Is one that manures his ground well, but lets himself lie fallow and
untilled. He has reason enough to do his business, and not enough to be
idle or melancholy. He seems to have the punishment of Nebuchadnezzar,
for his conversation is among beasts, and his talons none of the
shortest, only he eats not grass, because he loves not salads. His hand
guides the plough, and the plough his thoughts, and his ditch and
land-mark is the very mound of his meditations. He expostulates with his
oxen very understandingly, and speaks gee, and ree, better than English.
His mind is not much distracted with objects, but if a good fat cow come
in his way, he stands dumb and astonished, and though his haste be never
so great, will fix here half an hour's contemplation. His habitation is
some poor thatched roof, distinguished from his barn by the loop-holes
that let out smoke, which the rain had long since washed through, but
for the double ceiling of bacon on the inside, which has hung there from
his grandsire's time, and is yet to make rashers for posterity. His
dinner is his other work, for he sweats at it as much as at his labour;
he is a terrible fastener on a piece of beef, and you may hope to stave
the guard off sooner. His religion is a part of his copyhold, which he
takes from his landlord, and refers it wholly to his discretion: Yet if
he give him leave he is a good Christian to his power, (that is,) comes
to church in his best clothes, and sits there with his neighbours, where
he is capable only of two prayers, for rain, and fair weather. He
apprehends God's blessings only in a good year, or a fat pasture, and
never praises him but on _good ground_. Sunday he esteems a day to make
merry in, and thinks a bag-pipe as essential to it as evening-prayer,
where he walks very solemnly after service with his hands coupled behind
him, and censures the dancing of his parish. [His compliment with his
neighbour is a good thump on the back, and his salutation commonly some
blunt curse.] He thinks nothing to be vices, but pride and
ill-husbandry, from which he will gravely dissuade the youth, and has
some thrifty hob-nail proverbs to clout his discourse. He is a niggard
all the week, except only market-day, where, if his corn sell well, he
thinks he may be drunk with a good conscience. His feet never stink so
unbecomingly as when he trots after a lawyer in Westminster-hall, and
even cleaves the ground with hard scraping in beseeching his worship to
take his money. He is sensible of no calamity but the burning a stack of
corn or the overflowing of a meadow, and thinks Noah's flood the
greatest plague that ever was, not because it drowned the world, but
spoiled the grass. For death he is never troubled, and if he get in but
his harvest before, let it come when it will, he cares not.