wealth upon his back; or a philosopher, for he bears all hist substance about him. From his art was music first invented, and therefore he is always furnished with a song, to which his hammer keeping tune, proves that he was the first founder for the kettledrum. Note, that where the best ale is, there stands his music most upon crochets. The companion of his travels is some foul sun-burnt quean, that, since the terrible statute, recanted gipseyism and is turned pedlaress. So marches he all over England with his bag and baggage. His conversation is unreprovable, for he is ever mending. He observes truly the

statutes, and therefore he can rather steal than beg, in which he is unremovably constant in spite of whip or imprisonment; and so a strong enemy to idleness, that in mending one hole he had rather make three than want work, and when he hath done, he throws the wallet of his faults behind him. He embraceth naturally ancient custom, conversing in open fields and lowly cottages. If he visit cities or towns, 'tis but to deal upon the imperfections of our weaker vessels. His tongue is very voluble, which with canting proves him a linguist. He is entertained in every place, but enters no further than the door, to avoid suspicion. Some will take him to be a coward, but believe it, he is a lad of metal; his valour is commonly three or four yards long, fastened to a pike in the end for flying off. He is provident, for he will fight but with one at once, and then also he had rather submit than be counted obstinate. To conclude, if he escape Tyburn and Banbury, he dies a beggar.

AN APPARITOR

Is a chick of the egg abuse, hatched by the warmth of authority: he is a bird of rapine, and begins to prey and feather together. He croaks like a raven against the death of rich men, and so gets a legacy unbequeathed. His happiness is in the multitude of children, for their increase is his wealth, and to that end he himself yearly adds one. He is a cunning hunter, uncoupling his intelligencing hounds under hedges, in thickets and corn

fields, who follow the chase to city suburbs, where often his game is at covert; his quiver hangs by his side stuffed with silver arrows, which he shoots against church-gates and private men's doors, to the hazard of their purses and credit. There went but a pair of shears between him and the pursuivant of hell, for they both delight in sin, grow richer by it, and are by justice appointed to punish it; only the devil is more cunning, for he picks a living out of others' gains. His living lieth in his eye, which (like spirits) he sends through chinks and keyholes to survey the places of darkness; for which purpose he studieth the optics, but can discover no colour but black, for the pure white of chastity dazzleth his eyes. He is a Catholic, for he is everywhere; and with a politic, for he transforms himself into all shapes. He travels on foot to avoid idleness, and loves the Church entirely, because it is the place of his edification. He accounts not all sins mortal, for fornication with him is a venial sin, and to take bribes a matter of charity; he is collector for burnings and losses at sea, and in casting account readily subtracts the lesser from the greater sum. Thus lives he in a golden age, till death by a process summons him to appear.

AN ALMANAC-MAKER

Is the worst part of an astronomer; a certain compact of figures, characters, and ciphers, out of which he scores the fortune of a year, not so profitably as doubtfully. He is tenant by custom to the planets, of whom he holds the twelve houses by lease parol; to them he pays yearly rent, his study and time, yet lets them out again with all his heart for 40s. per annum. His life is merely contemplative; for his practice, 'tis worth nothing, at least not worthy of credit, and if by chance he purchase any, he loseth it again at the year's end, for time brings truth to light. Ptolemy and Tycho Brahe are his patrons, whose volumes he understands not but admires, and the rather because they are strangers, and so easier to be credited than controlled. His life is upright, for he is always looking upward, yet dares believe

nothing above primum mobile, for 'tis out of the reach of his Jacob's staff. His charity extends no further than to mountebanks and sow-gelders, to whom he bequeaths the seasons of the year to kill or torture by. The verses of his book have a worse pace than ever had Rochester hackney; for his prose, 'tis dappled with ink-horn terms, and may serve for an almanac; but for his judging at the uncertainty of weather, any old shepherd shall make a dunce of him. He would be thought the devil's intelligencer for stolen goods, if ever he steal out of that quality. As a fly turns to a maggot, so the corruption of the cunning man is the generation of an empiric; his works fly forth in small volumes, yet not all, for many ride post to chandlers and tobacco shops in folio. To be brief, he falls three degrees short of his promises, yet is he the key to unlock terms and law days, a dumb mercury to point out highways, and a bailiff of all marts and fairs in England. The rest of him you shall know next year, for what he will be then he himself knows not.

A HYPOCRITE

Is a gilded pill, composed of two virtuous ingredients, natural dishonesty and artificial dissimulation. Simple fruit, plant, or drug he is none, but a deformed mixture bred betwixt evil nature and false art by a monstrous generation, and may well be put into the reckoning of those creatures that God never made. In Church or commonwealth (for in both these this mongrel weed will shoot) it is hard to say whether he be physic or a disease, for he is both in divers respects.

As he is gilt with an outside of seeming purity, or as he offereth himself to you to be taken down in a cup or taste of golden zeal and simplicity, you may call him physic. Nay, and never let potion give patient good stool if, being truly tasted and relished, he be not as loathsome to the stomach of any honest man.

He is also physic in being as commodious for use as he is odious in taste, if the body of the company into which he is taken can make true use of him. For the malice of his nature makes

him so informer-like-dangerous, in taking advantage of anything done or said, yea, even to the ruin of his makers, if he may have benefit, that such a creature in a society makes men as careful of their speeches and actions as the sight of a known cut-purse in a throng makes them watchful over their purses and pockets. He is also in this respect profitable physic, that his conversation being once truly tasted and discovered, the hateful foulness of it will make those that are not fully like him to purge all such diseases as are rank in him out of their own lives, as the sight of some citizens on horseback make a judicious man amend his own faults in horsemanship. If one of these uses can be made of him, let him not long offend the stomach of your company; your best way is to spue him out. That he is a disease in the body where he liveth were as strange a thing to doubt as whether there be knavery in horse-coursers. For if among sheep, the rot; amongst dogs, the mange; amongst horses, the glanders; amongst men and women, the Northern itch and the French ache, be diseases, an hypocrite cannot but be the like in all States and societies that breed him. If he be a clergy hypocrite, then all manner of vice is for the most part so proper to him as he will grudge any man the practice of it but himself; like that grave burgess, who being desired to lend his clothes to represent a part in a comedy, answered: No, by his leave, he would have nobody play the fool in his clothes but himself. Hence are his so austere reprehensions of drinking healths, lascivious talk, usury, and unconscionable dealing; whenas himself, hating the profane mixture of malt and water, will, by his good will, let nothing come within him but the purity of the grape, when he can get it of another's But this must not be done neither without a preface of seeming soothness, turning up the eyes, moving the head, laying hand on the breast, and protesting that he would not do it but to strengthen his body, being even consumed with dissembled zeal, and tedious and thankless babbling to God and his auditors. And for the other vices, do but venture the making yourself private with him or trusting of him, and if you come off without a savour of the air which his soul is infected with you have great

cost.

་

fortune. The fardel of all this ware that is in him you shall commonly see carried upon the back of these two beasts that live within him, Ignorance and Imperiousness, and they may well serve to carry other vices, for of themselves they are insupportable. His Ignorance acquits him of all science, human or divine, and of all language but his mother's; holding nothing pure, holy, or sincere but the senseless recollections of his own crazed brain, the zealous fumes of his inflamed spirit, and the endless labours of his eternal tongue, the motions whereof, when matter and words fail (as they often do), must be patched up to accomplish. his four hours in a day at the least with long and fervent hums. Anything else, either for language or matter, he cannot abide, but thus censureth: Latin, the language of the beast; Greek, the tongue wherein the heathen poets wrote their fictions; Hebrew, the speech of the Jews that crucified Christ; controversies do not edify; logic and philosophy are the subtilties of Satan to deceive the simple; human stories profane, and not savouring of the Spirit; in a word, all decent and sensible form of speech and persuasion (though in his own tongue) vain ostentation. And all this is the burden of his Ignorance, saving that sometimes idleness will put in also to bear a part of the baggage. His other beast, Imperiousness, is yet more proudly laden; it carrieth a burden that no cords of authority, spiritual nor temporal, should bind if it might have the full swing. No Pilate, no prince should command him, nay, he will command them, and at his pleasure censure them if they will not suffer their ears to be fettered with the long chains of his tedious collations, their purses to be emptied with the inundations of his unsatiable humour, and their judgments to be blinded with the muffler of his zealous ignorance; for this doth he familiarly insult over his maintainer that breeds him, his patron that feeds him, and in time over all them that will suffer him to set a foot within their doors or put a finger in their purses. All this and much more is in him; that abhorring degrees and universities as reliques of superstition, hath leapt from a shop-board or a cloak-bag to a desk or pulpit; and that, like a sea-god in a pageant, hath the