Is one whom all other means have failed, and he now lives of himself. He
is some needy cashiered fellow, whom the world hath oft flung off, yet
still clasps again, and is like one a drowning, fastens upon any thing
that is next at hand. Amongst other of his shipwrecks he has happily
lost shame, and this want supplies him. No man puts his brain to more
use than he, for his life is a daily invention, and each meal a new
stratagem. He has an excellent memory for his acquaintance, though there
passed but _how do you_ betwixt them seven years ago, it shall suffice
for an embrace, and that for money. He offers you a pottle of sack out
of joy to see you, and in requital of his courtesy you can do no less
than pay for it. He is fumbling with his purse-strings, as a school-boy
with his points, when he is going to be whipped, 'till the master, weary
with long stay, forgives him. When the reckoning is paid, he says, It
must not be so, yet is straight pacified, and cries, What remedy? His
borrowings are like subsidies, each man a shilling or two, as he can
well dispend; which they lend him, not with a hope to be repaid, but
that he will come no more. He holds a strange tyranny over men, for he
is their debtor, and they fear him as a creditor. He is proud of any
employment, though it be but to carry commendations, which he will be
sure to deliver at eleven of the clock[27]. They in courtesy bid him
stay, and he in manners cannot deny them. If he find but a good look to
assure his welcome, he becomes their half-boarder, and haunts the
threshold so long 'till he forces good nature to the necessity of a
quarrel. Publick invitations he will not wrong with his absence, and is
the best witness of the sheriff's hospitality[28]. Men shun him at
length as they would do an infection, and he is never crossed in his way
if there be but a lane to escape him. He has done with the age as his
clothes to him, hung on as long as he could, and at last drops off.