An untrained soldier is like a young hound, that when he first falls to hunt, he knows not how to lay his nose to the earth; who, having his name but in a book, and marched twice about a market-place, when he comes to a piece of service knows not how to bestow himself.  He marches as if he were at plough, carries his pike like a pike-staff, and his sword before him for fear of losing from his side.  If he be a shot, he will be rather ready to say a grace over his piece, and so to discharge his hands of it, than to learn how to discharge it with a grace.  He puts on his armour over his ears, like a waistcoat, and wears his morion like a nightcap.  When he is quartered in the field, he looks for his bed, and when he sees his provant, he is ready to cry for his victuals; and ere he know well where he is, wish heartily he were at home again, with his head hanging down as if his heart were in his hose.  He will sleep till a drum or a deadly bullet awake him; and so carry himself in all companies that, till martial discipline have seasoned his understanding, he is like a cipher among figures, an owl among birds, a wise man among fools, and a shadow among men.

A WORTHY PHYSICIAN.

A worthy physician is the enemy of sickness, in purging nature from corruption.  His action is most in feeling of pulses, and his discourses chiefly of the natures of diseases.  He is a great searcher out of simples, and accordingly makes his composition.  He persuades abstinence and patience for the benefit of health, while purging and bleeding are the chief courses of his counsel.  The apothecary and the chirurgeon are his two chief attendants, with whom conferring upon time, he grows temperate in his cures.  Surfeits and wantonness are great agents for his employment, when by the secret of his skill out of others’ weakness he gathers his own strength.  In sum, he is a necessary member for an unnecessary malady, to find a disease and to cure the diseased.

AN UNWORTHY PHYSICIAN.

An unlearned and so unworthy physician is a kind of horse-leech, whose cure is most in drawing of blood, and a desperate purge, either to cure or kill, as it hits.  His discourse is most of the cures that he hath done, and them afar of; and not a receipt under a hundred pounds, though it be not worth three halfpence.  Upon the market-day he is much haunted with urinals, where if he find anything (though he know nothing), yet he will say somewhat, which if it hit to some purpose, with a few fustian words he will seem a piece of strange stuff.  He is never without old merry tales and stale jests to make old folks laugh, and comfits or plums in his pocket to please little children; yea, and he will be talking of complexions, though he know nothing of their dispositions; and if his medicine do a feat, he is a made man among fools; but being wholly unlearned, and ofttimes unhonest, let me thus briefly describe him:—­He is a plain kind of mountebank and a true quack-salver, a danger for the sick to deal withal, and a dizzard in the world to talk withal.