capable
only of two prayers, for rain, and fair weather. He apprehends God's
blessings only in a good year, or a fat pasture, and never praises him but
on _good ground_. Sunday he esteems a day to make merry in, and thinks a
bag-pipe as essential to it as evening-prayer, where he walks very
solemnly after service, with his hands coupled behind him, and censures
the dancing of his parish. [His compliment with his neighbour is a good
thump on the back, and his salutation commonly some blunt curse.] He
thinks nothing to be vices, but pride and ill husbandry, from which he
will gravely dissuade the youth, and has some thrifty hob-nail proverbs to
clout his discourse. He is a niggard all the week, except only market-day,
where, if his corn sell well, he thinks he may be drunk with a good
conscience. His feet never stink so unbecomingly as when he trots after a
lawyer in Westminster-hall, and even cleaves the ground with hard scraping
in beseeching his worship to take his money. He is sensible of no calamity
but the burning a stack of corn or the overflowing of a meadow, and
thinks Noah's flood the greatest plague that ever was, not because it
drowned the world, but spoiled the grass. For death he is never troubled,
and if he get in but his harvest before, let it come when it will, he
cares not.

XXIII.

A PLAYER.

He knows the right use of the world, wherein he comes to play a part and
so away. His life is not idle, for it is all action, and no man need be
more wary in his doings, for the eyes of all men are upon him. His
profession has in it a kind of contradiction, for none is more disliked,
and yet none more applauded; and he has the misfortune of some scholar,
too much wit makes him a fool. He is like our painting gentlewomen, seldom
in his own face, seldomer in his cloaths; and he pleases, the better he
counterfeits, except only when he is disguised with straw for gold lace.
He does not only personate on the stage, but sometimes in the street, for
he is masked still in the habit of a gentleman. His parts find him oaths
and good words, which he keeps for his use and discourse, and makes shew
with them of a fashionable companion. He is tragical on the stage, but
rampant in the tiring-house,[42] and swears oaths there which he never
conned. The waiting women spectators are over-ears in love with him, and
ladies send for him to act in their chambers. Your inns-of-court men were
undone but for him, he is their chi