Is a cipher, that has no value himself but from the place he stands in.
All his happiness consists in the opinion he believes others have of it.
This is his faith, but as it is heretical and erroneous, though he
suffer much tribulation for it, he continues obstinate, and not to be
convinced. He flutters up and down like a butterfly in a garden, and
while he is pruning of his peruke takes occasion to contemplate his legs
and the symmetry of his breeches. He is part of the furniture of the
rooms, and serves for a walking picture, a moving piece of arras. His
business is only to be seen, and he performs it with admirable industry,
placing himself always in the best light, looking wonderfully politic,
and cautious whom he mixes withal. His occupation is to show his
clothes, and if they could but walk themselves they would save him the
labour and do his work as well as himself. His immunity from varlets is
his freehold, and he were a lost man without it. His clothes are but his
tailor's livery, which he gives him, for 'tis ten to one he never pays
for them. He is very careful to discover the lining of his coat, that
you may not suspect any want of integrity or flaw in him from the skin
outwards. His tailor is his creator, and makes him of nothing; and
though he lives by faith in him, he is perpetually committing iniquities
against him. His soul dwells in the outside of him, like that of a
hollow tree, and if you do but peel the bark off him he deceases
immediately. His carriage of himself is the wearing of his clothes, and,
like the cinnamon tree, his bark is better than his body. His looking
big is rather a tumour than greatness. He is an idol that has just so
much value as other men give him that believe in him, but none of his
own. He makes his ignorance pass for reserve, and, like a hunting-nag,
leaps over what he cannot get through. He has just so much of politics
as hostlers in the university have Latin. He is as humble as a Jesuit to
his superior, but repays himself again in insolence over those that are
below him, and with a generous scorn despises those that can neither do
him good nor hurt. He adores those that may do him good, though he knows
they never will, and despises those that would not hurt him if they
could. The court is his church, and he believes as that believes, and
cries up and down everything as he finds it pass there. It is a great
comfort to him to think that some who do not know him may perhaps take
him for a lord, and while that thought lasts he looks bigger than usual
and forgets his acquaintance, and that's the reason why he will
sometimes know you and sometimes not. Nothing but want of money or
credit puts him in mind that he is mortal, but then he trusts Providence
that somebody will trust him, and in expectation of that hopes for a
better life, and that his debts will never rise up in judgment against
him. To get in debt is to labour in his vocation, but to pay is to
forfeit his protection, for what's that worth to one that owes nothing?
His employment being only to wear his clothes, the whole account of his
life and actions is recorded in shopkeepers' books, that are his
faithful historiographers to their own posterity; and he believes he
loses so much reputation as he pays off his debts, and that no man wears
his clothes in fashion that pays for them, for nothing is further from
the mode. He believes that he that runs in debt is beforehand with those
that trust him, and only those that pay are behind. His brains are
turned giddy, like one that walks on the top of a house, and that's the
reason it is so troublesome to him to look downwards. He is a kind of
spectrum, and his clothes are the shape he takes to appear and walk in,
and when he puts them off he vanishes. He runs as busily out of one room
into another as a great practiser does in Westminster Hall from one
court to another. When he accosts a lady he puts both ends of his
microcosm in motion, by making legs at one end and combing his peruke at
the other. His garniture is the sauce to his clothes, and he walks in
his portcannons like one that stalks in long grass. Every motion of him
cries "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, quoth the preacher." He rides
himself like a well-managed horse, reins in his neck, and walks
_terra-terra_. He carries his elbows backward, as if he were pinioned
like a trussed-up fowl, and moves as stiff as if he was upon the spit.
His legs are stuck in his great voluminous breeches like the whistles in
a bagpipe, those abundant breeches in which his nether parts are not
clothed but packed up. His hat has been long in a consumption of the
fashion, and is now almost worn to nothing; if it do not recover quickly
it will grow too little for a head of garlic. He wears garniture on the
toes of his shoes to justify his pretensions to the gout, or such other
malady that for the time being is most in fashion or request. When he
salutes a friend he pulls off his hat, as women do their vizard-masks.
His ribbons are of the true complexion of his mind, a kind of painted
cloud or gaudy rainbow, that has no colour of itself but what it borrows
from reflection. He is as tender of his clothes as a coward is of his
flesh, and as loth to have them disordered. His bravery is all his
happiness, and, like Atlas, he carries his heaven on his back. He is
like the golden fleece, a fine outside on a sheep's back. He is a
monster or an Indian creature, that is good for nothing in the world but
to be seen. He puts himself up into a sedan, like a fiddle in a case,
and is taken out again for the ladies to play upon, who, when they have
done with him, let down his treble-string till they are in the humour
again. His cook and _valet de chambre_ conspire to dress dinner and him
so punctually together that the one may not be ready before the other.
As peacocks and ostriches have the gaudiest and finest feathers, yet
cannot fly, so all his bravery is to flutter only. The beggars call him
"my lord," and he takes them at their words and pays them for it. If you
praise him, he is so true and faithful to the mode that he never fails
to make you a present of himself, and will not be refused, though you
know not what to do with him when you have him.