hath purchased legs, hair, beauty, and straightness, more than nature
left him. He unlocks maidenheads with his language, and speaks Euphues,
not so gracefully as heartily. His discourse makes not his behaviour;
but he buys it at court, as countrymen their clothes in Birchin Lane. He
is somewhat like the salamander, and lives in the flame of love, which
pains he expresseth comically. And nothing grieves him so much as the
want of a poet to make an issue in his love. Yet he sighs sweetly and
speaks lamentably, for his breath is perfumed and his words are wind. He
is best in season at Christmas, for the boar's head and reveller come
together. His hopes are laden in his quality; and, lest fiddlers should
take him unprovided, he wears pumps in his pocket; and, lest he should
take fiddlers unprovided, he whistles his own galliard. He is a calendar
of ten years, and marriage rusts him. Afterwards he maintains himself an
implement of household, by carving and ushering. For all this, he is
judicial only in tailors and barbers; but his opinion is ever ready, and
ever idle. If you will know more of his acts, the broker's shop is the
witness of his valour, where lies wounded, dead rent, and out of
fashion, many a spruce suit, overthrown by his fantasticness.



AN ELDER BROTHER

Is a creature born to the best advantage of things without him; that
hath the start at the beginning, but loiters it away before the ending.
He looks like his land, as heavily and dirtily, as stubbornly. He dares
do anything but fight, and fears nothing but his father's life, and
minority. The first thing he makes known is his estate, and the
loadstone that draws him is the upper end of the table. He wooeth by a
particular, and his strongest argument is all about the jointure. His