none.  That is much ravished with such a nobleman’s courtesy, and would venture his life for him, because he put off his hat.  One that is foremost still to kiss the king’s hand, and cries, “God bless his majesty!” loudest.  That rails on all men condemned and out of favour, and the first that says “away with the traitors!”—­yet struck with much ruth at executions, and for pity to see a man die, could kill the hangman.  That comes to London to see it, and the pretty things in it, and, the chief cause of his journey, the bears.  That measures the happiness of the kingdom by the cheapness of corn, and conceives no harm of state, but ill trading.  Within this compass too, come those that are too much wedged into the world, and have no lifting thoughts above those things; that call to thrive, to do well; and preferment only the grace of God.  That aim all studies at this mark, and show you poor scholars as an example to take heed by.  That think the prison and want a judgment for some sin, and never like well hereafter of a jail-bird.  That know no other content but wealth, bravery, and the town-pleasures; that think all else but idle speculation, and the philosophers madmen.  In short, men that are carried away with all outwardnesses, shows, appearances, the stream, the people; for there is no man of worth but has a piece of singularity, and scorns something.

A PLODDING STUDENT

Is a kind of alchymist or persecutor of nature, that would change the dull lead of his brain into finer metal, with success many times as unprosperous, or at least not quitting the cost, to wit, of his own oil and candles.  He has a strange forced appetite to learning, and to achieve it brings nothing but patience and a body.  His study is not great but continual, and consists much in the sitting up till after midnight in a rug-gown and a nightcap, to the vanquishing perhaps of some six lines; yet what he has, he has perfect, for he reads it so long to understand it, till he gets it without book.  He may with much industry make a breach into logic, and arrive at some ability in an argument; but for politer studies he dare not skirmish with them, and for poetry accounts it impregnable.  His invention is no more than the finding out of his papers, and his few gleanings there; and his disposition of them is as just as the book-binder’s, a setting or gluing of them together.  He is a great discomforter of young students, by telling them what travel it has cost him, and how often his brain turned at philosophy, and makes others fear studying as a cause of duncery.  He is a man much given to apophthegms, which serve him for wit, and seldom breaks any jest but which belonged to some Lacedemonian or Roman in Lycosthenes.  He is like a dull carrier’s horse, that will go a whole week together, but never out of a foot pace; and he that sets forth on the Saturday shall overtake him.

PAUL’S WALK[64]