A diurnal-maker is the sub-almoner of history, Queen Mab's register, one
whom, by the same figure that a north country pedlar is a merchantman,
you may style an author. It is like overreach of language, when every
thin tinder-cloaked quack must be called a doctor; when a clumsy cobbler
usurps the attribute of our English peers, and is vamped a translator.
List him a writer and you smother Geoffrey in swabber-slops; the very
name of dabbler oversets him; he is swallowed up in the phrase, like Sir
S.L. [Samuel Luke] in a great saddle, nothing to be seen but the giddy
feather in his crown. They call him a Mercury, but he becomes the
epithet like the little negro mounted upon an elephant, just such
another blot rampant. He has not stuffings sufficient for the reproach
of a scribbler, but it hangs about him like an old wife's skin when the
flesh hath forsaken her, lank and loose. He defames a good title as well
as most of our modern noblemen; those wens of greatness, the body
politic's most peccant humours blistered into lords. He hath so
raw-boned a being that however you render him he rubs it out and makes
rags of the expression. The silly countryman who, seeing an ape in a
scarlet coat, blessed his young worship, and gave his landlord joy of
the hopes of his house, did not slander his complement with worse
application than he that names this shred an historian. To call him an
historian is to knight a mandrake; 'tis to view him through a
perspective, and by that gross hyperbole to give the reputation of an
engineer to a maker of mousetraps. Such an historian would hardly pass
muster with a Scotch stationer in a sieveful of ballads and godly books.
He would not serve for the breast-plate of a begging Grecian. The most
cramped compendium that the age hath seen since all learning hath been
almost torn into ends, outstrips him by the head. I have heard of
puppets that could prattle in a play, but never saw of their writings
before. There goes a report of the Holland women that together with
their children they are delivered of a Sooterkin, not unlike to a rat,
which some imagine to be the offspring of the stoves. I know not what
_Ignis fatuus_ adulterates the press, but it seems much after that
fashion, else how could this vermin think to be a twin to a legitimate
writer; when those weekly fragments shall pass for history, let the poor
man's box be entitled the exchequer, and the alms-basket a magazine. Not
a worm that gnaws on the dull scalp of voluminous Holinshed, but at
every meal devoured more chronicle than his tribe amounts to. A marginal
note of W. P. would serve for a winding-sheet for that man's works, like
thick-skinned fruits are all rind, fit for nothing but the author's
fate, to be pared in a pillory.
The cook who served up the dwarf in a pie (to continue the frolic) might
have lapped up such an historian as this in the bill of fare. He is the
first tincture and rudiment of a writer, dipped as yet in the
preparative blue, like an almanac well-willer. He is the cadet of a
pamphleteer, the pedee of a romancer; he is the embryo of a history
slinked before maturity. How should he record the issues of time who is
himself an abortive? I will not say but that he may pass for an
historian in Garbier's academy; he is much of the size of those
knotgrass professors. What a pitiful seminary was there projected; yet
suitable enough to the present universities, those dry nurses which the
providence of the age has so fully reformed that they are turned
reformadoes. But that's no matter, the meaner the better. It is a maxim
observable in these days, that the only way to win the game is to play
petty Johns. Of this number is the esquire of the quill, for he hath the
grudging of history and some yawnings accordingly. Writing is a disease
in him and holds like a quotidian, so 'tis his infirmity that makes him
an author, as Mahomet was beholding to the falling sickness to vouch him
a prophet. That nice artificer who filed a chain so thin and light that
a flea could trail it (as if he had worked shorthand, and taught his
tools to cypher), did but contrive an emblem for this skipjack and his
slight productions.
Methinks the Turk should licence diurnals because he prohibits learning
and books. A library of diurnals is a wardrobe of frippery; 'tis a just
idea of a Limbo of the infants. I saw one once that could write with his
toes, by the same token I could have wished he had worn his copies for
socks; 'tis he without doubt from whom the diurnals derive their
pedigree, and they have a birthright accordingly, being shuffled out at
the bed's feet of history. To what infinite numbers an historian would
multiply should he crumble into elves of this profession? To supply this
smallness they are fain to join forces, so they are not singly but as
the custom is in a croaking committee. They tug at the pen like slaves
at the oar, a whole bank together; they write in the posture that the
Swedes gave fire in, over one another's heads. It is said there is more
of them go to a suit of clothes than to a _Britannicus;_ in this
polygamy the clothes breed and cannot determine whose issue is
lawfully begotten.
And here I think it were not amiss to take a particular how he is
accoutred, and so do by him as he in his Siquis for the wall-eyed mare,
or the crop flea-bitten, give you the marks of the beast. I begin with
his head, which is ever in clouts, as if the nightcap should make
affidavit that the brain was pregnant. To what purpose doth the _Pia
Mater_ lie in so dully in her white formalities; sure she hath had hard
labour, for the brows have squeezed for it, as you may perceive by his
buttered bon-grace that film of a demicastor; 'tis so thin and unctuous
that the sunbeams mistake it for a vapour, and are like to cap him; so
it is right heliotrope, it creaks in the shine and flaps in the shade;
whatever it be I wish it were able to call in his ears. There's no
proportion between that head and appurtenances; those of all lungs are
no more fit for that small noddle of the circumcision than brass bosses
for a Geneva Bible. In what a puzzling neutrality is the poor soul that
moves betwixt two such ponderous biases? His collar is edged with a
piece of peeping linen, by which he means a band; 'tis the forlorn of
his shirt crawling out of his neck; indeed it were time that his shirt
were jogging, for it has served an apprenticeship, and (as apprentices
use) it hath learned its trade too, to which effect 'tis marching to the
papermill, and the next week sets up for itself in the shape of a
pamphlet. His gloves are the shavings of his hands, for he casts his
skin like a cancelled parchment. The itch represents the broken seals.
His boots are the legacies of two black jacks, and till he pawned the
silver that the jacks were tipped with it was a pretty mode of
boot-hose-tops. For the rest of his habit he is a perfect seaman, a kind
of tarpaulin, he being hanged about with his coarse composition, those
pole-davie papers.
But I must draw to an end, for every character is an anatomy lecture,
and it fares with me in this of the diurnal-maker, as with him that
reads on a begged malefactor, my subject smells before I have gone
through with him; for a parting blow then. The word historian imports a
sage and solemn author, one that curls his brow with a sullen gravity,
like a bull-necked Presbyter since the army hath got him off his
jurisdiction, who, Presbyter like, sweeps his breast with a reverend
beard, full of native moss-troopers; not such a squirting scribe as this
that's troubled with the rickets, and makes pennyworths of history. The
college-treasury that never had in bank above a Harry-groat, shut up
there in a melancholy solitude, like one that is kept to keep
possession, had as good evidence to show for his title as he for an
historian; so, if he will needs be an historian, he is not cited in the
sterling acceptation, but after the rate of bluecaps' reckoning, an
historian Scot. Now a Scotchman's tongue runs high fullams. There is a
cheat in his idiom, for the sense ebbs from the bold expression, like
the citizen's gallon, which the drawer interprets but half a pint. In
sum, a diurnal-maker is the anti-mark of an historian, he differs from
him as a drill from a man, or (if you had rather have it in the saints'
gibberish) as a hinter doth from a holder-forth.