“As for the train that follows him let it be examined, and my life for yours, you shall find more creditors in’t, than servants: there are bankers, jewellers, scriveners, brokers, mercers, drapers, tailors, vintners; and these are properly the stays and supporters of this animated machine. The money, meat, drink, robes, liveries, wages, all comes out of their pockets; they have this honour for their security; and must content themselves with promises, and fair words for full satisfaction, unless they had rather have a footman with a cudgel for their pay-master. And after all, if this gallant were taken to shrift, or that a man could enter into the secrets of his conscience, I dare undertake, it would appear that he that digs in a mine for his bread lives ten thousand times more at ease than the other, with beating of his brains night and day for new shifts, tricks and projects to keep himself above water. “Observe his companions now, his fool and his flatterer. They are too hard for him, ye see; and eat, drink, and make merry at his expense. What greater misery or shame in the world, than for a man to make a friendship with such rascals, and to spend his time and estate in so brutal, and insipid a society! It costs him more (beside his credit) to maintain that couple of coxcombs than would have bought him the conversation of a brace of grave and learned philosophers. But will ye now see the bottom of this scandalous and dishonourable kindness? ‘My lord,’ says the buffoon, ‘you were most infallibly wrapt in your mother’s smock; for let me be — if ye have not set all the ladies about the court agog.’ ‘The very truth is,’ cries the parasite, ‘all the rest of the nobility look like corn-cutters to you; and indeed, wherever you come, you have still the eyes of the whole company upon you.’ ‘Go to, go to, gentlemen,’ says my lord, ‘you must not flatter your friends. This is more your courtesy than my desert; and I have an obligation to you for your kindness.’ After this manner these asses knab and curry one another, and play the fools by turns.”