they go barefooted and barelegged, the soles of their
feet being as hard as horse-hoofs, as [2255]Radzivilus
observed at Damietta in Egypt, leading a laborious,
miserable, wretched, unhappy life, [2256]"like beasts
and juments, if not worse:” (for a [2257]Spaniard
in Incatan, sold three Indian boys for a cheese, and
a hundred Negro slaves for a horse) their discourse
is scurrility, their
summum bonum, a pot of
ale. There is not any slavery which these villains
will not undergo,
inter illos plerique latrinas
evacuant, alii culinariam curant, alii stabularios
agunt, urinatores et id genus similia exercent,
&c. like those people that dwell in the [2258]Alps,
chimney-sweepers, jakes-farmers, dirt-daubers, vagrant
rogues, they labour hard some, and yet cannot get clothes
to put on, or bread to eat. For what can filthy
poverty give else, but [2259]beggary, fulsome nastiness,
squalor, contempt, drudgery, labour, ugliness, hunger
and thirst;
pediculorum, et pulicum numerum?
as [2260] he well followed it in Aristophanes, fleas
and lice,
pro pallio vestem laceram, et pro pulvinari
lapidem bene magnum ad caput, rags for his raiment,
and a stone for his pillow,
pro cathedra, ruptae
caput urnae, he sits in a broken pitcher, or on
a block for a chair,
et malvae, ramos pro panibus
comedit, he drinks water, and lives on wort leaves,
pulse, like a hog, or scraps like a dog,
ut nunc
nobis vita afficitur, quis non putabit insaniam esse,
infelicitatemque? as Chremilus concludes his speech,
as we poor men live nowadays, who will not take our
life to be [2261] infelicity, misery, and madness?
If they be of little better condition than those base
villains, hunger-starved beggars, wandering rogues,
those ordinary slaves, and day-labouring drudges;
yet they are commonly so preyed upon by [2262] polling
officers for breaking the laws, by their tyrannising
landlords, so flayed and fleeced by perpetual [2263]exactions,
that though they do drudge, fare hard, and starve
their genius, they cannot live in [2264]some countries;
but what they have is instantly taken from them, the
very care they take to live, to be drudges, to maintain
their poor families, their trouble and anxiety “takes
away their sleep,” Sirac. xxxi. 1, it makes them
weary of their lives: when they have taken all
pains, done their utmost and honest endeavours, if
they be cast behind by sickness, or overtaken with
years, no man pities them, hard-hearted and merciless,
uncharitable as they are, they leave them so distressed,
to beg, steal, murmur, and [2265] rebel, or else starve.
The feeling and fear of this misery compelled those
old Romans, whom Menenius Agrippa pacified, to resist
their governors: outlaws, and rebels in most
places, to take up seditious arms, and in all ages
hath caused uproars, murmurings, seditions, rebellions,
thefts, murders, mutinies, jars and contentions in
every commonwealth: grudging, repining, complaining,
discontent in each private family, because they want