him. He feeds fat in the reading, and till it chance to his turn,
dislikes no house order so much as that the month is so contracted to a
fortnight. Amongst his country neighbours he arrogates as much honour
for being reader of an Inn of Chancery, as if it had been of his own
house; for they, poor souls, take law and conscience, Court and
Chancery, for all one. He learned to frame his case from putting riddles
and imitating Merlin's prophecies, and to set all the Cross Row together
by the ears; yet his whole law is not able to decide Lucan's one old
controversy betwixt Tau and Sigma. He accounts no man of his cap and
coat idle, but who trots not the circuit. He affects no life or quality
for itself, but for gain; and that, at least, to the stating him in a
Justice of Peace-ship, which is the first quickening soul superadded to
the elementary and inanimate form of his new tide. His terms are his
wife's vacations; yet she then may usurp divers Court-days, and has her
returns in _mensem_ for writs of entry--often shorter. His vacations are
her termers; but in assize time (the circuit being long) he may have a
trial at home against him by _nisi prius_. No way to heaven, he thinks,
so wise as through Westminster Hall; and his clerks commonly through it
visit both heaven and hell. Yet then he oft forgets his journey's end,
although he look on the Star-Chamber. Neither is he wholly destitute of
the arts. Grammar he has enough to make termination of those words which
his authority hath endenizoned rhetoric-some; but so little that it is
thought a concealment. Logic, enough to wrangle. Arithmetic, enough for
the ordinals of his year-books and number-rolls; but he goes not to
multiplication, there is a statute against it. So much geometry, that he
can advise in a _perambulatione fadenda_, or a _rationalibus divisis_.
In astronomy and astrology he is so far seen, that by the Dominical
letter he knows the holy-days, and finds by calculation that Michaelmas
term will be long and dirty. Marry, he knows so much in music that he
affects only the most and cunningest discords; rarely a perfect concord,