Are a bad society, and yet a company of good fellows, that roar deep in
the quire, deeper in the tavern. They are the eight parts of speech
which go to the syntaxis of service, and are distinguished by their
noises much like bells, for they make not a concert but a peal. Their
pastime or recreation is prayers, their exercise drinking, yet herein so
religiously addicted that they serve God oftest when they are drunk.
Their humanity is a leg to the residencer, their learning a chapter, for
they learn it commonly before they read it; yet the old Hebrew names are
little beholden to them, for they miscall them worse than one another.
Though they never expound the scripture, they handle it much, and
pollute the gospel with two things, their conversation and their thumbs.
Upon worky-days, they behave themselves at prayers as at their pots, for
they swallow them down in an instant. Their gowns are laced commonly
with streamings of ale, superfluities of a cup or throat above measure.
Their skill in melody makes them the better companions abroad, and their
anthems abler to sing catches. Long lived for the most part they are
not, especially the bass, they overflow their bank so oft to drown the
organs. Briefly, if they escape arresting, they die constantly in God's
service; and to take their death with more patience, they have wine and
cakes at their funeral, and now they keep[73] the church a great deal
better and help to fill it with their bones as before with their noise.