man dares that knows him.  And he that dare do this is the only man can do much with him; for his friend he cares not for, as a man that carries no such terror as his enemy, which for this cause only is more potent with him of the two:  and men fall out with him of purpose to get courtesies from him, and be bribed again to a reconcilement.  A man in whom no secret can be bound up, for the apprehension of each danger loosens him, and makes him bewray both the room and it.  He is a Christian merely for fear of hell-fire; and if any religion could fright him more, would be of that.

A SORDID RICH MAN

Is a beggar of a fair estate, of whose wealth we may say as of other men’s unthriftiness, that it has brought him to this:  when he had nothing he lived in another kind of fashion.  He is a man whom men hate in his own behalf for using himself thus, and yet, being upon himself, it is but justice, for he deserves it.  Every accession of a fresh heap bates him so much of his allowance, and brings him a degree nearer starving.  His body had been long since desperate, but for the reparation of other men’s tables, where he hoards meats in his belly for a month, to maintain him in hunger so long.  His clothes were never young in our memory; you might make long epochas from them, and put them into the almanack with the dear year[92] and the great frost,[93] and he is known by them longer than his face.  He is one never gave alms in his life, and yet is as charitable to his neighbour as himself.  He will redeem a penny with his reputation, and lose all his friends to boot; and his reason is, he will not be undone.  He never pays anything but with strictness of law, for fear of which only he steals not.  He loves to pay short a shilling or two in a great sum, and is glad to gain that when he can no more.  He never sees friend but in a journey to save the charges of an inn, and then only is not sick; and his friends never see him but to abuse him.  He is a fellow indeed of a kind of frantic thrift, and one of the strangest things that wealth can work.

A MERE GREAT MAN

Is so much heraldry without honour, himself less real than his title.  His virtue is, that he was his father’s son, and all the expectation of him to beget another.  A man that lives merely to preserve another’s memory, and let us know who died so many years ago.  One of just as much use as his images, only he differs in this, that he can speak himself, and save the fellow of Westminster[94] a labour:  and he remembers nothing better than what was out of his life.  His grandfathers and their acts are his discourse, and he tells them with more glory than they did them; and it is well they did enough, or else he had wanted matter.  His other studies are his sports and those vices that are fit for great men.  Every vanity of his has his officer, and is a serious employment for his servants.