A GOLDEN ASS

Is a young thing, whose father went to the devil; he is followed like a

salt bitch, and limbed by him that gets up first; his disposition is

cut, and knaves rend him like tenter-hooks; he is as blind as his

mother, and swallows flatterers for friends. He is high in his own

imagination, but that imagination is as a stone that is raised by

violence, descends naturally. When he goes, he looks who looks; if he

find not good store of vailers, he comes home stiff and sere, until he

be new oiled and watered by his husbandmen. Wheresoever he eats he hath

an officer to warn men not to talk out of his element, and his own is

exceeding sensible, because it is sensual; but he cannot exchange a

piece of reason, though he can a piece of gold. He is not plucked, for

his feathers are his beauty, and more than his beauty, they are his

discretion, his countenance, his all. He is now at an end, for he hath

had the wolf of vainglory, which he fed until himself became the food.

Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century · 第 42 / 429 题