THE INCONSTANT

Has a vagabond soul without any settled place of abode, like the

wandering Jew. His head is unfixed, out of order, and utterly

unserviceable upon any occasion. He is very apt to be taken with

anything, but nothing can hold him, for he presently breaks loose and

gives it the slip. His head is troubled with a palsy, which renders it

perpetually wavering and incapable of rest. His head is like an

hour-glass; that part that is uppermost always runs out until it is

turned, and then runs out again. His opinions are too violent to last,

for, like other things of the same kind in Nature, they quickly spend

themselves and fall to nothing. All his opinions are like wefts and

strays that are apt to straggle from their owners and belong to the lord

of the manor where they are taken up. His soul has no retentive faculty,

but suffers everything to run from him as fast as he receives it. His

whole life is like a preposterous ague in which he has his hot fit

always before his cold one, and is never in a constant temper. His

principles and resolves are but a kind of movables, which he will not

endure to be fastened to any freehold, but left loose to be conveyed

away at pleasure as occasion shall please to dispose of him. His soul

dwells, like a Tartar, in a hoord, without any settled habitation, but

is always removing and dislodging from place to place. He changes his

head oftener than a deer, and when his imaginations are stiff and at

their full growth, he casts them off to breed new ones, only to cast off

again the next season. All his purposes are built on air, the

chamelion's diet, and have the same operation to make him change colour

with every object he comes near. He pulls off his judgment as commonly

as his hat to every one he meets with. His word and his deed are all

one, for when he has given his word he has done, and never goes farther.

His judgment, being unsound, has the same operation upon him that a

disease has upon a sick man, that makes him find some ease in turning

from side to side, and still the last is the most uneasy.

Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century · 第 387 / 429 题