stars, tam ficti pravique tenax, to carry lies and knavery, will serve astrologers without any sensible variation.  He is a fortune-seller, a retailer of destiny, and petty chapman to the planets.  He casts nativities as gamesters do false dice, and by slurring and palming sextile, quartile, and trine, like six, quatre, trois, can throw what chance he pleases.  He sets a figure as cheats do a main at hazard, and gulls throw away their money at it.  He fetches the grounds of his art so far off, as well from reason as the stars, that, like a traveller, he is allowed to lie by authority; and as beggars that have no money themselves believe all others have, and beg of those that have as little as themselves, so the ignorant rabble believe in him though he has no more reason for what he professes than they.

A LAWYER

Is a retailer of justice that uses false lights, false weights, and false measures.  He measures right and wrong by his retaining fee, and, like a French duellist, engages on that side that first bespeaks him, though it be against his own brother; not because it is right, but merely upon a punctilio of profit, which is better than honour to him, because riches will buy nobility, and nobility nothing, as having no intrinsic value.  He sells his opinion, and engages to maintain the title against all that claim under him, but no further.  He puts it off upon his word, which he believes himself not bound to make good, because when he has parted with his right to it, it is no longer his.  He keeps no justice for his own use, as being a commodity of his own growth, which he never buys, but only sells to others; and as no man goes worse shod than the shoemaker, so no man is more out of justice than he that gets his living by it.  He draws bills as children do lots at a lottery, and is paid as much for blanks as prizes.  He undoes a man with the same privilege as a doctor kills him, and is paid as well for it as if he preserved him, in which he is very impartial, but in nothing else.  He believes it no fault in himself to err in judgment, because that part of the law belongs to the judge and not to him.  His best opinions and his worst are all of a price, like good wine and bad in a tavern, in which he does not deal so fairly as those who, if they know what you are willing to bestow, can tell how to fit you accordingly.  When his law lies upon his hands he will afford a good pennyworth, and rather pettifog and turn common barreter than be out of employment.  His opinion is one thing while it is his own and another when it is paid for; for, the property being altered, the case alters also.  When his counsel is not for his client’s turn he will never take it back again, though it be never the worse, nor allow him anything for it, yet will sell the same over and over again to as many as come to him for it.  His pride increases with his practice, and the fuller of business he is, like