Читать книгу Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century - Various - Страница 70

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Is one of Samson's foxes; he sets men together by the ears, more shamefully than pillories, and in a long vacation his sport is to go a fishing with the penal statutes. He cannot err before judgment, and then you see it, only writs of error are the tariers that keep his client undoing somewhat the longer. He is a vestryman in his parish, and easily sets his neighbour at variance with the vicar, when his wicked counsel on both sides is like weapons put into men's hands by a fencer, whereby they get blows, he money. His honesty and learning bring him to Under-Shrieveship, which, having thrice run through, he does not fear the Lieutenant of the Shire; nay more, he fears not God. Cowardice holds him a good commonwealth's-man; his pen is the plough and parchment the soil whence he reaps both coin and curses. He is an earthquake that willingly will let no ground lie in quiet. Broken titles makes him whole; to have half in the country break their bonds were the only liberty of conscience. He would wish, though he be a Brownist, no neighbour of his should pay his tithes duly, if such suits held continual plea at Westminster. He cannot away with the reverend service in our Church, because it ends with the peace of God. He loves blows extremely, and hath his chirurgeon's bill of rates, from head to foot, incense the fury; he would not give away his yearly beatings for a good piece of money. He makes his will in form of a law-case, full of quiddits, that his friends after his death (if for nothing else, yet) for the vexation of the law, may have cause to remember him. And if he thought the ghost of men did walk again (as they report in the time of Popery), sure he would hide some single money in Westminster Hall that his spirit might haunt there. Only with this I will pitch him over the bar and leave him: that his fingers itch after a bribe ever since his first practising of court-hand.