Is so much heraldry without honour, himself less real than his title.
His virtue is, that he was his father's son, and all the expectation of
him to beget another. A man that lives merely to preserve another's
memory, and let us know who died so many years ago. One of just as much
use as his images, only he differs in this, that he can speak himself,
and save the fellow of Westminster[94] a labour: and he remembers
nothing better than what was out of his life. His grandfathers and their
acts are his discourse, and he tells them with more glory than they did
them; and it is well they did enough, or else he had wanted matter. His
other studies are his sports and those vices that are fit for great men.
Every vanity of his has his officer, and is a serious employment for his
servants. He talks loud, and uncleanly, and scurvily as a part of state,
and they hear him with reverence. All good qualities are below him, and
especially learning, except some parcels of the chronicle and the
writing of his name, which he learns to write not to be read. He is
merely of his servants' faction, and their instrument for their friends
and enemies, and is always least thanked for his own courtesies. They
that fool him most do most with him, and he little thinks how many laugh
at him bare-head. No man is kept in ignorance more of himself and men,
for he hears naught but flattery; and what is fit to be spoken, truth,
with so much preface that it loses itself. Thus he lives till his tomb
be made ready, and is then a grave statue to posterity.