Читать книгу Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century - Various - Страница 39

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Is a strayer from the drove: one that Nature made a sociable, because she made him man, and a crazed disposition hath altered. Unpleasing to all, as all to him; straggling thoughts are his content, they make him dream waking, there's his pleasure. His imagination is never idle, it keeps his mind in a continual motion, as the poise the clock: he winds up his thoughts often, and as often unwinds them; Penelope's web thrives faster. He'll seldom be found without the shade of some grove, in whose bottom a river dwells. He carries a cloud in his face, never fair weather; his outside is framed to his inside, in that he keeps a decorum, both unseemly. Speak to him; he hears with his eyes, ears follow his mind, and that's not at leisure. He thinks business, but never does any; he is all contemplation, no action. He hews and fashions his thoughts, as if he meant them to some purpose, but they prove unprofitable, as a piece of wrought timber to no use. His spirits and the sun are enemies: the sun bright and warm, his humour black and cold; variety of foolish apparitions people his head, they suffer him not to breathe according to the necessities of nature, which makes him sup up a draught of as much air at once as would serve at thrice. He denies nature her due in sleep, and nothing pleaseth him long, but that which pleaseth his own fantasies; they are the consuming evils, and evil consumptions that consume him alive. Lastly, he is a man only in show; but comes short of the better part, a whole reasonable soul, which is man's chief pre-eminence and sole mark from creatures sensible.