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
Is like one that spends on the stock without any revenues coming in, and
will shortly be no wit at all; for learning is the fuel to the fire of
wit, which, if it wants this feeding, eats out it self. A good conceit or
two bates of such a man, and makes a sensible weakening in him; and his
brain recovers it not a year after. The rest of him are bubbles and
flashes, darted out on a sudden, which, if you take them while they are
warm, may be laughed at; if they are cool, are nothing. He speaks best on
the present apprehension, for meditation stupifies him, and the more he is
in travel, the less he brings forth. His things come off then, as in a
nauseateing stomach, where there is nothing to cast up, strains and
convulsions, and some astonishing bombasts, which men only, till they
understand, are scared with. A verse or some such work he may sometimes
get up to, but seldom above the stature of an epigram, and that with some
relief out of Martial, which is the ordinary companion of his pocket, and
he reads him as he were inspired. Such men are commonly the trifling
things of the world, good to make merry the company, and whom only men
have to do withal when they have nothing to do, and none are less their
friends than who are most their company. Here they vent themselves over a
cup some-what more lastingly; all their words go for jests, and all their
jests for nothing. They are nimble in the fancy of some ridiculous thing,
and reasonable good in the expression. Nothing stops a jest when it's
coming, neither friends, nor danger, but it must out howsoever, though
their blood come out after, and then they emphatically rail, and are
emphatically beaten, and commonly are men reasonable familiar to this.
Briefly they are such whose life is but to laugh and be laughed at; and
only wits in jest and fools in earnest.
LVII.
A DRUNKARD
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