The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works (8 page)

The Counterfeit Politician

Some think to be counted rare politicians and statesmen by being solitary; as who should say, ‘I am a wise man, a brave man,
Secreta mea mihi; Frustra sapit, qui sibi non sapit
,
⁹¹
and there is no man worthy of my company or friendship;' when, although he goes ungartered like a malcontent cut-purse, and wears his hat over his eyes like one of the cursed crew, yet cannot his stabbing dagger, or his nitty love-lock,
⁹²
keep him out of
The Legend of Fantastical Coxcombs
.

I pray ye, good Monsieur Devil, take some order, that the streets be not pestered with them so as they are. Is it not a pitiful thing that a fellow that eats not a good meal's meat in a week, but beggareth his belly quite and clean to make his back a certain kind of brokerly gentleman, and now and then, once or twice in a term, comes to the eighteen pence ordinary,
⁹³
because he would be seen amongst cavaliers and brave
⁹⁴
courtiers, living otherwise all the year long with salt butter and Holland cheese in his chamber, should take up a scornful melancholy in his gait and countenance, and talk as though our commonwealth were but a mockery of government, and our magistrates fools,
who wronged him in not looking into his deserts, not employing him in state matters, and that, if more regard were not had of him very shortly, the whole realm should have a miss of him, and he would go (ay, marry, would he) where he should be more accounted of?

Is it not wonderful ill-provided, I say, that this disdainful companion is not made one of the fraternity of fools, to talk before great states, with some old moth-eaten politician, of mending highways and leading armies into France?

The Prodigal Young Master

A young heir or cockney,
⁹⁵
that is his mother's darling, if he have played the waste-good at the Inns of the Court or about London, and that neither his student's pension nor his unthrift's credit will serve to maintain his college of whores any longer, falls in a quarrelling humour with his fortune, because she made him not King of the Indies, and swears and stares, after ten in the hundred,
⁹⁶
that ne'er a such peasant as his father or brother shall keep him under: he will to the sea, and tear the gold out of the Spaniards' throats, but he will have it, by'rlady. And when he comes there, poor soul, he lies in brine, in ballast, and is lamentable sick of the scurvies; his dainty fare is turned to a hungry feast of dogs and cats, or haberdine
⁹⁷
and poor John
⁹⁸
at the most, and, which is lamentablest of all, that without mustard.

As a mad ruffian, on a time, being in danger of shipwreck by a tempest, and seeing all other at their vows and prayers, that if it would please God, of his infinite goodness, to deliver them out of that imminent danger, one would abjure this sin whereunto he was addicted, another make satisfaction for that violence he had committed. He, in a
desperate jest, began thus to reconcile his soul to heaven:

‘O Lord, if it may seem good to thee to deliver me from this fear of untimely death, I vow before thy throne and all thy starry host, never to eat haberdine more whilst I live.'

Well, so it fell out, that the sky cleared and the tempest ceased, and this careless wretch, that made such a mockery of prayer, ready to set foot a-land, cried out, ‘Not without mustard, good Lord, not without mustard'; as though it had been the greatest torment in the world to have eaten haberdine without mustard.

But this by the way, what penance can be greater for Pride than to let it swing in his own halter?
Dulce bellum inexpertis
:
⁹⁹
there's no man loves the smoke of his own country, that hath not been singed in the flame of another soil. It is a pleasant thing over a full pot to read the fable of thirsty Tantalus; but a harder matter to digest salt meats at sea, with stinking water.

The Pride of the Learned

Another misery of pride it is, when men that have good parts and bear the name of deep scholars cannot be content to participate one faith with all Christendom, but, because they will get a name to their vainglory, they will set their self-love to study to invent new sects of singularity, thinking to live when they are dead, by having their sects called after their names, as Donatists of Donatus,
¹⁰⁰
Arians of Arius,
¹⁰¹
and a number more new faith-founders, that have made England the exchange of innovations, and almost as much confusion of religion in every quarter, as there was of tongues at the building of the Tower of Babel.
Whence, a number that fetch the articles of their belief out of Aristotle, and think of heaven and hell as the heathen philosophers, take occasion to deride our ecclesiastical state and all ceremonies of divine worship as bugbears and scarecrows,
¹⁰²
because, like Herod's soldiers, we divide Christ's garment amongst us in so many pieces, and of the vesture of salvation make some of us babies' and apes' coats, others straight trusses and devil's breeches; some galligaskins
¹⁰³
or a shipman's hose, like the Anabaptists
¹⁰⁴
and adulterous Familists;
¹⁰⁵
others, with the Martinists,
¹⁰⁶
a hood with two faces, to hide their hypocrisy; and, to conclude, some, like the Barrowists
¹⁰⁷
and Green-woodians,
¹⁰⁸
a garment full of the plague, which is not to be worn before it be new washed.

Hence atheists triumph and rejoice, and talk as profanely of the Bible, as of
Bevis of Hampton
.
¹⁰⁹
I hear say there be mathematicians abroad that will prove men before Adam;
¹¹⁰
and they are harboured in high places, who will maintain it to the death that there are no devils.

It is a shame, Signor Beelzebub, that you should suffer yourself thus to be termed a bastard, or not approve to your predestinate children, not only that they have a father, but that you are he that must own them.
*
These are but the suburbs of the sin we have in hand: I must describe
to you a large city, wholly inhabited with this damnable enormity.

The Pride of the Artificers

In one place let me shew you a base artificer, that hath no revenues to boast on but a needle in his bosom, as brave as any pensioner or nobleman.

The Pride of Merchants' Wives

In another corner, Mistress Minx, a merchant's wife, that will eat no cherries, forsooth, but when they are at twenty shillings a pound, that looks as simperingly as if she were besmeared,
¹¹¹
and jets it as gingerly as if she were dancing the Canaries.
¹¹²
She is so finical
¹¹³
in her speech, as though she spake nothing but what she had first sewed over before in her samplers,
¹¹⁴
and the puling accent of her voice is like a feigned treble, or one's voice that interprets to the puppets.
¹¹⁵
What should I tell how squeamish she is in her diet, what toil she puts her poor servants unto, to make her looking glasses in the pavement? How she will not go into the fields, to cower on the green grass, but she must have a coach for her convoy; and spends half a day in pranking herself if she be invited to any strange place? Is not this the excess of pride, Signor Satan? Go to, you are unwise if you make her not a chief saint in your calendar.

The Pride of Peasants sprung up of Nothing

The next object that encounters my eyes is some such obscure upstart gallants as without desert or service are raised from the plough to be checkmates
¹¹⁶
with princes. And these I can no better compare than to creatures that
are bred
sine coitu
,
¹¹⁷
as crickets in chimneys; to which I resemble poor scullions, that, from turning spit in the chimney corner, are on the sudden hoised up from the kitchen into the waiting chamber, or made barons of the beeves,
¹¹⁸
and marquesses of the marybones;
¹¹⁹
some by corrupt water, as gnats, to which we may liken brewers, that, by retailing filthy Thames water, come in a few years to be worth forty or fifty thousand pound; others by dead wine, as little flying worms,
¹²⁰
and so the vintners in like case; others by slime, as frogs, which may be alluded to Mother Bunch's
¹²¹
slimy ale, that hath made her and some other of her fill-pot faculty so wealthy; others by dirt, as worms, and so I know many gold-finders
¹²²
and hostlers come up; some by herbs, as cankers, and after the same sort our apothecaries; others by ashes, as scarabs,
¹²³
and how else get our colliers the pence? Others from the putrefied flesh of dead beasts, as bees of bulls, and butchers by fly-blown beef; wasps of horses, and hackney-men by selling their lame jades to huntsmen for carrion.

Yet am I not against it, that these men by their mechanical
¹²⁴
trades should come to be sparage
*
gentlemen and chuff-headed burgomasters; but that better places should be possessed by coistrels,
¹²⁵
and the cobbler's crow,
¹²⁶
for crying but
Ave Caesar
, be more esteemed than rarer birds, that have warbled sweeter notes unrewarded. But it is no marvel, for as hemlock fatteth quails and henbane swine, which to all other is poison, so some men's vices have power
to advance them, which would subvert any else that should seek to climb by them; and it is enough in them, that they can pare their nails well to get them a living, whenas the seven liberal sciences
¹²⁷
and a good leg will scarce get a scholar a pair of shoes and a canvas doublet.

These whelps of the first litter of gentility, these exhalations, drawn up to the heaven of honour from the dunghill of abject fortune, have long been on horseback to come riding to your Devilship; but, I know not how, like Saint George,
¹²⁸
they are always mounted but never move. Here they outface town and country, and do nothing but bandy factions with their betters. Their big limbs yield the commonwealth no other service but idle sweat, and their heads, like rough-hewn globes, are fit for nothing but to be the blockhouses of sleep. Raynold the fox
¹²⁹
may well bear up his tail in the lion's den, but when he comes abroad he is afraid of every dog that barks. What cur will not bawl and be ready to fly in a man's face when he is set on by his master, who, if he be not by to encourage him, he casts his tail betwixt his legs and steals away like a sheepbiter? Ulysses was a tall man
¹³⁰
under Ajax' shield; but by him-self he would never adventure but in the night. Pride is never built upon some pillars; and let his supporters fail him never so little, you shall find him very humble in the dust. Wit oftentimes stands instead of a chief arch to underprop it; in soldiers, strength; in women, beauty.

The Base Insinuating of Drudges and their

Practice to Aspire

Drudges, that have no extraordinary gifts of body nor of mind, filch themselves into some nobleman's service, either by bribes or by flattery, and, when they are there, they so
labour it with cap and knee, and ply it with privy whisperings, that they wring themselves into his good opinion ere he be aware. Then do they vaunt themselves over the common multitude, and are ready to outbrave any man that stands by himself. Their lord's authority is as a rebater
¹³¹
to bear up the peacock's tail of their boasting, and anything that is said or done to the unhandsoming of their ambition is straight wrested to the name of treason. Thus do weeds grow up whiles no man regards them, and the Ship of Fools
¹³²
is arrived in the Haven of Felicity, whilst the scouts of Envy contemn the attempts of any such small barks.

But beware you that be great men's favourites; let not a servile, insinuating slave creep betwixt your legs into credit with your lords; for peasants that come out of the cold of poverty, once cherished in the bosom of prosperity, will straight forget that ever there was a winter of want, or who gave them room to warm them. The son of a churl cannot choose but prove ingrateful, like his father. Trust not a villain that hath been miserable, and is suddenly grown happy. Virtue ascendeth by degrees of desert unto dignity. Gold and lust may lead a man a nearer way to promotion; but he that hath neither comeliness nor coin to commend him undoubtedly strides over time by stratagems,
*
if of a molehill he grows to a mountain in a moment. This is that which I urge; there is no friendship to be had with him that is resolute to do or suffer anything rather than to endure the destiny whereto he was born; for he will not spare his own father or brother, to make himself a gentleman.

The Pride of the Spaniard

France, Italy and Spain, are all full of these false-hearted Machivillions; but, properly, pride is the disease of the
Spaniard, who is born a braggart in his mother's womb. For, if he be but seventeen years old and hath come to the place where a field was fought (though half a year before), he then talks like one of the giants that made war against Heaven, and stands upon his honour, as much as if he were one of Augustus' soldiers,
¹³³
of whom he first instituted the order of heralds. And let a man soothe him in this vein of killcow
¹³⁴
vanity, you may command his heart out of his belly to make you a rasher on the coals, if you will, next your heart.
¹³⁵

The Pride of the Italian

The Italian is a more cunning proud fellow, that hides his humour far cleanlier, and indeed seems to take a pride in humility, and will proffer a stranger more courtesy than he means to perform. He hateth him deadly that takes him at his word; as, for example, if upon occasion of meeting, he request you to dinner or supper at his house, and that at the first or second entreaty you promise to be his guest, he will be the mortalest enemy you have. But if you deny him, he will think you have manners and good bringing up, and will love you as his brother. Marry, at the third or fourth time you must not refuse him. Of all things he counteth it a mighty disgrace to have a man pass jostling by him in haste on a narrow causey
¹³⁶
and ask him no leave, which he never revengeth with less than a stab.