come that way again they are entertained as guests, not as friends.  At first, like another Ecebolius, he loved simple truth; thence, diverting his eyes, he fell in love with idolatry.  Those heathenish shrines had never any more doting and besotted client; and now of late he is leapt from Rome to Munster, and is grown to giddy Anabaptism.  What he will be next as yet he knoweth not; but ere he hath wintered his opinion it will be manifest.  He is good to make an enemy of, ill for a friend; because, as there is no trust in his affection, so no rancour in his displeasure.  The multitude of his changed purposes brings with it forgetfulness, and not of others more than of himself.  He says, swears, renounces, because what he promised he meant not long enough to make an impression.  Herein alone he is good for a commonwealth, that he sets many on work with building, ruining, altering, and makes more business than time itself; neither is he a greater enemy to thrift than to idleness.  Propriety is to him enough cause of dislike; each thing pleases him better that is not his own.  Even in the best things long continuance is a just quarrel; manna itself grows tedious with age, and novelty is the highest style of commendation to the meanest offers; neither doth he in books and fashions ask, How good? but, How new?  Variety carries him away with delight, and no uniform pleasure can be without an irksome fulness.  He is so transformable into all opinions, manners, qualities, that he seems rather made immediately of the first matter than of well-tempered elements; and therefore is in possibility anything or everything, nothing in present substance.  Finally, he is servile in imitation, waxy to persuasions, witty to wrong himself, a guest in his own house, an ape of others, and, in a word, anything rather than himself.

OF THE FLATTERER.

Flattery is nothing but false friendship, fawning hypocrisy, dishonest civility, base merchandise of words, a plausible discord of the heart and lips.  The flatterer is blear-eyed to ill, and cannot see vices; and his tongue walks ever in one track of unjust praises, and can no more tell how to discommend than to speak true.  His speeches are full of wondering interjections, and all his titles are superlative, and both of them seldom ever but in presence.  His base mind is well matched with a mercenary tongue, which is a willing slave to another man’s ear; neither regardeth he how true, but how pleasing.  His art is nothing but delightful cozenage, whose rules are smoothing and guarded with perjury; whose scope is to make men fools in teaching them to overvalue themselves, and to tickle his friends to death.  This man is a porter of all good tales, and mends them in the carriage; one of Fame’s best friends and his own, that helps to furnish her with those rumours that may advantage himself.  Conscience hath no greater adversary, for when she is about to play her