Barbarous rebel! who will be revenged upon all learning, because his treason is beyond the mercy of the book.

The diurnal as yet hath not talked much of his victories, but there is the more behind, for the knight must always beat the giant, that’s resolved.

If anything fall out amiss which cannot be smothered, the diurnal hath a help at maw.  It is but putting to sea and taking a Danish fleet, or brewing it with some success out of Ireland, and then it goes down merrily.

There are more puppets that move by the wire of a diurnal, as Brereton and Cell, two of Mars his petty-toes, such snivelling cowards that it is a favour to call them so.  Was Brereton to fight with his teeth (as in all other things he resembles the beast) he would have odds of any man at the weapon.  Oh, he’s a terrible slaughterman at a Thanksgiving dinner.  Had he been cannibal to have eaten those that he vanquished, his gut would have made him valiant.

The greatest wonder is at Fairfax, how he comes to be a babe of grace, certainly it is not in his personal, but (as the State-sophies distinguish) in his politic capacity; degenerate ab extra by the zeal of the house he sat in, as chickens are hatched at Grand Cairo by the adoption of an oven.

There is the woodmonger too, a feeble crutch to a declining cause, a new branch of the old oak of reformation.

And now I speak of reformation, vous avez, Fox the tinker, the liveliest emblem of it that may be; for what did this parliament ever go about to reform, but, tinkerwise, in mending one hole they made three?

But I have not ink enough to cure all the tetters and ring-worms of the State.

I will close up all thus.  The victories of the rebels are like the magical combat of Apuleius, who thinking he had slain three of his enemies, found them at last but a triumvirate of bladders.  Such, and so empty are the triumphs of a diurnal, but so many impostumated fancies, so many bladders of their own blowing.

* * * * *

The “Surfeit to A.B.C.” in 1656, was a look of Characters.  “Naps upon Parnassus’” in 1658 contained Characters of a Temporizer and an Antiquary.  In the same year appeared “Satyrical Characters and Handsome Descriptions, in Letters.”  In 1659 there was a third edition of a satire on the English, published as “A Character of England, as it was lately presented in a Letter to a Nobleman of France” replied to in that year by “A Character of France.”  These suggested the production in 1659 of “A Perfect Description of the People and Country of Scotland” and, also in 1659, “A Brief Character of the Low Countries under the States, being Three Weeks’ Observation of the Vices and Virtues of the Inhabitants.”  This was written by Owen Feltham, and added to several editions of his “Resolves.”  In 1660 appeared “The Character of Italy” and “The Character of Spain;” in 1661, “Essays and Characters by L. G.;” in 1662-63, “The Assembly-Man” a Character that had been written by Sir John Birkenhead in 1647.  Then came, in 1665, Richard Flecknoe, to whom Dryden ascribed sovereignty as one who