however heterogeneal to his matter in hand. His jests are either old
fled proverbs, or lean-starved hackney apophthegms, or poor verbal
quips, outworn by serving-men, tapsters, and milkmaids, even laid aside
by balladers. He assents to all men that bring any shadow of reason, and
you may make him when he speaks most dogmatically even with one breath,
to aver poor contradictions. His compositions differ only _terminorum
positione_ from dreams; nothing but rude heaps of immaterial,
incoherent, drossy, rubbishy stuff, promiscuously thrust up together;
enough to infuse dulness and barrenness in conceit into him that is so
prodigal of his ears as to give the hearing; enough to make a man's
memory ache with suffering such dirty stuff cast into it. As unwelcome
to any true conceit, as sluttish morsels or wallowish potions to a nice
stomach, which whiles he empties himself, it sticks in his teeth, nor
can he be delivered without sweat, and sighs, and hems, and coughs
enough to shake his grandam's teeth out of her head. He spits, and
scratches, and spawls, and turns like sick men from one elbow to
another, and deserves as much pity during his torture as men in fits of
tertian fevers, or self-lashing penitentiaries. In a word, rip him quite
asunder, and examine every shred of him, you shall find of him to be
just nothing but the subject of nothing; the object of contempt; yet
such as he is you must take him, for there is no hope he should ever
become better.



A GOOD WIFE

Is a man's best movable, a scion incorporate with the stock, bringing
sweet fruit; one that to her husband is more than a friend, less than
trouble; an equal with him in the yoke. Calamities and troubles she