A diurnal is a puny chronicle, scarce pin-feathered with the wings of
time. It is a history in sippets: the English Iliads in a nutshell: the
apocryphal Parliament's book of Maccabees in single sheets. It would
tire a Welshman to reckon up how many aps 'tis removed from an annal;
for it is of that extract, only of the younger house, like a shrimp to a
lobster. The original sinner in this kind was Dutch, Gallo-Belgicus the
protoplast, and the modern Mercuries but Hans-en-kelders. The Countess
of Zealand was brought to bed of an almanac, as many children as days in
the year. It may be the legislative lady is of that lineage, so she
spawns the diurnals, and they at Westminster take them in adoption by
the names of _Scoticus_, _Civicus_, _Britannicus_. In the frontispiece
of the old Beldam diurnal, like the contents of the chapter, sitteth the
House of Commons judging the twelve tribes of Israel. You may call them
the kingdom's anatomy before the weekly calendar; for such is a diurnal,
the day of the month with what weather in the commonwealth. It is taken
for the pulse of the body politic, and the empiric divines of the
assembly, those spiritual dragooners, thumb it accordingly. Indeed it is
a pretty synopsis, and those grave rabbis (though in the point of
Divinity) trade in no larger authors. The country-carrier, when he buys
it for the vicar, miscalls it the urinal; yet properly enough, for it
casts the water of the state ever since it staled blood. It differs from
an Aulicus, as the devil and his exorcist, or as a black witch doth from
a white one, whose office is to unravel her enchantments.
It begins usually with an Ordinance, which is a law still born, dropped
before quickened by the royal assent. 'Tis one of the parliament's
bye-blows, acts only being legitimate, and hath no more sire than a
Spanish jennet that is begotten by the wind.
Thus their militia, like its patron Mars, is the issue only of the
mother, without the concourse of royal Jupiter: yet law it is, if they
vote it, in defiance to their fundamentals; like the old sexton, who
swore his clock went true, whatever the sun said to the contrary.
The next ingredient of a diurnal is plots, horrible plots, which with
wonderful sagacity it hunts dry-Coot, while they are yet in their
causes, before _materia prima_ can put on her smock. How many such fits
of the mother have troubled the kingdom; and for all Sir W.E. [William
Earle] looks like a man-midwife, not yet delivered of so much as a
cushion? But actors must have properties; and since the stages were
voted down the only playhouse is at Westminster.
Suitable to their plots are their informers, skippers, and tailors,
spaniels both for the land and water. Good conscionable intelligence!
For however Pym's bill may inflame the reckoning, the honest vermin have
not so much for lying as the public faith.
Thus a zealous botcher in Moorfields, while he was contriving some
quirpocut of Church-Government, by the help of his outlying ears and the
Otacousticon of the spirit, discovered such a plot, that Selden intends
to combat antiquity, and maintain it was a tailor's goose that preserved
the capital.
I wonder my Lord of Canterbury is not once more all to be traitored, for
dealing with the lions to settle the Commission of Array in the Tower.
It would do well to cramp the articles dormant, besides the opportunity
of reforming these beasts of the prerogative, and changing their
profaner names of Harry and Charles into Nehemiah and Eleazar.
Suppose a corn-cutter being to give little Isaac a cast of his office
should fall to paring his brows (mistaking the one end for the other,
because he branches at both), this would be a plot, and the next diurnal
would furnish you with this scale of votes:--
_Resolved_ upon the question, That this act of the corn-cutter was an
absolute invasion of the city's charter in the representative
forehead of Isaac.
_Resolved_, That the evil counsellors about the corn-cutter are popishly
affected and enemies to the State.
_Resolved_, That there be a public thanksgiving for the great
deliverance of Isaac's brow-antlers; and a solemn covenant drawn up to
defy the corn-cutter and all his works.
Thus the Quixotes of this age fight with the windmills of their own
heads, quell monsters of their own creation, make plots, and then
discover them; as who fitter to unkennel the fox than the terrier that
is part of him?
In the third place march their adventures; the Roundheads' legends, the
rebels' romance; stories of a larger size than the ears of their sect,
able to strangle the belief of a Solifidian.
I'll present them in their order. And first as a whiffler before the
show enter Stamford, one that trod the stage with the first, traversed
the ground, made a leg and exit. The country people took him for one
that by order of the Houses was to dance a morrice through the west of
England. Well, he's a nimble gentleman; set him upon Banks his horse in
a saddle rampant, and it is a great question which part of the Centaur
shows better tricks.
There was a vote passing to translate him with all his equipage into
monumental gingerbread; but it was crossed by the female committee
alleging that the valour of his image would bite their children by
the tongues.
This cubit and half of commander, by the help of a diurnal, routed his
enemies fifty miles off. It's strange you'll say, and yet 'tis generally
believed he would as soon do it at that distance as nearer hand. Sure it
was his sword for which the weapon-salve was invented; that so wounding
and healing (like loving correlates) might both work at the same
removes. But the squib is run to the end of the rope: room for the
prodigy of valour. Madam Atropos in breeches, Waller's knight-errantry;
and because every mountebank must have his zany, throw him in Hazelrig
to set off his story. These two, like Bel and the Dragon, are always
worshipped in the same chapter; they hunt in couples, what one doth at
the head, the other scores up at the heels.
Thus they kill a man over and over, as Hopkins and Sternhold murder the
psalms with another of the same; one chimes all in, and then the other
strikes up as the saints-bell.