That which other men neglect he believes they oversee, and stores up trifles as rare discoveries, at least of his own wit and sagacity.  He admires subtleties above all things, because the more subtle they are the nearer they are to nothing, and values no art but that which is spun so thin that it is of no use at all.  He had rather have an iron chain hung about the neck of a flea than an alderman’s of gold, and Homer’s Iliads in a nutshell than Alexander’s cabinet.  He had rather have the twelve apostles on a cherry-stone than those on St. Peter’s portico, and would willingly sell Christ again for that numerical piece of coin that Judas took for Him.  His perpetual dotage upon curiosities at length renders him one of them, and he shows himself as none of the meanest of his rarities.  He so much affects singularity that, rather than follow the fashion that is used by the rest of the world, he will wear dissenting clothes with odd fantastic devices to distinguish himself from others, like marks set upon cattle.  He cares not what pains he throws away upon the meanest trifle so it be but strange, while some pity and others laugh at his ill-employed industry.  He is one of those that valued Epictetus’s lamp above the excellent book he wrote by it.  If he be a book-man, he spends all his time and study upon things that are never to be known.  The philosopher’s stone and universal medicine cannot possibly miss him, though he is sure to do them.  He is wonderfully taken with abstruse knowledge, and had rather handle truth with a pair of tongs wrapped up in mysteries and hieroglyphics than touch it with his hands or see it plainly demonstrated to his senses.

A HERALD

Calls himself a king because he has power and authority to hang, draw, and quarter arms.  For assuming a jurisdiction over the distributive justice of titles of honour, as far as words extend, he gives himself as great a latitude that way as other magistrates use to do where they have authority and would enlarge it as far as they can.  ’Tis true he can make no lords nor knights of himself, but as many squires and gentlemen as he pleases, and adopt them into what family they have a mind.  His dominions abound with all sorts of cattle, fish, and fowl, and all manner of manufactures, besides whole fields of gold and silver, which he magnificently bestows upon his followers or sells as cheap as lands in Jamaica.  The language they use is barbarous, as being but a dialect of pedlar’s French or the Egyptian, though of a loftier sound, and in the propriety affecting brevity, as the other does verbosity.  His business is like that of all the schools, to make plain things hard with perplexed methods and insignificant terms, and then appear learned in making them plain again.  He professes arms not for use, but ornament only, and yet makes the basest things in the world, as dogs’ turds and women’s spindles, weapons of good and worshipful bearings.  He is wiser than the