Microcosmography Part 14

A SERGEANT, OR CATCH-POLE

Is one of G.o.d's judgments; and which our roarers do only conceive terrible. He is the properest shape wherein they fancy Satan; for he is at most but an arrester, and h.e.l.l a dungeon. He is the creditor's hawk, wherewith they seize upon flying birds, and fetch them again in his tallons. He is the period of young gentlemen, or their full stop, for when he meets with them they can go no farther. His ambush is a shop-stall, or close lane, and his a.s.sault is cowardly at your back. He respites you in no place but a tavern, where he sells his minutes dearer than a clock-maker. The common way to run from him is through him, which is often attempted and atchieved,[76] [_and no man is more beaten out of charity_.]

He is one makes the street more dangerous than the highways, and men go better provided in their walks than their journey. He is the first handsel of the young rapiers of the templers; and they are as proud of his repulse as an Hungarian of killing a Turk. He is a moveable prison, and his hands two manacles hard to be filed off. He is an occasioner of disloyal thoughts in the commonwealth, for he makes men hate the king's name worse than the devil's.

FOOTNOTES:

[76] _And the clubs out of charity knock him down_, first edit.

LIII.

AN UNIVERSITY DUN

Is a gentleman's follower cheaply purchased, for his own money has hired him. He is an inferior creditor of some ten s.h.i.+llings downwards, contracted for horse-hire, or perchance for drink, too weak to be put in suit, and he arrests your modesty. He is now very expensive of his time, for he will wait upon your stairs a whole afternoon, and dance attendance with more patience than a gentleman-usher. He is a sore beleaguerer of chambers, and a.s.saults them sometimes with furious knocks; yet finds strong resistance commonly, and is kept out. He is a great complainer of scholar's loytering, for he is sure never to find them within, and yet he is the chief cause many times that makes them study. He grumbles at the ingrat.i.tude of men that shun him for his kindness, but indeed it is his own fault, for he is too great an upbraider. No man puts them more to their brain than he; and by s.h.i.+fting him off they learn to s.h.i.+ft in the world. Some chuse their rooms on purpose to avoid his surprisals, and think the best commodity in them his prospect. He is like a rejected acquaintance, hunts those that care not for his company, and he knows it well enough, and yet will not keep away. The sole place to supple him is the b.u.t.tery, where he takes grievous use upon your name,[77] and he is one much wrought with good beer and rhetorick. He is a man of most unfortunate voyages, and no gallant walks the streets to less purpose.

FOOTNOTES:

[77] That is, _runs you up a long score_.

LIV.

A STAYED MAN

Is a man: one that has taken order with himself, and sets a rule to those lawlesnesses within him: whose life is distinct and in method, and his actions, as it were, cast up before; not loosed into the world's vanities, but gathered up and contracted in his station: not scattered into many pieces of businesses, but that one course he takes, goes through with. A man firm and standing in his purposes, not heaved off with each wind and pa.s.sion: that squares his expence to his coffers, and makes the total first, and then the items. One that thinks what he does, and does what he says, and foresees what he may do before he purposes. One whose "if I can"

is more than another's a.s.surance; and his doubtful tale before some men's protestations:--that is confident of nothing in futurity, yet his conjectures oft true prophecies:--that makes a pause still betwixt his ear and belief, and is not too hasty to say after others. One whose tongue is strung up like a clock till the time, and then strikes, and says much when he talks little:--that can see the truth betwixt two wranglers, and sees them agree even in that they fall out upon:--that speaks no rebellion in a bravery, or talks big from the spirit of sack. A man cool and temperate in his pa.s.sions, not easily betrayed by his choler:--that vies not oath with oath, nor heat with heat, but replies calmly to an angry man, and is too hard for him too:--that can come fairly off from captain's companies, and neither drink nor quarrel. One whom no ill hunting sends home discontented, and makes him swear at his dogs and family. One not hasty to pursue the new fas.h.i.+on, nor yet affectedly true to his old round breeches; but gravely handsome, and to his place, which suits him better than his taylor: active in the world without disquiet, and careful without misery; yet neither ingulphed in his pleasures, nor a seeker of business, but has his hour for both. A man that seldom laughs violently, but his mirth is a cheerful look: of a composed and settled countenance, not set, nor much alterable with sadness or joy. He affects nothing so wholly, that he must be a miserable man when he loses it; but fore-thinks what will come hereafter, and spares fortune his thanks and curses. One that loves his credit, not this word reputation; yet can save both without a duel.

Whose entertainments to greater men are respectful, not complementary; and to his friends plain, not rude. A good husband, father, master; that is, without doting, pampering, familiarity. A man well poised in all humours, in whom nature shewed most geometry, and he has not spoiled the work. A man of more wisdom than wittiness, and brain than fancy; and abler to any thing than to make verses.

LV.

A 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;[78] 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 blus.h.i.+ngly reprehended in this, than others in sin: that counts all publick 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 any thing 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 pa.s.sions: 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-favoured, and shews more scurvily than another. A bawdy jest shall shame him more than a b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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 lye 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[78] This, as well as many other pa.s.sages in this work, has been appropriated by John Dunton, the celebrated bookseller, as his own. See his character of Mr. Samuel Hool, in _Dunton's Life and Errors_, 8vo.

1705. p. 337.

LVI.

A MEER EMPTY WIT

Is like one that spends on the stock without any revenues coming in, and will shortly be no wit at all; for learning is the fuel to the fire of wit, which, if it wants this feeding, eats out it self. A good conceit or two bates of such a man, and makes a sensible weakening in him; and his brain recovers it not a year after. The rest of him are bubbles and flashes, darted out on a sudden, which, if you take them while they are warm, may be laughed at; if they are cool, are nothing. He speaks best on the present apprehension, for meditation stupifies him, and the more he is in travel, the less he brings forth. His things come off then, as in a nauseateing stomach, where there is nothing to cast up, strains and convulsions, and some astonis.h.i.+ng bombasts, which men only, till they understand, are scared with. A verse or some such work he may sometimes get up to, but seldom above the stature of an epigram, and that with some relief out of Martial, which is the ordinary companion of his pocket, and he reads him as he were inspired. Such men are commonly the trifling things of the world, good to make merry the company, and whom only men have to do withal when they have nothing to do, and none are less their friends than who are most their company. Here they vent themselves over a cup some-what more lastingly; all their words go for jests, and all their jests for nothing. They are nimble in the fancy of some ridiculous thing, and reasonable good in the expression. Nothing stops a jest when it's coming, neither friends, nor danger, but it must out howsoever, though their blood come out after, and then they emphatically rail, and are emphatically beaten, and commonly are men reasonable familiar to this.

Briefly they are such whose life is but to laugh and be laughed at; and only wits in jest and fools in earnest.

LVII.

A DRUNKARD

Is one that will be a man to-morrow morning, but is now what you will make him, for he is in the power of the next man, and if a friend the better.

One that hath let go himself from the hold and stay of reason, and lies open to the mercy of all temptations. No l.u.s.t but finds him disarmed and fenceless, and with the least a.s.sault enters. If any mischief escape him, it was not his fault, for he was laid as fair for it as he could. Every man sees him, as Cham saw his father the first of this sin, an uncovered man, and though his garment be on, uncovered; the secretest parts of his soul lying in the nakedest manner visible: all his pa.s.sions come out now, all his vanities, and those shamefuller humours which discretion clothes.

His body becomes at last like a miry way, where the spirits are beclogged and cannot pa.s.s: all his members are out of office, and his heels do but trip up one another. He is a blind man with eyes, and a cripple with legs on. All the use he has of this vessel himself, is to hold thus much; for his drinking is but a scooping in of so many quarts, which are filled out into his body, and that filled out again into the room, which is commonly as drunk as he. Tobacco serves to air him after a was.h.i.+ng, and is his only breath and breathing while. He is the greatest enemy to himself, and the next to his friend, and then most in the act of his kindness, for his kindness is but trying a mastery, who shall sink down first: and men come from him as a battle, wounded and bound up. Nothing takes a man off more from his credit, and business, and makes him more retchlesly[79] careless what becomes of all. Indeed he dares not enter on a serious thought, or if he do, it is such melancholy that it sends him to be drunk again.

FOOTNOTES:

[79] Rechlesse, _negligent_. Saxon, rectlerre. Chaucer uses it also as an adjective:

"I may not in this cas be _reccheles_."

_Clerkes Tale_, v. 8364.

LVIII.

A PRISON

Is the grave of the living,[80] where they are shut up from the world and their friends; and the worms that gnaw upon them their own thoughts and the jaylor. A house of meagre looks and ill smells, for lice, drink, and tobacco are the compound. Pluto's court was expressed from this fancy; and the persons are much about the same parity that is there. You may ask, as Menippus in Lucian, which is Nireus, which Thersites, which the beggar, which the knight;--for they are all suited in the same form of a kind of nasty poverty. Only to be out at elbows is in fas.h.i.+on here, and a great indecorum not to be thread-bare. Every man shews here like so many wracks upon the sea, here the ribs of a thousand pound, here the relicks of so many mannors, a doublet without b.u.t.tons; and 'tis a spectacle of more pity than executions are. The company one with the other is but a vying of complaints, and the causes they have to rail on fortune and fool themselves, and there is a great deal of good fellows.h.i.+p in this. They are commonly, next their creditors, most bitter against the lawyers, as men that have had a great stroke in a.s.sisting them hither. Mirth here is stupidity or hard-heartedness, yet they feign it sometimes to slip melancholy, and keep off themselves from themselves, and the torment of thinking what they have been. Men huddle up their life here as a thing of no use, and wear it out like an old suit, the faster the better; and he that deceives the time best, best spends it. It is the place where new comers are most welcomed, and, next them, ill news, as that which extends their fellows.h.i.+p in misery, and leaves few to insult:--and they breath their discontents more securely here, and have their tongues at more liberty than abroad. Men see here much sin and much calamity; and where the last does not mortify, the other hardens; as those that are worse here, are desperately worse, and those from whom the horror of sin is taken off and the punishment familiar: and commonly a hard thought pa.s.ses on all that come from this school; which though it teach much wisdom, it is too late, and with danger: and it is better be a fool than come here to learn it.

FOOTNOTES:

[80] "A prison is a graue to bury men aliue, and a place wherein a man for halfe a yeares experience may learne more law then he can at Westminster for an hundred pound." Mynshul's _Essays and Characters of a Prison_. 4to.

1618.