is his prime qualification, by which he is distinguished from his pudding, as he is with his cap from him.  This is the usher of his school, that draws the rabble together, and then he draws their teeth.  He administers physic with a farce, and gives his patients a preparative of dancing on the rope, to stir the humours and prepare them for evacuation.  His fool serves for his foil, and sets him off as well as his bragging and lying.  The first thing he vents is his own praise, and then his medicines wrapped up in several papers and lies.  He mounts his bank as a vaulter does his wooden horse, and then shows tricks for his patients, as apes do for the King of Spain.  He casts the nativity of urinals, and tries diseases, like a witch, by water.  He bails the place with a jig, draws the rabble together, and then throws his hook among them.  He pretends to universal medicines; that is, such as, when all men are sick together, will cure them all, but till then no one in particular.

A WITTOL

Is a person of great complaisance, and very civil to all that have occasion to make use of his wife.  He married a wife as a common proxy for the service of all those that are willing to come in for their shares; he engrossed her first by wholesale, and since puts her off by retail; he professes a form of matrimony, but utterly denies the power thereof.  They that tell tales are very unjust, for, having not put in their claims before marriage, they are bound for ever after to hold their tongues.  The reason why citizens are commonly wittols is, because men that drive a trade and are dealers in the world seldom provide anything for their own uses which they will not very willingly put off again for considerable profit.  He believes it to be but a vulgar error and no such disparagement as the world commonly imagines to be a cuckold; for man, being the epitomy and representation of all creatures, cannot be said to be perfect while he wants that badge and character which so many several species wear both for their defence and ornament.  He takes the only wise and sure course that his wife should do him no injury; for, having his own free consent, it is not in her power that way to do him any wrong at all.  His wife is, like Eve in Paradise, married to all mankind, and yet is unsatisfied that there are no more worlds, as Alexander the Great was.  She is a person of public capacity, and rather than not serve her country would suffer an army to march over her, as Sir Rice ap Thomas did.  Her husband and she give and take equal liberty, which preserves a perfect peace and good understanding between both, while those that are concerned in one another’s love and honour are never quiet, but always caterwauling.  He differs from a jealous man as a valiant man does from a coward, that trembles at a danger which the other scorns and despises.  He is of a true philosophical temper, and suffers what he knows not how to avoid with a more than stoical resolution.  He is one of those the poet speaks of:—­