Is a certain classic author that handles his subject-matter very ruggedly, and endeavours with his own evil words to corrupt another man’s good manners.  All his works treat but of two things, his own malice and another man’s faults, both which he describes in very proper and pertinent language.  He is not much concerned whether what he writes be true or false; that’s nothing to his purpose, which aims only at filthy and bitter, and therefore his language is, like pictures of the devil, the fouler the better.  He robs a man of his good name, not for any good it will do him (for he dares not own it), but merely, as a jackdaw steals money, for his pleasure.  His malice has the same success with other men’s charity, to be rewarded in private; for all he gets is but his own private satisfaction and the testimony of an evil conscience; for which, if it be discovered, he suffers the worst kind of martyrdom and is paid with condign punishment, so that at the best he has but his labour for his pains.  He deals with a man as the Spanish Inquisition does with heretics, clothes him in a coat painted with hellish shapes of fiends, and so shows him to the rabble to render him the more odious.  He exposes his wit like a bastard, for the next comer to take up and put out to nurse, which it seldom fails of, so ready is every man to contribute to the infamy of another.  He is like the devil, that sows tares in the dark, and while a man sleeps plants weeds among his corn.  When he ventures to fall foul on the Government or any great persons, if he has not a special care to keep himself, like a conjurer, safe in his circle, he raises a spirit that falls foul on himself and carries him to limbo, where his neck is clapped up in the hole, out of which it is never released until he has paid his ears down on the nail for fees.  He is in a worse condition than a schoolboy, for when he is discovered he is whipped for his exercise, whether it be well or ill done; so that he takes a wrong course to show his wit, when his best way to do so is to conceal it; otherwise he shows his folly instead of his wit, and pays dear for the mistake.

A FACTIOUS MEMBER

Is sent out laden with the wisdom and politics of the place he serves for, and has his own freight and custom free.  He is trusted like a factor to trade for a society, but endeavours to turn all the public to his own private advantages.  He has no instructions but his pleasure, and therefore strives to have his privileges as large.  He is very wise in his politic capacity as having a full share in the House and an implicit right to every man’s reason, though he has none of his own, which makes him appear so simple out of it.  He believes all reason of State consists in faction, as all wisdom in haranguing, of which he is so fond that he had rather the nation should perish than continue ignorant of his great abilities that way; though he that observes his gestures,