A POOR FIDDLER

Is a man and a fiddle out of case, and he in worse case than his fiddle.  One that rubs two sticks together (as the Indians strike fire), and rubs a poor living out of it; partly from this, and partly from your charity, which is more in the hearing than giving him, for he sells nothing dearer than to be gone.  He is just so many strings above a beggar, though he have but two; and yet he begs too, only not in the downright ‘for God’s sake,’ but with a shrugging ‘God bless you,’ and his face is more pined than the blind man’s.  Hunger is the greatest pain he takes, except a broken head sometimes, and the labouring John Dory.[83] Otherwise his life is so many fits of mirth, and ’tis some mirth to see him.  A good feast shall draw him five miles by the nose, and you shall track him again by the scent.  His other pilgrimages are fairs and good houses, where his devotion is great to the Christmas; and no man loves good times better.  He is in league with the tapsters for the worshipful of the inn, whom he torments next morning with his art, and has their names more perfect than their men.  A new song is better to him than a new jacket, especially if bawdy, which he calls merry; and hates naturally the puritan, as an enemy to this mirth.  A country wedding and Whitsun-ale are the two main places he domineers in, where he goes for a musician, and overlooks the bag-pipe.  The rest of him is drunk, and in the stocks.

A MEDDLING MAN

Is one that has nothing to do with his business, and yet no man busier than he, and his business is most in his face.  He is one thrusts himself violently into all employments, unsent for, unfeed, and many times unthanked; and his part in it is only an eager bustling, that rather keeps ado than does any thing.  He will take you aside, and question you of your affair, and listen with both ears, and look earnestly, and then it is nothing so much yours as his.  He snatches what you are doing out of your hands, and cries “give it me,” and does it worse, and lays an engagement upon you too, and you must thank him for this pains.  He lays you down an hundred wild plots, all impossible things, which you must be ruled by perforce, and he delivers them with a serious and counselling forehead; and there is a great deal more wisdom in this forehead than his head.  He will woo for you, solicit for you, and woo you to suffer him; and scarce any thing done, wherein his letter, or his journey, or at least himself is not seen:  if he have no task in it else, he will rail yet on some side, and is often beaten when he need not.  Such men never thoroughly weigh any business, but are forward only to shew their zeal, when many times this forwardness spoils it, and then they cry they have done what they can, that is, as much hurt.  Wise men still deprecate these men’s kindnesses, and are beholden to them rather to let them alone; as being one trouble more in all business, and which a man shall be hardest rid of.