Is one of a more cunning and active envy, wherewith he gnaws not
foolishly himself, but throws it abroad and would have it blister
others. He is commonly some weak parted fellow, and worse minded, yet is
strangely ambitious to match others, not by mounting their worth, but
bringing them down with his tongue to his own poorness. He is indeed
like the red dragon that pursued the woman, for when he cannot
over-reach another, he opens his mouth and throws a flood after to drown
him. You cannot anger him worse than to do well, and he hates you more
bitterly for this, than if you had cheated him of his patrimony with
your own discredit. He is always slighting the general opinion, and
wondering why such and such men should be applauded. Commend a good
divine, he cries postilling; a philologer, pedantry; a poet, rhiming; a
school-man, dull wrangling; a sharp conceit, boyishness; an honest man,
plausibility. He comes to publick things not to learn, but to catch, and
if there be but one solecism, that is all he carries away. He looks on
all things with a prepared sourness, and is still furnished with a pish
beforehand, or some musty proverb that disrelishes all things
whatsoever. If fear of the company make him second a commendation, it is
like a law-writ, always with a clause of exception, or to smooth his way
to some greater scandal. He will grant you something, and bate more; and
this bating shall in conclusion take away all he granted. His speech
concludes still with an Oh! but,--and I could wish one thing amended;
and this one thing shall be enough to deface all his former
commendations. He will be very inward with a man to fish some bad out of
him, and make his slanders hereafter more authentic, when it is said a
friend reported it. He will inveigle you to naughtiness to get your good
name into his clutches; he will be your pandar to have you on the hip
for a whore-master, and make you drunk to shew you reeling. He passes
the more plausibly because all men have a smatch of his humour, and it
is thought freeness which is malice. If he can say nothing of a man, he
will seem to speak riddles, as if he could tell strange stories if he
would; and when he has racked his invention to the utmost, he ends;--but
I wish him well, and therefore must hold my peace. He is always
listening and enquiring after men, and suffers not a cloak to pass by
him unexamined. In brief, he is one that has lost all good himself, and
is loth to find it in another.