unless he jeer and lie.  It is the food of men’s natures; the diet of the times; gallants cannot sleep else.  The writer must lie and the gentle reader rests happy to hear the worthiest works misinterpreted, the clearest actions obscured, the innocentest life traduced:  and in such a licence of lying, a field so fruitful of slanders, how can there be matter wanting to his laughter?  Hence comes the epidemical infection; for how can they escape the contagion of the writings, whom the virulency of the calumnies hath not staved off from reading?

Sed seculi morbus.—­Nothing doth more invite a greedy reader than an unlooked-for subject.  And what more unlooked-for than to see a person of an unblamed life made ridiculous or odious by the artifice of lying?  But it is the disease of the age; and no wonder if the world, growing old, begin to be infirm:  old age itself is a disease.  It is long since the sick world began to dote and talk idly:  would she had but doted still! but her dotage is now broke forth into a madness, and become a mere frenzy.

Alastoris malitia.—­This Alastor, who hath left nothing unsearched or unassailed by his impudent and licentious lying in his aguish writings (for he was in his cold quaking fit all the while), what hath he done more than a troublesome base cur? barked and made a noise afar off; had a fool or two to spit in his mouth, and cherish him with a musty bone?  But they are rather enemies of my fame than me, these barkers.

Mali Choragi fuere.—­It is an art to have so much judgment as to apparel a lie well, to give it a good dressing; that though the nakedness would show deformed and odious, the suiting of it might draw their readers.  Some love any strumpet, be she never so shop-like or meretricious, in good clothes.  But these, nature could not have formed them better to destroy their own testimony and overthrow their calumny.

Hear-say news.—­That an elephant, in 1630, came hither ambassador from the Great Mogul, who could both write and read, and was every day allowed twelve cast of bread, twenty quarts of Canary sack, besides nuts and almonds the citizens’ wives sent him.  That he had a Spanish boy to his interpreter, and his chief negociation was to confer or practise with Archy, the principal fool of state, about stealing hence Windsor Castle and carrying it away on his back if he can.

Lingua sapientis, potius quam loquentis.—­A wise tongue should not be licentious and wandering; but moved and, as it were, governed with certain reins from the heart and bottom of the breast:  and it was excellently said of that philosopher, that there was a wall or parapet of teeth set in our mouth, to restrain the petulancy of our words; that the rashness of talking should not only be retarded by the guard and watch of our heart, but be fenced in and defended by certain strengths placed in the mouth itself, and within the lips.  But you shall see some so abound with words, without any seasoning or taste of matter, in so profound a security, as while they are speaking, for the most part they confess to speak they know not what.