IVIOUS MAN

Is the servant he says of many mistresses, but all are but his lust, to
which only he is faithful, and none besides, and spends his best blood and
spirits in the service. His soul is the bawd to his body, and those that
assist him in this nature the nearest to it. No man abuses more the name
of love, or those whom he applies this name to; for his love is like his
stomach to feed on what he loves, and the end of it to surfeit and loath,
till a fresh appetite rekindle him; and it kindles on any sooner than who
deserve best of him. There is a great deal of malignity in this vice, for
it loves still to spoil the best things, and a virgin sometimes rather
than beauty, because the undoing here is greater, and consequently his
glory. No man laughs more at his sin than he, or is so extremely tickled
with the remembrance of it; and he is more violence to a modest ear than
to her he defloured. A bawdy jest enters deep into him, and whatsoever you
speak he will draw to baudry, and his wit is never so good as here. His
unchastest part is his tongue, for that commits always what he must act
seldomer; and that commits with all which he acts with few; for he is his
own worst reporter, and men believe as bad of him, and yet do not believe
him. Nothing harder to his persuasion than a chaste man, no eunuch; and
makes a scoffing miracle at it, if you tell him of a maid. And from this
mistrust it is that such men fear marriage, or at least marry such as are
of bodies to be trusted, to whom only they sell that lust which they buy
of others, and make their wife a revenue to their mistress. They are men
not easily reformed, because they are so little ill-persuaded of their
illness, and have such pleas from man and nature. Besides it is a jeering
and flouting vice, and apt to put jests on the reprover. The pox only
converts them, and that only when it kills them.

LXX.

A RASH MAN

Is a man too quick for himself; one whose actions put a leg still before
his judgement, and out-run it. Every hot fancy or passion is the signal
that sets him forward, and his reason comes still in the rear. One that
has brain enough, but not patience to digest a business, and stay the
leisure of a second thought. All deliberation is to him a kind of sloth
and freezing of action, and it shall burn him rather than take cold. He is
always resolved at first thinking, and the ground he goes upon is, _hap
what may_. Thus he enters not, but throws