A CANTING ROGUE.

’Tis not unlikely but he was begot by some intelligencer under a hedge, for his mind is wholly given to travel.  He is not troubled with making of jointures; he can divorce himself without the fee of a proctor, nor fears he the cruelty of overseers of his will.  He leaves his children all the world to cant in, and all the people to their fathers.  His language is a constant tongue; the northern speech differs from the south, Welsh from the Cornish; but canting is general, nor ever could be altered by conquest of the Saxon, Dane, or Norman.  He will not beg out of his limit though he starve, nor break his oath, if he swear by his Solomon, though you hang him; and he pays his custom as truly to his grand rogue as tribute is paid to the great Turk.  The March sun breeds agues in others, but he adores it like the Indians, for then begins his progress after a hard winter.  Ostlers cannot endure him, for he is of the infantry, and serves best on foot.  He offends not the statute against the excess of apparel, for he will go naked, and counts it a voluntary penance.  Forty of them lie together in a barn, yet are never sued upon the Statute of Inmates.  If he were learned no man could make a better description of England, for he hath travelled it over and over.  Lastly, he brags that his great houses are repaired to his hands when churches go to ruin, and those are prisons.

A FRENCH COOK.

He learnt his trade in a town of garrison near famished, where he practised to make a little go far.  Some derive it from more antiquity, and say, Adam, when he picked salads, was of his occupation.  He doth not feed the belly, but the palate; and though his command lie in the kitchen, which is but an inferior place, yet shall you find him a very saucy companion.  Ever since the wars in Naples, he hath so minced the ancient and bountiful allowance as if his nation should keep a perpetual diet.  The serving-men call him the last relic of popery, that makes men fast against their conscience.  He can be truly said to be no man’s fellow but his master’s, for the rest of the servants are starved by him.  He is the prime cause why noblemen build their houses so great, for the smallness of their kitchen makes the house the bigger; and the lord calls him his alchemist, that can extract gold out of herbs, mushrooms, or anything.  That which he dresses we may rather call a drinking than a meal, yet he is so full of variety that he brags, and truly, that he gives you but a taste of what he can do.  He dares not for his life come among the butchers, for sure they would quarter and bake him after the English fashion, he’s such an enemy to beef and mutton.  To conclude, he were only fit to make, a funeral feast, where men should eat their victuals in mourning.

A SEXTON