in double danger of crabbed creditors for his purse, and horns for his head, if his wife’s heels be light.  If he be a gentleman, he alters his arms so soon as he comes in.  Few here carry fields or argent, but whatsoever they bear before, here they give only sables.  Whiles he lies by it, he is travelling over the Alps, and the hearts of his creditors are the snows that lie unmelted in the middle of summer.  He is an almanac out of date; none of his days speak of fair weather.  Of all the files of men, he marcheth in the last, and comes limping, for he is shot, and is no man of this world.  He hath lost his way, and being benighted, strayed into a wood full of wolves, and nothing so hard as to get away without being devoured.  He that walks from six to six in Paul’s goes still but a quoit’s cast before this man.

A CREDITOR

Is a fellow that torments men for their good conditions.  He is one of Deucalion’s sons, begotten of a stone.  The marble images in the Temple Church that lie cross-legged do much resemble him, saving that this is a little more cross.  He wears a forfeited bond under that part of his girdle where his thumb sticks, with as much pride as a Welshman does a leek on St. David’s Day, and quarrels more and longer about it.  He is a catchpole’s morning’s draught, for the news that such a gallant has come yesternight to town, draws out of him both muscadel and money too.  He says the Lord’s Prayer backwards, or, to speak better of him, he hath a Paternoster by himself, and that particle, Forgive us our debts, as we forgive others, &c., he either quite leaves out, or else leaps over it.  It is a dangerous rub in the alley of his conscience.  He is the bloodhound of the law, and hunts counter, very swiftly and with great judgment.  He hath a quick scent to smell out his game, and a good deep mouth to pursue it, yet never opens till he bites, and bites not till he kills, or at least draws blood, and then he pincheth most doggedly.  He is a lawyer’s mule, and the only beast upon which he ambles so often to Westminster.  And a lawyer is his God Almighty, in him only he trusts.  To him he flies in all his troubles; from him he seeks succour.  To him he prays, that he may by his means overcome his enemies.  Him does he worship both in the temple and abroad, and hopes by him and good angels to prosper in all his actions.  A scrivener is his farrier, and helps to recover all his diseased and maimed obligations.  Every term he sets up a tenters in Westminster Hall, upon which he racks and stretches gentlemen like English broadcloth, beyond the staple of the wool, till the threads crack, and that causeth them with the least wet to shrink, and presently to wear bars.  Marry, he handles a citizen (at least if himself be one) like a piece of Spanish cloth, gives him only a twitch, and strains him not too hard, knowing how apt he is to break of himself, and then he can cut nothing out