Is the best shadow to make a discreet one show the fairer. He is a
_materia prima_ informed by reports, actuated by statutes, and hath his
motion by the favourable intelligence of the Court. His law is always
furnished with a commission to arraign his conscience; but, upon
judgment given, he usually sets it at large. He thinks no language worth
knowing but his Barragouin: only for that point he hath been a long time
at wars with Priscian for a northern province. He imagines that by sure
excellency his profession only is learning, and that it is a profanation
of the Temple to his Themis dedicated, if any of the liberal arts be
there admitted to offer strange incense to her. For, indeed, he is all
for money. Seven or eight years squires him out, some of his nation less
standing; and ever since the night of his call, he forgot much what he
was at dinner. The next morning his man (in _actu_ or _potentia_) enjoys
his pickadels. His laundress is then shrewdly troubled in fitting him a
ruff, his perpetual badge. His love-letters of the last year of his
gentlemanship are stuffed with discontinuances, remitters, and uncore
priests; but, now being enabled to speak in proper person, he talks of a
French hood instead of a jointure, wags his law, and joins issue. Then
he begins to stick his letters in his ground chamber-window, that so the
superscription may make his squireship transparent. His heraldry gives
him place before the minister, because the Law was before the Gospel.
Next term he walks his hoopsleeve gown to the hall; there it proclaims
him. He feeds fat in the reading, and till it chance to his turn,
dislikes no house order so much as that the month is so contracted to a
fortnight. Amongst his country neighbours he arrogates as much honour
for being reader of an Inn of Chancery, as if it had been of his own
house; for they, poor souls, take law and conscience, Court and
Chancery, for all one. He learned to frame his case from putting riddles
and imitating Merlin's prophecies, and to set all the Cross Row together
by the ears; yet his whole law is not able to decide Lucan's one old
controversy betwixt Tau and Sigma. He accounts no man of his cap and
coat idle, but who trots not the circuit. He affects no life or quality
for itself, but for gain; and that, at least, to the stating him in a
Justice of Peace-ship, which is the first quickening soul superadded to
the elementary and inanimate form of his new tide. His terms are his
wife's vacations; yet she then may usurp divers Court-days, and has her
returns in _mensem_ for writs of entry--often shorter. His vacations are
her termers; but in assize time (the circuit being long) he may have a
trial at home against him by _nisi prius_. No way to heaven, he thinks,
so wise as through Westminster Hall; and his clerks commonly through it
visit both heaven and hell. Yet then he oft forgets his journey's end,
although he look on the Star-Chamber. Neither is he wholly destitute of
the arts. Grammar he has enough to make termination of those words which
his authority hath endenizoned rhetoric-some; but so little that it is
thought a concealment. Logic, enough to wrangle. Arithmetic, enough for
the ordinals of his year-books and number-rolls; but he goes not to
multiplication, there is a statute against it. So much geometry, that he
can advise in a _perambulatione fadenda_, or a _rationalibus divisis_.
In astronomy and astrology he is so far seen, that by the Dominical
letter he knows the holy-days, and finds by calculation that Michaelmas
term will be long and dirty. Marry, he knows so much in music that he
affects only the most and cunningest discords; rarely a perfect concord,
especially song, except _in fine_. His skill in perspective endeavours
much to deceive the eye of the law, and gives many false colours. He is
specially practised in necromancy (such a kind as is out of the Statute
of Primo), by raising many dead questions. What sufficiency he hath in
criticism, the foul copies of his special pleas will tell you. Many of
the same coat, which are much to be honoured, partake of divers of his
indifferent qualities; but so that discretion, virtue, and sometimes
other good learning, concurring and distinguishing ornaments to them,
make them as foils to set their work on.