Is a piece of base metal with the King's stamp upon it, a fog raised by
the sun to obscure his own brightness. He came to preferment by unworthy
offices, like one that rises with his bum forwards, which the rabble
hold to be fortunate. He got up to preferment on the wrong side, and
sits as untoward in it. He is raised rather above himself than others,
or as base metals are by the test of lead, while gold and silver
continue still unmoved. He is raised and swells, like a pimple, to be an
eyesore and deform the place he holds. He is borne like a cloud on the
air of the Prince's favour, and keeps his light from the rest of his
people. He rises, like the light end of a balance, for want of weight,
or as dust and feathers do, for being light. He gets into the Prince's
favour by wounding it. He is a true person of honour, for he does but
act it at the best; a lord made only to justify all the lords of
May-poles, morrice-dances, and misrule; a thing that does not live, but
lie in state before he's dead, such as the heralds dight at funerals.
His Prince gives him honour out of his own stock, and estate out of his
revenue, and lessens himself in both:--
"He is like fern, that vile unuseful weed,
That springs equivocally, without seed."
He was not made for honour, nor it for him, which makes it sit so
unfavouredly upon him. The fore-part of himself and the hinder-part of
his coach publish his distinction; as French lords, that have _haute
justice_--that is, may hang and draw--distinguish their qualities by the
pillars of their gallows. He got his honour easily, by chance, without
the hard, laborious way of merit, which makes him so prodigally lavish
of it. He brings down the price of honour, as the value of anything
falls in mean hands. He looks upon all men in the state of knighthood
and plain gentility as most deplorable, and wonders how he could endure
himself when he was but of that rank. The greatest part of his honour
consists in his well-sounding title, which he therefore makes choice of,
though he has none to the place, but only a patent to go by the name of
it. This appears at the end of his coach in the shape of a coronet,
which his footmen set their bums against, to the great disparagement of
the wooden representative. The people take him for a general grievance,
a kind of public pressure or innovation, and would willingly give a
subsidy to be redressed of him. He is a strict observer of men's
addresses to him, and takes a mathematical account whether they stoop
and bow in just proportion to the weight of his greatness and allow full
measure to their legs and cringes accordingly. He never uses courtship
but in his own defence, that others may use the same to him, and, like a
true Christian, does as he would be done unto. He is intimate with no
man but his pimp and his surgeon, with whom he keeps no state, but
communicates all the states of his body. He is raised, like the market
or a tax, to the grievance and curse of the people. He that knew the
inventory of him would wonder what slight ingredients go to the making
up of a great person; howsoever, he is turned up trump, and so commands
better cards than himself while the game lasts. He has much of honour
according to the original sense of it, which among the ancients, Gellius
says, signified injury. His prosperity was greater than his brain could
bear, and he is drunk with it; and if he should take a nap as long as
Epimenides or the Seven Sleepers he would never be sober again. He took
his degree and went forth lord by mandamus, without performing exercises
of merit. His honour's but an immunity from worth, and his nobility a
dispensation for doing things ignoble. He expects that men's hats should
fly off before him like a storm, and not presume to stand in the way of
his prospect, which is always over their heads. All the advantage he has
is but to go before or sit before, in which his nether parts take place
of his upper, that continue still, in comparison, but commoners. He is
like an open summer-house, that has no furniture but bare seats. All he
has to show for his honour is his patent, which will not be in season
until the third or fourth generation, if it lasts so long. His very
creation supposes him nothing before, and as tailors rose by the fall of
Adam, and came in, like thorns and thistles, with the curse, so did he
by the frailty of his master. His very face is his gentleman-usher, that
walks before him in state, and cries "Give way!" He is as stiff as if he
had been dipped in petrifying water and turned into his own statue. He
is always taking the name of his honour in vain, and will rather damn it
like a knighthood of the post than want occasion to pawn it for every
idle trifle, perhaps for more than it is worth, or any man will give to
redeem it; and in this he deals uprightly, though perhaps in
nothing else.