worth than his body. If ever he do good deed (which is very seldom) his
own mouth is the chronicle of it, lest it should die forgotten. His
whole body goes all upon screws, and his face is the vice that moves
them. If his patron be given to music, he opens his chops and sings, or
with a wry neck falls to tuning his instrument; if that fail, he takes
the height of his lord with a hawking pole. He follows the man's
fortune, not the man, seeking thereby to increase his own. He pretends
he is most undeservedly envied, and cries out, remembering the game,
chess, that a pawn before a king is most played on. Debts he owns none
but shrewd turns, and those he pays ere he be sued. He is a flattering
glass to conceal age and wrinkles. He is mountain's monkey that,
climbing a tree and skipping from bough to bough, gives you back his
face; but come once to the top, he holds his nose up into the wind and
shows you his tail. Yet all this gay glitter shows on him as if the sun
shone in a puddle, for he is a small wine that will not last; and when
he is falling, he goes of himself faster than misery can drive him.



A FAIR AND HAPPY MILKMAID

Is a country wench, that is so far from making herself beautiful by art,
that one look of hers is able to put all face physic out of countenance.
She knows a fair look is but a dumb orator to commend virtue, therefore
minds it not. All her excellences stand in her so silently, as if they
had stolen upon her without her knowledge. The lining of her apparel
(which is herself) is far better than outsides of tissue; for though she
be not arrayed in the spoil of the silk-worm, she is decked in
innocency, a far better wearing. She doth not, with lying long a-bed,
spoil both her complexion and conditions; Nature hath taught her too