_Shift_. A threadbare shark; one that never was a soldier, yet lives upon lendings. His profession is skeldring and odling, his bank Paul's, and his warehouse Picthatch. Takes up single testons upon oath, till doomsday. Falls under executions of three shillings, and enters into five-groat bonds. He waylays the reports of services, and cons them without book, damning himself he came new from them, when all the while he was taking the diet in the bawdy-house, or lay pawned in his chamber for rent and victuals. He is of that admirable and happy memory, that he will salute one for an old acquaintance that he never saw in his life before. He usurps upon cheats, quarrels, and robberies, which he never did, only to get him a name. His chief exercises are, taking the whiff, squiring a cockatrice, and making privy searches for imparters. _Clove_ and _Orange_. An inseparable case of coxcombs, city born; the Gemini, or twins of foppery; that, like a pair of wooden foils, are fit for nothing but to be practised upon. Being well flattered they'll lend money, and repent when they have done. Their glory is to invite players, and make suppers. And in company of better rank, to avoid the suspect of insufficiency, will enforce their ignorance most desperately, to set upon the understanding of anything. Orange is the most humorous of the two, whose small portion of juice being squeezed out, Clove serves to stick him with commendations. _Cordatus_. The author's friend; a man inly acquainted with the scope and drift of his plot; of a discreet and understanding judgment; and has the place of a moderator. _Mitis_. Is a person of no action, and therefore we have reason to afford him no character. _Of this kind are the CHARACTERS BY SIR THOMAS OVERBURY, which were not published until_ 1614, _the year after their writer's death, at the age of thirty-two; but they may have been written earlier than the "Characters of Virtues and Vices"--ethical characters--written by Joseph Hall, which were first published in_ 1609.