k testament or Hebrew
bible, which he opens only in the church, and that when some stander-by
looks over. He has sentences for company, some scatterings of Seneca and
Tacitus, which are good upon all occasions. If he reads any thing in the
morning, it comes up all at dinner; and as long as that lasts, the
discourse is his. He is a great plagiary of tavern wit, and comes to
sermons only that he may talk of Austin. His parcels are the meer
scrapings from company, yet he complains at parting what time he has lost.
He is wondrously capricious to seem a judgment, and listens with a sower
attention to what he understands not. He talks much of Scaliger, and
Casaubon, and the Jesuits, and prefers some unheard-of Dutch name before
them all. He has verses to bring in upon these and these hints, and it
shall go hard but he will wind in his opportunity. He is critical in a
language he cannot conster, and speaks seldom under Arminius in divinity.
His business and retirement and caller away is his study, and he protests
no delight to it comparable. He is a great nomenclator of authors, which
he has read in general in the catalogue, and in particular in the title,
and goes seldom so far as the dedication. He never talks of any thing but
learning, and learns all from talking. Three encounters with the same men
pump him, and then he only puts in or gravely says nothing. He has taken
pains to be an ass, though not to be a scholar, and is at length
discovered and laughed at.

FOOTNOTES:

[71] _Study_, first edit.

[72] The first edition reads _post_, and, I think, preferably.

XLVI.

A HERALD

Is the spawn or indeed but the resultancy of nobility, and to the making
of him went not a generation but a genealogy. His trade is honour, and he
sells it and gives arms himself, though he be no gentleman. His bribes are
like those of a corrupt judge, for they are the prices of blood. He seems
very rich in discourse, for he tells you of whole fields of gold and
silver, or, and argent, worth much in French but in English nothing. He is
a great diver in the streams or issues of gentry, and not a by-channel or
bastard escapes him; yea he does with them like some shameless queen,
fathers more children on them than ever they begot. His traffick is a kind
of pedlary-ware, scutchions, and pennons, and little daggers and lions,
such as children esteem and gentlemen; but his penny-worths are rampant,
for you may buy three whole brawns cheaper