Is a volume of various conceits or epitome of time, who by his
representation and appearance makes things long past seem present. He is
much like the counters in arithmetic, and may stand one while for a
king, another while a beggar, many times as a mute or cipher. Sometimes
he represents that which in his life he scarce practises--to be an
honest man. To the point, he oft personates a rover, and therein conies
nearest to himself. If his action prefigure passion, he raves, rages,
and protests much by his painted heavens, and seems in the height of
this fit ready to pull Jove out of the garret where perchance he lies
leaning on his elbows, or is employed to make squibs and crackers to
grace the play. His audience are oftentimes judicious, but his chief
admirers are commonly young wanton chambermaids, who are so taken with
his posture and gay clothes, they never come to be their own women
after. He exasperates men's enormities in public view, and tells them
their faults on the stage, not as being sorry for them, but rather
wishes still he might find more occasions to work on. He is the general
corrupter of spirits yet untainted, inducing them by gradation to much
lascivious depravity. He is a perspicuity of vanity in variety, and
suggests youth to perpetrate such vices as otherwise they had haply
ne'er heard of. He is (for the most part) a notable hypocrite, seeming
what he is not, and is indeed what he seems not. And if he lose one of
his fellow strolls, in the summer he turns king of the gipsies; if not,
some great man's protection is a sufficient warrant for his
peregrination, and a means to procure him the town-hall, where he may
long exercise his qualities with clown-claps of great admiration, in a
tone suitable to the large ears of his illiterate auditory. He is one
seldom takes care for old age, because ill diet and disorder, together
with a consumption or some worse disease taken up in his full career,
have only chalked out his catastrophe but to a colon; and he scarcely
survives to his natural period of days.
* * * * *
_In_ 1631 _"Whimzies, or, A new Cast of Characters" inscribed to Sir
Alexander Radcliffe by one who signed his dedication Clitus
Alexandrinus, gave twenty-four Characters, of which this of the maker of
a Courant or news sheet is one:--_