A DISSEMBLER

Is an essence needing a double definition, for he is not that he appears.  Unto the eye he is pleasing, unto the ear he is harsh, but unto the understanding intricate and full of windings; he is the prima materia, and his intents give him form; he dyeth his means and his meaning into two colours; he baits craft with humility, and his countenance is the picture of the present disposition.  He wins not by battery but undermining, and his rack is smoothing.  He allures, is not allured by his affections, for they are the breakers of his observation.  He knows passion only by sufferance, and resisteth by obeying.  He makes his time an accountant to his memory, and of the humours of men weaves a net for occasion; the inquisitor must look through his judgment, for to the eye only he is not visible.

A COURTIER,

To all men’s thinking, is a man, and to most men the finest; all things else are defined by the understanding, but this by the senses; but his surest mark is, that he is to be found only about princes.  He smells, and putteth away much of his judgment about the situation of his clothes.  He knows no man that is not generally known.  His wit, like the marigold, openeth with the sun, and therefore he riseth not before ten of the clock.  He puts more confidence in his words than meaning, and more in his pronunciation than his words.  Occasion is his Cupid, and he hath but one receipt of making love.  He follows nothing but inconstancy, admires nothing but beauty, honours nothing but fortune:  Loves nothing.  The sustenance of his discourse is news, and his censure, like a shot, depends upon the charging.  He is not, if he be out of court, but fish-like breathes destruction if out of his element.  Neither his motion or aspect are regular, but he moves by the upper spheres, and is the reflection of higher substances.

If you find him not here, you shall in Paul’s, with a pick-tooth in his hat, cape-cloak, and a long stocking.

A GOLDEN ASS

Is a young thing, whose father went to the devil; he is followed like a salt bitch, and limbed by him that gets up first; his disposition is cut, and knaves rend him like tenter-hooks; he is as blind as his mother, and swallows flatterers for friends.  He is high in his own imagination, but that imagination is as a stone that is raised by violence, descends naturally.  When he goes, he looks who looks; if he find not good store of vailers, he comes home stiff and sere, until he be new oiled and watered by his husbandmen.  Wheresoever he eats he hath an officer to warn men not to talk out of his element, and his own is exceeding sensible, because it is sensual; but he cannot exchange a piece of reason, though he can a piece of gold.  He is not plucked, for his feathers are his beauty, and more than his beauty, they are his discretion, his countenance, his all.  He is now at an end, for he hath had the wolf of vainglory, which he fed until himself became the food.