A VAINGLORIOUS COWARD IN COMMAND

Is one that hath bought his place, or come to it by some nobleman’s letter.  He loves alive dead pays, yet wishes they may rather happen in his company by the scurvy than by a battle.  View him at a muster, and he goes with such a nose as if his body were the wheelbarrow that carried his judgment rumbling to drill his soldiers.  No man can worse design between pride and noble courtesy.  He that salutes him not, so far as a pistol carries level, gives him the disgust or affront, choose you whether.  He trains by the book, and reckons so many postures of the pike and musket as if he were counting at noddy.  When he comes at first upon a camisado, he looks, like the four winds in painting, as if he would blow away the enemy; but at the very first onset suffers fear and trembling to dress themselves in his face apparently.  He scorns any man should take place before him, yet at the entering of a breach he hath been so humble-minded as to let his lieutenant lead his troops for him.  He is so sure armed for taking hurt that he seldom does any; and while he is putting on his arms, he is thinking what sum he can make to satisfy his ransom.  He will rail openly against all the great commanders of the adverse party, yet in his own conscience allows them for better men.  Such is the nature of his fear that, contrary to all other filthy qualities, it makes him think better of another man than himself.  The first part of him that is set a running is his eye-sight; when that is once struck with terror all the costive physic in the world cannot stay him.  If ever he do anything beyond his own heart ’tis for a knighthood, and he is the first kneels for it without bidding.

A PIRATE,

Truly defined, is a bold traitor, for he fortifies a castle against the king.  Give him sea-room in never so small a vessel, and like a witch in a sieve, you would think he were going to make merry with the devil.  Of all callings his is the most desperate, for he will not leave off his thieving, though he be in a narrow prison, and look every day, by tempest or fight, for execution.  He is one plague the devil hath added to make the sea more terrible than a storm, and his heart is so hardened in that rugged element that he cannot repent, though he view his grave before him continually open.  He hath so little of his own that the house he sleeps in is stolen:  all the necessities of life he filches but one; he cannot steal a sound sleep for his troubled conscience.  He is very gentle to those under him, yet his rule is the horriblest tyranny in the world, for he gives licence to all rape, murder, and cruelty in his own example.  What he gets is small use to him, only lives by it somewhat the longer to do a little more service to his belly, for he throws away his treasure upon the shore in riot, as if he cast it into the sea.  He is a cruel hawk that