and beaten from all his guards, to amuse the foe with some senseless distinction, like a falsified blow that never hits where ’tis aimed, but while it is minded makes way for some other trick that may pass.  But that which renders him invincible is abundance of confidence and words, which are his offensive and defensive arms; for a brazen face is a natural helmet or beaver, and he that has store of words needs not surrender for want of ammunition.  No matter for reason and sense, that go for no more in disputations than the justice of a cause does in war, which is understood but by few and commonly regarded by none.  For the custom of disputants is not so much to destroy one another’s reason as to cavil at the manner of expressing it, right or wrong; for they believe Dolus an virtus, &c., ought to be allowed in controversy as war, and he that gets the victory on any terms whatsoever deserves it and gets it honourably.  He and his opponent are like two false lute-strings that will never stand in tune to one another, or like two tennis-players whose greatest skill consists in avoiding one another’s strokes.

A PROJECTOR

Is by interpretation a man of forecast.  He is an artist of plots, designs, and expedients to find out money, as others hide it, where nobody would look for it.  He is a great rectifier of the abuses of all trades and mysteries, yet has but one remedy for all diseases; that is, by getting a patent to share with them, by virtue of which they become authorised, and consequently cease to be cheats.  He is a great promoter of the public good, and makes it his care and study to contrive expedients that the nation may not be ill served with false rags, arbitrary puppet-plays, and insufficient monsters, of all which he endeavours to get the superintendency.  He will undertake to render treasonable pedlars, that carry intelligence between rebels and fanatics, true subjects and well-affected to the Government for half-a-crown a quarter, which he takes for giving them license to do so securely and uncontrolled.  He gets as much by those projects that miscarry as by those that hold (as lawyers are paid as well for undoing as preserving of men); for when he has drawn in adventurers to purchase shares of the profit, the sooner it is stopped the better it proves for him; for, his own business being done, he is the sooner rid of theirs.  He is very expert at gauging the understandings of those he deals with, and has his engines always ready with mere air to blow all their money out of their pockets into his own, as vintners do wine out of one vessel into another.  He is very amorous of his country, and prefers the public good before his own advantage, until he has joined them both together in some monopoly, and then he thinks he has done his part, and may be allowed to look after his own affairs in the second place.  The chiefest and most useful part of his talent consists in quacking and lying, which he calls answering of objections and convincing the ignorant.  Without this he can do nothing; for as it is the common practice of most knaveries, so it is the surest and best fitted to the vulgar capacities of the world; and though it render him more ridiculous to some few, it always prevails upon the greater part.