both parties, and he that considers but the one side of things can never make a just judgment, though he may by chance a true one.  Impudence is the bastard of ignorance, not only unlawfully but incestuously begotten by a man upon his own understanding, and laid by himself at his own door, a monster of unnatural production; for shame is as much the propriety of human nature, though overseen by the philosophers, and perhaps more than reason, laughing, or looking asquint, by which they distinguish man from beasts; and the less men have of it the nearer they approach to the nature of brutes.  Modesty is but a noble jealousy of honour, and impudence the prostitution of it; for he whose face is proof against infamy must be as little sensible of glory.  His forehead, like a voluntary cuckold’s, is by his horns made proof against a blush.  Nature made man barefaced, and civil custom has preserved him so; but he that’s impudent does wear a vizard more ugly and deformed than highway thieves disguise themselves with.  Shame is the tender moral conscience of good men.  When there is a crack in the skull, Nature herself, with a tough horny callous repairs the breach; so a flawed intellect is with a brawny callous face supplied.  The face is the dial of the mind; and where they do not go together, ’tis a sign that one or both are out of order.  He that is impudent is like a merchant that trades upon his credit without a stock, and if his debts were known would break immediately.  The inside of his head is like the outside, and his peruke as naturally of his own growth as his wit.  He passes in the world like a piece of counterfeit coin, looks well enough until he is rubbed and worn with use, and then his copper complexion begins to appear, and nobody will take him but by owl-light.

AN IMITATOR

Is a counterfeit stone, and the larger and fairer he appears the more apt he is to be discovered; whilst small ones, that pretend to no great value, pass unsuspected.  He is made like a man in arras-hangings, after some great master’s design, though far short of the original.  He is like a spectrum or walking spirit, that assumes the shape of some particular person and appears in the likeness of something that he is not because he has no shape of his own to put on.  He has a kind of monkey and baboon wit, that takes after some man’s way whom he endeavours to imitate, but does it worse than those things that are naturally his own; for he does not learn, but take his pattern out, as a girl does her sampler.  His whole life is nothing but a kind of education, and he is always learning to be something that he is not nor ever will be.  For Nature is free, and will not be forced out of her way, nor compelled to do anything against her own will and inclination.  He is but a retainer to wit and a follower of his master, whose badge he wears everywhere, and therefore his way is called servile imitation.  His fancy is like the innocent