especially if bawdy, which he calls
merry; and hates naturally the puritan, as an enemy to this mirth. A
country wedding and Whitson-ale are the two main places he domineers in,
where he goes for a musician, and overlooks the bag-pipe. The rest of him
is drunk, and in the stocks.

FOOTNOTES:

[85] Probably the name of some difficult tune.

LXIV.

A MEDDLING MAN

Is one that has nothing to do with his business, and yet no man busier
than he, and his business is most in his face. He is one thrusts himself
violently into all employments, unsent for, unfeed, and many times
unthanked; and his part in it is only an eager bustling, that rather keeps
ado than does any thing. He will take you aside, and question you of your
affair, and listen with both ears, and look earnestly, and then it is
nothing so much yours as his. He snatches what you are doing out of your
hands, and cries "give it me," and does it worse, and lays an engagement
upon you too, and you must thank him for his pains. He lays you down an
hundred wild plots, all impossible things, which you must be ruled by
perforce, and he delivers them with a serious and counselling forehead;
and there is a great deal more wisdom in this forehead than his head. He
will woo for you, solicit for you, and woo you to suffer him; and scarce
any thing done, wherein his letter, or his journey, or at least himself is
not seen; if he have no task in it else, he will rail yet on some side,
and is often beaten when he need not. Such men never thoroughly weigh any
business, but are forward only to shew their zeal, when many times this
forwardness spoils it, and then they cry they have done what they can,
that is, as much hurt. Wise men still deprecate these men's kindnesses,
and are beholden to them rather to let them alone; as being one trouble
more in all business, and which a man shall be hardest rid of.

LXV.

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