fellow that sold his ass, but kept the shadow for his own use; for he sells only the shadow (that is, the picture) and keeps the ass himself.  He makes pedigrees as apothecaries do medicines when they put in one ingredient for another that they have not by them; by this means he often makes incestuous matches, and causes the son to many the mother.  His chief province is at funerals, where he commands in chief, marshals the tristitiae irritamenta, and, like a gentleman-sower to the worms, serves up the feast with all punctual formality.  He will join as many shields together as would make a Roman testudo or Macedonian phalanx, to fortify the nobility of a new-made lord that will pay for the impressing of them and allow him coat and conduct money.  He is a kind of a necromancer, and can raise the dead out of their graves to make them marry and beget those they never heard of in their lifetime.  His coat is, like the King of Spain’s dominions, all skirts, and hangs as loose about him; and his neck is the waist, like the picture of Nobody with his breeches fastened to his collar.  He will sell the head or a single joint of a beast or fowl as dear as the whole body, like a pig’s head in Bartholomew Fair, and after put off the rest to his customers at the same rate.  His arms, being utterly out of use in war since guns came up, have been translated to dishes and cups, as the ancients used their precious stones, according to the poet, Gemmas ad pocula transfert a gladiis, &c.; and since are like to decay every day more and more, for since he gave citizens coats-of-arms, gentlemen have made bold to take their letters of mark by way of reprisal.  The hangman has a receipt to mar all his work in a moment, for by nailing the wrong end of a scutcheon upwards upon a gibbet all the honour and gentility extinguishes of itself, like a candle that’s held with the flame downwards.  Other arms are made for the spilling of blood, but his only purify and cleanse it like scurvy-grass; for a small dose taken by his prescription will refine that which is as base and gross as bull’s blood (which the Athenians used to poison withal) to any degree of purity.

A VIRTUOSO

Is a well-willer to the mathematics; he pursues knowledge rather out of humour than ingenuity, and endeavours rather to seem than to be.  He has nothing of nature but an inclination, which he strives to improve with industry; but as no art can make a fountain run higher than its own head, so nothing can raise him above the elevation of his own pole.  He seldom converses but with men of his own tendency, and wheresoever he comes treats with all men as such; for as country gentlemen use to talk of their dogs to those that hate hunting because they love it themselves, so will he of his arts and sciences to those that neither know nor care to know anything of them.  His industry were admirable if it did not attempt the greatest