Characters and characteristics in literature; English literature
and is counted for it an honest fellow. He is grumbling much in behalf
of the commonwealth, and is in prison oft for it with credit. He is
generally honest, but more generally thought so, and his downrightness
credits him, as a man not well bended and crookened to the times. In
conclusion, he is not easily bad in whom this quality is nature, but the
counterfeit is most dangerous, since he is disguised in a humour that
professes not to disguise.
A HANDSOME HOSTESS
Is the fairer commendation of an inn, above the fair sign, or fair
lodgings. She is the loadstone that attracts men of iron, gallants and
roarers, where they cleave sometimes long, and are not easily got off.
Her lips are your welcome, and your entertainment her company, which is
put into the reckoning too, and is the dearest parcel in it. No
citizen's wife is demurer than she at the first greeting, nor draws in
her mouth with a chaster simper; but you may be more familiar without
distaste, and she does not startle at anything. She is the confusion of
a pottle of sack more than would have been spent elsewhere, and her
little jugs are accepted to have her kiss excuse them. She may be an
honest woman, but is not believed so in her parish, and no man is a
greater infidel in it than her husband.
A CRITIC
Is one that has spelled over a great many books, and his observation is
the orthography. He is the surgeon of old authors, and heals the wounds
of dust and ignorance. He converses much in fragments and _desunt
multa's_, and if he piece it up with two lines he is more proud of that
book than the author. He runs over all sciences to peruse their
syntaxis, and thinks all learning com-prised in writing Latin. He tastes
styles as some discreeter palates do wine; and tells you which is
genuine, which sophisticate and bastard. His own phrase is a miscellany
of old words, deceased long before the Caesars, and entombed by Varro,
and the modernest man he follows is Plautus. He writes _omneis_ at
length, and _quidquid_, and his gerund is most inconformable. He is a
troublesome vexer of the dead, which after so long sparing must rise up
to the judgment of his castigations. He is one that makes all books sell
dearer, whilst he swells them into folios with his comments.
A SERGEANT, OR CATCH-POLE
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