ing what time he has lost. He is wondrously capricious to seem a judgment, and listens with a sour attention to what he understands not. He talks much of Scaliger, and Casaubon, and the Jesuits, and prefers some unheard-of Dutch name before them all. He has verses to bring in upon these and these hints, and it shall go hard but he will wind in his opportunity. He is critical in a language he cannot conster, and speaks seldom under Arminius in divinity. His business and retirement and caller away is his study, and he protests no delight to it comparable. He is a great nomenclator of authors, which he has read in general in the catalogue, and in particular in the title, and goes seldom so far as the dedication. He never talks of anything but learning, and learns all from talking. Three encounters with the same men pump him, and then he only puts in or gravely says nothing. He has taken pains to be an ass, though not to be a scholar, and is at length discovered and laughed at.

Complete. Number XLV. of "Microcosmography.»

THE

ON CHURCH CHOIRS

HE common singing-men in cathedral churches are a bad society, and yet a company of good fellows that roar deep in the choir, deeper in the tavern. They are the eight parts of speech which go to the syntaxis of service, and are distinguished by their noises much like bells, for they make not a concert, but a peal. Their pastime or recreation is prayers, their exercise drinking, yet herein so religiously addicted that they serve God oftest when they are drunk. Their humanity is a leg to the residencer, their learning a chapter, for they learn it commonly before they read it; yet the old Hebrew names are little beholden to them, for they miscall them worse than one another. Though they never expound the Scripture, they handle it much, and pollute the Gospel with two things, their conversation and their thumbs. Upon workydays they behave themselves at prayers as at their pots, for they swallow them down in an instant. Their gowns are laced commonly with streamings of ale, the superfluities of a cup or throat above measure. Their skill in melody makes them the better companions abroad, and their anthems. abler to sing catches. Long lived for the most part they are not, especially the bass, they overflow their bank so often to drown

the organs. Briefly, if they escape arresting, they die constantly in God's service; and to take their death with more patience, they have wine and cakes at their funeral, and now they keep the church a great deal better, and help to fill it with their bones as before with their noise.

Complete. Number XLVII. of "Microcosmography."

Η

ON A SHOP-KEEPER

Is shop is his well-stuffed book, and himself the title-page of

H" it, or index. He utters much to all men, though he sells but

to a few, and entreats for his own necessities by asking others what they lack. No man speaks more and no more, for his words are like his wares, twenty of one sort, and he goes over them alike to all comers. He is an arrogant commender of his own things; for whatsoever he shows you is the best in the town, though the worst in his shop. His conscience was a thing that would have laid upon his hands, and he was forced to put it off, and makes great use of honesty to profess upon. He tells you lies by rote, and not minding, as the phrase to sell in, and the language he spent most of his years to learn. He never speaks so truly as when he says he would use you as his brother; for he would abuse his brother, and in his shop thinks it lawful. His religion is much in the nature of his customers, and indeed the pander to it; and by a misinterpreted sense of Scripture makes a gain of his godliness. He is your slave while you pay. him ready money, but if he once befriend you, your tyrant, and you had better deserve his hate than his trust.

Complete. Number XLVIII. of "Microcosmography.»

A

ON THE BLUNT MAN

BLUNT man is one whose wit is better pointed than his behavior, and that coarse and unpolished, not out of ignorance so much as humor. He is a great enemy to the fine gentleman, and these things of compliment, and hates ceremony in conversation as the Puritan in religion. He distinguishes not betwixt fair and double dealing, and suspects all smoothness for the dress of knavery. He starts at the encounter of a salutation

as an assault, and beseeches you in choler to forbear your courtesy. He loves not anything in discourse that comes before the purpose, and is always suspicious of a preface. Himself falls rudely still on his matter without any circumstance, except he use an old proverb for an introduction. He swears old out-ofdate innocent oaths, as, By the mass! By our lady! and such like, and though there be lords present, he cries, My masters! He is exceedingly in love with his humor, which makes him always profess and proclaim it, and you must take what he says patiently, because he is a plain man. His nature is his excuse still, and other men's tyrant; for he must speak his mind, and that is his worst, and craves your pardon most injuriously for not pardoning you. His jests best become him, because they come from him rudely and unaffected; and he has the luck commonly to have them famous. He is one that will do more than he will speak, and yet speak more than he will hear; for though he love to touch others, he is touchy himself, and seldom to his own abuses replies but with his fists. He is as squeasy of his commendations as his courtesy, and his good word is like a eulogy in a satire. He is generally better favored than he favors, as being commonly well expounded in his bitterness, and no man speaks treason more securely. He chides great men with most boldness, and is counted for it an honest fellow. He is grumbling much in the behalf of the commonwealth, and is in prison oft for it with credit. He is generally honest, but more generally thought so, and his downrightness credits him, as a man not well bended and crookened to the times. In conclusion, he is not easily bad, in whom this quality is nature; but the counterfeit is most dangerous, since he is disguised in a humor that professes not to disguise.

Complete. Number XLIX. of "Microcosmography."

A

ON A CRITIC

CRITIC is one that has spelled over a great many books, and his observation is the orthography. He is the surgeon of old authors, and heals the wounds of dust and ignorance. He converses much in fragments and desunt multa's, and if he piece it up with two lines he is more proud of that book than the author. He runs over all sciences to peruse their syntaxis, and

thinks all learning comprised in writing Latin. He tastes styles as some discreeter palates do wine; and tells you which is genuine, which sophisticate and bastard. His own phrase is a miscellany of old words, deceased long before the Cæsars, and entombed by Varro, and the modernest man he follows is Plautus. He writes omneis at length, and quicquid, and his gerund is most inconformable. He is a troublesome vexer of the dead, which after so long sparing must rise up to the judgment of his castigations. He is one that makes all books sell dearer, whilst he swells them into folios with his comments.

Complete. Number LI. of "Microcosmography.»

A

ON THE MODEST MAN

MODEST man is a far finer man than he knows of, one that shews better to all men than himself, and so much the better to all men, as less to himself; for no quality sets a man off like this, and commends him more against his will: and he can put up any injury sooner than this (as he calls it) your irony. You shall hear him confute his commenders, and giving reasons how much they are mistaken, and is angry almost if they do not believe him. Nothing threatens him so much as great expectation, which he thinks more prejudicial than your under-opinion, because it is easier to make that false than this true. He is one that sneaks from a good action as one that had pilfered, and dare not justify it; and is more blushingly reprehended in this than others in sin: that counts all public declarings of himself but so many penances before the people; and the more you applaud him the more you abash him, and he recovers not his face a month after. One that is easy to like anything of another man's, and thinks all he knows not of him better than that he knows. He excuses that to you which another would impute; and if you pardon him is satisfied. One that stands in no opinion because it is his own, but suspects it rather, because it is his own, and is confuted and thanks you. He sees nothing more willingly than his errors, and it is his error sometimes to be too soon persuaded. He is content to be auditor where he only can speak, and content to go away and think himself instructed. No man is so weak that he is ashamed to learn of, and is less ashamed to confess it; and he finds many times even in the dust what others

overlook and lose. Every man's presence is a kind of bridle to him, to stop the roving of his tongue and passions; and even impudent men look for this reverence from him, and distaste that in him which they suffer in themselves, as one in whom vice is ill favored and shows more scurvily than another A bawdy jest shall shame him more than a bastard another man, and he that got it shall censure him among the rest. And he is coward to nothing more than an ill tongue, and whosoever dare lie on him hath power over him; and if you take him by his look he is guilty. The main ambition of his life is not to be discredited, and for other things, his desires are more limited than his fortunes, which he thinks preferment, though never so mean, and that he is to do something to deserve this. He is too tender to venture on great places, and would not hurt a dignity to help himself. If he do, it was the violence of his friends constrained him; how hardly soever he obtain it, he was harder persuaded to seek it

Complete. Number LV. of "Microcosmography."

A

ON THE INSOLENT MAN

N INSOLENT man is a fellow newly great and newly proud; one that hath put himself into another face upon his preferment, for his own was not bred to it. One whom fortune hath shot up to some office or authority, and he shoots up his neck to his fortune, and will not bate you an inch of either. His very countenance and gesture bespeak how much he is, and if you understand him not, he tells you, and concludes every period with his place, which you must and shall know. He is one that looks on all men as if he were angry, but especially on those of his acquaintance, whom he beats off with a surlier distance, as men apt to mistake him, because they have known him: and for this cause he knows not you till you have told him your name, which he thinks he has heard, but forgot, and with much ado seems to recover. If you have anything to use him in, you are his vassal for that time, and must give him the patience of any injury, which he does only to show what he may do. He snaps

you up bitterly, because he will be offended, and tells you you are saucy and troublesome, and sometimes takes your money in this language. His very courtesies are intolerable, they are done