and not to spend time. It is his trade to do good, and to think of it his recreation. He hath hands enough for himself and others, which are ever stretched forth for beneficence, not for need. He walks cheerfully in the way that God hath chalked, and never wishes it more wide or more smooth. Those very temptations whereby he is foiled18 strengthen him; he comes forth crowned and triumphing out of the spiritual battles, and those scars that he hath make him beautiful. His soul is every day dilated to receive that God, in whom he is; and hath attained to love himself for God, and God for His own sake. His eyes stick so fast in heaven that no earthly object can remove them; yea, his whole self is there before his time, and sees with Stephen,19 and hears with Paul,20 and enjoys with Lazarus,21 the glory that he shall have, and takes possession beforehand of his room amongst the saints; and these heavenly contentments have so taken him up that now he looks down displeasedly upon the earth as the region of his sorrow and banishment, yet joying more in hope than troubled with the sense of evils. He holds it no great matter to live, and his greatest business to die; and is so well acquainted with his last guest that he fears no unkindness from him; neither makes he any other of dying than of walking home when he is abroad, or of going to bed when he is weary of the day. He is well provided for both worlds, and is sure of peace here, of glory hereafter; and therefore hath a light heart and a cheerful face. All his fellow-creatures rejoice to serve him; his betters, the angels, love to observe him; God Himself takes pleasure to converse with him, and hath sainted him before his death, and in his death crowned him.

18. foiled. Partly thrown (in wrestling).

19. Stephen. See Acts 7:55-56.

20. Paul. See Acts 9:3-4.

21. Lazarus. See Luke 16:23.

JOHN EARLE

A YOUNG MAN

He is now out of nature's protection, though not yet able to guide himself; but left loose to the world and fortune, from which the weakness of his childhood preserved him; and now his strength exposes him. He is, indeed, just of age to be miserable, yet in his own conceit22 first begins to be happy; and he is happier in this imagination, and his misery not felt is less. He sees yet but the outside of the world and men, and conceives them according to their appearing glister, 23 and out of this ignorance believes them. He pursues all vanities for happiness, and enjoys them best in this fancy. His reason serves not to curb but understand his appetite, and prosecute the motions thereof with a moro eager earnestness. Himself is his own temptation, and needs not Satan, and the world will come hereafter. He leaves repentance for gray hairs, and performs it in being covetous. He is mingled with the vices of the age as the fashion and custom, with which he longs to be acquainted, and sins to better his understanding. He conceives his youth as the season of his lust, and the hour wherein he ought to be bad; and because he would not lose his time, spends it. He distastes religion as a sad thing, and is six years elder for a thought of heaven. He scorns and fears, and yet hopes for old age, but dare not imagine it with wrinkles. He loves and hates with the same inflammation, and when the heat is over is cool alike to friends and enemies. His friendship is seldom so steadfast, but that lust, drink, or anger may overturn it. He offers you his blood today in kindness, and is ready to take yours tomorrow. He does seldom anything which he wishes not to do again, and is only wise after a mis

22. conceit.

Imagination.

23. conceives apparent brilliance.

glister. Judges them according to their

fortune. He suffers much for his knowledge, and a great deal of folly it is makes him a wise man. He is free from many vices, by being not grown to the performance, and is only more virtuous out of weakness. Every action is his danger, and every man his ambush. He is a ship without pilot or tackling, and only good fortune may steer him. If he scape this age, he has scaped a tempest, and may live to be a man.

A GOOD OLD MAN

IS THE best antiquity, and which we may with least vanity admire. One whom time hath been thus long a working, and like winter fruit ripened when others are shaken down. He hath taken out as many lessons of the world as days, and learnt the best thing in it, the vanity of it. He looks over his former life as a danger well past, and would not hazard himself to begin again. His lust was long broken before his body, yet he is glad this temptation is broke too, and that he is fortified from it by this weakness. The next door of death sads him not, but he expects it calmly as his turn in nature; and fears more his recoiling back to childishness than dust. All men look on him as a common father, and on old age, for his sake, as a reverent thing. His very presence and face puts vice out of countenance, and makes it an indecorum in a vicious man. He practices his experience on youth without the harshness of reproof, and in his counsel is good company. He has some old stories still of his own seeing to confirm what he says, and makes them better in the telling; yet is not troublesome neither with the same tale again, but remembers with them how oft he has told them. His old sayings and morals seem proper to his beard; and the poetry of Cato24 does well out of his mouth, and he speaks it as if he were the author. He is not apt to put the

24. Cato. The Roman statesman of the second century B.C., who was highly reputed for his old-fashioned and uncompromising virtue. He was not a poet, but in later ages various ethical maxims, in verse form, were attributed to him.

25

boy on a younger man, nor the fool on a boy, but can distinguish gravity from a sour look; and the less testy he is, the more regarded. You must pardon him if he like his own times better than these, because those things are follies to him now that were wisdom then; yet he makes us of that opinion too when we see him, and conjecture those times by so good a relic. He is a man capable of a dearness with the youngest men, yet he not youthfuller for them, but they older for him; and no man credits more his acquaintance. He goes away at last too soon whensoever, with all men's sorrow but his own; and his memory is fresh, when it is twice as old.

A TEDIOUS MAN

TALKS to no end, as well as to no purpose; for he would never come at it willingly. His discourse is like the roadmiles in the north,26 the filthier and dirtier the longer; and he delights to dwell the longer upon them to make good the old proverb that says they are good for the dweller, but ill for the traveler. He sets a tale upon the rack, and stretches it until it becomes lame and out of joint. Hippocrates27 says art is long; but he is so for want of art. He has a vein of dullness that runs through all he says or does; for nothing can be tedious that is not dull and insipid. Digressions and repetitions, like bag and baggage, retard his march and put him to perpetual halts. He makes his approaches to a business by oblique lines, as if he meant to besiege it, and fetches a wide compass about to keep others from discovering what his design is. He is like one that travels in a dirty deep road, that moves slowly; and, when he is at a stop,

25. put younger man. Take a younger man for a boy. 26. road-miles in the north. The Scottish mile was formerly about an eighth longer than the English. Cf. Burns in Tam O'Shanter: "We think na on the lang Scots miles."

27. Hippocrates An ancient Greek physician. His famous aphorism was handed down later in Seneca's Latin version: "Vita brevis, ars longa," which Chaucer paraphrased in the line, "The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne."

goes back again, and loses more time in picking of his way than in going it. How troublesome and uneasy soever he is to others, he pleases himself so well that he does not at all perceive it; for though home be homely, it is more delightful than finer things abroad; and he that is used to a thing and knows no better believes that other men, to whom it appears otherwise, have the same sense of it that he has; as melancholy 28 persons that fancy themselves to be glass believe that all others think them so too; and therefore that which is tedious to others is not so to him, otherwise he would avoid it; for it does not so often proceed from a natural defect as affectation and desire to give others that pleasure which they find themselves, though it always falls out quite contrary. He that converses with him is like one that travels with a companion that rides a lame jade; he must either endure to go his pace or stay for him; for though he understands long before what he would be at better than he does himself, he must have patience and stay for him, until, with much ado to little purpose, he at length comes to him; for he believes himself injured if he should abate a jot of his own diversion.

SAMUEL BUTLER

A ROMANCE WRITER

PULLS down old histories to build them up finer again, after a new model of his own designing. He takes away all the lights of truth in history to make it the fitter tutoress of life; for Truth herself has little or nothing to do in the affairs of the world, although all matters of the greatest weight and moment are pretended and done in her name, like a weak princess that has only the title, and falsehood all the power. He observes one very fit decorum in dating his histories in the days of old and putting all his own inventions upon ancient times; for when the world was younger, it might 28. melancholy. Mad.