Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century Part 22

He is a tooth-drawer once removed; here is the difference, one applauds the grinder the other the grist. Never till now could I verify the poet's description, that the ravenous harpy had a human visage. Death himself cannot quit scores with him; like the demoniac in the gospel, he lives among tombs, nor is all the holy water shed by widows and orphans a sufficient exorcism to dispossess him. Thus the cat sucks your breath and the fiend your blood; nor can the brotherhood of witchfinders, so sagely inst.i.tuted with all their terror, wean the familiars.

But once more to single out my embossed committee-man; his fate (for I know you would fain see an end of him) is either a whipping audit, when he is wrung in the withers by a committee of examinations, and so the sponge weeps out the moisture which he had soaked before; or else he meets his pa.s.sing peal in the clamorous mutiny of a gut-foundered garrison, for the hedge-sparrow will be feeding the cuckoo till he mistake his commons and bites off her head. Whatever it is, it is within his desert, for what is observed of some creatures that at the same time they trade in productions three stories high, suckling the first, big with the second, and clicketing for the third: a committee-man is the counterpoint, his mischief is superfoetation, a certain scale of destruction, for he ruins the father, beggars the son, and strangles the hope of all posterity.

THE CHARACTER OF A DIURNAL-MAKER.

A diurnal-maker is the sub-almoner of history, Queen Mab's register, one whom, by the same figure that a north country pedlar is a merchantman, you may style an author. It is like overreach of language, when every thin tinder-cloaked quack must be called a doctor; when a clumsy cobbler usurps the attribute of our English peers, and is vamped a translator.

List him a writer and you smother Geoffrey in swabber-slops; the very name of dabbler oversets him; he is swallowed up in the phrase, like Sir S.L. [Samuel Luke] in a great saddle, nothing to be seen but the giddy feather in his crown. They call him a Mercury, but he becomes the epithet like the little negro mounted upon an elephant, just such another blot rampant. He has not stuffings sufficient for the reproach of a scribbler, but it hangs about him like an old wife's skin when the flesh hath forsaken her, lank and loose. He defames a good t.i.tle as well as most of our modern n.o.blemen; those wens of greatness, the body politic's most peccant humours blistered into lords. He hath so raw-boned a being that however you render him he rubs it out and makes rags of the expression. The silly countryman who, seeing an ape in a scarlet coat, blessed his young wors.h.i.+p, and gave his landlord joy of the hopes of his house, did not slander his complement with worse application than he that names this shred an historian. To call him an historian is to knight a mandrake; 'tis to view him through a perspective, and by that gross hyperbole to give the reputation of an engineer to a maker of mousetraps. Such an historian would hardly pa.s.s muster with a Scotch stationer in a sieveful of ballads and G.o.dly books.

He would not serve for the breast-plate of a begging Grecian. The most cramped compendium that the age hath seen since all learning hath been almost torn into ends, outstrips him by the head. I have heard of puppets that could prattle in a play, but never saw of their writings before. There goes a report of the Holland women that together with their children they are delivered of a Sooterkin, not unlike to a rat, which some imagine to be the offspring of the stoves. I know not what _Ignis fatuus_ adulterates the press, but it seems much after that fas.h.i.+on, else how could this vermin think to be a twin to a legitimate writer; when those weekly fragments shall pa.s.s for history, let the poor man's box be ent.i.tled the exchequer, and the alms-basket a magazine. Not a worm that gnaws on the dull scalp of voluminous Holinshed, but at every meal devoured more chronicle than his tribe amounts to. A marginal note of W. P. would serve for a winding-sheet for that man's works, like thick-skinned fruits are all rind, fit for nothing but the author's fate, to be pared in a pillory.

The cook who served up the dwarf in a pie (to continue the frolic) might have lapped up such an historian as this in the bill of fare. He is the first tincture and rudiment of a writer, dipped as yet in the preparative blue, like an almanac well-willer. He is the cadet of a pamphleteer, the pedee of a romancer; he is the embryo of a history slinked before maturity. How should he record the issues of time who is himself an abortive? I will not say but that he may pa.s.s for an historian in Garbier's academy; he is much of the size of those knotgra.s.s professors. What a pitiful seminary was there projected; yet suitable enough to the present universities, those dry nurses which the providence of the age has so fully reformed that they are turned reformadoes. But that's no matter, the meaner the better. It is a maxim observable in these days, that the only way to win the game is to play petty Johns. Of this number is the esquire of the quill, for he hath the grudging of history and some yawnings accordingly. Writing is a disease in him and holds like a quotidian, so 'tis his infirmity that makes him an author, as Mahomet was beholding to the falling sickness to vouch him a prophet. That nice artificer who filed a chain so thin and light that a flea could trail it (as if he had worked shorthand, and taught his tools to cypher), did but contrive an emblem for this skipjack and his slight productions.

Methinks the Turk should licence diurnals because he prohibits learning and books. A library of diurnals is a wardrobe of frippery; 'tis a just idea of a Limbo of the infants. I saw one once that could write with his toes, by the same token I could have wished he had worn his copies for socks; 'tis he without doubt from whom the diurnals derive their pedigree, and they have a birthright accordingly, being shuffled out at the bed's feet of history. To what infinite numbers an historian would multiply should he crumble into elves of this profession? To supply this smallness they are fain to join forces, so they are not singly but as the custom is in a croaking committee. They tug at the pen like slaves at the oar, a whole bank together; they write in the posture that the Swedes gave fire in, over one another's heads. It is said there is more of them go to a suit of clothes than to a _Britannicus;_ in this polygamy the clothes breed and cannot determine whose issue is lawfully begotten.

And here I think it were not amiss to take a particular how he is accoutred, and so do by him as he in his Siquis for the wall-eyed mare, or the crop flea-bitten, give you the marks of the beast. I begin with his head, which is ever in clouts, as if the nightcap should make affidavit that the brain was pregnant. To what purpose doth the _Pia Mater_ lie in so dully in her white formalities; sure she hath had hard labour, for the brows have squeezed for it, as you may perceive by his b.u.t.tered bon-grace that film of a demicastor; 'tis so thin and unctuous that the sunbeams mistake it for a vapour, and are like to cap him; so it is right heliotrope, it creaks in the s.h.i.+ne and flaps in the shade; whatever it be I wish it were able to call in his ears. There's no proportion between that head and appurtenances; those of all lungs are no more fit for that small noddle of the circ.u.mcision than bra.s.s bosses for a Geneva Bible. In what a puzzling neutrality is the poor soul that moves betwixt two such ponderous biases? His collar is edged with a piece of peeping linen, by which he means a band; 'tis the forlorn of his s.h.i.+rt crawling out of his neck; indeed it were time that his s.h.i.+rt were jogging, for it has served an apprentices.h.i.+p, and (as apprentices use) it hath learned its trade too, to which effect 'tis marching to the papermill, and the next week sets up for itself in the shape of a pamphlet. His gloves are the shavings of his hands, for he casts his skin like a cancelled parchment. The itch represents the broken seals.

His boots are the legacies of two black jacks, and till he p.a.w.ned the silver that the jacks were tipped with it was a pretty mode of boot-hose-tops. For the rest of his habit he is a perfect seaman, a kind of tarpaulin, he being hanged about with his coa.r.s.e composition, those pole-davie papers.

But I must draw to an end, for every character is an anatomy lecture, and it fares with me in this of the diurnal-maker, as with him that reads on a begged malefactor, my subject smells before I have gone through with him; for a parting blow then. The word historian imports a sage and solemn author, one that curls his brow with a sullen gravity, like a bull-necked Presbyter since the army hath got him off his jurisdiction, who, Presbyter like, sweeps his breast with a reverend beard, full of native moss-troopers; not such a squirting scribe as this that's troubled with the rickets, and makes pennyworths of history. The college-treasury that never had in bank above a Harry-groat, shut up there in a melancholy solitude, like one that is kept to keep possession, had as good evidence to show for his t.i.tle as he for an historian; so, if he will needs be an historian, he is not cited in the sterling acceptation, but after the rate of bluecaps' reckoning, an historian Scot. Now a Scotchman's tongue runs high fullams. There is a cheat in his idiom, for the sense ebbs from the bold expression, like the citizen's gallon, which the drawer interprets but half a pint. In sum, a diurnal-maker is the anti-mark of an historian, he differs from him as a drill from a man, or (if you had rather have it in the saints'

gibberish) as a hinter doth from a holder-forth.

THE CHARACTER OF A LONDON DIURNAL.

A diurnal is a puny chronicle, scarce pin-feathered with the wings of time. It is a history in sippets: the English Iliads in a nutsh.e.l.l: the apocryphal Parliament's book of Maccabees in single sheets. It would tire a Welshman to reckon up how many aps 'tis removed from an annal; for it is of that extract, only of the younger house, like a shrimp to a lobster. The original sinner in this kind was Dutch, Gallo-Belgicus the protoplast, and the modern Mercuries but Hans-en-kelders. The Countess of Zealand was brought to bed of an almanac, as many children as days in the year. It may be the legislative lady is of that lineage, so she sp.a.w.ns the diurnals, and they at Westminster take them in adoption by the names of _Scoticus_, _Civicus_, _Britannicus_. In the frontispiece of the old Beldam diurnal, like the contents of the chapter, sitteth the House of Commons judging the twelve tribes of Israel. You may call them the kingdom's anatomy before the weekly calendar; for such is a diurnal, the day of the month with what weather in the commonwealth. It is taken for the pulse of the body politic, and the empiric divines of the a.s.sembly, those spiritual dragooners, thumb it accordingly. Indeed it is a pretty synopsis, and those grave rabbis (though in the point of Divinity) trade in no larger authors. The country-carrier, when he buys it for the vicar, miscalls it the urinal; yet properly enough, for it casts the water of the state ever since it staled blood. It differs from an Aulicus, as the devil and his exorcist, or as a black witch doth from a white one, whose office is to unravel her enchantments.

It begins usually with an Ordinance, which is a law still born, dropped before quickened by the royal a.s.sent. 'Tis one of the parliament's bye-blows, acts only being legitimate, and hath no more sire than a Spanish jennet that is begotten by the wind.

Thus their militia, like its patron Mars, is the issue only of the mother, without the concourse of royal Jupiter: yet law it is, if they vote it, in defiance to their fundamentals; like the old s.e.xton, who swore his clock went true, whatever the sun said to the contrary.

The next ingredient of a diurnal is plots, horrible plots, which with wonderful sagacity it hunts dry-Coot, while they are yet in their causes, before _materia prima_ can put on her smock. How many such fits of the mother have troubled the kingdom; and for all Sir W.E. [William Earle] looks like a man-midwife, not yet delivered of so much as a cus.h.i.+on? But actors must have properties; and since the stages were voted down the only playhouse is at Westminster.

Suitable to their plots are their informers, skippers, and tailors, spaniels both for the land and water. Good conscionable intelligence!

For however Pym's bill may inflame the reckoning, the honest vermin have not so much for lying as the public faith.

Thus a zealous botcher in Moorfields, while he was contriving some quirpocut of Church-Government, by the help of his outlying ears and the Otacousticon of the spirit, discovered such a plot, that Selden intends to combat antiquity, and maintain it was a tailor's goose that preserved the capital.

I wonder my Lord of Canterbury is not once more all to be traitored, for dealing with the lions to settle the Commission of Array in the Tower.

It would do well to cramp the articles dormant, besides the opportunity of reforming these beasts of the prerogative, and changing their profaner names of Harry and Charles into Nehemiah and Eleazar.

Suppose a corn-cutter being to give little Isaac a cast of his office should fall to paring his brows (mistaking the one end for the other, because he branches at both), this would be a plot, and the next diurnal would furnish you with this scale of votes:--

_Resolved_ upon the question, That this act of the corn-cutter was an absolute invasion of the city's charter in the representative forehead of Isaac.

_Resolved_, That the evil counsellors about the corn-cutter are popishly affected and enemies to the State.

_Resolved_, That there be a public thanksgiving for the great deliverance of Isaac's brow-antlers; and a solemn covenant drawn up to defy the corn-cutter and all his works.

Thus the Quixotes of this age fight with the windmills of their own heads, quell monsters of their own creation, make plots, and then discover them; as who fitter to unkennel the fox than the terrier that is part of him?

In the third place march their adventures; the Roundheads' legends, the rebels' romance; stories of a larger size than the ears of their sect, able to strangle the belief of a Solifidian.

I'll present them in their order. And first as a whiffler before the show enter Stamford, one that trod the stage with the first, traversed the ground, made a leg and exit. The country people took him for one that by order of the Houses was to dance a morrice through the west of England. Well, he's a nimble gentleman; set him upon Banks his horse in a saddle rampant, and it is a great question which part of the Centaur shows better tricks.

There was a vote pa.s.sing to translate him with all his equipage into monumental gingerbread; but it was crossed by the female committee alleging that the valour of his image would bite their children by the tongues.

This cubit and half of commander, by the help of a diurnal, routed his enemies fifty miles off. It's strange you'll say, and yet 'tis generally believed he would as soon do it at that distance as nearer hand. Sure it was his sword for which the weapon-salve was invented; that so wounding and healing (like loving correlates) might both work at the same removes. But the squib is run to the end of the rope: room for the prodigy of valour. Madam Atropos in breeches, Waller's knight-errantry; and because every mountebank must have his zany, throw him in Hazelrig to set off his story. These two, like Bel and the Dragon, are always wors.h.i.+pped in the same chapter; they hunt in couples, what one doth at the head, the other scores up at the heels.

Thus they kill a man over and over, as Hopkins and Sternhold murder the psalms with another of the same; one chimes all in, and then the other strikes up as the saints-bell.

I wonder for how many lives my Lord Hopton took the lease of his body.

First Stamford slew him, then Waller outkilled that half a bar; and yet it is thought the sullen corpse would scarce bleed were both these manslayers never so near it.

The same goes of a Dutch headsman, that he would do his office with so much ease and dexterity, that the head after execution should stand upon the shoulders. Pray G.o.d Sir William be not probationer for the place; for as if he had the like knack too, most of those whom the diurnal hath slain for him, to us poor mortals seem untouched.

Thus these artificers of death can kill the man without wounding the body, like lightning, that melts the sword and never singes the scabbard.

This is the William whose lady is the conqueror; this is the city's champion and the diurnal's delight; he that cuckolds the general in his commission; for he stalks with Ess.e.x, and shoots under his belly, because his Excellency himself is not charged there: yet in all this triumph there is a whip and bell; translate but the scene to Roundway Down, there Hazelrig's lobsters turned crabs and crawled backwards, there poor Sir William ran to his lady for an use of consolation.

But the diurnal is weary of the arm of flesh, and now begins an hosanna to Cromwell; one that hath beat up his drums clean through the Old Testament; you may learn the genealogy of our Saviour by the names in his regiment; the muster-master uses no other list but the first chapter of Matthew.

With what face can they object to the king the bringing in of foreigners, when themselves entertain such an army of Hebrews? This Cromwell is never so valorous as when he is making speeches for the a.s.sociation, which nevertheless he doth somewhat ominously with his neck awry, holding up his ear as if he expected Mahomet's pigeon to come and prompt him. He should be a bird of prey too by his b.l.o.o.d.y beak; his nose is able to try a young eagle, whether she be lawfully begotten. But all is not gold that glitters. What we wonder at in the rest of them is natural to him to kill without bloodshed, for the most of his trophies are in a church window, when a looking-gla.s.s would show him more superst.i.tion. He is so perfect a hater of images that he hath defaced G.o.d's in his own countenance. If he deals with men, 'tis when he takes them napping in an old monument; then down goes dust and ashes, and the stoutest cavalier is no better. O brave Oliver! Time's voider, subsizer to the worms, in whom death, who formerly devoured our ancestors, now chews the cud. He said grace once as if he would have fallen aboard with the Marquis of Newcastle; nay, and the diurnal gave you his bill of fare; but it proved a running banquet, as appears by the story. Believe him as he whistles to his Cambridge team of committee-men, and he doth wonders. But holy men, like the holy language, must be read backwards.

They rifle colleges to promote learning, and pull down churches for edification. But sacrilege is entailed upon him. There must be a Cromwell for cathedrals as well as abbeys; a secure sin, whose offence carries its pardon in its mouth; for how shall he be hanged for church-robbery, that gives himself the benefit of the clergy?

But for all Cromwell's nose wears the dominical letter, compared to Manchester he is but like the vigils to an holy-day. This, this is the man of G.o.d, so sanctified a thunderbolt, that Burroughs (in a proportionable blasphemy to his Lord of Hosts) would style him the archangel giving battle to the devil.

Indeed, as the angels each of them makes a several species, so every one of his soldiers makes a distinct church. Had these beasts been to enter into the ark it would have puzzled Noah to have sorted them into pairs.

If ever there were a rope of sand it was so many sects twisted into an a.s.sociation.

They agree in nothing but that they are all Adamites in understanding.

It is a sign of a coward to wink and fight, yet all their valour proceeds from their ignorance.

But I wonder whence their general's purity proceeds; it is not by traduction; if he was begotten a saint it was by equivocal generation, for the devil in the father is turned monk in the son, so his G.o.dliness is of the same parentage with good laws, both extracted out of bad manners, and would he alter the Scripture as he hath attempted the creed, he might vary the text and say to corruption, Thou art my Father.

This is he that put out one of the kingdom's eyes by clouding our mother university; and (if this Scotch mist farther prevail) he will extinguish the other. He hath the like quarrel to both, because both are strung with the same optic nerve, knowing loyalty.

Barbarous rebel! who will be revenged upon all learning, because his treason is beyond the mercy of the book.

The diurnal as yet hath not talked much of his victories, but there is the more behind, for the knight must always beat the giant, that's resolved.

If anything fall out amiss which cannot be smothered, the diurnal hath a help at maw. It is but putting to sea and taking a Danish fleet, or brewing it with some success out of Ireland, and then it goes down merrily.

There are more puppets that move by the wire of a diurnal, as Brereton and Cell, two of Mars his petty-toes, such snivelling cowards that it is a favour to call them so. Was Brereton to fight with his teeth (as in all other things he resembles the beast) he would have odds of any man at the weapon. Oh, he's a terrible slaughterman at a Thanksgiving dinner. Had he been cannibal to have eaten those that he vanquished, his gut would have made him valiant.

The greatest wonder is at Fairfax, how he comes to be a babe of grace, certainly it is not in his personal, but (as the State-sophies distinguish) in his politic capacity; degenerate _ab extra_ by the zeal of the house he sat in, as chickens are hatched at Grand Cairo by the adoption of an oven.

There is the woodmonger too, a feeble crutch to a declining cause, a new branch of the old oak of reformation.