reverence from
him, and distaste that in him, which they suffer in themselves, as one in
whom vice is ill-favoured, and shews more scurvily than another. A bawdy
jest shall shame him more than a bastard another man, and he that got it
shall censure him among the rest. And he is coward to nothing more than an
ill tongue, and whosoever dare lye on him hath power over him; and if you
take him by his look, he is guilty. The main ambition of his life is not
to be discredited; and for other things, his desires are more limited than
his fortunes, which he thinks preferment, though never so mean, and that
he is to do something to deserve this. He is too tender to venture on
great places, and would not hurt a dignity to help himself: If he do, it
was the violence of his friends constrained him, how hardly soever he
obtain it, he was harder persuaded to seek it.

FOOTNOTES:

[78] This, as well as many other passages in this work, has been
appropriated by John Dunton, the celebrated bookseller, as his own. See
his character of Mr. Samuel Hool, in _Dunton's Life and Errors_, 8vo.
1705. p. 337.

LVI.

A MEER EMPTY WIT

Is like one that spends on the stock without any revenues coming in, and
will shortly be no wit at all; for learning is the fuel to the fire of
wit, which, if it wants this feeding, eats out it self. A good conceit or
two bates of such a man, and makes a sensible weakening in him; and his
brain recovers it not a year after. The rest of him are bubbles and
flashes, darted out on a sudden, which, if you take them while they are
warm, may be laughed at; if they are cool, are nothing. He speaks best on
the present apprehension, for meditation stupifies him, and the more he is
in travel, the less he brings forth. His things come off then, as in a
nauseateing stomach, where there is nothing to cast up, strains and
convulsions, and some astonishing bombasts, which men only, till they
understand, are scared with. A verse or some such work he may sometimes
get up to, but seldom above the stature of an epigram, and that with some
relief out of Martial, which is the ordinary companion of his pocket, and
he reads him as he were inspired. Such men are commonly the trifling
things of the world, good to make merry the company, and whom only men
have to do withal when they have nothing to do, and none are less their
friends than who are most their company. Here they vent themselves over a
cup some-what more lastingly;