
 mills. Though some may be turned by the watery 
 scource of discontent, other by the aiery and windy 
 commotions of a brain, and speculative knowledge, and 
 others turned by the hand of strength. Swords must 
 force aw in cowards. Yet all are moved by the main 
 spring of self security and temporary preservation. 
 
 A Finnicall London Citizen. 
 
 TT is reported of Minerva, or Pallas, that she was 
 -*- begot of Jupiters brain, without the help of a 
 woman. But this compleat crafts master was begot 
 of Midas his ears, by the assistance of a finnicall 
 exchange-woman ; and you shall find in him the exact 
 
54 Characters. 
 
 qualities of both his progenitors. His bringing up and 
 education was pretty good, but his greatest perfection 
 consists in the vokibiHty of his tongue, and in the em- 
 phatical pronunciation of a AVhat lack you 1 His great 
 care in the morning is to get his brazen face into a 
 good decommi ; and he much admires a handsome 
 prentice, which, as a good sign post and bush in a 
 country town., he thinks draws in customers. He fears 
 much least he should not be trim, and therefore he 
 carries his lookinglasse in his shoes, that so when ever 
 he looks dowTi, he may correct the rumple in his band. 
 And his boy every night rul^s and scoures them for the 
 same purj)ose, least he be the next morning crowned 
 with the heels of them as a pennance for omission. 
 He's a man will scorn to take any affront, and his 
 reason he's a free man. This mans memory is very 
 good in his place, and he runs over his wares with a 
 great deale of celerity. He's no respector of persons ; 
 for, because he'le be in the mode of the times, he 
 Maddames all his customers ; and by his good words 
 cheats the poor gulls, and makes them pay for their 
 high titles. Hee's a man of a very large and spacous 
 conscience, which ajDpears by his large demands, and 
 small receipts ; he'l aske you a pounde for a commodity, 
 and take the third part. And yet by reason of his 
 neatness and trimnesse, he may be said to be a man 
 very exact in his walking. His roses, garters and cuffs 
 putting on, spend the whole morning ; and then with 
 
Characters. 55 
 
 his vineyger cloak, he marches into the shop, and to 
 the Change, with a great cleale of gravity, and thinks 
 himself a alderman apparent, at his first setting up. 
 His wife, that trim dame, is his only crosse. For he's 
 forc't to wear out a paire of shoes more in a quarter for 
 her ; for he's fane to scrub them half a houre at the 
 doore mat, for fear of fowling the kitching ; if he takes 
 tobacco, the sinck is his drawing roome, and he must 
 not spit in her palace, under the penance of a scolding ; 
 she's a notable good scold, and will use her tongue, as 
 well as her husband can use his rapier, and better too. 
 This queen, or rather nymph of the queene of faries, is 
 a very costly dame, and must eat nothing but dainties 
 and dear bought cates, dressed in ample manner, which 
 makes them both very often to fall from high faire, and 
 rich clothes, to the counter, and the brokers. Did you 
 but see her husband and she, with what devotion they 
 walk to IsUing-ton cake-house, you would think them 
 some zealous sacrificers in there ceremonicall works. 
 Every May she goes to hear the cucko sing, but that 
 is the only sorrow of her husbands zealous braine. 
 They are the only wise ones in the city ; but in the 
 countiy, the only fools and ignoramouses. The only 
 notable and gallant day is on that day they call my 
 Lord Mayors day, and then my gallant squires of the 
 cloth are in all their pontificalihus. If he's a young 
 man, he's wliifler to the company, which is much of the 
 same nature with a dog whiper ; and then he marches 
 
56 Characters. 
 
 with his white rod and golden chaine before his com- 
 pany ; if he comes to the honour of a gowne, you'd 
 take him to be a hog in armour, just such another 
 bumble arst furfact piece of mortality. But when he 
 comes to be master of a company, or alderman or 
 lord mayor, then he's at the height of his preferment, 
 and he must take on him by his place. And then he, 
 who before was good at light waits, short yards, scant 
 measure, is the only best man to discover his o\ni fore- 
 past knaveries ; there I leave him to order his upstorts 
 in the art of knavery. 
 
 A Hide-Parhe Lady. 
 
 TT is fabled of Orion, the son of Hirius, that he was 
 -^ begote by the urin of Jupiter, Mercury, and Nept, 
 when they pissed in the ox hide, with the flesh of 
 which these three gods were feasted by Hireus, but 
 how Hkely this is, judge you. Yet we may justly 
 think these salacious females to be of such another ex- 
 tract, as bcino: the wanton kidds of their old insatiate 
 goatfathers. But its but a folly to pry into their ma- 
 toria i^fima, because a good father may generate a bad 
 child, and a bad father as good one. But look on them 
 as they come hurrying with theii* horses and rattling 
 with their chariots to the gale of this aiery place, you 
 could not but mistake them for vapors by their light 
 
Characters, 57 
 
 carnage. There is some marks, and they but a few, 
 left of the imcige of God in their faces ; for the rest are 
 covered mth the shreds of the devils mantle (I mean 
 those) black spots and patches of deformity, and now 
 their leaporde skin is freckled with the marks of the 
 beast, and markt with the devils insignes. 
 
 I cannot but wonder these shavings of the brokers 
 trumpery should be so much in fashion now in these 
 bad times, unlesse it is to shew humility, by an ante- 
 penstasis, or to mock God by blazoning our faces with 
 sables, and have in our hearts our ox. But to passe by 
 these marks of a Jesabell, look on her cariage and 
 deportment, and you shall finde her a Lucifer in the 
 abstract, a prety kinde of a gawdy peacock, folowed by 
 a proud turkey-cock. Thus she and her brusling gal- 
 lant, whose whole erudition tyes in the form all pro- 
 nunciation of madam and such finickle accents, and in 
 swearing in print, and as they call it ad unguem, with 
 a specious flattery of her ladiships eye, nose, cheek, 
 hand, body, &c., make one of the many puppes that are 
 in the play. Their whole imployments is to gaze and 
 look to see how the wanton beauties of our age, like 
 the wheele of fortune, run round the ring. And there, 
 as it is reported between Caesar and Pompey, that one 
 could not abide a superior, the other an equall ; so 
 these fenes of finery quite undoe the grammarian, by 
 quite extinguishing the degree which is called super- 
 lative. And thus they spend their malice and emy, 
 
 I 
 
58 Characters. 
 
 each faulting the others face aud gesture, and thiuking 
 her self the only master piece of the pack. 
 
 Ival <yap errl yXdie'; ^r)\e/xove^ hen yuvai,Ke<i. 
 
 Then after these lustful! platon nicks have had a suf- 
 ficient contemjilation of each others ideas, for I cannot 
 give a more substantial expression to such a violatile 
 subject, a way march they by paires, or perhaps they 
 have by this time increast their company, and having 
 glutted their eyes, now they must pamjDcr their un- 
 godly guts, and lustfull cates are held onely expedient 
 for lustful employments ; and the cup, the platter, and 
 a coranto take up the time till midnight, and then to 
 kennel march my hounds, and to hogsty my swine. 
 
 But this little magpy of chattering eloquence never 
 uses her judgment, in censuring and condemning so 
 much, as when her finified cracklowse brings home her 
 to'ther gowns : now her eagle eyes spie out the least 
 unmannerly misdemeanour of her upstart courtier ; 
 and because her joy and delight is in a ternacy number, 
 it must march at least thrice to the botchers for trans- 
 mogrification, though her nimble shankt nipshred never 
 medles with the garments ; and so deceives his Argus 
 ey'd madam. Her mornings are spent in trimming 
 and decking her unsanctified corps ; and she surely 
 concludes her patience to be superabundant, and much 
 in imitation to that of Jobes, because she can endure 
 to be so long in dresing. Take her altogether, shee's a 
 
Characters. 59 
 
 meere whirlegig, a piece of painted clay layd over with 
 the watry colours of red and white, which when the 
 streaks of old age have a little scarified, she fills up 
 with a supliment of untempered mortar, and thinks to 
 mend and repaire the decay 'd morter of her face with 
 the artificiall clay of a painting Jesabell. Take her 
 altogether, and she's in generall the jay of the age ; in 
 particular, she's crowned with a right womans wit, 
 thats none at all ; her face represents the signe of the 
 checker, her naked breasts the flesh pots of Egypt 
 cleckt with a seeming comlinesse her body, the stew of 
 an Italian corporation, and her whole self the common 
 Hiclc-Parke lady, that is, if unmarid, one that longs for 
 a husband, and for want makes use of her little lacque ; 
 if wedded, one that picks up stalions as a begger doth 
 chips in a frosty morning, to supply present necessity 
 and the dificiancy of conjugall fuell. 
 
 The Good old Cause. 
 
 THIS bad new cause may justly be compared to the 
 rhetorick of a nonsensical! mountebank, which he 
 uses to signifie, not what he means, or what he can 
 doe ; onely they are intended to pussel poore mens in- 
 tellects, and catch their fancies into an admiration, to 
 the loosing of their money ; just such a painted flag of 
 policy is this, whose end is to allure us to close with it, 
 
60 Characters. 
 
 aud iiiulcr a specious pretence of I cannot tell what 
 platonical immaginary felicity, to wheele us, and egg 
 us into an abysse of slavery : this is that politique 
 mous-trap, baited with the moldy cheese of formall 
 pretences, which at last will dwindle and decline into 
 an apparent fallacy, and bring uj)on us a dilemmaticall 
 confusion. And the devil useth the same art in moral 
 policy, as he hath done in spiritual ; endeavouring to 
 cover over the lurcking blasphemies of an upstart 
 hcresie with famous pretences, and paint them over 
 with the sucus and tincture of whorish and Jesabell 
 expressions, thinking by the suggercandy of expression 
 to make the soule damning tenents go down more 
 glibbery : such are these. An evangelical hunnycombe, 
 a new light, a gospell revelation, and spiritual perfec- 
 tion. Thus I say in morall policy, he hath gotten a 
 bait to catch the gaping and greedy men after innova- 
 tion, deluding them by verball expressions. 
 
 Thus, like an occsecated Tobit, do the purblinde 
 polititians of our tottering common-wealth send forth 
 before them this dog, this their fawning dog of faire 
 seeming 2:)retenccs, to make them way to those prefer- 
 ments, which like egs at Grand Carlo, are all ready 
 hatched in the ovens of their hot and fiery pericra- 
 nium's. But still this good old cause lacks searching, 
 and requii'cs a finer probe of wit to dive into, than the 
 dull and dismall phansie of my illiterate intellect is 
 able to aitbrd. But a little to illustrate it, we must 
 
Characters. 61 
 
 consider the several kindes of causes, and see to which 
 of these, or whether to all these, this good old cause is 
 a retainer. A cause, then, is either efficiens, materialise 
 formalis principalis, minus priiicipalis, jinialis. For 
 1 shall not stand to an exact logickal division and sub- 
 division. 
 
 If they by this good old cause mean causa efficiens, 
 then it is that usurping cause or principall which 
 inheres in the phantastique braine of an unsetled 
 trouper, whereby he endeavors to stettle himself in such 
 a ruling decorum, as to effect and produce his own 
 weale and safety, sink or swim common weal, and 
 spirituall and ecclesiastical weal together. 
 
 This now may be called an old cause, because it hath 
 its product from self-seeking, that branch of original 
 corruption ; but how it may be called good, I know 
 not, unlesse it is respectu seipsorum ; and that is so 
 farr from good in a ruler, to minde only private occa- 
 sions, that heathens have condemned it for unsufferable. 
 
 If you take it for causa materialis, then you must 
 annex that substantive ruine to it ; for where the 
 cause and means be bad and impious, the effect must 
 needs be matter of ruine and impiety. As to the 
 materiallity of this cause, the materia p>rima must 
 needs be like that in the braines of an Aristotle, empty 
 and aiery notional, and phantasticall ; for the first 
 matter springs from a timpany of conceited greatnesse, 
 and an ovcrweaning pliancy of deserving and meriting ; 
 
62 Characters. 
 
 by the biting of this bryc they run headlong after 
 superiority, under the notion of a good old cause. 
 
 As to the materia secunda, the second matter of this 
 cause, will be matter of mourning and lamentation to 
 England (if it proceed) in respect of us ; of tyranny 
 and irreligion, and multiplicity of herecies in respect of 
 them. Thus the materiall cause is but pride and hy- 
 pocrisy, self conceitednesse and vain-glory, which, 
 Avhen it once comes to get the upper hand and rule, 
 never goes without the company of its second and 
 companion : viz., cruelty and irreligion, schismaticall 
 heresies and profanenesse ; if you consider it as causa 
 formalis, a formall cause, why then you consider it 
 just as it is ; for it pretends faire, and professeth a 
 Herods delight in the John Baptists of our time, I 
 mean the godly ministers ; but intendeth nothing lesse 
 then their supporture, nothing more then monarchicall 
 tyrany and usurpation. Just like the devill in Samuels 
 mantle, and like our Saviours comparison of the tombs, 
 an outside Saint lin'd with the devill within, outward 
 promising, inward treason. 
 
 Thus they set a formal and hypocriticall face, and a 
 formall and deceiving cause ; like to like, quoth the 
 devill to the colier. Consider it as causa j9r//?c'^j3a//5, 
 and minus 2^'^i'^cipci^is. For I am almost a weary of 
 this causelesse cause, and it will prove the principall, 
 chief, and most notorious cause of innovation and 
 traitorisme, the lesse principall cause of all mutuall 
 
Characters. 63 
 
 divisions, distractions, unsettlement and quarells. The 
 principall cause of quakerisme, papisme, anabaptisme, 
 fifth monacrisme, and also striving for superiority, to 
 the undoing our commonwealth ; and thus it may be 
 called the devills old cause of heart burnings, envies, 
 malice, and cut-throating. Thus causa causcB est causa 
 causati Take it as causa iiropinqua and remota, and 
 so in brief the devil's the remote cause, and their 
 hearts the approximate and neere propinque cause of 
 this dissenting cause. The truth is, the only cause 
 they seek is matter of warr and dissention ; the pro- 
 vocking cause is their accustomednesse to live idle and 
 keep hy company, and the remote cause their want of 
 money (which is remote from them), to maintaine this 
 idle life and ranting company ; and to speak aright, it 
 would be hard for the tinker to return to his snap-sack, 
 the cobler to his all, the weaver to his shuttle, or the 
 brewer to his dray ; and, therefore, they are resolved, 
 before they will do it, tinker wise, to make two holes 
 in a devided commonwealth ; in mending one, to stitch 
 up their consciences with the coblers-end of resolved- 
 nesse in sin, and chock and stifle it in the graintub of 
 resistance, before they'l returne, as they call it, with the 
 dog to their vomit, and the sow to her wallowing in 
 the mire. But if you look on it as causa Jinalis, the 
 finall cause, its end may prove misery and affliction to 
 us, but surely without repentance damnable to them ; 
 but, however, this is not the end of the cause, but the 
 
64 Characters. 
 
 end of the caused ejffcct of the cause. Therefore, this 
 good old cause hath a two fold end, as they call it ; 
 one in respect of it self, and thats self advancement, 
 and monarchy ; the other in resjiect of others, and that 
 is dehilitating and oppression of opposites, advancing 
 and approving complices, and heretiques ; but take 
 this cause together, and it is a mad piece of pedHng 
 pohcy, and no more to be maintained, or mentioned by 
 a rationall man, that pretends to wisdome, then sen- 
 suality ; it is a fantastique, whinesicall, ruinous self- 
 seeking hipocriticall, irreligious, contentious and de- 
 structively ruinous cause, whose pretences, though never 
 so faire, will be found not only to come short of that 
 good they pretend, but include all pernicious evill to 
 be immagined. But we must pray that this cause may 
 never come to effect. 
 
 A detracting Einperick. 
 
 AN emperick is one whose chief excellency consists 
 in hard words and sentences, and in a fine bom- 
 bastique oratory, accompanied with detraction from the 
 credit of his betters, and commendation of his own farr 
 fetcht experience. His first originall is from a poor 
 apothecaries' subservant, whose work is to look to the 
 stills and sweep the shop, who, having got a smatch 
 and relish of their nonscnsicall gibberish, and stolen 
 
Characters. 0*5 
 
 some of his masters receipts, at the end of his time 
 makes an end of his master, and the next market day 
 sets up for himself ; his first adventures are upon the 
 swetty toes and butter teeth of country jobsons, whos 
 hard travel and dry crusts make their grinders and 
 carriers in an unserviceable condition. After, his im- 
 pudence encreasing, not his wit, then out he comes in 
 half a sheet a paper, a French doctor ; and his pitifull 
 retainers plaister him on every post and wall, with a 
 lying account of his exquisite parts and great skill. 
 And these are the men that attest he hath wrought 
 wonders on their bodies ; but, however, lets give you a 
 glimps of his profession. This excrement of an apo- 
 thecary, this quackroyall is never so much himself, as 
 when he's a pratling on things he cannot understand, 
 and never so happy as when he's a puzHng the duU 
 intellects of his silly patients with Greek, Latine words, 
 and telling them what fractions, disloetions he hath set, 
 how many humours he hath asswaged by fricatiou, 
 how many megrimicall and hypocondriacal humors he 
 hath dissipated, what marvelous unheard of cures he 
 hath done in places where he never was, nor ever will 
 be ; and then to all his brags he cannot passe by the 
 mentioning of the weakness and unsufficiency of other 
 doctors, and what a want of experience there is in 
 most of them, for want of his travels. Thus this 
 politique glisterpipe runs himself into a kinde of small 
 practice for a time, but they all learn his simplicity at 
 
 K 
 
66 Characters. 
 
 Last, A\liicli vexes him to the guts. For like the kite, 
 who, having over-laid her maw with carrion, and 
 vomiting it up, thought she had parted with her guts ; 
 so this scum of a closestool thinks himself ruined by 
 then- departure. But, however, because he will be a 
 right traveller indeed, and so may lye by authority, he 
 never stays in a place above a fortnight, but makes 
 himself an individumn vagum, under pretence of the 
 common sfood, and because he will not hide his tallent 
 in a napkin, his candle under a bushel. But if he had 
 his due, he should have a paire of stocks at least ; for 
 the grave is his friend in receiving those he murders. 
 This is the man who is the lord paramount of all 
 doctors, and dares tiy it out with Gallen or Hipocrates, 
 but shewes never so good sport as when two of them 
 meet together in a market. Then like two mastifts 
 they fall on for the prey, and by this means the people 
 escape a cheating. Then these quacks peale out each 
 others weaknesse ; and because they know each others 
 weaknesse, and because they know their own originalls, 
 they discover their own knavery to the bottome. But 
 their greatest skill hes in the French pox. How coms 
 that about 1 Only by self experience ; for such idle 
 vagabonds lay themselves open to all such impious 
 suggestions. But let not me tire my self with these 
 hocus 2^ocusses of doctorisme, but leave them to their 
 ignorance, to scrape a living out of their equalls. 
 
Characters. 6 7 
 
 A Colledge Butler. 
 
 ACOLLEDGE buttler is much of kin to those 
 worms who take up their habitations in learned 
 vohimes, who overrun whole pages to their little emo- 
 lument ; even thus this finicall attendant spins out his 
 time amongst the learned, and lives amongst a suc- 
 ceeding stock of phylosophers, and yet remains as meer 
 an animal as the former, no whit a proficient, but infe- 
 riour to his emblem ; for it dyes it self over with a 
 blushing tincture, as being ashamed of its own negli- 
 gence ; but this calves skin impudence brazens it out 
 with a cuckolds-face ; and what he lacks in reality, he 
 supplyes in shew and affectation. This spicket of a 
 university man is much accoutred with complements, 
 and is able in the country to quite astonish an honest 
 farmer, and when he travels, goes at least for a justice 
 of the quorum. Nay, this presumptions chip crust 
 thinks himself to be at present of kin to the lawyers 
 (and hopes all others do so too), and doubts not but to 
 be a judge in time, since he already gets his living by 
 sizes. And could this tapdropping but unmask and 
 unveile the knaveries of the state or church, so well as 
 he can excoriate a loafe, and bring down the lofty 
 tumors of its swelling pericranium, he would prove an 
 unmatchable piece of sliving policy, and the onely man 
 fit for a protectorship : but it is to be feared, if once 
 
G8 Characters. 
 
 tliis man should soare into any place of credit, he 
 would soon become hereticall and dangerous, for he 
 hath Leen continually exercised in, and hath his living 
 by schismes and divisions : and indeed he may claime 
 some kin to the former sophoi of Hterature, for he 
 divides and subdivides with much sharpenesse. He is 
 a good anatomist to scrue into the very center of a 
 loaf, and to pry into the joynt of separation. A good 
 surveyour only, he measures not by the chaine nor the 
 quacbant, no, by the rctundant rather, i. e. the jugg. 
 I shall not insist much of his dealing with Bellarmine, 
 that is kno^^Ti to every fresh man, but only take notice 
 of his equall and unpartiall justice in his distriljutions, 
 which is so exquisite and plausable, that he thinks him 
 self another Aristides, not a scruple doth he give to 
 one more then another. 
 
 An excelent arethmetitian he is, and most accurate 
 in accounts ; he's blameable in nothing but in that he 
 will be sure to charge the schollers noddles, which 
 should ]je fraught \Y\ih. learning, with the strange and 
 unwelcome letters of ob, and in so much that these 
 strange and unknown characters make freshmen take 
 him for a necromancer. But did you but see him 
 dominere over a freshman, you'd soon conclude him to 
 be some extraordinary officer, Avhen as, poore caitiff, 
 when they come to be sophs, the pump is his reward 
 for his insolencies. But to come to his office, he's so 
 used to spread cloaths, that he's ne're well but when 
 
Characters. 69 
 
 lie's imspreading of aprons, and spreading of females 
 sails, in so much that lie often comes to be a father, 
 before he's either willing or provided. He keeps all 
 things in order but himself, for the continuall use of 
 mault-juice, which he powres down continually, makes 
 him alwayes dizzey. 
 
 His tables are alwayes full of Latine characters, 
 which makes the country-man think him an excellent 
 schollar at his first coming, but staying a while, he 
 hath much a doe to think of his home, for his head 
 poizes his whole body ; his exact accounts will not let 
 a quart passe unaccounted, which if it chances to re- 
 main an odd one, he'le be sure to make it up, because 
 he'le have an even quantum. If any thing kills him, it 
 will be a grief, because under graduates are stinted, 
 who are the fresh drinkers, and love to his own gain 
 makes him give them a little liberty to exceed. But 
 to take away this university man, and to fold him 
 quite up by giving him his due, you may broach him 
 an exquisite gut servant, who's own belly is his best 
 clock, which though it onely gives warning at 8. 11. 3. 
 6. 8. yet is sure to be exact then to a punctilio. This 
 the cook and the bed maker are the Cerberus of a col- 
 ledge, if you take them under a general notion ; but 
 divide them accurately, and they are the necessary 
 evils of an accademian. The cook he's the grasier, the 
 poulterer and fish-monger of the society ; the bed- 
 maker must be ranged amongst the huntsmen, because 
 
70 Charactei's. 
 
 of their kennels ; and the butler, he's the whiffler to go 
 before and prepare for the cook, and the lievtenant to 
 bring up the reere, and place things as they were : but 
 I shall doe by him as he by a loaf, martyr him into too 
 many subdivisions. I shall therefore leave him lockt 
 up in his binn. 
 
 A Vniversity Beadle. 
 
 n^HIS is the arse gut of an accademy, the meere 
 -*- lacky of a vice-chanceller in a black gown and a 
 round cap, much of kin to those hinch-boys, who on 
 my lord mayors day at London, were wont to run 
 before my lady marice in velvet caps, &c. But to give 
 him his due, he hath been a schoUar in his time, and 
 fellow perhaps of a colledge, but as they say, when 
 drinks in wits out, so when the bellygod hath been a 
 feast-hunting, the vapours of his stomach clowd the 
 lioht and hinder the infuence of his cerebrum if he 
 hath any. This man by his place is the prologue of 
 the vicechan., and every exercising master of arts. His 
 chiefest imployment is in gathering congregations, and 
 oivinfr notice of clerums, Avhicli if it be in mornino- or 
 afternoon he doth plenore : I can compare him to none 
 more aptly then Milo, who by continuall using to carry 
 a calf at lest could bear an ox ; even so this officer, by 
 continuall feasting his gut, and indulging his paunch, 
 
Characte7's. 71 
 
 he's come to so great a proficiency in the art of glut- 
 tony, that it is not oxen will serve his turne. His 
 senting haires are still quick and tender, and he hath 
 as thinne a nose as any dog in the pack ; if he walks 
 he'l smeU a feast as far as Trumpinton or Coton, and 
 foot it accordingly, hunting dry foot with extream 
 celerity and labour, till he hath obtained his prey, and 
 then a game at noddy disgests all. He's cousen-ger- 
 main to the fatt monk, who hearing that abbies should 
 go down, got a pention, and then clapping his hands 
 on his ungodly panch, said, Modo hoc sit bene, if this 
 thrive but, alls well ; so this Marriotus redevivos re- 
 natusq. makes his venter the primum mobile of all his 
 actions, that makes them in stature to be so like to the 
 Anakims and Zansummims. 
 
 It may be said of him as it was of Bonosus, that 
 rebelled against M. Aurel Valer. Probus, that he was 
 borne nou ut viveret sed aut biberet : so of this he 
 was borne non ut viveret sed ut ederet : for as other 
 men only eat that they may live, so this only lives 
 that he may eat, and if once university revenues should 
 be taken away, either you'd soon hear of his death of 
 a consumption, or else you'ld hear of his metamor- 
 phosis into an anthropophagus. Never till I was at 
 Cambridge did I see the logicians chimsera, his Hirco- 
 crervus, but when I had a view of it in a beadle, he's a 
 Hircus in his wanton endeavours after dainties, and a 
 Cervus in his speed and festination he maks to obtain 
 
72 Characters. 
 
 them, his fear of loosing, and his quick hearing the 
 rumor of them. And I much wonder he hath not long 
 since been carried and shown at Bartholmew faire for 
 a sight. 
 
 His first place, or his ushering in of the actors makes 
 him seem a retainer to a stageplayer, though he is 
 swelled up with a timpany of pride in conceit of his 
 fine office ; did you but see him delivering his verses 
 he understands not in his coife, you'd take him for 
 some bearded London coster-wife newly drest up on a 
 munday morning. But to make an end with him, he's 
 the materia prima of a tripus or prcevericator, the 
 very causa sine qua non, of all his quibles, and one 
 that is fit for nothing else but to be made the fool at a 
 commencement vacation. Should I run through the 
 organs of this accademick body and the favorites of 
 independing presbyterianisme, would put him down 
 and bruise his pipes, being angry with the harsh me- 
 lody of such a tincklering instrument. I shall there- 
 fore rather leave the filling of his stuft parts to the 
 bellowes of a more strong invention, having wearied 
 my self already with so fulsome a suliject. 
 
 A Covetueus Usurer. 
 
 ACOVETUOUS usurer is cousen german to good 
 ^lonsieur Midas ; and though perhaps his fools 
 noddle is not furnished with so good a pair of asses 
 
Characters. 73 
 
 ears, yet he could wish his fingers might have a Httle 
 of the same virtue. Take him in a morning, and his 
 worships spectacles adorn his nose, and direct and 
 guide his industrious pen in arithmetique, and debts, 
 and mortgages are all viewed over once a day, which 
 is his breakfast ; for the miser accounts that amongst 
 the number of innecessaria. Take him about noon, 
 and his stomach is a preparing for his dinner by a 
 walk : and then this threadbare companion lookes 
 much like a broken citizen, that cannot afford himself 
 a new suit ; but to be short, his purse and his gut take 
 up all his time, but chiefly his purse ; his yellow and 
 white blessings are so much in his thoughts, that his 
 onely care is to live and encrease his money and dye, 
 and there is an end. But as shottenly as he looks, he's 
 a notable crafty fox in his way, and will make a 
 bargain with any man in England. Oh how he pin'd 
 and murmur'd when it was broupht to six in the 
 hundred ; that fit of sicknesse had almost brought him 
 to the grave. His greatest delight and complacency is 
 in the acquaintaince with young spend-thrifts : these 
 he loves for their papers sake ; oh he'd fain be fin- 
 gering there, and to be sure not a farthing will he lend 
 till he hath twice the value in land made over to him ; 
 and then he hugs and blesseth himself, and never gives 
 over reading, and hopes there will never come a 
 redemption. These are his onely dehght, and though 
 he hates, yet he loves their extravagancies ; did you 
 
 L 
 
74 Characters. 
 
 but know in what fear he is, when any of his gods lye 
 dormant, and how he crowds them together, and 
 watches his trunk, and locks his chests, and bars his 
 hutches, you'ld think, nay conclude, his life, his very 
 animal spirits, were contained in his coffers. Thus this 
 miserable earthgrubber doth not onely acquii-e this 
 trash with vexation and labour, envy and malice, but 
 is perplexed, distracted, distrustfull to keep it also. If 
 he be a batchelour, he's the more happy man ; for the 
 very charge of a wife and barncs, would (as they say) 
 put him out of his seven senses. His diet now is 
 onely what mice and rats will not eat, moldy bread 
 and old cheese. For, quoth Mr. Provident, is it not a 
 sin to let such vermin destroy the good creature 1 but 
 his minde is in his counting-house ; did you but take 
 a strict account of that Fryday face of his, whose 
 rowsey whiskers and brischy turn-pikes make him 
 resemble some shaggy meteor, or some borish Turk, 
 you could not but smile and burst your spleen with 
 laughing, to think what a dish of butter'd crablice his 
 mossy excrement contains fat and in good liking. I 
 wonder he sels not his head to some ale wife, it would 
 make an excellent Sarazen signe, if he could but spare 
 it. His rinckled jaws, like an old cows neck, hang 
 chathernwise, lank and loose ; his whining and peltmg 
 posture have distracted his chops beyond their bounds, 
 and his skin to a greater and more large extention, so 
 that now it superabounds in vacuits, and Uke his grand 
 
Characters. 75 
 
 sires double ruff hangs in pleats and folds, his eyes 
 are dim'd before he's thirty ; for he hates candles, and 
 pores in the dark if his arithmatical occasions require 
 speed. I wonder he gets not a glow-worm to save 
 charges ; his band (of his own patching) becomes him 
 very well, and suits the other habliments of his body ; 
 and for brevity sake, to save soape, cloth, water, and 
 time, is not extended beyond the dimensions of his 
 collar ; and for another reason, if necessity force him, 
 a clean shirt may supply both offices. 
 
 His hands and his gloves alwaies goe together, he 
 hates artificiall ones, because they are apt to weare out 
 and seam rend. His doublet and breeks are of the 
 oldest fashion, for he keeps a Jewish jubile, and he 
 never gives rest to his cloaths but once in 7. years, and 
 that never to serve him more ; he's such a constant 
 man, he hates mutation. Thus you may know a 
 usuring bachelour by his mode, which is out of mode. 
 If he hath got a wife, oh poor woman, she'd better be 
 hanged ; for exclamations against expences and charges 
 are never out of his mouth. what afflictions doth 
 he meet with each moment, a peniworth of butter, a 
 halfpenyworth of salt, two peny worth of milk, soap 
 and candles, to pay for fire and meat, house rent and 
 cloath, oh, oh, oh, enough to undoe a poor house- 
 keeper. Well, he's a house keeper now, and the 
 colectors for the poor give him daily visits ; often he's 
 abroad, though alwayes at home, and he payes these 
 
76 Characters. 
 
 just as his brother batchclour, if he have lands, pays 
 taxes after a long conflict. When at home, with what 
 deliberation doth he pull forth his greasy powch, and 
 accompany its production with a sith ; then the un- 
 willino- hand he forces to dive into and search for 
 his heart blood, which is accompanied out with a 
 liideous groane ; but when its gone, he thinks he's 
 bound by naturall afi'ection to give it a parting showre 
 of tears, though the losse of a wife would not come half 
 so near him. And she's like to suff"er for all, and eat 
 nothing but flotten milk this fortnight, for this trick. 
 
 Thus this money bag, like a hide bound horse, never 
 evacuates any of his mettle, but with sorrow and 
 regreate, me thinks a purge might do well ; plurasies 
 are very dangerous, a little phlebotomy's good physick. 
 But this retentive faculty of his, he thinks is his great 
 vertue. Provide for thy family is his proof ; nay, 
 rather than heel be an infidel in not getting, heel be so 
 in not trusting his nearest friends without a mortgage, 
 and his poorest without a pawn. And thus he builds 
 and lays Pelion upon Ossa, one bagg on another, till 
 death trips up his heels, and his young son pulls them 
 down. Thus this muck worme never leaves delving 
 till a damp over takes him and puts out this candles 
 end. Oh how it delights him (when he's past hark- 
 ning after chapmen, and past seeking after spenders), 
 to hear frugality, as he calls it, connnended, and prodi- 
 gality laid out in its proper colours, when alasse he's 
 
Characters. 77 
 
 far from the golden mean, incidit m Sylam dum vult 
 vitare Caryhden, just in the extreame. Well, to put 
 a period to my coffer keeper, follow him in all his 
 plots and proceedings, and you'l find him just like a 
 horse in a mill, that though he uses continuall motion, 
 is still where he was ; even so this man, for all his 
 pains and getiiigs, is as miserable, nay more then the 
 most indigent, and is never the better, he lives never 
 the more comfortably, does never the more good for all 
 his riches. 
 
 A Cairibridge Minion. 
 
 ACAMBKIDGE paraketo is an outlandish ape, 
 whose mimick disposition makes her shape her 
 seacole vestures into the form of the fashion ; though 
 her self be quite out of shape, a meere petty chaos of 
 dust and ashes ; half animated and lickt over by the 
 flattering tongue of some puny freshman : she's one of 
 the times beauties in her own conceit, and though her 
 fingers are shriveled with exercising a landi'esses func- 
 tion throughout the week, yet on Sunday she bridles it 
 according to her own imagination ; and with don 
 Quiro orecomes all the stout sophs of her diocesse, by 
 the strength of her own fancyed beautifull perfections. 
 Her Sundays imployment after evening prayer is a 
 walke, and that day she accounts to be a market one. 
 
78 Characters. 
 
 for then she displays the soiled ware of her pedling 
 face to the view and sail of all in its most artificial! 
 decking. Thus have I read of a garulous crow bedeck- 
 ing it self with the gawdy j)lumes of a siipercillious 
 peacock ; and an emblematicall ass sprucefyed with 
 the gorgeous trappings of a lofty beusephalus : and 
 thus this sweeping of a schollars bed-chamber invelops 
 her course gran'd hide in vestures of a madam, and 
 though, poor soul, she starves mthin dores and pinches 
 fort all the year after, her gown and other accoutre- 
 ments shall extend beyond the ne ultra of her ability. 
 But she becomes them accordingly, and they hang 
 about her fusty corps, much after the rate as if hang'd 
 on with pitch-forks, so that she is finely slutish, and 
 sluttishly fine ; I wonder what she would do with her 
 yellow goUs, were it not for her apron and stomacher ; 
 for they are the only upholders of those masy quarters, 
 squeesed into the narrow comj)asse of a finicle paire of 
 gloves, to the danger of overheating her foggy flesh ; 
 and when all is done, rowling pin like, it seems to be 
 a confused lumpe of flesh, not a hand, its more hke a 
 foot. Her squint eyes are for the most part fixed on 
 the ground, neither dares she lift up her gogles for fear 
 of prejudicing her chast modesty : but yet an occult 
 leere is now and then cast at a transient schoUar. Her 
 swimming and frigging gate denotes something of 
 levity, though her set countenance proclaimes a noli 
 me tangere. 
 
Characters. 79 
 
 Take her upon the account of an husband, she's a 
 notable, quaint, precise, curious, wary and cautious 
 dame; she looks high; a gentleman sehollar is her 
 scope, her marke ; her fellow townesmen she scornes, 
 as being below her merrit : oh, she affects courtship 
 extreamly, and loves above all things to be saluted 
 with a madam-eticall title ; she curtesies in print, ob- 
 serving both mood and figure, and can if need be sing 
 you a merry song and be pretty joculatory : and though 
 in town or before company she's something coy and 
 occultly reserved, yet in private she is as free of her 
 flesh as an emperor, and will afford her company a 
 whole night at any time, provided you prepare good 
 store of cates for her Hcquorish chops, and wine too, 
 for she loves to make use of the creature. She hath a 
 notable politique way of begging, by an exclamation of 
 her wants, and she'le ware her worst gloves on purpose 
 that she may by finding fault purchase new ones. 
 
 If she be any thing handsome, she knows it too 
 well ; and if any sort of portion or pedigree she can 
 claime too, then she soares high ; pentioners and un- 
 dergraduates are of too mean a stock, to low and un- 
 worthy, to pretend service to her : no, because shee's 
 a gawdy fool her self, she'le be sure to chuse her fellow, 
 her Hke a gentleman fellow commoner, to be sure or a 
 master of arts, that gos in his fine half shirts : these 
 she seeks to enchant by her devotion at church ; and 
 these most of them have more wit then to be what 
 
80 Characters. 
 
 they seem, only kisse her and feel her a litle, and leave 
 her to the next. 
 
 Take them all together, and they all of them appear 
 to me to be of the same extraction, and originall with 
 Venus, begot of the froth of the sea, or rather by some 
 frothy or light timbred fellow commoner, that makes 
 them so gravely light and fantastical. But to give you 
 the taile, marke and brand of this fine whimsicall piece 
 of scholarship, you may know her by these ensuing 
 characters. 
 
 First, by her Bartholmew f^ice, her affinity in pole 
 trimming with the plays of that toy faire ; if she be of 
 any mean extraction, her flying coifes intimate her 
 soaring intentions, and she looks in those starcht conun- 
 di'ums like a little meat mins't and slice't and laid in 
 order, in a prodigiously great charger. Neither will 
 her whitewine and wild tansy burnish over her rusty 
 brazen face, so as to bring it to a right posture ; but 
 she'le be sure, because she'l be gay, to wear in her 
 visage the right Bartholomew fools coulers, red and 
 yelow. The continuall bleaching and whitening her 
 Mr. SchoUars linncn, makes her woUen face of a tallow 
 complection, jumping with the proverbe, 
 
 March winde and May sun 
 
 Makes cloths white, but maidens dun. 
 
 But, perhaps, the brewers daughter of our coUedge 
 will be angry ; she'le make our bear so small for this, it 
 
Characters. 81 
 
 shall never smile on ns more. Nay, pray Mis. Ale- 
 berry, sweet Mis. Graine tub, bunny Mis. Copper face, 
 be not to angry. I bope you do not think I intend to 
 spoil the use of your mashing fat by these lines, or 
 have a designe to make your skipping suiters hop away 
 and leave you : no truly, I msb you so good a brewer 
 to your husband, as may carry about him such effec- 
 tuall barm, as may set the musty hogshead of your 
 pawnch a rising and swelling, to the production of a 
 Bacchus, a better man then his father ; but don't mis- 
 take me, I don't wish you Semeles fortune, viz. to be 
 imbraced by your clarke underneath your copper in 
 the midst of his searching thunderbolts. No indeed 
 forsooth, if you'l believe me forsooth, I don't forsooth ; 
 only forsooth a good lusty malthorse forsooth, your 
 husband forsooth, thats all forsooth. 
 
 These petty ladies whose fathers have obtained them 
 a kind of a petty fortune, are of anothers guesse hue 
 then the former ; for their countenances are bedizned 
 in sable sacks, or it may be in white sarcenet wallats, 
 w^hich alwaies intimates their husbands fortune. 
 
 If dame nature hath been riged as to deny them 
 red and white, they can buy some, and so plaster ac- 
 cordingly ; but though they think to hide their snouts 
 over with size and w^hiting, all will not do ; you may 
 know them by the cast of the ey, the purse of the 
 mouth, and the coy cariage of their weighty nodle, 
 whose trembhng motion and wagging posture denotes 
 
82 CJiaracterfi. 
 
 something, but thus much for the face, I fear I have 
 painted them too right. 
 
 Secondly, know her (because I have spent too much 
 paper on her) by the rest of her body and gate. Her 
 breasts you shall be sure to know by their afiinity with 
 the udder of our sandy cow and your bro^^^l heifer, 
 which she lays open as she thinks for temptation sake, 
 but alas, these her milk-pails lack a little scouring ; she 
 must serve them as good housewifes do theirs, bestow 
 a little sand and straw on them, or they will nere be 
 oughts. Her gant belly and her bushel arse denotes 
 her a maid ; but her wanton eye and affected gate 
 show it is much to her affliction : but her crupper arse 
 is to be sure beautified with a gawdy traping ; I won- 
 der she don't hang bells at them, she'd make an excel- 
 lent forehorse. Take her altogether, and she's a fine 
 finacle Cambridge production, got by and aiming no 
 higher then some suckspicket sophister. 
 
 A Pune Pragmatick Pulpit-filler. 
 
 HE is one that can say to corruption, thou art my 
 father : for the corruption of his manners at the 
 university generated the odium of the master and 
 felloAvs to such a height, that they had brought forth 
 the birth of expulsion, if he by this preventing medi- 
 cine of giving them a vale (as one wittily saith) nihil 
 
Characters. 83 
 
 a7ite dictum, had not casheered himself their jurisdic- 
 tion. And we all know the rediest way for such is to 
 get a pulpet and teach others what they scarce under- 
 stand ; nay, cannot maintain by syllogisticall dispute 
 themselves. So that I may justly describe him to be 
 a half stewed codling'd philosopher, a linsewoolsy 
 logitian, &c. and with illustrious Cleaveland, call him a 
 lay interlining clergyman. And me thinks these John 
 Lacklatines creep into benefices, like foxes into hen- 
 rousts, only to fill their empty guts (starved as much 
 for want of food, as their noetical faculties devoid of 
 all philosophick irradiations, and as their perecraniimi 
 dark and gloomy, dismall and obscure, for want of the 
 gilding and glistering rayes of the sun of good erudi- 
 tion) : and to supply the vanities of their elbowes, I 
 mean their froward and fretfull doublets, whose conti- 
 nuall and quotidian vexations by rubs and foiles, hath 
 quite worne out the patience of the nap, and the long 
 sufiering of both warp and woolf. And, like their 
 brother reynard, though their intention be onely their 
 own emolument, yet they keep out and hinder their 
 betters, and spoile and mangle the good food of the 
 word (just as old women their naturall meat with the 
 blunt and notcht cuttles of their wit). T'would grieve 
 your heart to hear what work these sand drope makers 
 make with an easy and facile text, into what far fetcht 
 notions they dissolve it, and how miserably they are 
 forced to wander from their busmesse, to patch up 
 
84 Charack'TS. 
 
 their i^iccc of stuff to tlie length of the houre glasse. 
 And yet this apothegmaticall licosthenes will bring 
 you up whole legions of examples, and quote you those 
 authors he never saw, much lesse read : and his Greek 
 and Latine spouts from his originall jaws as water from 
 a cesterne redundant with that element. And thus this 
 new consecrated Levite gets the aerial and vaine ap- 
 plause of the vulgar, who cryes him up for a great 
 losopher and an excellent scholarde ; nay, I warrant 
 you, they take him at least for a conjurer. And truly 
 the brazen faces and nimble clacks of these, by the 
 help of that smatch of di\dnity they have, may serve 
 for edification and be good, but there are another sort, 
 who as they have neither wit of their own, nor fancy 
 others, but fill up their sermon with the rifi" raff" of 
 their own nodles, and a heaped congeries of imperti- 
 nent and inapposite Scriptures, and a multitude of 
 illoo-icall acatao-oricall reasons and aro;umeuts : these 
 arc they that hammer out a sermon, like an unknown 
 unwonted unseen oration ; and because their time shal 
 be spent at church, their clumsy fists and squint eys 
 will be sure to have half an hours busling at every 
 proof, before the hold-my-stafte can finde it ; for as 
 the j^i'overbe saith, it is to him as bad as seeking a 
 needle in a bottle of hay. His studies are as small as 
 his brains, for its one of the torments of his life to 
 think of his Sunday employment, and that makes him 
 a speeiall friend to the booksellers, old obsolete and 
 
Characters. 85 
 
 Noalicall sermons, and these are the parchments he 
 especially takes care of it. But it may be objected 
 here by the clown his father, nay, I cant believe this, 
 sir : for my son mnst needs be a good scholard, for 
 he's seldome without a book in his hand, and I'me sure 
 he can speak good Latine. I answer, sir, for your com- 
 fort, your son is a tolerable thunderbolt ; an indifferent 
 good Hanctulo, for to be sure, though he reads but 
 little, yet his parts are so ripe, and he's so exquisitely 
 gifted, that though he reads but little, yet whatever it 
 is, he makes it his own. But a querie now arises 
 among the Quakers, whether this be not petty felony 
 to rob the dead and the quick ; and what religion this 
 is to offer up that in the temple that costs them 
 nought. Truly, friend, for answer you shall have no- 
 thing but the old proverbe, I would they were hang'd 
 that want one shift ; I would he was hanged has one 
 too many. But to conclude with the time, I should be 
 very sorry if I should overtire your patience with any 
 inconvenient language or prejudiciall sentences in this 
 character ; it is not the function but abuse of it I con- 
 demn ; the former I reverence and love ; this latter 
 proceeds from a timpany of pride inherent in the pla- 
 tonicall pericranium of an empty nodled sophister, or 
 from the dropsicall humors of a young suckspiting 
 junior, whose manners being remora's to his studys and 
 degrees, have forced him to take the wings of an owle, 
 and flying forth, he thinks to enlighten others with his 
 
86 Characters. 
 
 own dim and gloworm understanding to the prejudice 
 of the function, which is much scandald by such empty 
 novices, whose empty nodls seek nothing hut to be 
 filled with the vaine breath of applause, though all 
 their connundi'ums and bombastic pettifoging deserves 
 rather a satyr then a panegirick. 
 
 An old Hording Hagg. 
 
 SHE is one of the Wich of Endors cosen-germans, 
 that for a little yellow dirt or white clay will 
 court the devill himself in a Samuels mantle, nay pro- 
 strate her body and soul to the devotion of idolatrizing 
 Mamon ; she's a woman of a notorious faith ; it hath 
 in it all dimentions, longitude, latitude, and prefundity. 
 Her money is her god, and shes an implicite papist. 
 The reason why she scrapes her copper quarter peny 
 coyn into her fusty j)ouch, made of the last sheding of 
 the lanck and loose skin of her hoary buttock (for she 
 therein immitates deere) till it amounts to the sacred 
 number of 6. score (for her huncbed is of the largest 
 size) is because she is a saint worshiper, and loves to 
 pray to the image of St. George in a half crown. She's 
 nere in an extasy but very seldome, once in seven 
 years, and thats their jubile ; and that is, when her old 
 stumps have by the oile of elbow-grease and continuall 
 drawing (for shes an excellent good carte jade) rak't 
 
Characters. 87 
 
 together an unexpected angell ; and then shes in her 
 paradice, she thinks ; for she converses now with cera- 
 phims. In general!, shes one of a universall conscience 
 or rather none at all, for she never knows the 7ie plus 
 ultra, the Hercules Pillar of her progging : but lets 
 trace her in a few particulars, ob ovo ad makes, I may- 
 allude, and then you may know her by her first 
 aspect. 
 
 And first take her a bed (for we had need dresse 
 her, for she cant spare time to do it her self), and shes 
 a fine dirty hieroghpick of her pigsty recreations, snud- 
 led and kennel'd over with the dirty sackcloth of her 
 gloomy harding : she snorts and snores, and wakes and 
 
 scrubs, and and looks for day, and barkens for the 
 
 first cock ; and if it be too soon, down lies she and 
 streaks and picks her stincking toes, and dares not 
 sleep more for fear of loosing a minute. But as soon 
 as ever she spies the harbinger of Sol, that winged 
 courser, she salutes him with a %at/oe (^<m9, and up rouses 
 nasty-nock to put on her weeds. 
 
 Her clothes, or rather those signes and representa- 
 tions, those faint and weak ideas of garments (for it 
 would poze a good scholar to distinguish and define 
 the difi'erence between her and them, and the heape on 
 the backside Cambridge paper mil), hang about her 
 cadaver, her corps, her piece of clay, her all ; much 
 after the rate of the skin hanging about a calf when 
 tis half flaid, just ready to depart and take their leave 
 
88 Characters. 
 
 of their old mistris, whom they have served one of 
 Jacobs apprentiships, twice seven years ; and if the 
 more carelesse the more gentle behaviour she's a not- 
 able fashion monger. Her smock and her skin are 
 much of the same roof, you may pick holes through 
 either of them ; this and her skin hath had such a 
 familiarity vaih. each other, that they still play loath to 
 depart, for, quoth the trot, the oftener to wash boule the 
 sooner to rags ; its length is somewhat lesse then that of 
 her coats, and they and her knees, if it please you, are 
 ec[uij)olent, for shes very loath to be called a drags taile 
 slut. But suppose a little it should so hajDpen that a 
 man should extend his nerves, out of reverence to an- 
 tiquity, and take up her coat, her uper coat, onely 
 have a care of blasting neighbom' and mildew, for the 
 extent of her placket is alwayes lower than her smock, 
 and that comes but an inch lower than her navel. But 
 she's up and drest, well to work she hops with expedi- 
 tion ; her maid, if she hath one, to milk, she to hog 
 serving, to hackhngt, to spinning, to hempbeating, to 
 any thing, to hell scraping it self to get money. And 
 you may know exactly her thoughts are working, for 
 the motion of her brains, for the most part, unloosen 
 her pins and erects her tippet. Her maid coming 
 home, she erects her voice also, for she cannot make 
 haste enough, but will loose time though she flies for 
 it. I would be heartily glad to see her make a cheese 
 once, that I might observe the speed and sluttery of 
 
Characters. 89 
 
 her proceeding. Well, this work done, she fals to the 
 next, and so handles them all in order, and makes the 
 best, worst use of her time she can possible : nay, 
 rather then faile, she'le do two works at a time. And 
 yet this notable dunghill raker hath scripture for what 
 she doth, and will tell you she believes she must, and 
 therefore doth and will provide for her family ; and by 
 this she proves she's no infidel. AVell, thus much for 
 her house : onely her dyet it is much hke her self, 
 quite out of fashion ; she bakes but once a quarter, it 
 spends the slower ; her whey and butter-milk, etc., are 
 her food ; she and her swine feed much alike, the dif- 
 ference lyes onely in the dish ; on's long, the other 
 round. 
 
 But to know her in her finery, in her Kersmasse 
 holiday dresse, as she calls it, take but a strict view of 
 her visage, and you may give a shrewd guesse. Her 
 wrinkled and withered front resembles an old fashioned 
 pair of plateing irons ; and I believe in the dayes of 
 yore, that was the mode of the visage. Her whole face 
 looks like an old blasted and withered pumpkin, with 
 a slit one way and to'ther way, and two holes of each 
 side, for the sun hath died her fusty hide into a dark 
 yellow, and the colour of her ruby cheeks into a bay 
 brown. 
 
 Her hands are the clumsie hangbyes of her body ; 
 they and their appurtenances may very well be called 
 arms, for their hard branchey resemblance. Her fin- 
 
90 Characters. 
 
 gers, those crooked disciples of her body, stand much 
 after the posture, as if they would denote her husbands 
 fortune, just such crampt associates. 
 
 Her feet are inveloped in her aulean or rather co- 
 thurnian buskins, whose plodding shape and substan- 
 tial! plainnesse denotes them to be intended for some 
 hard service. Her swetty toes the res contentw, the 
 thighs contained in these swabberslops are the frankin- 
 sence of her presence, or rather the assefaetida she 
 carryes about her to keep those she comes neer (by its 
 nauseating odour) from sounding at her ghastly in- 
 fernal presence : and now I hojDC you are satisfied, and 
 I have characterized her sufficiently, you may know 
 her by her hogo, I pray you scent her accordingly. 
 
 FINIS, 
 
91 
 
 Of a Protector. 
 
 WHAT'S a Protector \ He's a stately thing 
 That apes it, in the nonage of a king. 
 A tragick actor, Csesar in a clowne, 
 Hee's a brasse farthing stamped with a crown. 
 -^sops proud asse mask't in a lyons skin ; 
 An outside saint lyn'd with the devill within ; 
 An eccho whence the royall sound doth come, 
 Hee's but a barrel head unto a drum : 
 A bladder blown, with others breath puft full. 
 Not the parlous, but perilus bull. 
 A counterfeited piece like one that showes 
 Charles his effigies with a copper nose. 
 Phantastick shadow of the royall head, 
 The brewers with the kings arms quartered. 
 In fine hee's one we must Protector call, 
 From which, the King of kings protect us all. 
 
 A Neuter Wish. 
 
 MY wishes great- 
 The English fleet- 
 May no storme tosse- 
 The harpe and crosse- 
 Smile gentle fate- 
 Upon the state,- 
 Attend all health- 
 The common-wealth- 
 
 The navy of the Dutch 
 I all good fortune grutch ; 
 Vantrump and his sea forces 
 Shall have my daily curses. 
 On the Dutch admirall 
 The plagues of ^Egypt fall. 
 The cavelering part, 
 I value not a . 
 
02 
 
 On the death of one Mr. Pitcher. 
 
 THE worlds Ai'chitect did all our bodies frame 
 To be but eartben vessels for tbat flame, 
 Wbicb politick Prometheus stole away, 
 From beaven t'informe his massie lump of clay ; 
 By vertue of which fire our senses keep 
 Ahve, that being j)ut out, they fall asleep. 
 But if that names with nature may agree, 
 Our brother Pitcher rather seems to be 
 A water vessel, in which, death without doubt. 
 Water put in, and so the fire put out. 
 Some Puritan wit, thus would bewaile his lot, 
 Howie, holy sister. Pitcher's gone to pot. 
 But I say 'tis mortalities common show. 
 For Pitcher's earth, and earth must go. 
 We all dropt from our mother earths past wombe. 
 And in her bowels all must finde a tombe. 
 As giddy zealots often do outvie. 
 The w^eathercock, in its activity ; 
 Of turning round, whose brains being sore perplext. 
 Hug every schisme that comes in fashion next : 
 Then turn to the old again, when they have gone 
 Throuoh all the chanofcs of reliction. 
 So the body after many changes must 
 Keturue to its first principles of dust ; 
 
03 
 
 At last though, first we conquer many a wound ; 
 Death wins the field, though we must keep the 
 Our friend deceast had in his fife time past [ground. 
 Grapled with many maladies, but at last, 
 Death or the dire physitian, one oth' twaine, 
 Was too hard for him, thus the proverb's plaine. 
 The Pitcher never goes so oft nor fast 
 To th' well, but it comes broken home at last. 
 Yet none can losse by losse of him sustaine, 
 Whose natures fate, tends much to others gaine ; 
 For death doth hvelyhood to others give. 
 Death brake him for the nonce, all trades must five. 
 
 A Dialogue between a Tawny-more and a 
 faire Lady. 
 
 Taw. 
 
 FIX my darke tawny starr in thy white spheare. 
 Twill make thy glittring beauty shine more clear. 
 
 Lad. Your councill with the fashion suiteth not, 
 No ladies weare a yellow beauty spot. 
 
 Taw. I would not be a spot upon thy face, 
 But something in thine armes thou mights embrace. 
 
 Lad. Should herauld thy, or on my argent see 
 They would impute to us false armorye ; 
 Besides I fear infection to imbrace, 
 A man in my armes, with a jaundice face : 
 
94 
 
 The Egyptians on thy safron skin would pray, 
 And stak't to scare the crocodiles away. 
 
 Taw. If I be safron, let my seed, to yield 
 Encrease, be sowne within thy pleasant field. 
 
 Lad. No, pray go farme some common colony 
 To break up, your plow hath no share in me. 
 
 Taiv. Oh but, sweet lady, tis my earnest suit, 
 Of this face dyde in graine, to reap the fruit. 
 
 Lad. Beyond, sea coloured sir, your suits in vaine, 
 I like no face dipt in an orange staine. 
 
 Taio. Slight not the surface of my orange skin. 
 The best part of an orange is within. 
 To be an orange, I could gladly choose 
 If you to squeeze and suck me won't refuse. 
 
 Lad. Yes, but He do as those that orange eat, 
 Hang th' peele on string when I have eat the meat. 
 
 Taiv. Your skin of silver white for worth can't fellow, 
 Mine whose rich tincture is a golden yellow. 
 
 Lad. I praise you not, sir, for your golden hieu, 
 In this was Apuleas asse like you ; 
 But if your gold, and willing to be mine. 
 You shall be stamj)t upon to make me coyne ; 
 I speak my minde, yet your face would not passe. 
 So soon for gold, as for new scowred brasse. 
 
 Taiv. My yellow sun beams thou shouldst not despise, 
 Sols collour when he doth in glory rise. 
 
 Lad. If your sun shine, I'le here no longer stand. 
 Adieu, I must be gone least I be tand. 
 
95 
 
 A Petition of Questionests to Mr. Frost for 
 
 their degrees, Woodcock and Heron 
 
 Procters. 
 
 ALL haile, great Frost, tis our desire 
 To kindle in thy breast a fire 
 Of gentle love ; and by our art 
 To tbaw thy too hard frozen heart. 
 Be thou propitious, and we fear 
 No beaked procters fluttring here. 
 For when t's a frost, the birds we know, 
 Last wildnesse of and tamer grow. 
 We'r sirs ith house, and should we leese, 
 For want of wit all our degrees ; 
 They'l sweare a Frost hath nipt us so, 
 That we, like icesikles doT\Tiward grow. 
 Thy flexile minde, I hope, ^\aLl bend ; 
 The longest frost must have an end. 
 Lets have calm weather then, for though 
 You raigne, you wall not storme, I trow. 
 Behold, but how our faces show 
 For fear of Frost as cold as snow. 
 Only because thou art so nice. 
 Chill, fear hath made's as cold as ice : 
 Then let's for once our pleasure have, 
 A common courtesie we crave : 
 To w^it, that since such cold there haps, 
 Thoud'st giA^e us leave put on our caps. 
 
96 
 
 Post-script. 
 
 YOU that upon free cost this book do view, 
 Suspend too harsh a censure least you shew 
 Your asses ears, ther's Httle reason why. 
 Judgments should be pul'd forth and purses lye 
 Quiet and still ; or that a man should hold 
 A feesimple of censure without gold. 
 But you that pull your purses forth and buy, [try. 
 Judge till your heart strings, and your purse strings 
 For th' mastery e, which shall crack first, soonest break, 
 rie alwaies give you loosers leave to speak. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
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