be
good, are nothing in comparison thereto; even to be noble and rich
are inferior things, and afford no such glory. Many at least (to
purchase this glory, to be deemed considerable in this faculty, and
enrolled among the wits) do not only make shipwreck of conscience,
abandon virtue, and forfeit all pretences to wisdom; but neglect
their estates, and prostitute their honour: so to the private
damage of many particular persons, and with no small prejudice to
the public, are our times possessed and transported with this
humour. To repress the excess and extravagance whereof, nothing in
way of discourse can serve better than a plain declaration when and
how such a practice is allowable or tolerable; when it is wicked and
vain, unworthy of a man endued with reason, and pretending to
honesty or honour.

This I shall in some measure endeavour to perform.

But first it may be demanded what the thing we speak of is, or what
this facetiousness doth import? To which question I might reply as
Democritus did to him that asked the definition of a man, "'Tis that
which we all see and know": any one better apprehends what it is by
acquaintance than I can inform him by description. It is indeed a
thing so versatile and multiform, appearing in so many shapes, so
many postures, so many garbs, so variously apprehended by several
eyes and judgments, that it seemeth no less hard to settle a clear
and certain notion thereof, than to make a portrait of Proteus, or
to define the figure of the fleeting air. Sometimes it lieth in pat
allusion to a known story, or in seasonable application of a trivial
saying, or in forging an apposite tale: sometimes it playeth in
words and phrases, taking advantage from the ambiguity of their
sense, or the affinity of their sound: sometimes it is wrapped in a
dress of humorous expression; sometimes it lurketh under an odd
similitude; sometimes it is lodged in a sly question, in a smart
answer, in a quirkish reason, in a shrewd intimation, in cunningly
diverting, or cleverly retorting an objection: sometimes it is
couched in a bold scheme of speech, in a tart irony, in a lusty
hyperbole, in a startling metaphor, in a plausible reconciling of
contradictions, or in acute nonsense: sometimes a scenical
representation of persons or things, a counterfeit speech, a mimical
look or gesture passeth for it: sometimes an affected simplicity,
sometimes a presumptuous blun