Would give a penny for any statesman's thought at any time. He travels
abroad to guess what princes are designing by seeing them at church or
dinner, and will undertake to unriddle a government at first sight, and
tell what plots she goes with, male or female; and discover, like a
mountebank, only by seeing the public face of affairs, what private
marks there are in the most secret parts of the body politic. He is so
ready at reasons of State, that he has them, like a lesson, by rote; but
as charlatans make diseases fit their medicines, and not their medicines
diseases, so he makes all public affairs conform to his own established
reason of State, and not his reason, though the case alter ever so much,
comply with them. He thinks to obtain a great insight into State affairs
by observing only the outside pretences and appearances of things, which
are seldom or never true, and may be resolved several ways, all equally
probable; and therefore his penetrations into these matters are like the
penetrations of cold into natural bodies, without any sense of itself or
the thing it works upon. For all his discoveries in the end amount only
to entries and equipages, addresses, audiences, and visits, with other
such politic speculations as the rabble in the streets is wont to
entertain itself withal. Nevertheless he is very cautious not to omit
his cipher, though he writes nothing but what every one does or may
safely know, for otherwise it would appear to be no secret. He
endeavours to reduce all his politics into maxims, as being most easily
portable for a travelling head, though, as they are for the most part of
slight matters, they are but like spirits drawn out of water, insipid
and good for nothing. His letters are a kind of bills of exchange, in
which he draws news and politics upon all his correspondents, who place
it to account, and draw it back again upon him; and though it be false,
neither cheats the other, for it passes between both for good and
sufficient pay. If he drives an inland trade, he is factor to certain
remote country virtuosos, who, finding themselves unsatisfied with the
brevity of the _Gazette_, desire to have exceedings of news besides
their ordinary commons. To furnish those, he frequents clubs and
coffee-houses, the markets of news, where he engrosses all he can light
upon; and if that do not prove sufficient, he is forced to add a lie or
two of his own making, which does him double service; for it does not
only supply his occasions for the present, but furnishes him with matter
to fill up gaps in the next letter with retracting what he wrote before,
and in the meantime has served for as good news as the best; and when
the novelty is over it is no matter what becomes of it, for he is better
paid for it than if it were true.