Microcosmography: or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and CharactersEarle, John
General
Microcosmography: or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters
Earle, John
Character sketches
language he cannot conster, and speaks seldom under Arminius in divinity.
His business and retirement and caller away is his study, and he protests
no delight to it comparable. He is a great nomenclator of authors, which
he has read in general in the catalogue, and in particular in the title,
and goes seldom so far as the dedication. He never talks of any thing but
learning, and learns all from talking. Three encounters with the same men
pump him, and then he only puts in or gravely says nothing. He has taken
pains to be an ass, though not to be a scholar, and is at length
discovered and laughed at.
FOOTNOTES:
[71] _Study_, first edit.
[72] The first edition reads _post_, and, I think, preferably.
XLVI.
A HERALD
Is the spawn or indeed but the resultancy of nobility, and to the making
of him went not a generation but a genealogy. His trade is honour, and he
sells it and gives arms himself, though he be no gentleman. His bribes are
like those of a corrupt judge, for they are the prices of blood. He seems
very rich in discourse, for he tells you of whole fields of gold and
silver, or, and argent, worth much in French but in English nothing. He is
a great diver in the streams or issues of gentry, and not a by-channel or
bastard escapes him; yea he does with them like some shameless queen,
fathers more children on them than ever they begot. His traffick is a kind
of pedlary-ware, scutchions, and pennons, and little daggers and lions,
such as children esteem and gentlemen; but his penny-worths are rampant,
for you may buy three whole brawns cheaper than three boar's heads of him
painted. He was sometimes the terrible coat of Mars, but is now for more
merciful battles in the tilt-yard, where whosoever is victorious, the
spoils are his. He is an art in England but in Wales nature, where they
are born with heraldry in their mouths, and each name is a pedigree.
XLVII.
THE COMMON SINGING-MEN IN CATHEDRAL CHURCHES
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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