other to maintain forbidden titles, both which he sows amongst them.
Honest he dare not be, for that loves order; yet, if he can be brought
to ceremony and made but master of it, he is converted.



A MERE COMMON LAWYER

Is the best shadow to make a discreet one show the fairer. He is a
_materia prima_ informed by reports, actuated by statutes, and hath his
motion by the favourable intelligence of the Court. His law is always
furnished with a commission to arraign his conscience; but, upon
judgment given, he usually sets it at large. He thinks no language worth
knowing but his Barragouin: only for that point he hath been a long time
at wars with Priscian for a northern province. He imagines that by sure
excellency his profession only is learning, and that it is a profanation
of the Temple to his Themis dedicated, if any of the liberal arts be
there admitted to offer strange incense to her. For, indeed, he is all
for money. Seven or eight years squires him out, some of his nation less
standing; and ever since the night of his call, he forgot much what he
was at dinner. The next morning his man (in _actu_ or _potentia_) enjoys
his pickadels. His laundress is then shrewdly troubled in fitting him a
ruff, his perpetual badge. His love-letters of the last year of his
gentlemanship are stuffed with discontinuances, remitters, and uncore
priests; but, now being enabled to speak in proper person, he talks of a
French hood instead of a jointure, wags his law, and joins issue. Then
he begins to stick his letters in his ground chamber-window, that so the
superscription may make his squireship transparent. His heraldry gives
him place before the minister, because the Law was before the Gospel.
Next term he walks his hoopsleeve gown to the hall; there it proclaims