hatches, and help to ballast it. Intricate cases are the tacklings,
executions the anchors, capiases the cables, chancery bills the huge
sails, a long term the mast, law the helm, a judge the pilot, a counsel
the purser, an attorney the boatswain, his Setting clerk the swabber,
bonds the waves, outlawries gust, the verdict of juries rough wind,
extents the knocks that split all in pieces. Or if it be not a ship, yet
this and a ship differ not much in the building; the one is moving
misery, the other a standing. The first is seated on a spring, the
second on piles. Either this place is an emblem of a bawdy house, or a
bawdy house of it; for nothing is to be seen in any room but scurvy beds
and bare walls. But (not so much to dishonour it) it is an university of
poor scholars, in which three arts are chiefly studied: to pray, to
curse, and to write letters.



A PRISONER

Is one that hath been a monied man, and is still a very close fellow;
whosoever is of his acquaintance, let them make much of him, for they
shall find him as fast a friend as any in England: he is a sure man, and
you know where to find him. The corruption of a bankrupt is commonly the
generation of this creature. He dwells on the back side of the world, or
in the suburbs of society, and lives in a tenement which he is sure none
will go about to take over his head. To a man that walks abroad, he is
one of the antipodes, that goes on the top of the world, and this under
it. At his first coming in, he is a piece of new coin, all sharking old
prisoners lie sucking at his purse. An old man and he are much alike,
neither of them both go far. They are still angry and peevish, and they
sleep little. He was born at the fall of Babel, the confusion of