But I must draw to an end, for every character is an anatomy lecture, and it fares with me in this of the diurnal-maker, as with him that reads on a begged malefactor, my subject smells before I have gone through with him; for a parting blow then.  The word historian imports a sage and solemn author, one that curls his brow with a sullen gravity, like a bull-necked Presbyter since the army hath got him off his jurisdiction, who, Presbyter like, sweeps his breast with a reverend beard, full of native moss-troopers; not such a squirting scribe as this that’s troubled with the rickets, and makes pennyworths of history.  The college-treasury that never had in bank above a Harry-groat, shut up there in a melancholy solitude, like one that is kept to keep possession, had as good evidence to show for his title as he for an historian; so, if he will needs be an historian, he is not cited in the sterling acceptation, but after the rate of bluecaps’ reckoning, an historian Scot.  Now a Scotchman’s tongue runs high fullams.  There is a cheat in his idiom, for the sense ebbs from the bold expression, like the citizen’s gallon, which the drawer interprets but half a pint.  In sum, a diurnal-maker is the anti-mark of an historian, he differs from him as a drill from a man, or (if you had rather have it in the saints’ gibberish) as a hinter doth from a holder-forth.

THE CHARACTER OF A LONDON DIURNAL.

A diurnal is a puny chronicle, scarce pin-feathered with the wings of time.  It is a history in sippets:  the English Iliads in a nutshell:  the apocryphal Parliament’s book of Maccabees in single sheets.  It would tire a Welshman to reckon up how many aps ’tis removed from an annal; for it is of that extract, only of the younger house, like a shrimp to a lobster.  The original sinner in this kind was Dutch, Gallo-Belgicus the protoplast, and the modern Mercuries but Hans-en-kelders.  The Countess of Zealand was brought to bed of an almanac, as many children as days in the year.  It may be the legislative lady is of that lineage, so she spawns the diurnals, and they at Westminster take them in adoption by the names of Scoticus, Civicus, Britannicus.  In the frontispiece of the old Beldam diurnal, like the contents of the chapter, sitteth the House of Commons judging the twelve tribes of Israel.  You may call them the kingdom’s anatomy before the weekly calendar; for such is a diurnal, the day of the month with what weather in the commonwealth.  It is taken for the pulse of the body politic, and the empiric divines of the assembly, those spiritual dragooners, thumb it accordingly.  Indeed it is a pretty synopsis, and those grave rabbis (though in the point of Divinity) trade in no larger authors.  The country-carrier, when he buys it for the vicar, miscalls it the urinal; yet properly enough, for it casts the water of the state ever since it staled blood.  It differs from an Aulicus, as the devil and his exorcist, or as a black witch doth from a white one, whose office is to unravel her enchantments.