Is a certain classic author that handles his subject-matter very
ruggedly, and endeavours with his own evil words to corrupt another
man's good manners. All his works treat but of two things, his own
malice and another man's faults, both which he describes in very proper
and pertinent language. He is not much concerned whether what he writes
be true or false; that's nothing to his purpose, which aims only at
filthy and bitter, and therefore his language is, like pictures of the
devil, the fouler the better. He robs a man of his good name, not for
any good it will do him (for he dares not own it), but merely, as a
jackdaw steals money, for his pleasure. His malice has the same success
with other men's charity, to be rewarded in private; for all he gets is
but his own private satisfaction and the testimony of an evil
conscience; for which, if it be discovered, he suffers the worst kind of
martyrdom and is paid with condign punishment, so that at the best he
has but his labour for his pains. He deals with a man as the Spanish
Inquisition does with heretics, clothes him in a coat painted with
hellish shapes of fiends, and so shows him to the rabble to render him
the more odious. He exposes his wit like a bastard, for the next comer
to take up and put out to nurse, which it seldom fails of, so ready is
every man to contribute to the infamy of another. He is like the devil,
that sows tares in the dark, and while a man sleeps plants weeds among
his corn. When he ventures to fall foul on the Government or any great
persons, if he has not a special care to keep himself, like a conjurer,
safe in his circle, he raises a spirit that falls foul on himself and
carries him to limbo, where his neck is clapped up in the hole, out of
which it is never released until he has paid his ears down on the nail
for fees. He is in a worse condition than a schoolboy, for when he is
discovered he is whipped for his exercise, whether it be well or ill
done; so that he takes a wrong course to show his wit, when his best way
to do so is to conceal it; otherwise he shows his folly instead of his
wit, and pays dear for the mistake.