Carries himself like his dish (as the proverb says), very uprightly,
without spilling one drop of his humour. He is an orator and
rhetorician, that delights in flowers and ornaments of his own devising
to please himself and others that laugh at him. He is of a leaden, dull
temper, that stands stiff, as it is bent, to all crooked lines, but
never to the right. When he thinks to appear most graceful, he adorns
himself most ill-favouredly, like an Indian that wears jewels in his
lips and nostrils. His words and gestures are all as stiff as buckram,
and he talks as if his lips were turned up as well as his beard. All his
motions are regular, as if he went by clockwork, and he goes very true
to the nick as he is set. He has certain favourite words and
expressions, which he makes very much of, as he has reason to do, for
they serve him upon all occasions and are never out of the way when he
has use of them, as they have leisure enough to do, for nobody else has
any occasion for them but himself. All his affectations are forced and
stolen from others; and though they become some particular persons where
they grow naturally, as a flower does on its stalk, he thinks they will
do so by him when they are pulled and dead. He puts words and language
out of its ordinary pace and breaks it to his own fancy, which makes it
go so uneasy in a shuffle, which it has not been used to. He delivers
himself in a forced way, like one that sings with a feigned voice beyond
his natural compass. He loves the sound of words better than the sense,
and will rather venture to incur nonsense than leave out a word that he
has a kindness for. If he be a statesman, the slighter and meaner his
employments are the bigger he looks, as an ounce of tin swells and looks
bigger than an ounce of gold; and his affectations of gravity are the
most desperate of all, as the aphorism says--Madness of study and
consideration are harder to be cured than those of lighter and more
fantastic humour.