Always throws beyond the jack and is gone a mile. He is no more able to contain himself than a bowl is when he is commanded to rub with the greatest power and vehemence imaginable, and nothing lights in his way. He is a conjurer that cannot keep within the compass of his circle, though he were sure the devil would fetch him away for the least transgression. He always overstocks his ground and starves instead of feeding, destroys whatsoever he has an extraordinary care for, and, like an ape, hugs the whelp he loves most to death. All his designs are greater than the life, and he laughs to think how Nature has mistaken her match, and given him so much odds that he can easily outrun her. He allows of no merit but that which is superabundant. All his actions are superfoetations, that either become monsters or twins; that is, too much, or the same again; for he is but a supernumerary and does nothing but for want of a better. He is a civil Catholic, that holds nothing more steadfastly than supererogation in all that he undertakes, for he undertakes nothing but what he overdoes. He is insatiable in all his actions and, like a covetous person, never knows when he has done enough until he has spoiled all by doing too much. He is his own antagonist, and is never satisfied until he has outdone himself as well as that which he proposed, for he loves to be better than his word (though it always falls out worse) and deceive the world the wrong way. He believes the mean to be but a mean thing, and therefore always runs into extremities as the more excellent, great, and transcendent. He delights to exceed in all his attempts, for he finds that a goose that has three legs is more remarkable than a hundred that have but two apiece, and has a greater number of followers; and that all monsters are more visited and applied to than other creatures that Nature has made perfect in their kind. He believes he can never bestow too much pains upon anything; for his industry is his own and costs him nothing; and if it miscarry he loses nothing, for he has as much as it was worth. He is like a foolish musician that sets his instrument so high that he breaks his strings for want of understanding the right pitch of it, or an archer that breaks his with overbending; and all he does is forced, like one that sings above the reach of his voice. THE RASH MAN